LAS VEGAS (KSNV MyNews3) – An emergency appeal with the Nevada Supreme Court to delay Thursday’s coroner’s inquest process has been granted.

A three-judge panel ruled that the inquest involving Eduardo Lopez-Hernandez is stayed until at least May 11.

The police union said it believes new inquest guidelines and parameters are unconstitutional because an ombudsman is provided to the deceased's family. The union says this makes the process adversarial...

Ron Westmoreland is a firefighter for the City of Bay Village, Ohio. The Fire Department has roughly 24 firefighters. Budget concerns in the spring of 2008 led to the adoption of changes that substantially reduced overtime for firefighters.

In addition, the Fire Chief recommended that the dive team be eliminated, a recommendation approved by the City Council. The Chief stated that the dive team had been used an average of less than once per year, had never actually rescued anyone, and had cost between $10,000 and $12,000 in overtime annually. Also, he determined that between 1999 and 2007, the City had purchased a total of more than $26,000 in diving gear and equipment from Westmoreland’s for-profit dive business...

A campaign to let Camden residents decide the fate of a controversial takeover of the city’s police department by Camden County hit a roadblock Wednesday when the city filed an injunction seeking to block the referendum.

In a complaint filed in Superior Court, Camden attorneys argued that the decision whether to implement the plan is not up to voters and is within the sole authority of city and state officials.

The action comes three weeks after police-union officials and community activists submitted a petition with 2,800 signatures calling for an ordinance to block the police takeover, arguing it was a union-busting maneuver that would make the city unsafe by replacing veteran police with younger, inexperienced officers. Under state law, City Council — which was scheduled to meet on the matter next week — has to vote down the ordinance or put the matter to voters...

America’s unionized workers, buffeted by layoffs and stagnating wages, face another phenomenon that is increasingly throwing them on the defensive: lockouts.

From the Cooper Tire factory in Findlay, Ohio, to a country club in Southern California and sugar beet processing plants in North Dakota, employers are turning to lockouts to press their unionized workers to grant concessions after contract negotiations deadlock. Even the New York City Opera locked out its orchestra and singers for more than a week before settling the dispute last Wednesday.

Many Americans know about the highly publicized lockouts in professional sports — like last year’s 130-day lockout by the National Football League and the 161-day lockout by the National Basketball Association — but lockouts, once a rarity, have been used in less visible industries as well...

Florida cities said Monday that they are poised to make another attempt at revamping costly pension requirements that emerged under former Republican Gov. Jeb Bush.

The current Republican-led Legislature may be wary of antagonizing police and firefighter unions, a frequent election-year ally. But Florida League of Cities officials said they hope a pocketbook appeal might drive changes when lawmakers reconvene in January...

As expected, conservative Californians have qualified a measure for the November 2012 ballot that would prohibit unions from deducting dues from paychecks.

Known as  “paycheck protection” by supporters, the initiative has long been expected. It’s not the first time union critics have tried: two efforts, in 1998 and 2005, failed at the ballot box.

Here’s how the Attorney General’s office is describing the measure...

The fight over unions using members' dues to fund political spending is headed back to the ballot next year.

A proposed initiative to block unions and corporations from using automatic payroll deductions for political purposes has made the cut to go in front of voters next November, the secretary of state announced today.. The measure, backed by GOP groups, also bans labor unions, corporations and, in some cases, contractors doing business with state government, from making contributions to candidate-controlled committees...

Proponents of an initiative to prohibit unions from automatically deducting dues from members' paychecks for political purposes say they've collected more than 900,000 voter signatures in hopes of placing the measure on next year's ballot.

The so-called "paycheck protection" measure would ban contributions to candidate-controlled committees by corporations and labor unions. Contractors that receive government contracts could not donate to the officeholder who awarded the contract.

"This initiative gets to the heart of one of the most corrosive elements in politics: campaign contributions," former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, a supporter of the initiative drive, said in a statement. "For too long, special interest money has dominated our politics, muting the voice of average Californians...

Republicans who swept into power in state capitols this year with promises to cut spending and bolster the business climate now are beginning to usher in a new era of labor relations that could result in the largest reduction of power in decades for public employee unions.

But as massive public protests and legislative boycotts in Wisconsin this week have shown, the Republican charge can be fraught with risk and unpredictable turns as politicians try to transform campaign ideas into action...

The reason California is bankrupt and it is bankrupt is because the state workers unions run our state. They bankroll the Democrats to keep them in power but in return, the Dems have to raise taxes or find other means to pay for the state union's guaranteed pensions, 100% tax-payer funded medical care, as well as pay increases and money to hire more state workers which are still being hired and added to an already grossly over populated and inefficient union work force at a time when we in the private sector are being laid off and worse.

The powerful state unions, such as the State Employees Services Union, the teachers union, the prison guard union and others are used to making a phone call to their politicians in Sacramento and getting what they demand. They are ruthless and care nothing about California's sad state or the average taxpayer for that matter. They will continue to syphon the states life blood at a rabid rate and they are in position to shut down the state by way of strikes, work stoppages etc., after all, their workers run the state…

…The statewide ad was released by the California Teachers Association, the state's largest teachers union, with 300,000 members.

This summer, as lawmakers and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger weigh a plan to bridge the state's $15.2 billion deficit in a $101 billion general fund spending plan, a broad network of teachers unions, prison guards, state employees, health care providers and other groups are flexing their collective political muscle in an effort to get new revenues. Political experts say that can mean only one thing: pressuring minority Republicans to agree to tax increases…

For the state public employee unions whose contracts come up this year, the timing couldn't be worse.

It's a bargaining season where an $8 billion budget deficit provides the economic backdrop, and just about all the parties agree the atmosphere surrounding the talks is going to be dismal.

"It's sort of like having Christmas during the Depression," said Terry McHale, a lobbyist who represents the California Department of Forestry Firefighters…