On Wednesday, June 19 at 9:00 a.m., the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, chaired by Rep. John Kline (R-MN), will mark up the Student Success Act (H.R. 5). The markup will take place in room 2175 of the Rayburn House Office Building. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, currently known as No Child Left Behind, has been due for reauthorization since 2007. Despite its best inten... Read more »
On Tuesday, June 18 at 10:00 a.m., the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, chaired by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), will hold a hearing entitled, “Promoting the Accuracy and Accountability of the Davis-Bacon Act.” The hearing will take place in room 2175 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Enacted in 1931, the Davis-Bacon Act requires the payment of local prevailing wage rates to workers on federa... Read more »
Republicans today introduced two legislative proposals that would protect workers’ right to secret ballot union elections and roll back the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) micro-union Specialty Healthcare decision. The Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions will discuss both proposals during a hearing scheduled for June 26. “The last thing workers need is special interests... Read more »
THE PROBLEM: Unions have long tried to organize small groups or “units” of employees as an incremental step toward organizing an entire workplace. A standard used for decades by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) required a different approach, one that promoted unity in workplaces by including in the proposed unit all employees that had a “community of interest.” The board considered basic... Read more »
THE PROBLEM: Under current federal labor law, workers choose whether or not to be represented by a union through a federally-supervised secret ballot election. However, workers can also organize through a ‘card check’ campaign, in which workers are asked to publicly declare their support for union representation by signing an authorization card. When a simple majority of workers sign a card – by ... Read more »
Based on an idea of self-regulation, accreditation was originally developed to assure and improve excellence in higher education programs. When the federal government began investing in higher education, accreditation took on another role by ensuring that the gate to federal funds is open only to high quality academic institutions. Today the federal government, states, and accrediting agencies – k... Read more »
Dear Assistant Secretary Michaels: On February 21, 2013, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a letter of interpretation allowing Compliance Safety and Health Officers (CSHO or inspectors) to be accompanied by third-parties who are selected by employees of the company being inspected. Rescinding a previous letter of interpretation from March 7, 2003, referred to as the “... Read more »
House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman John Kline (R-MN) has called on President Obama and Senate Democrats to work with congressional Republicans to negotiate a long-term solution to the student loan interest rate problem. During an interview posted on the Yahoo! Finance website earlier today, Chairman Kline said, "I’ve felt for a long time that we ought to get out of the business o... Read more »
As the title of the hearing suggests, today we will begin to review possible reforms to the nation’s multiemployer pension system. In 2014 provisions in the Pension Protection Act affecting multiemployer pensions are set to expire. For more than a year the committee has looked closely at the challenges facing this pension system, which is relied upon by more than 10 million individuals. Academics,... Read more »
There may be few issues that Republicans and Democrats agree on these days, but protecting college students and graduates from sky-high student loan rates should be one of them. The Smarter Solutions for Students Act, currently pending before the Senate, ties student loan rates to the market instead of leaving interest rates up to politicians’ whims. On July 1, these rates are set to double from ... Read more »
