When I first heard about the proposed anti-union laws moving through the Arizona legislature, I was fairly resigned to their passage. Arizona has huge Republican majorities in its legislature, and they already passed a major anti-immigration bill, though they obviously weren’t shy about courting controversy. But then a funny thing happened. The Republicans couldn’t find [...]

Despite fierce opposition from major transit unions, the Senate yesterday gave final approval to the FAA Authorization bill, a five-year extension that removes uncertainty from the FAA, approves a next-generation air traffic monitoring system and, in Harry Reid’s telling, creates hundreds of thousands of jobs. But unions were unhappy about changes to labor law insisted [...]

The Senate will vote as early as today on whether to punish transportation unions in a bid to get Federal Aviation Administration authorization through 2015. The House already passed its version of what negotiators called a bipartisan compromise. But unions object to the deal and have gotten more vocal about it in recent days. The [...]

Before moving on to Arizona, let’s note that Indiana will soon become the nation’s 23rd right-to-work state, after the state Senate passed a revised bill to that effect. The bill now can go to Governor Mitch Daniels for his signature. Lawmakers voted Wednesday to make Indiana the Rust Belt’s first right-to-work state, passing legislation that [...]

Many observers would look at the Wisconsin uprising and think that the Republicans made a catastrophic mistake. They re-energized the opposition in the state, created a powerful grassroots machine, lost two state Senators through recall, and now their Governor faces a recall election. But that’s short-term thinking. After fits and starts, and backed by a [...]

A collection of 18 transportation unions have demanded that Congress reject a compromise measure on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Authorization bill which they say will hurt unions. Unions like the United Auto Workers, United Steelworkers, Teamsters, the International Association of Machinists, the Association of Flight Attendants (CWA) and more object to several hidden provisions [...]

The John Doe investigation swirling around Scott Walker in Wisconsin has begun to become a factor in his recall election. The labor-backed progressive group We Are Wisconsin has called for the resignations of two current Walker staffers, who exhibited some of the same behavior that drew indictments for former aides. The group called on Brett [...]

This isn’t how conservatives wanted things to play out. They wanted to use the post-Tea Party period as a time to crush union membership. They sought out a coordinated strategy, in places like Wisconsin and Ohio and Indiana and Tennessee and Oklahoma and Idaho, to roll back and bust up unions. And despite all that, [...]

Remember during the debate over the Colombian trade deal when the Administration swore up and down that they would, as a condition of putting the free trade agreement forward, insist on an “action plan” that would end the murder of trade unionists in Colombia and bring about justice for those already killed? Yeah, so, we’re [...]

I was very skeptical that the Indiana House Democrats could hold up on a boycott to deny quorum to Republicans, and indeed, they couldn’t. They returned to work late today and allowed the right-to-work legislation to pass. Indiana’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives cleared the way Wednesday to become the first right-to-work state in a traditionally [...]

Despite the vulnerabilities of Scott Walker in the upcoming recall election, he also has plenty of advantages. It’s very difficult to recall a governor, it’s only been done twice in American history. Because of the rules governing the recall, Walker can continue to raise unlimited campaign funds until the date is set for the recall. [...]