Is Paycheck Fairness Good for Women?
Christina Hoff Sommers, writing in U.S. News and World Report, says the Paycheck Fairness Act will work to the disadvantage of women. Read more here.
Employment Relations:
Getting Rid of Chores for Farm Kids
Most urban kids don’t know what chores are. But in farm country kids know well what it means to “get out and do your chores.” According to a story in today’s Daily Caller, the Obama Administration means to bring our urban and rural kids together by banning chores for country kids. You can’t make stuff [...]
Turns Out Federal Employees are Underpaid
A week ago we posted a link [here] to a Congressional Budget Office study finding that federal employees make 16% more than comparable workers in the private sector. But don’t be fooled It turns out that federal employees are actually underpaid relative to the private sector because their jobs are more complicated and difficult. Don’t [...]
Job Holder as Job Creator
Walter Russell Mead, blogging for The American Interest, argues [here] that we need a whole new understanding of jobs, employment and employers. The future, he says, is about entrepreneurs and innovation. “In order to create the kind of job and service explosion that can provide better incomes for more Americans going forward, the government needs [...]
A Race to the Bottom
Oregon politicians dare not speak of RTW (shhhh … whisper quietly … the right to work), but maybe they should start thinking about it if they are serious about competing in a 21st century world economy. Arthur Laffer writes in today’s Wall Street Journal: “The benefits to states having right-to-work legislation are overwhelming. As demonstrated [...]
A Right to Work Law in Oregon?
Cascade Policy Institute has just released a study of the effects a right to work law would have for Oregon’s economy, employment and personal income. The study, The Right to Work is Right for Oregon, is authored by economists Randall Pozdena and Eric Fruits. The full report can be downloaded from the Cascade website here. [...]
Maggie Thatcher and Indiana Republicans
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has come to the silver screen portrayed by none other than the incomparable Meryl Streep. According to Daniel Yergin, writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, the film gets the character right but leaves out much that was important about Thatcher’s tenure. Among the most important of Thatcher’s accomplishments were [...]
Decline of Oregon Teachers’ Union Influence
Could the Oregon Education Association’s stranglehold on Oregon politics be loosening? A story by Nigel Jaquiss in Willamette Week suggests maybe so. Several bills opposed by the teachers’ union passed with Democratic support but, as Jaquiss reports, OEA’s political contributions are three times larger than the next most generous organization — the public employees union [...]
NLRB should back off plan to shorten union-vote time
Proposed federal rules, which are unfair to employers, slash the length of time workers have before being asked to unionize. This is the Denver Post’s take on President Obama’s most recent effort to satisfy Big Labor’s tireless efforts to collect on the work it did to help him win the presidency. Click here to read [...]
Battle underway over Blair Mountain coal
Twenty years ago the apparent absence of spotted owls in Northwest forests provided the spark for ongoing tensions between timber communities and environmentalists. In West Virginia today, the presence of bullet casings from a century old labor dispute have helped ignite a battle over the future of coal-rich Blair Mountain. Read more…
Boeing lawsuit may reach U.S. Supreme Court
Last month the National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint against Boeing, claiming that the aircraft manufacturer located its new 787 Dreamliner assembly plant in South Carolina, rather than Washington State, in retaliation against the Machinists Union and therefore in violation of federal law. Boeing has now rejected a settlement proposal from the Machinists and says [...]
The Lochner Ness Monster
Last week we noted that while the right hand of the Obama Administration was announcing regulatory reforms intended to reduce burdens on business, the left hand was imposing hundreds of pages of new regulations. Part of what explains this seemingly contradictory behavior is that, while some businesses are seeking relief from regulation, others are seeking [...]
Less Perfect Unions
Collective bargaining turns teachers into teamsters. Probably because of a career spent toiling in financial journalism—where being wrong matters, unlike in political journalism—I’ve grown very fond of Stein’s Law. Formulated by the late economist Herb Stein, it states: “If something can’t go on forever, it will stop.” That’s what we used to tell ourselves when [...]
Voters should demand answers about Obamacare exemptions
Over the last few months, most public discussion of Obamacare has centered round the pending legal challenges to the constitutionality of the so-called “individual mandate,” the provision in the law that requires everyone to purchase insurance. It will be months if not a year or two before that question is finally resolved, but in the [...]
Amtrak Chugs Deeper Into the Red
05/11/11 by JOSH MITCHELL, Wall Street Journal. Amtrak’s financial losses are projected to widen this year despite rising ridership, the top executive of the government-subsidized rail system said Tuesday. Amtrak blames the red ink on rising compensation costs for union workers and increased costs for fuel. Read more…
