News of the Week — Voters resoundingly reject anti-union law

NewsAugust 9, 2018

Each week we share articles on subjects that are important to NUHW and its members. Here are several must-read stories over the past seven days:

Workers won a landmark and lopsided victory Tuesday as Missourians voted by referendum to overturn the state’s new right-to-work law, HuffPost reported. Proposition A asked voters whether or not they would like to enact the right-to-work statute that the state legislature passed and former Gov. Eric Greitens (R) signed early last year. The “no” votes defeated the “yes” by a 2-1 margin, with 937,241 against the proposition and 452,075 for, according to returns released Tuesday night by the secretary of state.

Prime Healthcare’s CEO and 10 Prime Hospitals including West Anaheim Medical Center have agreed to pay $65 million to resolve allegations that the company overbilled Medicare, the San Bernardino Sun reports. The settlement agreement resolves allegations that 14 Prime hospitals in California knowingly submitted false claims to Medicare by admitting patients who required less costly, outpatient care and by billing for more expensive patient diagnoses, a practice known as up-coding, according to the United States Attorney’s Office.

Donald Trump’s executive order threatening to withhold funding from “sanctuary cities” that limit cooperation with immigration authorities is unconstitutional, The Guardian reported. But a judge went too far when he blocked its enforcement nationwide, a US appeals court ruled Wednesday.

A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that while unemployment may be low, workers are experiencing historically low wage growth, while companies are responding to Trump’s recent tax cut by routing their profits predominantly to top executives and big shareholders in the form of stock buybacks.

Las week, a U.S. District Court judge in California ordered the Trump administration stop giving psychotropic medicine to undocumented minors without the consent of their parents or legal guardians, according to Splinter. A Texas facility was giving such drugs to minors.

The Trump administration is considering a plan that would cut federal taxes on investment income, a change that independent analysts say would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans, according to the Washington Post. All told, 86.1 percent of the tax cut, or more than $80 billion, would be captured by the top 1 percent of earners, with the next 4 percent of earners receiving 9 percent of the cut. The remaining 5 percent of the cut would be distributed among the bottom 95 percent of the population.

John Frahm, a Humboldt County labor leader, wrote a pointed response to a Providence St. Joseph statement attempting to justify its failure to honor it’s charity care obligation.