National Labor Updates: High Court Turns Back Bid To Aid 'Free Riders'; Senate Sends Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill To Obama; Bush's 'Midnight Rules' Bite The Dust

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

HIGH COURT TURNS BACK BID TO AID 'FREE RIDERS': By a 9-0 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court on January 21 turned back a bid to let "free riders" escape paying not just their share of local union expenses for such non-bargaining items as lobbying and politics, but also their share of national and international union expenses, specifically for lawsuits that benefit all union-covered workers. SENATE SENDS LILLY LEDBETTER FAIR PAY BILL TO OBAMA: By a 61-36 vote on January 22, the Senate sent the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill to President Barack Obama, who plans to sign it.  Passage of the legislation, which would again let victims of pay discrimination on the job sue came after senators beat back a GOP filibuster against the measure the week before. The legislation would overturn a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that said workers - woman workers, minorities, or anyone else - who are discriminated against in pay on the job could sue only within the first 180 days of being hired.  In practical terms, advocates said, that barred all pay discrimination cases, since workers often do not discover the discrimination until long afterwards. BUSH'S 'MIDNIGHT RULES' BITE THE DUST: President Barack Obama used his first moments in the nation’s highest office to make sure predecessor GOP President George W. Bush’s "midnight rules" turned into pumpkins. The first memo Obama approved said rules Bush promulgated in his final days would be suspended pending review for another 60 days, and those which have not yet been officially published would be yanked. Among the Bush rules that Obama halted were a scheme to lengthen the number of hours truckers spend consecutively on the road, and a plan to make it harder for  workers to show they've been exposed to toxic substances on the job. They also include rules pushed by business, and adopted by anti-worker Bush Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, to make it tougher for workers to take family and medical leave and to let their bosses demand workers' medical records, as well as a proposal for mandatory drug and alcohol testing for almost all coal miners.
- Mark Gruenberg, Press Associates