Latest news with #Taft-Hartley
Business Wire
08-05-2025
- Business
- Business Wire
Empower Reports Base Earnings of $255M in First Quarter, up 13% Year Over Year
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Empower announced today it has achieved base earnings of $255 million for the first quarter of 2025, up 13% from the same period in 2024. The retirement services and wealth management provider added approximately $42 billion in assets under administration to its Workplace Solutions unit over the past 12 months ending March 31, 2025, which includes 700,000 new participants and 12,000 new plans. In addition, Empower Personal Wealth TM, the firm's wealth management unit, which recognized its second anniversary this quarter, has seen net flows up 115% to $2.8 billion from this time last year, driven by retention and strong sales growth of 30% from the prior year. Empower released results as part of a broader quarterly announcement by its parent company, Winnipeg-based Great-West Lifeco (TSX: GWO-CA). For more information on Great-West Lifeco's first-quarter 2025 results, please see the release on firm's website. 'Empower is presenting itself to a range of investors and employers who are coming to us in a greater degree because of our expanding capabilities, insights, and offerings,' said Empower President and CEO Edmund F. Murphy III. 'We are making investments in our customers' needs like never before and they are, in turn, choosing to invest with us.' The company serves more than 19 million individuals and administers more than $1.8 trillion in assets 2. In Empower's Workplace Solutions unit, the second-largest retirement services provider in the U.S. by plan participants 1, request-for-proposal activity in the last year has been higher than any previous year across plan types, including 401(k), 457(b), and 403(b) defined contribution plans of all sizes covering corporate, government, and not-for-profit employers. The $42 billion in AUA represents funded organic sales over the last year. As of March 31, 2025, Empower has provided retirement services to approximately 89,000 retirement plans over the past year. New workplace clients Empower serves all segments of the employer-sponsored retirement plan market: government 457 plans; small, midsize, and large corporate 401(k) clients; nonprofit 403(b) entities; Taft-Hartley plans; and private-label recordkeeping clients. Empower has approximately $56 billion in funded and committed sales for 2025, which will exceed prior full-year sales by 13%, including nine new clients with more than $1 billion in AUA. The firm currently serves 29 state government plans and supports the retirement needs of more than 4 million public employees exceeding more than $252 billion in assets,* and has seen average balances of government employees increase by 7% from this time last year. Empower is the leading provider of retirement services to states and continues to gain new government clients. Within the last year, Empower has welcomed new government clients such as the State of Maryland and the City of Anaheim, CA, and Nassau County, NY, an existing 15-year client, renewed in 2025, as did the State of New Hampshire and Contra Costa County, CA. Expanding capabilities Earlier in the first quarter, the firm launched new capabilities for employers sponsoring retirement plans, announcing a new consumer-directed healthcare (CDH) offering to help individuals manage their healthcare finances in conjunction with their full financial picture. Empower Consumer-Directed Health will offer employers and individuals an array of offerings to help them make use of products and services that allow for optimization of their health and wealth benefits. Empower is now offering benefits such as health savings accounts (HSAs), flexible spending accounts (FSAs), health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs), voluntary employees' beneficiary association plans (VEBAs), wellness incentives, lifestyle benefits, and more. In September 2024, Empower announced the acquisition of Plan Management Corporation (PMC), the creator of OptionTrax, a leading digital equity plan administration platform and service provider, which paved the way for the establishment of Empower Stock Plan Services. ABOUT EMPOWER Recognized as the second-largest retirement services provider in the U.S. 1 by total participants, Empower administers approximately $1.8 trillion in assets 2 for more than 19 million individuals through the provision of retirement plans, advice, wealth management, and investments. Connect with us on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. * As of March 31, 2025. 1 Pensions & Investments DC Recordkeeper Survey (2024). Ranking measured by total number of participants as of December 31, 2023. 2 As of or for the year ended March 31, 2025. Information refers to all retirement business of Empower Annuity Insurance Company of America (EAICA) and its subsidiaries, including Empower Retirement, LLC; Empower Life & Annuity Insurance Company of New York (ELAINY); and Empower Annuity Insurance Company (EAIC), marketed under the Empower brand. Assets under Administration (AUA) refers to the assets administered by Empower. AUA does not reflect the financial stability or strength of a company. Empower refers to the products and services offered by Empower Annuity Insurance Company of America and its subsidiaries. 'EMPOWER' and all associated logos and product names are trademarks of Empower Annuity Insurance Company of America. The information contained herein is being provided for discussion purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy or sell securities. All visuals are illustrative only. ©2025 Empower Retirement, LLC. All rights reserved. RO-4483219-0525 Learn more: To learn more about how we're empowering plan sponsors and their participants to be more engaged in their retirement plans than ever before, call us at 800-719-9914.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Contributor: The National Labor Relations Act worked for 90 years. Suddenly, it's in the crosshairs
Joe Biden was the first president to join a union picket line and support labor's side in a number of major disputes. His appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, the principal administrative agency handling labor-management conflict, interpreted the 90-year old National Labor Relations Act so as to enhance the rights of workers to organize. The Biden board promoted workplace democracy more effectively than any of its predecessors. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. President Trump's second term presages the most anti-labor labor board appointees ever (his first-term NLRB had that same distinction). And equally or more troublesome, Trump, through his arbitrary dismissal of Biden-appointed board member Gwynne Wilcox has joined a position advanced by management labor lawyers at Starbucks, Trader Joe's and Elon Musk's Space X, among others. Together they wish to take a wrecking ball to labor law, asserting that the 90-year-old National Labor Relations Act and the independent agency it established are unconstitutional. Read more: Labor board accuses Apple of suppressing employee discussions On March 6, in a sweeping opinion both eloquent and scholarly, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell pushed back against the president's unlawful firing of Wilcox. Now, as was surely the plan all along, the question of control of the NLRB can and will go to the Supreme Court. If the conservative, Trump-appointed majority agrees with the president — instead of upholding nearly a century of precedent — independent due process for labor and management will be wiped away. Of course, politics and labor law have always had an uneasy coexistence. By virtue of the National Labor Relations Act's system of five-year staggered appointments to the NLRB, presidents are able to influence the board's direction during their four-year terms, but they cannot dominate it or dictate the outcome of a particular case that is before the labor board. If, however, board members can be dismissed by a president any time he or she disagrees with their votes on the reinstatement of a dismissed worker, say, or a conclusion that labor or management has not bargained in good faith, the rule of law can easily be denied, along with well-accepted principles of independent conflict resolution. Such a prospect is an ominous cloud over a labor movement that even during the friendly Biden era lost ground. Today unions represent only 11.1% of employees in the workforce. Does all of this mean that organized labor law is a doomed dinosaur, irrevocably headed toward irrelevance? Not necessarily. Read more: A year after 'hot labor summer,' California Legislature chills on union demands amid budget concerns First, as important as legal protections have been to organizing, law has proved to be a subordinate factor in union growth or decline. In the 1930s, union militancy was in place at least four years before the National Labor Relations Act became effective. The 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the act placed restrictions on unions and workers, yet unions continued to grow for nearly a decade after its enactment. Labor won considerably more of its workplace elections in the George W. Bush era than under a more pro-labor board during the Obama administration. As important, according to U.S. Labor Department data, unions hold $42 billion in financial assets. They can use these monies to finance costly and protracted campaigns in many different businesses, hiring dedicated workers who will give their wholehearted attention to the difficult, time-consuming work of organizing. And these positions could be made more attractive by the promise of advancement to union leadership positions, now too often the province of those who process membership grievances rather than working to widen unions' reach. The stage has been set for just such organizing, with recent effective uses of the strike weapon. In 2023, the United Auto Workers new rolling strike strategy against the Big 3 auto companies produced substantial wage and benefit increases. In January, the International Longshoremen's Assn. obtained more than a 60% pay increase over six years, plus an apparent ban on automation, on the basis of a short stoppage last fall at ports on the East and Gulf coasts. Read more: Long Beach Convention Center subcontractor accused of wage theft, tax evasion Further, if Trump is even partially successful in his attempt to rid the country of immigrants, a result will be a shortage of workers, which will slant the labor market toward the sellers. The impact in construction, for instance, a sector that is already short hundreds of thousands of hires, will only improve the prospects for unions. And lastly, if the Supreme Court uses Wilcox's case to deem the National Labor Relations Act and an independent NLRB unconstitutional, or contrives to consign them to irrelevance, states such as New York, California, Michigan, Illinois and others can work to occupy the vacuum with more robust labor legislation. The fight is not over. William B. Gould IV , a professor of law emeritus at Stanford Law and chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, is the author of "Those Who Travail and Are Heavy Laden: Memoir of a Labor Lawyer." If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
20-03-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
The National Labor Relations Act worked for 90 years. Suddenly, it's in the crosshairs
Joe Biden was the first president to join a union picket line and support labor's side in a number of major disputes. His appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, the principal administrative agency handling labor-management conflict, interpreted the 90-year old National Labor Relations Act so as to enhance the rights of workers to organize. The Biden board promoted workplace democracy more effectively than any of its predecessors. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished. President Trump's second term presages the most anti-labor labor board appointees ever (his first-term NLRB had that same distinction). And equally or more troublesome, Trump, through his arbitrary dismissal of Biden-appointed board member Gwynne Wilcox has joined a position advanced by management labor lawyers at Starbucks, Trader Joe's and Elon Musk's Space X, among others. Together they wish to take a wrecking ball to labor law, asserting that the 90-year-old National Labor Relations Act and the independent agency it established are unconstitutional. On March 6, in a sweeping opinion both eloquent and scholarly, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell pushed back against the president's unlawful firing of Wilcox. Now, as was surely the plan all along, the question of control of the NLRB can and will go to the Supreme Court. If the conservative, Trump-appointed majority agrees with the president — instead of upholding nearly a century of precedent — independent due process for labor and management will be wiped away. Of course, politics and labor law have always had an uneasy coexistence. By virtue of the National Labor Relations Act's system of five-year staggered appointments to the NLRB, presidents are able to influence the board's direction during their four-year terms, but they cannot dominate it or dictate the outcome of a particular case that is before the labor board. If, however, board members can be dismissed by a president any time he or she disagrees with their votes on the reinstatement of a dismissed worker, say, or a conclusion that labor or management has not bargained in good faith, the rule of law can easily be denied, along with well-accepted principles of independent conflict resolution. Such a prospect is an ominous cloud over a labor movement that even during the friendly Biden era lost ground. Today unions represent only 11.1% of employees in the workforce. Does all of this mean that organized labor law is a doomed dinosaur, irrevocably headed toward irrelevance? Not necessarily. First, as important as legal protections have been to organizing, law has proved to be a subordinate factor in union growth or decline. In the 1930s, union militancy was in place at least four years before the National Labor Relations Act became effective. The 1947 Taft-Hartley amendments to the act placed restrictions on unions and workers, yet unions continued to grow for nearly a decade after its enactment. Labor won considerably more of its workplace elections in the George W. Bush era than under a more pro-labor board during the Obama administration. As important, according to U.S. Labor Department data, unions hold $42 billion in financial assets. They can use these monies to finance costly and protracted campaigns in many different businesses, hiring dedicated workers who will give their wholehearted attention to the difficult, time-consuming work of organizing. And these positions could be made more attractive by the promise of advancement to union leadership positions, now too often the province of those who process membership grievances rather than working to widen unions' reach. The stage has been set for just such organizing, with recent effective uses of the strike weapon. In 2023, the United Auto Workers new rolling strike strategy against the Big 3 auto companies produced substantial wage and benefit increases. In January, the International Longshoremen's Assn. obtained more than a 60% pay increase over six years, plus an apparent ban on automation, on the basis of a short stoppage last fall at ports on the East and Gulf coasts. Further, if Trump is even partially successful in his attempt to rid the country of immigrants, a result will be a shortage of workers, which will slant the labor market toward the sellers. The impact in construction, for instance, a sector that is already short hundreds of thousands of hires, will only improve the prospects for unions. And lastly, if the Supreme Court uses Wilcox's case to deem the National Labor Relations Act and an independent NLRB unconstitutional, or contrives to consign them to irrelevance, states such as New York, California, Michigan, Illinois and others can work to occupy the vacuum with more robust labor legislation. The fight is not over. William B. Gould IV , a professor of law emeritus at Stanford Law and chairman of the National Labor Relations Board, is the author of 'Those Who Travail and Are Heavy Laden: Memoir of a Labor Lawyer.'
Yahoo
07-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
TSA Union Workers: You Should All Walk Off The Job
Transportation Security Administration workers, I know you and I haven't always seen eye to eye. I call your profession "security theater," you groped me at JFK, it's fair to say we're not the best of friends. But right now, you face an assault on your rights that could radically alter the shape of employment across the United States forever, and you can't let it stand. The union contract you fought so hard for last year has just been declared null and void by the federal government, unilaterally ignoring the process of collective bargaining you went through. You have to fight this, and to do so you should start ignoring the government's own rules: Give the Taft-Hartley Act the finger and go on strike. Last May, the TSA finalized negotiations on a seven-year collective bargaining agreement with the American Federation of Government Employees. The agreement raised salaries by as much as 31 percent, according to the Federal News Network, as well as expanded options for sick leave and grievances. It did what CBAs always do: Made life more livable for workers. Now, with a simple press release, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wants to undo that work. Read more: Apparently It's Illegal To Put A 'For Sale' Sign In Your Truck Now Biden hamfistedly blowing up negotiations for railway workers was bad enough — it set the precedent that government bosses can override workers' collective bargaining — but this new move is far worse. No boss should be able to ignore a CBA, but that's exactly what DHS is doing. If this move is allowed to stand, with what's left of the National Labor Relations Board, it'll set an even worse precedent: That CBAs, signed contracts, can be ignored when they're inconvenient to the bosses. I may not love the job the TSA does, but as a worker I'll stand with fellow workers against greedy bosses any day of the week (note: cops do not count as workers, or human beings). Your management has decided to ignore the legal process of collective bargaining, so why should you honor their legal proceedings barring you from striking? TSA workers, you need to remind the Department of Homeland Security who actually does the work around there: You. They're dressing up this anti-worker move with the language of national security, so why don't you let them see how secure they feel without anyone there to check bags and IDs? Really, you'd just be giving Kristi Noem a taste of the TSA within the next few years without a union. Before the CBA, the TSA was already facing worker attrition and having a rough time hiring folks — salaries and benefits simply weren't worth the work, and other employers were offering better deals. Killing the union has a very real chance of killing the TSA entirely, and the bosses deserve to know what that feels like. Noem is ignoring the law, Trump and Musk are ignoring the law with all these layoffs, why should you have to follow the Taft-Hartley act? Rules shouldn't bind one party but not another. If they're null and void on one side, they're null and void on the other. I say this as a taxpayer who funds your salaries, one who's honestly not very happy that I do. But I'd rather pay you to grab my balls every time I fly out for a press trip than live in a world where your domino was allowed to fall, and take further union power with it. Management moves like this rely on your inaction, they expect you to offer no resistance. They forget that the workers, as always, have the power. The formal union process protects them from you, not the other way around. Remind them. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.
