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De Omnibus Dubitandum - Lux Veritas

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Labor Department Meddles in California Transit Dispute

by Ivan Osorio on August 19, 2013 · 1 comment
California public transit unions seem to have found a new, powerful bargaining tactic: If you don’t get your way in the legislature, threaten your state’s transportation funding. And it helps to have the administration in Washington on your side. California’s government and unions representing the state’s public transit workers are still negotiating, past the August 16 deadline imposed by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) for the state to give in to the unions’ demand to exempt transit workers from the state’s 2012 pension reform law or lose up to $1.6 billion in federal transportation funding.
After Governor Jerry Brown signed the pension reform into law last fall, the Teamsters and Amalgamated Transit Union filed complaints with the Labor Department, citing a provision in the Federal Transit Act that allows DOL to hold up federal transportation funds if states interfere with public transit workers’ ability to bargain collectively with their employers (transit authorities). California Labor Secretary Marty Morgenstern defended the state’s pension reform law in February, saying that it doesn’t weaken collective bargaining and “merely modifies” the retirement plans that public employers can offer.
The Labor Department is clearly out of line in trying to impose its own interpretation of the law by threatening California’s transportation funding, especially in determining something as fuzzy as when collective bargaining is “impeded.” ……To Read More, it gets better.  

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