by rondelord | Feb 3, 2015 | Collective Bargaining, Health Insurance, Labor, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
Miami-Dade County’s 2014 labor negotiations seem ready to stretch well into 2015 — and maybe beyond. At the moment, a little more than half of the county’s unionized county employees are covered by new three-year labor contracts. The holdouts: unions for the fire,...
by rondelord | Feb 3, 2015 | Collective Bargaining, Fire, Health Insurance, Labor, Pensions, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
These are trying times for the American labor movement. Employer backlash; the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, which restricted union activities and allowed states to pass “right-to-work” laws; and deindustrialization have led to a decades-long decline in union membership, a...
by rondelord | Feb 3, 2015 | Collective Bargaining, Fire, Labor, Pensions, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
Let’s break out the crystal ball and peer into the future for Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to bargain state-employee and retiree health benefits with unions. Background: California spends about $3 billion on medical benefits for state workers, plus $2 billion for retirees....
by rondelord | Feb 3, 2015 | Fire, Labor, Pensions, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
The three largest cities in Riverside County are still having difficulty in fully funding public employee pension costs. The emergent problem of rising unfunded liabilities, soaring costs and falling investment returns have been a long-time coming. The challenge for...
by rondelord | Feb 3, 2015 | Labor, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
The latest figures on union membership from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the long decline has continued to the point where the percentage of Americans in unions is lower now than at any point in the last century. That decline has not been arrested even by...
by rondelord | Feb 3, 2015 | Collective Bargaining, Fire, Labor, Police, Politics, Public Employees (Non-Sworn), Unions
The city of Aurora this week approved new contracts for three key city unions. The contracts with two units of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, and with the Association of Professional Police Officers were literally years in...
