While Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees awaits a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, developments in California may clarify the issues involved. The California Association of Psychiatric Technicians, a government employee union with more than 6,000 members, will levy a monthly charge of $6.50 to fund political activities. Union…
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California Assembly Bill 1250, authored by Los Angeles Democrat Reginald Jones-Sawyer, would restrict counties from contracting out for key services. The bill is sponsored by two of the most powerful government employee unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). As the San Jose…
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Back in 2013, some 8,000 members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) rallied at the California state capitol in Sacramento chanting, “We’re letting them know this is our house!” In 2012, the government employee unions had helped elect big-government, tax-hiking politicians such as Jerry Brown, and they were now clamoring for more money…
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As we noted in 2013, California’s government employee unions are so confident of their power that they demonstrate in front of the capitol chanting “This is our house!” They were right then and are still right now, as a Sacramento Bee editorial explains. Senate Bill 376 by Ricardo Lara is “a sop to the…
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Some taxpayers remain unaware that government-employee unions run the state of California, but the evidence is not hard to find. Sure enough, Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers, fired the first salvo to make a temporary tax hike permanent. “Proposition 30 is the best thing to happen to public education and…
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We recently noted that California governor Jerry Brown’s 2014-15 budget would result in the overstaffing of Caltrans design and construction departments by about 3,500 full-time employees at a cost of more than $500 million. This comes at a time when, as Dan Walters of the Sacramento Bee observed, a declining workload is “not being…
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As Josh Hicks reports in the Washington Post, the U.S. Postal Service lost $1.9 billion in the second quarter, and the losses come despite increases in revenues, higher prices for stamps, and a boost in USPS package shipping. The losses, Hicks notes, mark “the 20th time in the last 22 quarters in which the…
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In a new article for the Wall Street Journal, “We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers,” Stephen Moore discusses that “More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined.” If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering…
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FreedomWorks has produced a very timely new video, “We Won Wisconsin—But the Fight Goes On,” on the very serious, looming crises for state government across the U.S., as a result of the unsustainable entitlements, government employee union costs, and other spending and debt.
San Jose City Councilman Pete Constant wants to answer his office phone but the City Hall employees’ union says he should not be allowed to do so. The union has taken the Councilman to court, attempting to force him to hire someone else to be his administrative assistant and answer phones for $70,000 a…
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