On November 6, 2018, Americans voted for a divided government. The Democrats will now control the House of Representatives, while Republicans will retain control of the Senate.

What do the election results mean for labor policy?

On October 22, 2018, the U.S. Department of Labor under the leadership of U.S. Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Association Retirement Plans (ARPs). The proposed rule follows through on President Donald Trump’s August 31^st Executive Order 13847, “Strengthening Retirement Security in America.”

On September 18, 2018, the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB) finally counted the votes for an election that took place five years earlier.

The Gerawan farm workers voted to decertify the United Farm Workers (UFW) by a 5 to 1 margin. The vote count was 1,098 for “No Union” and 197 for the union.

Gerawan Farming has approximately 5,000 workers, and the UFW listed about 10,000 people as members in 2017. 

Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Labor released several videos celebrating the American worker. The videos highlighted President Trump's Task Force on Apprenticeship Expansion, the increasing number of jobs available today, Association Health Plans, criminal justice reform, and DOL funding to solve the opioid crisis.

On August 8, 2018, the Center for Worker Freedom submitted comments on a new proposed rule by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The rule seeks to end union dues skimming.

Please see below for CWF's comments or click here:

Missouri voters on Tuesday will decide whether to support the right-to-work law that the Missouri legislature passed last year or not.

Before voting, Missouri voters should know how important right to work is to their freedom and economic prosperity.

Despite what unions might say, right to work merely allows workers to decide for themselves whether they want to pay union fees or not. With right to work, workers are still able to organize and join a union, but they are not forced to support that union.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Labor rescinded the 2016 persuader rule.

The persuader rule that President Obama’s Department of Labor issued greatly expanded the reporting requirements of employers. Under this 2016 rule, employers were forced to report to the government communications between their lawyers and themselves on union organizing efforts. Employers were also still required to report communications between the employers’ lawyers and employees on union organizing efforts.