President Trump’s Proposed Budget Eliminates Union-Funding Harwood Grant

President Trump’s budget slashed the Department of Labor’s funding from $12.2 billion this year to $9.6 billion next year. This equals a 21% cut. On the chopping block is the DOL’s Susan Harwood Training Grant Program. You don’t know what the Susan Harwood Grant is? I didn’t either. The Susan Harwood grant gives out grants…
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Unions Seek to Reverse the Elusiveness of Organizing Retail

Since 1980 real wages in retail have fallen by 11% while on-call scheduling, involuntary part-time work, and “clopening” (where workers lock up the store at night and reopen the next morning) have, according to unions, wreaked havoc with workers’ lives. But the retail sector has one of the lowest rates of unionization in the economy…
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Organized Labor Stakes Future Success on Non-Traditional Measures

As followers of Roetzel Recap: Labor Relations know, the labor movement is slowly shifting away from traditional boots on the ground union organizing to a more holistic approach of worker centers and getting municipalities to change ordinances to benefit unions, to name a few. At a recent conference geared toward union organizers, it was noted…
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Subway Franchise Employees Vote In Favor of Union Validating Union’s Efforts to Organize Fast Food Industry

Employees of a Subway franchise in Bloomsbury, N.J. voted 8-5 to join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) Local 108. While this is great fodder for unions to hark the success of its 3-year effort to organize the fast food industry, these 13 employees are hardly the poster children for a successful campaign.…
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Legal Developments’ Potential Impact on Franchisees

Labor unions are targeting franchisees and the restaurant industry as a whole, and they are not alone. Worker centers, including Fast Food Forward and Worker’s Organizing Committee are generally closely affiliated with, i.e. fully funded by, labor unions, and are the brains behind the fast food strikes, Black Friday strikes at Wal-Mart, and raising the…
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Complaint Issues Against UFCW for Unlawful Coercion of Walmart Employees

Region 7 of the NLRB in Detroit, Michigan issued a complaint, alleging that the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) violated Section the NLRA by restraining and coercing Walmart employees during a 2012 Black Friday protest at a store in Dearborn, Michigan. According to the complaint, an organizing director for UFCW Local 876 and…
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