Starting as early as March, the White House waived some rules for former labor union personnel slotted to fill Biden’s transition teams and government vacancies, who would have otherwise been barred from interacting with their old unions.
Senior official in the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Alethea Predeoux, was granted a waiver to enable her to facilitate communication between the government agency and the American Federation of Government Employees – a union representing 700,000 federal workers for whom she was formerly a top lobbyist.
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In April, the White House announced a similar waiver, enabling Celeste Drake, who was tapped to head the White House Made In America Office, to communicate with her past employers, the Director’s Guild of America and the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).
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The administration has explained these are important moves to facilitate liaisons between government agencies and labor unions.
In a statement on Saturday, National Republican Senatorial Committee spokeswoman Katharine Cooksey announced, "The pattern of corruption between Democrats and big union bosses is obvious – just follow the money and follow the staff," according to Fox News.
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Biden promised from the campaign trail to support unions across the US – a move that Republicans think has made the administration overly beholden to them.
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Union involvement in White House policy making has become increasingly evident in recent months.
Reporting by the New York Post last week determined that the country's second-largest teachers' union, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), regularly communicated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on school opening guidelines.
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Correspondence obtained by a Freedom of Information Act request discovered the AFT had a direct influence on language implemented in the CDC’s February safety guidance for in-person instruction.
The CDC had initially made guidelines that enabled in-school instruction despite transmission rates. Though, at the suggestion of the union, the language was modified to include a provision that granted remote work for those "who have a household member" or "who have documented high-risk conditions or who are at increased risk."
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Frustrated parents and city officials nationwide have started lawsuits and blamed teachers' unions for using the pandemic to bargain for increased benefits by refusing to re-enter the classroom.
The AFT political action committee further granted more than $1.6 million in funding to Democratic congressional campaigns and committees between January and March, according to FEC filings.
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