SAN JOSE –Barack Obama’s praising Wal-Mart again, and union leaders Maria Elena Durazo and Joe Hansen don’t like that one bit. The Democratic president traveled on May 9 to a Wal-Mart in San Jose, Calif., to laud the firm for committing to solar energy technology to power hundreds of its stores and for being a leader in that movement.  That […]

WASHINGTON –By party-line votes, the highly polarized Republican-run House Education and the Workforce Committee approved two bills curbing the National Labor Relations Board, even as the board held two days of hearings on its plan to streamline union recognition election procedures. Committee Democrats called the GOP measures “union-busting bills” and unsuccessfully tried to attach to them legislation to raise the […]

CHICAGO –Unions hailed a National Labor Relations Board official’s ruling on March 26 that athletes at private universities nationwide – such as Northwestern, where the case occurred – are employees of the institutions and thus can unionize. NLRB Chicago Regional Director Peter Sung Ohr said Northwestern’s football players can hold a board-sanctioned election on whether to unionize with the College […]