Organized Labor Issues
News and opinions about organized labor


 Introduction:   Many members of labor unions vote for Democratic candidates (often upon the heavy-handed "advice" of union leaders) even though the Democrats stand for socialist principles with which the average blue collar worker probably disagrees.

Labor unions appear to be little more than fundraising machines — and pools of temporary manpower — for the Democratic Party.  But the Democratic Party supports a number of things that the average blue collar worker opposes, such as high taxes, gun control, abortion, same-sex adoptions, same-sex marriages, women in combat, radical environmentalism, radical feminism, race-based hiring quotas, and a permanent multi-billion dollar welfare state.

"Joe Six-Pack", the average white male factory worker, has no use for taxpayer-funded needle exchanges for IV drug users.  He doesn't approve of dispensing condoms (and instructions on how to use them) in schools.  And he doesn't like 1.6 gallon toilets any more than the rest of us.  But these are the kinds of things the Democratic Party fights for, and he unwittingly supports them with money siphoned from his union dues.

Labor leaders vigorously opposed NAFTA, which was signed into law during President Clinton's first year in office, yet the unions endorsed Clinton's reelection.  It makes no sense!

According to 1992 exit polls, 45% of all union members voted either for George Bush or Ross Perot, not Bill Clinton.*:  If you belong to a labor union, remember this:  the union cannot tell you how to vote!  It is your decision, not theirs.

Related pages:
Card Check and the preservation of the secret ballot.
Jump to the Minimum Wage Section
Jump to the page about the teachers' unions in particular.
Jump to the page about liberal politics in general, and the socialist Democratic Party platform.
Jump to the page about The UAW Bailout.


A Victory Against Obama's Unionism in New Hampshire.  In a victory for free labor, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has cancelled its solicitation for bids to build a new Jobs Corps Center in the state of New Hampshire.  Why is it a victory?  Because initial plans to receive bids would have discriminated against non-union construction companies per President Obama's orders.  Over 80% of all construction companies are non-union.

SEIU:  Building a New American Health Care Empire?  Most average Americans know little about the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  Some know them as the people in purple shirts that beat up attendees at the town halls this summer.  Some equate them to ACORN, or to the Obama administration.  While there is some truth to all of the above, there is for certain one title that every voting American should be bestowing upon SEIU, and that is the title of "special interest".

Ban government employee unions.  There was a time in America when the typical union member was a blue-collar guy sweating in a Pittsburgh steel mill, screwing together Chevies in Detroit or loading and unloading ships on the San Francisco docks.  But things are radically different today because Joe Lunchpail has been replaced by white-collar Todd and Margo Yuppiecrat processing Social Security checks in Baltimore, conducting environmental audits in Denver or keeping the lines moving at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Union and Whistleblower Complaint Documents SEIU Ballot Fraud.  Today's Wall Street Journal and Fresno Bee report that SEIU engaged in illegal threats, ballot-tampering, and other serious violations of election rules during a June union election for 10,000 homecare providers in Fresno, according to voters and union staff who worked for SEIU during the election and have now come forward.

Union troubled by Eagle Scout project in Allentown.  In pursuit of an Eagle Scout badge, Kevin Anderson, 17, has toiled for more than 200 hours hours over several weeks to clear a walking path in an east Allentown park.  Little did the do-gooder know that his altruistic act would put him in the cross hairs of the city's largest municipal union.

When Big Labor Bullies and Volunteers Collide.  The Boy Scouts' motto is:  Be prepared.  Who knew it meant preparing to defend themselves against purple-shirted union thuggery over community service?  Kids, pay attention.  This is a teachable moment for all of you on power, politics and Big Labor's culture of corruption.

Pennsylvania Union Leader Criticized for Threatening Legal Action Over Boy Scout's Volunteerism.  A Pennsylvania union leader has come under fire after threatening legal action against the city of Allentown for allowing a Boy Scout to voluntarily clear a walking path in a local park.  Nick Balzano, president of the Service Employees International Union's Allentown chapter, said last week that the union might file a grievance against the city for allowing 17-year-old Kevin Anderson to clear the hiking trail, instead of paying some of the 39 recently laid-off SEIU members to do the work.

The Editor says...
 Why hire unionized workers to perform work that can be done by unpaid volunteers?  The fact that civic-minded people will volunteer to do this work proves that the monetary value of the labor is zero.

Tuesday's Biggest Loser:  the Union Agenda.  [Scroll down]  That man is Andy Stern, who has boasted that the Service Employees International Union, which he heads, ponied up something like $60 million for Barack Obama and other Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle.  Altogether, Mr. Stern and other labor union leaders reportedly gave Democrats some $400 million last year.  This was, to borrow a word from Mr. Obama, an audacious gamble.  Unions these days represent only 8% of private-sector employees (and that's counting General Motors and Chrysler as private sector) and some unions went into debt to make these contributions.

Unions Calling in Their Chits.  "That's not the change America voted for."  The implied criticism of President Obama comes not from Rush Limbaugh or Fox News but from the AFL-CIO in a newspaper ad this week letting the president and congressional Dems know unions' "bottom line for health care reform."  The unions are calling in their chits.  If health care legislation doesn't include a public option, they won't support it.  And if it does include a tax on so-called gold-plated plans, they'll oppose it.

Unions, Lenin, and the American Way (Part II).  American trade unions spent almost a billion dollars in the recent election to put pro-union politicians in positions of power in Washington.  The Service Employees International Union, in the words of its own president, has "spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama."  According to the Washington Examiner, the United Auto Workers had taken a break from bringing the auto industry to its knees and gave $1.98 million to Democratic candidates, plus $4.87 million in independent expenditures to Obama's campaign.  The money came from the mandatory dues of the workers who often wouldn't have donated or voted for these people.

Live Better, Don't Work Union.  Card check legislation appears to be dead in Washington.  Companies, shareholders and employees don't know how narrowly they missed the financial trouble that comes with a union shop.

Big Labor and Big Government — there's little difference.  A new Heritage foundation study shows that while the percentage of the American workforce that is unionized is holding steady, there's actually a huge difference in the composition of those union workers.  Private sector unions continue to dwindle, but public sector unionization is on the rise.

Obama, labor's lackey.  President Obama says the big problem in Washington is that politicians focus on pleasing special interests at the expense of the general public.  But his curious definition of "special interests" exempts one key political force:  organized labor.

Obama puts union strings on federal jobs.  Delivering on President Obama's promise to boost the labor movement, the administration has announced a $35 million federal construction project in New Hampshire that requires union representation for the workers and forces nonunion employees to pay dues and contribute to a union pension fund.  Mr. Obama issued an executive order in the first weeks of his presidency that would make the requirement, known as a "project labor agreement" or PLA, the norm for all government contracts on large-scale construction jobs.

Follow the Money.  Unions spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting candidate Obama's run for the White House.  And, not coincidentally, unions have been the biggest supporters of President Obama's call for a "public option," where the taxpayer money would be seized by the government in order to pay for health care coverage. ...[Why?]  Because the "public option" would create more government workers.  And the unions need more government workers.

Some Criticize SEIU for Its ACORN Connections.  A rapidly growing union that represents nurses, janitors and other low-wage workers is coming under fire from conservatives because of its long-standing financial and leadership ties to ACORN, a liberal organizing group recently embarrassed by videos filmed covertly.  Some Republicans say federal agencies that recently cut ties with ACORN — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — should also consider severing their relationship with the Service Employees International Union.

SEIU Hit by ACORN.  As the full extent of ACORN's corruption and criminality is revealed, we are also learning about ACORN's special friend, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the most militant and active unions in the country.  It turns out that the two organizations are quite chummy.

Not Far From the Tree.  While everyone in Washington is suddenly pretending they've hardly ever heard of ACORN, they might want to pretend they've never heard of the SEIU, one of the nation's largest unions.  The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now and the Service Employees International Union are as tight as Heidi Klum and a new pair of jeans.

Did someone mention ACORN?

Unions, Lenin, and the American Way (Part III).  On the construction site at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, an outside freight elevator was built to lift crews and materials.  It was operated by an "elevator engineer" who pushed floor buttons at the rate of $37 per hour, competing for the title of world's most expensive bellhop.  Two union goons, armed with crowbars, sat at the foot of the elevator all day in lawn chairs, sipping coffee, reading newspapers, or listening to the Howard Stern Show on the radio.  Their job was to tell the crews that the elevator was unavailable — at least that's what they told my friend when he needed to lift his workers.  But after his boss arrived from Queens with $500 in cash for the goons, the elevator became readily available to their crew for the duration of one week.

Home-care providers object to union label.  Sherry Loar and Dawn Ives take care of children out of their Petoskey homes so they were surprised to learn that their state-subsidized checks, which cover day care for some low-income families, now have union dues withheld.  Neither has ever voted for or consented to union membership.

Political Wind Blowing Against Unions.  When Barack Obama won the election, Big Labor's ambitions soared.  It spent $400 million to elect Democrats and expected an easy ride ahead.  A hundred days into the Obama administration, it's playing defense.

Union blues:  The approval rating of one of the biggest supporters of Obama's attempt to impose a socialist system on America has plummeted.  Gallup has been polling on the public's attitude to Labor Unions since the 1930s.  They report public support of unions is at an all time low.

How Obama Cronyism Threatens Rail Security.  [Scroll down]  Biden, in turn, is tight with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the powerful union that represents the Amtrak Police Department.  According to OSSSO sources, the APD brass have been aggrieved over the non-unionized counterterrorism unit's existence from its inception.  A West Coast OSSSO team member told me that union leaders blocked police credentialing efforts by his office for more than a year.  An East Coast OSSSO team member told me that the FOP recently filed a grievance against one of its counterterrorism officers for assisting a train conductor who asked for help in ejecting a ticketless passenger.

SEIU chief:  We won't be silenced.  Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, has just released a statement vowing not to be "silenced" by "right wing attack dogs" targeting "progressive individuals" and "community organizations."

Lost:  600,000 Jobs.  As if Big Labor hasn't been repaid enough for its help in electing Democrats, a new report shows that protectionism — the unions' signature issue — costs 585,000 of the rest of us our jobs.

Students and Unions Swoon for Obama and Obamacare.  Obama didn't quite fill the 18,000 seats in UMD's Comcast Center and appeared three hours later than the scheduled 9 am start time. ...[That] didn't seem to bother the members of the Maryland Bricklayers' Union, one of several unions that bussed in workers for the event, giving them paid time off for a chance to rally for Obamacare and kick back with friends.  Several workers said this wasn't the first Obama rally they've attended while on the clock.

Read the Union Health-Care Label.  In the heated debates on health-care reform, not enough attention is being paid to the huge financial windfalls ObamaCare will dole out to unions — or to the provisions in the various bills in Congress that will help bring about the forced unionization of the health-care industry.  Tucked away in thousands of pages of complex new rules, regulations and mandates are special privileges and giveaways that could have devastating consequences for the health-care sector and the American economy at large.

More about Obamacare.

And You Thought This Was All About Health Care...  The all-consuming debate over health care has effectively sucked all of the oxygen out of the policy world leaving little room for discussion, let alone action on other major elements of the progressive agenda — or so it would seem.  The mammoth bills winding their way through Congress will certainly upend our health care sector, if they are enacted.  Little known, however, are several provisions that will provide an enormous pay-off to one of the Democrat parties most loyal constituency — Big Labor.

On Labor Day, support for unions plunges to all-time low.  This Labor Day brings word of a new Gallup poll showing that American public support for labor unions has taken a sharp dive in the last year and is at its lowest point since Gallup began polling in 1936.  In response to the question, "Do you approve or disapprove of labor unions?" just 48 percent of respondents said they approve, while 45 percent said they disapprove.

Labor Unions on Health Care:  Their True Motives.  Unions across the country are campaigning hard for Obamacare over Labor Day weekend.  The AFL-CIO has made creating a government run "public plan" their top priority.  Yet polls show that most Americans strongly oppose this.  So why have the self-proclaimed advocates for America's workers made government-run health care their top priority?

The Union Fable.  Praise for organized labor was fulsome as usual over the Labor Day weekend.  But a poll showing public support for unions hitting an all-time low shows that Americans are seeing through the mist of deception.

Dirty Money Watch:  Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-Pa.).  [Scroll down]  Multiple officers and members of these unions, including division presidents, secretary-treasurers and business managers, have been convicted since 2001 of felonies ranging from embezzlement, falsifying official reports to government, mail fraud and conspiracy.  The Communication Workers of America and The American Federation of Government Employees have had eight convictions, the Service Employees International Union has had nine convictions and the Boilermakers have had 10 convictions, while the IBEW has had 14 members convicted.  The United Steelworkers of America has had 30 convictions among its membership.  The amounts of embezzled funds range from over $5,000 to over $100,000.

These people would rather have a union than a job.
 Mercury Marine:  Union rejects changes, so we'll move south.  Following a union vote this morning to reject contract changes that company officials say would have kept Mercury Marine in Fond du Lac, Mercury Marine issued the following statement:  "Union workers at Mercury Marine voted this morning to reject a contract proposal that company officials said was necessary to keep Mercury in Fond du Lac. ..."

These people would rather have a job than a union.
 Key Boeing factory goes non-union.  Even as unions revel in their access to political power with Barack Obama, actual workers handed the union movement a stinging defeat.

Boeing workers vote to decertify union.  Boeing Co. workers voted overwhelmingly Thursday [9/10/2009] to disband the union at the North Charleston factory, boosting prospects corporate officials will consider the Lowcountry for a second assembly line for the 787 Dreamliner.  Of the fewer than 300 International Association of Machinist organized workers at the local plant eligible to vote, 199 voted to decertify the union and 68 voted to keep it in place, Boeing spokeswoman Candy Eslinger said.

Payday For Unions.  If there's any question as to why union toughs turned up at recent health care town halls and got violent, consider what they were gooning for:  a $10 billion bailout for their mismanaged pensions — at our expense.

Victim of Alleged SEIU Town Hall Assault in St. Louis Interviewed on Cavuto.  On Friday's [8/7/2009] Your World program, Fox News Channel's interviewed Kenneth Gladney, the victim of an assault outside a health care town hall meeting in St. Louis on August 6, along with his lawyer David Brown.  A video of the immediate aftermath of the attack (posted earlier on NewsBusters by Seton Motley) showed some of the suspects wearing t-shirts bearing the logo of the SEIU union, which is a member organization of Health Care for America Now!, a left-wing coalition pushing for the passage of ObamaCare.

Eye Witness to St. Louis Scuffle:
 'SEIU Representative Punched Him In the Face'.  Last night [8/6/2009], as reports began to emerge of unrest at two big health care town halls in Tampa and St. Louis, a man on Twitter claiming to work with SEIU, claimed a handful of arrests in St. Louis had been Obamacare critics, and they'd been arrested for assaulting SEIU members.  His report was dutifully repeated by liberals looking to paint the violence as caused by critics of the administration.  When I went looking for corroboration of his story, I found something quite different in this report from the Post-Dispatch...

Obama, ACORN, and the SEIU?  They Go Way Back.  The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has been acting as the president's thug squad, attacking ObamaCare protesters across the country.  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reached out to them when the administration needed "backup" for the town halls...

The Storm Upon Us:  [Scroll down]  The SEIU (Service Employees International Union) is run by Andy Stern, a militant Far-Left thug, and Anna Burger, another Far-Left radical.  The SEIU has increased its size and power through arm-twisting intimidation tactics, and other nefarious means.  Two years ago Obama said before an SEIU rally, "I've spent my entire adult life working with SEIU."  That is not good news.  Once you've looked into the corruption, ruthlessness, and Far-Left agenda of the SEIU leadership, you will know that it is not good news at all.

Boss at ACORN-Friendly SEIU Found Guilty on Kiddie Porn Charges.  Jaime E. Feliciano, president of the radical Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1000 District Labor Council 784, has been convicted of possessing child pornography.

Union thugs aren't helping Obama on health care.  I wonder who's the genius who first thought up the idea of having a bunch of thugs all wearing the same colored shirts show up to intimidate opponents of the government.  Now I remember!  It was that funny little guy with the mustache from Austria.  What's his name again?

Union Thugs Beat Up Man at Anti-Obamacare Meeting.  The St. Louis Tea Party movement is incensed that thugs from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) beat up an African-American conservative that had come out to a recent anti-Obamacare protest.  The attack sent the man to a local hospital.

Obama's Three Stooges.  The Service Employees' International Union made its presence felt in the 2008 election, spending a reported $150 million to elect Obama and Congressional Democrats.  And they're showing up at the town hall meetings in considerable numbers.  We've all seen the video of people wearing SEIU t-shirts pushing and shoving — physically assaulting — protesters outside one town hall meeting.

Obama Rent-A-Thug Program moves into High Gear.  As Obama already had SEIU (Service Employees International Union) in his back pocket, it was easy for him to have his union management friends pay overtime to SEIU rent-a-thugs at several recent Democrat Town Hall meetings.  Interestingly, as appears on one of the videos of the ObamaThugs referenced below, after one of the SEIU purple-shirted thugs beats Ned Gladney the thug pretends he has been injured.  Note:  This is part of the Obama and Alinsky Chicago Way — attack another unmercifully then claim to be the real victim.

"Brown Shirts" vs. Purple Shirts:  Who are the real thugs?  Democrats attack congressional town hall protesters as "Brown Shirts" — likening taxpayer activists across the country to Hitler's storm troopers.  But it's the Big Labor hoodlums clad in identical purple shirts — the uniform of Service Employees International Union members — who own the mob label.

Big Labor's Investment in Obama Pays Off.  "We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama — $60.7 million to be exact — and we're proud of it," boasted Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, to the Las Vegas Sun this week.  The behemoth labor organization's leadership is getting its money's worth. Whether rank-and-file workers and ordinary taxpayers are profiting from this ultimate campaign pay-for-play scheme is another matter entirely.

Union Pensions in the Red.  We've all read about underfunded corporate pensions, but here's an unreported story: Union pensions are even more in the red, and it's one reason union chiefs are so eager to rig organizing rules to gain more dues-paying members. ... Poor management probably deserves a lot of the blame for the union decline, but the exact causes are a mystery.  An even bigger mystery is that the unions do a far better job with funds created for their officers and employees than for mere workers.

Obama Admin Requiring Project Labor Agreements.  Almost as soon as he took office, President Barack Obama repealed a Bush executive order and issued EO #13502 which once again forces all federally contracted building projects to suffer under a PLA [Project Labor Agreement].  The fact is that President Obama stands in opposition to cost effective use of our federal construction dollars as well as free enterprise.  And why did he do this?  Perhaps the millions of dollars raised by unions to fund Obama's presidential campaign explains why?  This is no less than a pay back to Big Labor.

Unions budget up to $15 million for August campaign.  Labor unions and liberal advocacy groups will spend between $10 million and $20 million this month to twist lawmakers' arms over the stalled healthcare reform effort in Congress.  Much of the grassroots activity and television ads will be aimed at persuading centrist Democrats and Republicans to support the creation of a robust government-run health insurance program.

Blame the unions.  For years, two of California Democrats' top priorities have been enrolling more poor children in state health programs and encouraging individual homeowners and businesses to install solar panels to generate their own power.  But at the behest of unions, Democratic legislative leaders killed a measure to allow parents to enroll their kids online because it might have led to layoffs of clerks at county social-services offices.  They also killed a bill touted by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to create incentives for solar-panel installation because it didn't mandate the use of union labor.

ACORN's "Muscle for Money" does the bidding of SEIU.  Corporate and political officials who defy workplace and community organizers risk being made objects of scorn by bright red-clad protestors in public and private, courtesy of an activist union and its close allies in the nation's most controversial liberal non-profit advocacy group.  It's officially called the "Muscle for Money" program within the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) where it was started, and unofficially by the same name among activists of Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN).

Back to ACORN General Hospital.  Unlike 98.4% of you nurses out there, I have actually belonged to a union.  Years ago, after accepting a new hospital position I was filling out the obligatory HR paperwork.  Among the forms was an index card.  "What's this?" I asked.  "It's for the union."  I handed it to her.  "You don't understand.  I am an RN.  A professional.  I won't be joining a union."  She handed the card back to me.  "No, you don't understand.  This is a closed shop.  Fill out the card."  Except for irritation at the dues deducted from my paycheck, the union had no effect on my life.  Then, a few months later, the hospital informed us that they were in dire financial straits and needed concessions from all employees.  So, I made plans to attend my one and only union meeting.  We gathered to hear how our union was going to fight for our rights.  The representative got up to the microphone and said — I swear I am not making this up — "We've looked over what they're asking and we recommend you take it."  End of meeting.

Unions Seem Determined to Kill Michigan Film Industry.  A lot can be said about unions supporting wage earners and creating a middle class.  However, a lot can also be said about unions ruining this country.  Case in point:  Michigan.  You would think that after the UAW destroyed the auto industry and the tax base in Michigan, the people of the state and the unions based there would have learned.  However, this is not the case.  In the latest union disaster for the state of Michigan, the IATSE has decided that the blooming film industry in the state must be stopped before it even gets started.

Warning:  This link goes to a self-described Marxist web site.
 Labor Union Celebrates Gay Pride and History Month.  "Join the UFCW [United Food and Commercial Workers International Union] in celebrating Gay and Lesbian Pride Month!"

AFL-CIO Hard Hats:  The AFL-CIO is passing around these hard hats today to every office on Capitol Hill.  Check out where they're made:  China.

Transparency in union finances a thing of the past.  Ignoring their own rhetoric about the value of transparency and openness, the Obama administration is "rolling back rules requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances and compensation," according to [a] Washington Times report written by Jim McElhatton.

Obama team reverses union transparency.  The Obama administration, which has boasted about its efforts to make government more transparent, is rolling back rules requiring labor unions and their leaders to report information about their finances and compensation.  The Labor Department noted in a recent disclosure that "it would not be a good use of resources" to bring enforcement actions against union officials who do not comply with conflict of interest reporting rules passed in 2007.  Instead, union officials will now be allowed to file older, less detailed conflict reports.

Obama Tries to Stop Union Disclosure.  Fifty years ago, Congress passed the landmark Landrum-Griffin Act to protect rank-and-file union members from malfeasance by union leaders.  Senate hearings had uncovered serious corruption and other unethical practices inside the labor movement, and a bipartisan coalition emerged to shine the light of disclosure on union practices.  Nevertheless, Democrats in Congress and in the executive branch have often attempted to undercut that law's financial reporting and disclosure requirements.

Workers using fake Social Security numbers are fired — and the union is upset.
 Computer 'raid' in Vernon leaves factory workers devastated.  "A desktop raid" is how the workers' representative, John M. Grant, vice president of Local 770 of the United Food and commercial Workers International Union, described the scenario.  Overhill, a $200-million-a-year company that provides frozen meals for clients such as American Airlines, Panda Express, Safeway and Jenny Craig, says it had no choice:  An Internal Revenue Service audit found that 260 workers had provided "invalid or fraudulent" Social Security numbers.  The government took no action against the workers.  But Overhill did:  All of the employees were fired May 31.

State's budget crisis opens rift between unions and Democrats.  The Capitol's usual political alliances are being tested by the state's severe financial problems as interest groups scramble to hold onto as much as possible of the state's shrinking coffers.  The relationship between Democratic leaders and some of their labor benefactors has turned particularly frosty:  Many of the programs union members rely on for paychecks — and the unions rely on for dues — have been slated for deep cuts.

FedEx To Mount Campaign Against Bill Viewed As Pro-Union.  FedEx Corp. is launching what it describes as multi-million-dollar campaign to derail proposed federal legislation that would make it easier for the company's workers to unionize.  The effort targets chief rival United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) in particular, reiterating FedEx's recent criticism of the bill as a federal bailout for UPS.

Kneecapping FedEx.  FedEx Express is learning what could be the Democrats' economic motto — "Never Let Success Go Unpunished."  Led by Rep. James L. Oberstar, Minnesota Democrat, the House on May 21 passed legislation that contains an almost hidden provision — a mere 230 words — that would hobble FedEx Express.  It would do so by completely changing the labor laws under which the company operates.  Unless the Senate removes the language from the underlying bill reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration, a mere dozen or so workers in just one city could hamstring much of the nation's overnight delivery service.

Union boss returns some of $1.2M pay.  The president of a maritime workers union — a labor organization dogged for years by declining membership and a federal racketeering lawsuit — reported receiving $1.2 million in compensation last year but abruptly gave back much of the money in April after his big payout was disclosed to the government, according to federal documents and interviews.

Teamsters convicted: 3 in Chicago Local 743 guilty in union election scheme.  A former union officer and two employees of Teamsters Local 743 were convicted in federal court Friday [5/1/2009] for rigging two elections in 2004.

ACORN joins with unions.  Political activists who masquerade as non-partisan community organizers have joined with organized labor to pressure elected officials into supporting left wing causes, according to a top analyst with the Capital Research Center (CRC).  Matthew Vadum, a senior editor and analyst with CRC has determined that the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) is best described as a "multi-headed hydra" with over 400,000 member families positioned in 110 cities fiercely opposed to the capitalist system.

Union Intensifies Efforts to Organize Workers at Wal-Mart.  The United Food and Commercial Workers union is ramping up organizing at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. after a five-year lull, dovetailing with its efforts to win support in Congress for a bill to make union organizing easier.

What Do Union Members Want?  For all their influence in the workplace, it is not clear whether unions actually represent their members' values.  While it is true that union members elect their leaders, union leaders appear to pursue an agenda disconnected from the concerns of their members.

Bringing Back the Union Label?  Most Americans these days have little to do with unions.  Barely 12% of today's workers belong to a union, compared to over 32% at the high water mark in 1953-1954.  And most union workers today don't work in factories, mines, shipyards, on the railroads or driving trucks like they did in the 1950s.  Most of them are federal and state civil servants, policemen and firefighters and public school teachers with a few service workers and airline pilots and attendants thrown in.

Is Obama Designing the End of Capitalism?  All of Obama's economic policies thus far are designed to drive America into full embrace of socialism. His chief means for this transformation:  inflation.  He is attempting to inflate the currency through two primary means:  intense deficit spending, and pushing up production costs through union subsidization.  In order to make these measures politically palatable, he cites FDR as an example of good deficit spending; he cites the credit crunch as an excuse for inflationary monetary policy; and he recommends unionization in order to boost wages.

Labor Department seeks to cancel rule on unions.  The Labor Department moved Tuesday to rescind a regulation approved during President George W. Bush's last days in office that would have increased scrutiny of union finances to help root out financial corruption.

The Fallacious Notion of Job Creation:  when considering work, it should first be said that it always exists wherever there are people.  Given the basic human need for the necessities of life, absent an ability to draw on the gains or productivity of others, people must necessarily work in order to consume.  In that sense the word "unemployment" is a logical falsehood.  Individuals aren't so much out of work because there are no jobs as they're unemployed for failing to supply their labor at the going market rate.  Better yet, people are frequently unemployed owing to the belief that available jobs aren't worth their time, or worthy of their skill set.

Alan Grayson to introduce Paid Vacation Act.  Rep. Alan Grayson was standing in the middle of Disney World when it hit him: What Americans really need is a week of paid vacation.  So on Thursday [5/21/2009], the Florida Democrat will introduce the Paid Vacation Act — legislation that would be the first to make paid vacation time a requirement under federal law.

Delta, Northwest mechanics reject union representation.  Mechanics at Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, the two carriers that merged in March to create the world's largest air carrier, won't be represented by a union, the company announced Thursday [2/26/2009].

Labor's Greed:  The Dow plunged below the 7,000 mark yesterday for the first time in 12 years — but don't expect that news to register in the fantasyland inhabited by the Working Families Party. ... Big labor kicked more than $1 million into WFP coffers last year, according to state campaign-finance disclosures — more than half the party's total intake.  Of that sum, fully $200,000 came from teachers unions around the state, while the powerful health-care workers Local 1199 — a union threatened by equally fictitious Medicaid "cuts" — chipped in more than $330,000.  So let's say it like it is:  The WFP is the tail on Big Labor's dog.

Unions see better days ahead under Obama's leadership.  Happier days are here for the labor movement in the United States.  The AFL-CIO spent $53 million and its trade union affiliates $250 million to help Barack Obama win the White House, relying mostly on "field mobilization" campaigns to turn out a favorable vote.  The excitement level already has risen at the AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington.  "The most pro-working-family president in years," noted one staffer.

An obvious payback to the unions who supported Obama...
 Davis-Bacon Wage Provisions Depress the Economy.  Congress has included a little-known provision in the economic stimulus legislation that wastes tax dollars and costs jobs.  All $188 billion worth of construction projects funded in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1) must pay Davis-Bacon prevailing wage rates.  This requirement will inflate construction costs by $17 billion and depress the economy.

Hiding the Truth About the Pay Gap Between Men and Women.  The Labor Department's new report is clearly an important contribution to the debate over pay equity.  But where is it?  Although it was posted on the Labor Department's web site just days after it was finalized, it was apparently removed as the transition in power was occurring between former President Bush and President Obama.  We don't know why the report was taken down, but certainly the timing is suspicious.

How Obama Stimulates Feminists.  [Scroll down]  "Could it possibly be that women have lost only 20 percent of the jobs that have vanished in the last, devastating year?"  Yes.  Women (generally) favor public-sector jobs that are not contingent on high rates of productivity and involve little personal risk.  Being a teacher, an academic, a social worker, and/or a bureaucrat are not careers wherein one is exposed to physical danger or the elements.  Therefore, it is no surprise that they are largely immune to economic downturns because government never cuts programs.  Living on a budget is something only the taxpayers need do.

Obama acts for unions.  President Barack Obama issued a series of executive orders today [1/30/2009] that he said should "level the playing field" for labor unions in their struggles with management.  Obama also used the occasion at the White House to announce formally a new White House task force on the problems of middle-class Americans, and installed Vice President Joe Biden as its chairman.  Union officials say the new orders by Obama will undo Bush administration policies that favored employers over workers.

Obama Stimulates Unions, Inflation and Debt.  The George Soros-funded Center for American Progress, which was run by Obama's Transition Project co-chair, John Podesta, said Obama would launch a "Green, Unionized Economic Recovery."  The key word was "unionized," a tip-off that public money would subsidize expansion of the labor unions that backed Obama.  One of those powerful unions, the AFL-CIO, is headed by John Sweeney, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Let's 'Share the Wealth'.  "We just won an election.  It's no secret."  By "we," Andy Stern means "American workers."  He also means Big Labor.  Speaking on behalf of the fastest growing trade group in America, the Service Employees International Union — and as one of labor's most powerful figures today — Mr. Stern sets this simple bar for the Obama presidency:  "I expect nothing less than what he said he was going to do, and we should hold him accountable." ... The bit about accountability is no idle warning.  Organized labor put up some $450 million to get Democrats elected.

Most Union Members Oppose Big Three Bailout, New Poll Finds.  A deal may be close, but even union members don't think a federal bailout of the Big Three automakers makes much sense, according to a new ATI-News/Zogby poll.  More than 57 percent of those who identified themselves as being union employees said Congress should say no to a proposed bailout, while only 30 percent of union members approve.  Approximately 13 percent are not sure.

Union-founded nonprofit spent zero on its charitable purpose in two years.  A nonprofit organization founded by California's largest union local reported spending nothing on its charitable purpose — to develop housing for low-income workers — during at least two of the four years it has been operating, federal records show.  The charity, launched by a scandal-ridden Los Angeles chapter of the Service Employees International Union, had total expenses of about $165,000 for 2005 and 2006, and all of the money went to consulting fees, insurance costs and other overhead, according to its Internal Revenue Service filings.

Obama executive order favors union labor.  President Barack Obama on Friday issued an executive order backing the use of union labor for large-scale federal construction projects.  The order encourages federal agencies to have construction contractors and subcontractors enter project labor agreements.  Those agreements require contractors to negotiate with union officials, recognize union wages and benefits and generally abide by collective-bargaining agreements.

Ohio organizer faked union donor cards.  An Ohio union organizer has been fired after he was caught forging documents to deduct money from public employees' wages to pay for political activity, the Service Employees International Union said yesterday [4/14/2009].  Becky Williams, president of the SEIU District 1199, said she thinks this is an isolated incident, but the union is continuing to investigate.

AFL-CIO to Federal Union Watchdog:  Drop Dead.  The AFL-CIO is shameless.  In addition to trying to eliminated employees' right to a secret ballot vote, they are also trying weaken the Department of Labor's Office of Labor-Management Standards, which serves as a watchdog for union members by fighting corruption and embezzlement.  In a petition made public by the Obama's Transition Project — which was oddly filled with typos — the union calls on the incoming administration to issue an emergency interim rule (meaning no public comment period) eliminating "all financial reporting regulations that have not yet gone into effect."  That is their "Priority for Day 1."

Detroit's Faustian Bargain.  A Democratic Green Industrial Policy was already gaining speed Thursday [11/6/2008] as American automakers groveled for money before the most openly hostile-to-auto Congress in U.S. history. ... It is, of course, no coincidence that the Big Three arrived at Washington's doorstep together.  All three have labored under "pattern bargaining" union contracts — Democrat-supported unions — that made their wage and pension costs unsustainable against non-union foreign automakers.

Your union dues at work...
 Autoworkers Union Keeps $6 Million Golf Course for Members.  The United Auto Workers may be out of the hole now that President Bush has approved a $17 billion bailout of the U.S. auto industry, but the union isn't out of the bunker just yet.  Even as the industry struggles with massive losses, the UAW brass continue to own and operate a $33 million lakeside retreat in Michigan, complete with a $6.4 million designer golf course.  And it's costing them millions each year.

Bloated benefits for unions are sinking automakers.  The current auto-industry panic is instructive of Obama's dilemma.  The crisis facing America's Big Three auto manufacturers has, arguably, a single source:  legacy costs resulting from union contracts that were negotiated half a century ago.  The financial burden thus incurred weighs down their balance sheets to such a degree that, even if the industry in which they compete were thriving, it would be extremely difficult to maintain long-term profitability.

Union Revival Act.  It was assumed that the new larger Democratic congressional majority would be a boost for labor organizers who want to push workers into joining unions.  The reality might turn out to be a bit different.

Sizing Up Civil Service:  Before 1981, there were an average of 300 strikes a year.  Strikers held all the power; they were seldom replaced by their employer.  By firing the air traffic controllers, [President Reagan] changed the dynamic.  "Any kind of worker, it seemed, was vulnerable to replacement if they went out on strike, and the psychological impact of that, I think, was huge," explains Joseph McCartin, a historian working on a book about the strike.  That's why strikes are rare these days, with fewer than 30 per year on average.

Unions plan organization push in Texas.  The unions, which include the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition, enhanced their political muscle by campaigning heavily for Mr. Obama, who sponsored several labor-friendly bills during his brief career in the Senate.  The unions want the next Congress to quickly pass a bill at the top of their shopping list:  legislation that would allow unions to form as soon as a majority of workers sign cards saying they want one.

After Push for Obama, Unions Seek New Rules.  After making millions of phone calls and knocking on millions of doors to elect Barack Obama, the nation's labor unions have begun a new campaign: to get the new president and Congress to pass legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize.  Unions, delighted that they will have a friend in the White House after eight years of fighting President Bush, also plan to push for universal health coverage and a huge stimulus program to create jobs and counter the downturn.

Democracy Alliance memo details Dem plan to "educate the idiots" and target minorities.  In a confidential internal memorandum obtained by Face The State (PDF), the Colorado Democracy Alliance outlines a roster of "operatives" who worked for Democratic victory in the 2006 general election.  The document outlines specific tasks for various members of the state's liberal infrastructure, including a campaign to "educate the idiots," assigned to the state's AFL-CIO union.  Among the operation's intended targets:  "minorities, GED's, drop-outs."

Union Pension Funds Go Green.  Organized labor officials are using their control over union pension funds to promote their own political agenda at the expense of rank-and-file union members.  By promoting shareholder resolutions that advance environmentalist causes, among other "progressive" goals — as part of the unions' "corporate campaign" strategy — unions are building a stronger political coalition, but they may be violating their fiduciary responsibility to their own members and putting workers' retirement security at risk.

Colorado's Labor Showdown:  Right-to-work laws tend to make it harder to organize a union, and Big Labor's national priority these days is reversing a long-term trend of falling union numbers.  So at the first hint of the initiative, Colorado's labor unions mobilized to defeat the measure, while escalating with four antibusiness ballot initiatives as political retaliation.

AFL-CIO kicks off largest Get Out The Vote effort ever.  With less than two weeks to go before voters cast their ballots, the AFL-CIO launched a massive Get Out The Vote campaign Tuesday [10/21/2008], targeting over 13 million union voters across the country in presidential, congressional and gubernatorial battleground states. ... The efforts will also target 12 Senate races and 60 House races in an effort to secure a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate.

The Editor says...
 So much for our system of checks and balances.

Dems play footloose with immigration facts.  As they recall the failure of immigration reform in Congress, Democrats want to come off as the good guys.  This means burying the fact that their patrons in organized labor instructed them to kill any compromise that included guest workers — a concept AFL-CIO President John Sweeney termed "a bad idea (that) harms all workers."

Union helps non-profit groups pay for attack ads.  The nation's largest public employee union has funneled more than $5 million to a series of non-profits running ads attacking Republican congressional candidates, federal election records show.  Since July, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has donated almost $5.5 million to three groups:  Campaign Money Watch, Patriot Majority and Patriot Majority Midwest.

States of the unions.  You just knew that when Joe O'Connell, former head of the local AFL-CIO, got on stage here with John McCain and Sarah Palin things were not going smoothly for the Obama campaign among union voters.  "I am a lifelong Democrat, an intelligent Democrat, who is supporting John McCain," O'Connell said last week as a crowd of 7,000 waved "Another Democrat for John McCain" signs and roared its approval.

Big Labor's Billion Dollar Bet on Obama.  Big Labor is launching its largest political campaign in its history, and this year, more than ever, Big Labor means Big Money.  The union conglomerate is already sending teams of canvassers to knock on doors in swing states.  Unions are distributing 1.5 million flyers and sending 500,000 targeted attack mailers to voters as well.  The two largest union coalitions — the AFL-CIO and the "Change to Win" Federation, a coalition of the American labor unions formed in 2005 as an alternative to the AFL-CIO — have publicly admitted they will spend at least $300 million combined on federal elections alone.

AFL-CIO getting ready to endorse Obama.  The AFL-CIO is preparing to give its stamp of approval to Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.  The leaders of the nation's largest labor organization started voting Tuesday [6/24/2008] on whether to endorse the Illinois senator.  The election, which is being done by fax, is scheduled to end on Thursday.  Obama's name is the only one on the ballot sent to the AFL-CIO's 56 unions.

Just one name on the ballot.  Sounds like Zimbabwe.

Barack Obama's AFL-CIO nod gives him one more potent weapon.  With just a few days left before June ends, there's a clear frontrunner for the month's least surprising political development — the endorsement Barack Obama received today from the AFL-CIO. The massive conglomeration of 56 national and international unions — comprising about 10.5 million workers — steered clear of making a pick during the primary season because there was no consensus choice among the group's various affiliates.

The Editor says...
 If you are a member of a labor union, and a portion of your union dues — your money — goes to support Barack Obama, I urge you to take a look at his voting record in the Senate, as well as the Illinois legislature.  There is no US Senator who is more radically liberal than Obama.  Read about him on this page.

The Union Party:  At the AFL-CIO forum in Chicago this summer, Barack Obama declared that "special interests have been shaping our trade policy.  That's something that I'll end." … But Obama and his rivals have had nothing to say about the special interest that sat right in front of them at the forum — the one that really is shaping our trade policy.  That would be the labor unions.  According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, unions contributed $925 million to political campaigns and causes during the last presidential-election cycle.  Nearly all of that money went to Democrats.

Your union dues at work:
 Donors pick up convention tab.  Labor unions and wealthy donors are helping to close funding gaps for both national political conventions, sometimes contributing more than what they could legally donate to Barack Obama or John McCain.  The American Federation of Teachers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) each recently gave at least $500,000 for the Democratic convention in Denver.

Docking Paychecks for Politics.  The mighty Service Employees International Union (SEIU) plans to spend some $150 million in this year's election, most of it to get Barack Obama and other Democrats elected.  Where'd they get that much money?  That's a question the Departments of Labor and Justice are being asked to investigate by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.  Specifically, the labor watchdog group wants Justice to query a new SEIU policy that appears to coerce local workers into funding the parent union's national political priorities.

Union Leader's Spending Scrutinized.  Annual reports filed with the Labor Department show that the local paid $177,000 last year to a video production firm run by [Tyrone] Freeman's wife, Pilar Planells.  The local's training center has often paid more than $90,000 a year to a child care firm run by Mr. Freeman's mother-in-law.  In 2006, the local paid $16,000 to a basketball team coached by Mr. Freeman's brother-in-law.  The expenditures were first reported by The Los Angeles Times.

AFL-CIO Falsely Attacks McCain.  It runs an ad claiming McCain voted "against increasing health care benefits for veterans," when he actually voted repeatedly to increase them.

Mexican Trucks:  Phantom Menace.  Anyone worried that, once in charge, Democrats wouldn't be vigilant in protecting our southern border can relax:  The grave threat of Mexican long-haul truckers has been shut down. ... The [Teamsters] union can't abide Mexican trucks:  They represent competition, and so must be blocked legal obligations, economic rationality and diplomatic sense aside.

Obama Says Teamsters Need Less Oversight.  Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.  It's an unusual stance for a presidential candidate.  Policy makers have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union.

Teamsters Defend Endorsement of Obama.  The Teamsters union vigorously denied on Monday [5/5/2008] that its decision to endorse Senator Barack Obama in the presidential race was in any way tied to Mr. Obama's statement that federal supervision of the union had run its course.

Culture of Corruption: Obama and the Teamsters.  The Wall Street Journal recently reported that last summer, Illinois Senator Barack Obama told officials in the Teamsters union that he favored ending the Independent Review Board (IRB) that was created in 1989 by the federal government to rid the union of organized crime.  Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for Obama, confirmed the story, saying that the candidate believed that the IRB had "run its course" because "organized crime influence in the union has drastically declined."  The Teamsters subsequently endorsed Obama for president, in late February.  Obama and the Teamsters bristled at suggestions that any deal was made.

Democrats' Risky Alliance with Big Labor:  This is one more instance in which Democrats have confused the interests of union power brokers with the interests of working-class voters.  Unions may want to do away with workplace democracy, but real workers do not.  Similarly, teachers' unions hate school choice measures, but working-class voters whose kids are trapped in underperforming public schools like them.

Barack Obama Isn't Santa Claus.  In his speech, Obama speaks of America being "a better country than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment that he's worked on for 20 years and watch as it's shipped off to China."  Yet he left out that he recently told the Las Cruces Sun-News about his plan to give citizenship to all the undocumented illegal immigrants already here taking Americans' jobs and undercutting wages.  I wonder how all the union employees who applauded this week as some 600 illegals were hauled out of their plant during an INS raid in small town Mississippi would feel about Urkel Obama's plans to turn around and give all such cheaters citizenship?

Labor Unions Prolonged the Depression.  Pre-Depression-era growth and prosperity did not return to the private sector until the early 1950s, when the spread of state right-to-work laws prohibiting forced union membership and dues greatly reduced the detrimental effects of the Wagner Act.  The U.S. has just experienced another stock market crash, and Barack Obama, the candidate now favored to be the next president, is in favor of what amounts to a new Wagner Act.

Unions Support Democratic Presidential Candidates.  Last month the AFL-CIO held a press conference to announce its $53 million "McCain Revealed" campaign to portray McCain as "anti-worker" and attack his support for President George W. Bush's economic policies.  Unions already have spent at least $7.3 million in independent expenditures on behalf of Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the latter receiving $3 million from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) alone, according to Cox News Service.  The SEIU has pledged $150 million to support Obama in the general election.

Wal-Mart ordered to allow union contract in Canada.  A Quebec arbitrator imposed a labor contract Friday [8/15/2008] at a unionized Wal-Mart outlet there, marking the first such deal involving the retail giant in North America.  While other Wal-Mart stores have been unionized, a group that is critical of the company's labor policies called it a "landmark" collective agreement.

ACORN Cracks Wide Open.  It's more than a little ironic that ACORN for nearly 15 years has been leading heavily union-backed campaigns to force private- as well as public-sector employers in cities and counties across the nation to pay workers a "living" wage, while severely underpaying and otherwise exploiting its own community foot soldiers.  Indeed, ACORN for years had blocked attempts by employees to unionize until the National Labor Relations Board told them otherwise.

Did someone mention ACORN?


Union workers lose Labor Day holiday

...but this will appease the Muslims, so maybe they won't poison the chicken nuggets.

Plant Drops Labor Day For Muslim Holiday.  Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville [Tennessee] will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be granted the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.  According to a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a new five-year contract at the plant included the change to accommodate Muslim workers at the plant.

Tyson 'regrets' public reaction.  Tyson Foods says that Labor Day is still a holiday, but not for the union employees at the Shelbyville poultry processing facility, who will be taking off the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr instead.  Meanwhile, the union that negotiated the controversial contract at the Shelbyville plant has removed the original press release announcing the holiday change from its web site, and the union president has described the backlash to the decision as "bigotry."

Tyson Foods Adopts Muslim Holiday.  Eid mubarak, Shelbyville!  Union employees at Tyson Foods' poultry processing plant in Shelbyville, Tennessee will enjoy a paid holiday this year on October 1, the date on which the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr falls this year.  And on Labor Day, they will be hard at work, per a new agreement that the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) negotiated with Tyson.  The RWDSU explained that the new contract "implements a new holiday to accommodate the … Muslim workers at the plant."

The Editor says...
 Something tells me most of the non-Muslims will call in sick on Labor Day, so they can go to the parades and picnics with everybody else.


AFSCME, MoveOn ad targets McCain on Iraq war.  A major labor union and the liberal organization MoveOn.org are joining forces to air a provocative new ad portraying John McCain's Iraq policy as a prolonged presence that would involve a new generation of Americans.  Paid for by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and by MoveOn.org, the commercial represents an expansion by Democratic-leaning groups of a campaign against McCain.

The Union Agenda:  Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama visited the House of Labor this week, and Labor can't wait to invite one back.  Which one?  Who cares.  To read the press coverage, unions are as split as the rest of the country over a Democratic nominee.

Hillary Labor Pains:  Powerful union bosses, including a key backer of Hillary Rodham Clinton, urged her to sack chief strategist Mark Penn just days before she axed him, it was revealed yesterday [4/7/2008].  Clinton backer Gerald McEntee, who heads the powerful AFSCME union of government workers, says he told her that Penn needed to go.

Voter Turnout or Voter Fraud?  On March 8 the Washington Post disclosed that George Soros has decided to help fund a state-of-the-art database that will collect and organize detailed information on millions of voters. ... Harold Ickes, a former Clinton White House deputy chief of staff, will organize the project and he will encourage labor unions and liberal special interest groups to use its information. ... Ickes' job will be to help unions and advocacy groups use its detailed up-to-date information on voters' likes and dislikes to push their hot buttons and get them to the polls on Election Day.

When Unions Negotiate With Governments:  Ever wonder what determines the outcome of multi-year billion dollar employee contracts negotiated between labor unions and state government agencies?  Here's what happened when one group filed a public records request to find out.

U.S. Supreme Court to Consider Union Political Funds Collection.  Taxpayers across the nation will soon know whether states can prohibit local school boards from collecting political contributions for teacher unions, as the U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing such matters in a case from Idaho.  In 2003, the Idaho Legislature passed the Voluntary Contributions Act, which banned the collection of political contributions through government payroll systems throughout the state.  Nothing in the law prohibits union members from contributing to candidates by choice, and nothing in it prohibits unions from engaging in politics.

Unions Look to Democrats to Enact Sweeping Legislative Agenda.  What makes labor's current political activity so significant is that, unlike when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House in the early 1990s, this time unions want a major overhaul of labor law.  Unions are demanding that Democratic presidential candidates commit to adopting their agenda, and a Democratic president will feel an enormous obligation to uphold election promises.  If Democrats hang onto the House and increase their Senate margin, Republicans will have few opportunities to impede labor's broader agenda.

Workers are fine with fewer unions.  Labor unions' importance in the workplace has fallen steadily since 1950, when roughly a third of American workers were unionized.  Today, that number is well below 10% in the private sector. ... Maybe unions aren't so crucial to worker well-being.  When more than 90% of the private-sector labor force isn't unionized, why do 97% of us earn above the minimum wage?  If our bargaining power is so pitiful, why don't greedy employers exploit us and drive wages down to the legal minimum?

"You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.  You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.  You cannot further the brotherhood of many by encouraging class hatred.  You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich."

— Rev. William J. H. Boetcker, 1916.    


Expect Big Labor Power Grabs Next Year.  Focused on raising forced-union-dues dollars, union officials have made expanding Big Labor's government-granted special privileges a top priority.  So, although the Supreme Court's decision in Chamber v. Brown may slow coercive union organizing down from its current breakneck speed, workers likely face a renewed assault on their freedom of association after the November elections.

Workers Get To Say No To Labor Bosses.  The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday [6/14/2007] that unions may not spend nonunion workers' fees for political purposes without the workers' permission.  Now the question is, will the unions obey the ruling?

Union Officials Forced to Drop $5,000 Retaliatory Fines.  Under federal law, workers who resign from union membership cannot be lawfully fined by a union — even if the union maintains a formal rule governing the situation, which it did not in this case.  In Patternmakers v. NLRB (1984) U.S. Supreme Court decision, the High Court ruled workers may resign their formal union membership immediately, at any time, and without restrictions.

Unions pump $1 million into phone-tax campaign.  Organized labor has contributed more than $1 million to help Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa persuade voters to approve a Feb. 5 ballot measure that would maintain the city's telephone utility users tax. … Los Angeles County Federation of Labor Executive Secretary-Treasurer Maria Elena Durazo said unions are bankrolling the campaign because losing the telephone tax would hurt city services and the public employees who provide them.

Rescuing the Rust Belt?  When the American automobile industry was the world's leader in its field, many people seemed to think that labor unions could transfer a bigger chunk of that prosperity to its members without causing economic repercussions.  Toyota, Honda, and others who took away more and more of the Big Three automakers' market share — leading to huge job losses in Detroit — proved once again the old trite saying that there is no free lunch. … Many workers in the new plants being built by Toyota and others apparently already understand that.  They have repeatedly voted against being represented by labor unions.  They want to keep their jobs.

Big Labor's Unfulfilled Wish List:  The federal government's union watchdog agency will have to get by on less next year.  The mammoth omnibus spending bill passed last week hacks nearly $3 million from the Office of Labor Management Standards — a small gift for Big Labor just in time for Christmas.  The budget cut was a setback for the office, which has recouped more than $100 million for American workers since 2001 as a result of increased enforcement.

Government Unions Hide Behind Secrecy Protections.  There is little doubt that financial transparency is a major deterrent to labor union and political corruption.  Yet, where the two meet — unions of government employees — there is virtually no financial transparency.  Unions composed entirely of government employees at the state and local level are not covered by the federal Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), also known as the Landrum-Griffin Act.

Unions Allowed Back Into Utah's Payroll System.  Big Labor struck back against Utah's Voluntary Contributions Act by convincing the state's 10th Circuit Court unions have the right to collect political contributions of members through the state and local payroll systems.

FEC Fines Group Allied With Democrats.  A union-financed advocacy group that played a major role in the 2004 elections has agreed to pay a $580,000 fine after the Federal Election Commission concluded it illegally ran advertising against President Bush and in favor of Democrat John Kerry.

Union Math, Union Myths.  Since its peak in the 1950s, union membership in the private sector has steadily dropped.  To explain the decline, labor leaders have scapegoated businesses for intimidating employees during organizing campaigns.  But data from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) do not — in any way — substantiate the notion that tens of thousands of employees are wrongly fired each year.

Embezzlement, False Reports, Violence, and More.  Most people don't know just how many crimes are committed every year through which union officials hurt their own members.  The number of reputed and verified crimes is staggering.  Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the hundreds of indictments of union officials for violations of the Labor Management and Reporting Disclosure Act.  According to the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), those crimes include "embezzlement, filing false reports, keeping false records, destruction of records, extortionate picketing and deprivation of rights by violence."

Union Violence, Harassment, and Intimidation of Workers:  Many union officials have ordered or approved of violent, coercive, and harassing conduct aimed at making an example of employees who don't toe the union line.  The National Institute for Labor Relations Research has compiled a list of incidents of union violence that average nearly 300 per year for the last 30 years.

Conscientious Objections to Union Fee Increase.  Federal law is clear that no employee can be forced to support political or ideological causes with which he or she disagrees.  Unionized employees have the right to become religious or political objectors, either diverting their full dues to charity, or receiving a refund for the portion of their dues which would otherwise be spent for political causes.  In this way, employees can ensure that their funds are not used for purposes which contradict their beliefs.

[In one recent year, the IBEW spent $4,637,733 per year on political activities and lobbying.*]

Unions' Latest Abuse of Power:  Union leaders [have begun] to lose touch with the men and women they were supposedly elected to represent.  Today, they are more likely to be found on the golf course or at pricey restaurants and nightclubs than at the negotiating table or on the picket line.  As a result, workers who were once proud of their union affiliation have begun to turn away in droves.  Less than 7.4 percent of the private-sector workforce in this country is unionized today, and the percentage is steadily decreasing.

Carpenters' Union Outsources Picket Lines.  In this video, one union boss oversees a picket line of homeless and transients the union hired to do work the union's members won't do themselves.  When a reporter tries to ask the picketers questions, they say that they will be fired if they talked to him.  The union boss remains tight lipped too.

Clinton Picks Up Union Endorsement.  The United Transportation Union on Tuesday [8/28/2007] endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president, the first national union endorsement of the 2008 campaign. … The UTU also is one of the top political donors in organized labor, contributing $1.3 million in the 2004 federal elections, with 84 percent of the money going to Democratic candidates.

Large Union Backs Obama; Another Is Likely to Do Same.  Giving Senator Barack Obama new momentum, one of the nation's largest labor unions, the United Food and Commercial Workers, endorsed him on Thursday [2/14/2008].  Another giant, the Service Employees International Union, was on the brink of backing him.

Union members can opt out of dues based on religious beliefs.  An employee whose religious beliefs conflict with the political positions of their labor union cannot be forced to pay dues, a federal judge ruled.  U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost's ruling broadens the category of employees who may opt out of unions because of religious beliefs beyond Seventh-day Adventists and Mennonites.

Democrats pledge to reverse unions' decline.  Six Democratic presidential contenders, courting one of the party's most crucial interest groups, pledged Wednesday [8/15/2007] to work to reverse decades of decline in the nation's union movement.

AFL-CIO to spend $200 million on 2008.  The AFL-CIO and its unions said Friday [9/21/2007] they will spend an estimated $200 million on the 2008 elections, with the nation's largest labor federation devoting $53 million exclusively to grass-roots mobilization.  In addition, the AFL-CIO said it would deploy more than 200,000 volunteers leading up to the election, with special focus on battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Here is an excerpt from the article above...
"Today the AFL-CIO is sending a powerful message that we are going to change the course of our country in 2008 by electing a president and candidates at all levels who are committed to restoring the promise of America to working people," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said.
The Editor says...
 This is the emptiest rhetoric I've heard in a long time.  Who made (and then retracted) the "promise of America?"  And what guarantees do you have when someone has promised you "America"?  I'm sure the enthusiastic crowd cheered, even though Mr. Sweeney's statement makes no sense.

AFL-CIO to spend $40 million in political fight.  The AFL-CIO, a federation of 52 U.S. labor unions, plans to spend a record $40 million in an attempt to unseat Republicans in this year's congressional elections.

AFL-CIO Begins $40M Voter Drive.  The AFL-CIO launched a $40 million voter-drive yesterday [8/30/2006], targeting 21 states and hoping increased turnout among union members swings competitive races in Ohio and Pennsylvania. … The vast majority of the candidates who would benefit are Democrats in union-heavy states, especially the Midwest.

Outsourcing the Picket Line:  Carpenters Union Hires Homeless to Stage Protests.  Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.  They're hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket.  Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses.  Several have recently been released from prison.  Others are between jobs.

One union fights another -- over politics.
 Voter-Fraud Rethink:  Nevada allies of Hillary Clinton have just sued to shut down several caucus sites inside casinos along the Las Vegas Strip, potentially disenfranchising thousands of Hispanic or black shift workers who couldn't otherwise attend the 11:30 a.m. caucus this coming Saturday.  D. Taylor, the president of the Culinary Workers Union that represents many casino workers, notes that legal complaint was filed just two days after his union endorsed Barack Obama.  He says the state teachers union, most of whose leadership backs Mrs. Clinton, realized that the Culinary union would be able to use the casino caucuses to better exercise its clout on behalf of Mr. Obama, and used a law firm with Clinton ties to file the suit.

Unions bitterly divided in Democratic race.  The tight race between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama has opened surprisingly deep and bitter divisions in the ranks of organized labor, as rival union leaders fly planeloads of last-minute volunteers into key states, accuse each other of trying to disenfranchise members, and even launch open attacks on rival Democratic candidates.

Teachers Sue to Block Hotel Workers' Union Vote in Nevada Caucus.  Nevada's state teachers union and six Las Vegas area residents filed a lawsuit late Friday that could make it harder for many members of the state's huge hotel workers union to vote in the hotly contested Jan. 19 Democratic caucus in Nevada.  The 13-page lawsuit in federal district court here comes two days after the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union Local 226 in Nevada endorsed Senator Barack Obama, a blow to Mrs. Clinton.

The Voters Beat Shameful Suit by Nevada Teachers.  This year's presidential contest already has sparked massive voter interest in Iowa and New Hampshire, and for those of us who are embarrassed by America's low voter turnout the past few election cycles, it is something wonderful to watch.  So thank goodness a federal judge in Nevada didn't damage this excitement by siding with the state's teachers union, which filed a shocking lawsuit eight days before Saturday's primary [1/19/2008] in a clear effort to dilute the voting strength of working-class people.

Democrats love unions, and unions love Democrats.  Whenever Democrats meet with organized labor leaders, it is a love fest.  Indeed, the love fest has been a central feature of this year's congressional session.  Few things have been more important to Democrats that pleasing organized labor.

Whose side are they on?
 AFL-CIO Sues Over Government Crackdown.  The nation's largest federation of labor unions sued the U.S. government Wednesday over a plan to crack down on employers who hire illegal immigrants, arguing increased scrutiny of Social Security numbers will result in errors and threaten the jobs of legal workers.

Tennessee raids Teamsters amid union rivalry.  The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday hauled away files and computer hard drives from the Teamsters, which took over as the police department's representative from the Fraternal Order of Police last year in a bitter department election.  Earlier this month, International Brotherhood of Teamsters organizer Calvin Hullett was arrested and charged with aggravated burglary.  Agents said he hid cameras at a youth camp run by the FOP.

Why union assault is 'failed campaign'.  Who is Gomez, I wondered, and what does he have to do with Cintas?  The answer tells us a lot about how far unions will go to distort the truth and destroy a successful company.

Rival Labor Unions Beating Each Other Up.  The effort to unionize Ohio nurses has ended with one labor union accusing another labor union of waging a "vicious union-busting campaign."

Unions Grasp for Influence Over Private Equity.  When planning corporate campaigns, unions and activist groups research their target and identify its weaknesses.  One key pressure point is a company's need for capital.  Because they often have great influence over pension funds, many unions are able to pressure companies by having the funds offer shareholder resolutions at corporate annual meetings.

Food Workers Local 951 Pressuring witnesses to save a suspect election.  The DOL charged substantial and numerous LMRDA violations, including:  no secret balloting; ballot distribution and collection by staff at work sites; failure to account for hundreds of unused ballots and replacement ballots; denying ballots to eligible voters; discriminating in the use of the membership list; and using union and employer money to promote the incumbent slate.

Leaders wonder if state ready to rethink unions.  Michigan is bleeding jobs, especially good-paying, top-benefit manufacturing jobs.  Supporters of making Michigan a right-to-work state, including about a dozen Republican legislators, say a heavily unionized culture deters businesses from locating in the state, so, with the economic crisis, the once unthinkable must be examined.

Don't Scrap the Private Ballot.  Democracy can be messy.  You find that in any number of stories about voting irregularities.  For example, in Florida's 13th congressional district, Republican Vern Buchanan won last fall by just 369 votes.  Democrat Christine Jennings cried foul, noting that some 18,000 ballots were cast without a vote for either candidate.  (The House of Representatives is investigating.)  Not to worry, though, because organized labor has a way to end electoral controversy:  Eliminate the private ballot.

How Labor Rules:  Why did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi renege on her previous commitment?  She dances to the tune of AFL-CIO President John Sweeney, who preaches outright protectionism.  Hostility toward not only the Peru and Panama pacts but also a vital agreement with Colombia can be traced to influence on U.S. unions by South America's leftist labor leaders, originating in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

Election 2008 — Notes on Funding and Support.  It is a well-known fact that unions invariably support the Democrat Party with cash, workers and votes but, it seems the Democrat Party has forgotten to support the unions!  The Democrat National Convention on August 25-28, 2008 is scheduled to be held in Denver Colorado.  Colorado is known as NOT being overly supportive of organized labor.  In the 2006 Mid-Term Elections, unions were very useful in putting the Democratic candidates over the top in close contests and enabling Democrats to take control of Congress.

Colorado opens door too wide for unions.  Will the proposed policy that would expand the access unions have to state employees truly make Colorado a "union paradise," as Republicans claim?  Is it Gov. Bill Ritter's "thank you" to organized labor for its help in his winning election?

Barack Obama, Control Freak:  Senator Barack Obama recently said, "let's allow our unions and their organizers to lift up this country's middle class again."  Ironically, he said it at a time when Detroit automakers have been laying off unionized workers by the tens of thousands, while Toyota has been hiring tens of thousands of non-union American automobile workers.

Union mentality can be a roadblock to innovation.  One of the most cherished assumptions of organized labor is that a hefty increase in union membership would be good for the nation.  This is simply untrue. … For the economy as a whole, a large increase in the number of unionized businesses would be a tremendous drag on growth, especially in dynamic sectors such as technology.

The Union Police:  Unions keep losing membership as a share of the national workforce, which explains why organized labor's main political focus is changing the rules to force more workers into unions.  Witness a bill that Senate Democrats are pushing this week to require that hundreds of thousands of local police and firemen submit to collective bargaining. … Sixteen states have considered legislation like this since 1996 and voted it down.  The bill, pushed hardest by the International Association of Fire Fighters, would impose it nationwide, superceding all of these state laws.

Heat on volunteer firefighters.  You probably haven't heard Congress is about to shut down many of America's volunteer fire departments.  Not intentionally, perhaps.  Yet a little-known bill advancing through Congress would do just that. … Who would want to shut them down?  The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), that's who. … The union's effort to ban volunteering is an assault on our civic fabric.  Doctors who provide free care to the poor, lawyers who work pro bono for the disadvantaged, and firefighters who volunteer for their communities make America a better country.

Labor-Liberal Incest.  In Stamford, Connecticut, where I live, police, fireman, and teachers unions, which constitute more than 70% of the budget, are driving property taxes upward at rates of 8% to 10% per annum.  Emblematic of the malevolent influence of these unions is the daily spectacle of uniformed policemen, at $70 per hour, doing an indifferent job of directing traffic around roadside work crews.  Such work could and should be done at no more than $10 per hour by lower-income people eager for such work.

Labor's man in '08.  While Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama soak up news media attention, John Edwards has pushed for organized labor's support.  No decisions have yet been made, but the former senator from North Carolina and 2004 vice presidential nominee is the front-runner for winning over the big, dynamic unions who left the AFL-CIO 18 months ago.

Organized Labor Supports Democrats with Biggest Voter Mobilization Ever.  The labor movement geared up for its "biggest political blitz ever" in the November 2006 elections, according to the Capital Research Center.  The AFL-CIO announced it intended to pour "$40 million into 80 targeted races in 21 states — the largest voter mobilization drive in the history of organized labor."  That is only the tip of the iceberg and doesn't account for in-kind contributions such as volunteer hours, phone lines, brochures, etc.

Nurse Sues Union for Failure to Accommodate Religious Beliefs.  Sacramento nurse Jennifer Le … is a Roman Catholic who objected to membership because of the union's positions on moral issues such as abortion, comprehensive sex education and domestic partnerships.  The union informed Le that she could divert her dues to charity.  However, the union insisted that Le give her dues to one of five charities such as Planned Parenthood and the AIDS Foundation.

Union Free Choice.  Union membership among non-government employees now stands at 7.4 percent, its lowest rate in decades.  So, the AFL-CIO, its affiliates, and several independent unions are trying to make it easier to force employers to recognize unions as exclusive bargaining agents through legislation.

Union Members, Not Minimum-Wage Earners, Benefit When the Minimum Wage Rises.  Supporters of raising the minimum wage argue it will raise the earnings of low-income workers.  Labor unions are among the most prominent of these supporters, a fact that makes little intuitive sense, because very few union members work for the minimum wage.  Unions, however, are not just being altruistic when they push to raise the minimum wage.  A higher minimum wage increases the expense of hiring unskilled workers.  This makes hiring skilled union members more attractive.

The heroic era of organized labor is long gone.  Soon, perhaps, a majority of organized labor will be government employees.  The labor movement will be primarily government organized as an interest group to lobby and pressure itself.  Already New York City, which has about the same size population it had 40 years ago, has 30 percent more city employees.  Antonio Villaraigosa, the new mayor of Los Angeles, is a former organizer for that city's teachers union.

Are Labor Unions Obsolete?  Hint:  Yes.  Whether or not you think that unions were necessary in the first place, it's clear that today they've become a dinosaur of our post-industrial society.  Like a dead whale washed up on a beach, unions are big, rotting, and avoided by a growing number of people each day — but nobody quite knows how to get rid of them.

Connecticut Public Employees Live On Easy Street.  "No, layoffs are not something we would ever consider," said former Connecticut House of Representatives Speaker Moira Lyons (D-Stamford) in November 2002, in response to a reporter's question about laying off state employees in order to close the state's budget deficit.

Overly Powerful Public Sector Unions.  The percentage of private sector workers who are covered by a collective bargaining agreement has plunged to just 8.5 percent, down from 23.2 percent in 1983. … Meanwhile, public sector union membership shows very little net change over the past 22 years, rising from 340,00 to 350,000.

Puerto Rican Union President Sentenced for $15 Million Theft.  In the summer of 2005, four officials of UTM 1740, an affiliate of the International Longshoremen's Association, along with six businessmen and three companies, were indicted in U.S. District Court on nearly two dozen counts of embezzlement, money-laundering and maintaining false records.  They were accused of converting some $10 million in funds, mainly from the union's health care plan, to their own use, plus underreporting another $1.5 million in dues collections.

Court hears arguments in Washington state cases.  The U.S. Supreme Court has held that labor unions may collect fees from nonunion workers to cover the costs of collective bargaining performed on their behalf.  But the court has further held that's all they can take — the unions are forbidden from collecting and using additional fees from nonunion workers to finance union political activities, unless those workers grant their permission.

First pizza-delivery union formed in Florida city.  Eleven Domino's employees hoping to make a little more dough have formed the nation's first union of pizza-delivery drivers. … The union organizing drive was started by Jim Pohle, a 37-year-old Domino's driver who said he delivers pizzas because he likes to sleep late, smoke on the job and listen to the radio.

[That sounds like exactly the kind of employee that the unions work hardest to defend.]

NLRB Decision on Supervisors Could Limit Unions' Power.  Labor unions are conducting rallies in cities across the country in anticipation of a decision by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dealing with the definition of a supervisor.

UFCW Exposed.  The United Food and Commercial Workers' union bosses have a dirty secret:  While they rake in six-figure salaries paid by their member's hard earned dues, the union has done little to represent their members' interests.

RICO Trial for Bosses of Florida Union Gets Underway.  Michael and Robert McKay have been living on borrowed time.  Respectively, president and treasurer-secretary of the American Maritime Officers, the McKay brothers, aged 59 and 56, rigged elections, stole funds, obstructed justice, and orchestrated illegal campaign contributions.  At least that's what the Justice Department has been alleging in a criminal racketeering suit against the pair.

US postal workers union endorses Obama.  US Democratic White House hopeful Barack Obama on Wednesday [4/7/2008] won the endorsement of the country's largest postal workers union in a fresh boost to his 2008 nomination race against rival Hillary Clinton.

Former postal union leaders arrested.  Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat could stop two leaders of an American Postal Workers Union local, but a federal criminal investigation apparently has.  John McGovern, 50, of Hawthorne and Gary Weightman, 53, of Keansburg were arrested Friday [2/17/2006] and charged with embezzling more than $400,000 from Local 190 of the APWU.

Can the Postal Service Learn?  Employees of the U.S. Postal Service — the third largest employer in the country — should take note:  Asking for too much can sometimes turn big benefits into big layoffs.  Delphi, the nation's largest auto-parts supplier and employer of 34,000 hourly workers, is bankrupt.  It might have something to do with the fact that Delphi's unionized workers make on average $64 per hour in wages and benefits — more than twice what some of its competitors pay.

Economic sabotage with a union label.  During the mid-90s, for example, United Steelworkers Local 9121 targeted Bayou Steel Corp. In addition to striking, the local union (supported by the national union) advanced its demands through assaults, vandalism, blackmail, and threats against management's family members.  The exasperated Louisiana-based company filed a civil RICO suit against the union, eventually settling out of court.

So America wants Socialism, eh?  In the mid-sixties, Union activists started visiting my Dad's shop, pressuring [harassing] him to hire Union Employees and pay Union Wages.  As Ohio was a "right to work" state at that time [as I recall].  Dad told them that this was his business and that if they wanted to set the rules that they should go start their own business.  This was unacceptable to these organizers.  I remember the resulting vandalism, a slashed tire the following night on the family's only vehicle. ... Calls to the police never resulted in any arrests.  Telephone threats persisted.  Today, forty years later, ACORN has shown that nothing has changed.

Kennedy Pledges to 'Play Offense' for Labor.  Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) joined with union leaders Friday [12/8/2006] to rally for a bill that would make it easier for American workers to unionize and pledged to work for labor interests when he takes over the Senate Labor Committee in January.

Head of Nation's Largest Municipal Labor Council Arrested in NYC.  A seven-term Democratic state assemblyman who also is president of the nation's largest municipal labor council was arrested on federal racketeering charges Tuesday, accused of stealing more than $2 million from the state, labor unions and even a Little League fund.

Unions are bad for job growth.  Right to Work laws give individual workers the right to stay out of unions.  In a truly free society, though, right to work laws would not exist.  After all, a company should have the right to make union membership a condition of employment, even though that might be a foolish approach.  But because there is so much pro-union legislation tilting the playing field against business, right to work laws are seen as a way of creating some balance.

Unions using coerced revenues for politics.  The cases began in Washington State where teachers have been embroiled in a conflict with the NEA-affiliated teachers' union over whether the union has a right to use nonmembers' dues however it chooses.  Passed by nearly 73 percent of voters in an initiative, Washington's paycheck protection law has been on the books for over a decade.  It requires that union receive the "affirmative authorization" of workers prior to spending their mandatory dues or agency fees on politics.  The union flagrantly violated the law, even admitting to multiple violations during a state investigation.

Unions' Grip on State Governments Tightens With Forced Dues.  Recent developments in Washington and Maine demonstrate why state government is the silver lining to the cloud that hangs over organized labor.  Although union membership in private industry is at an all-time low, one in three public-sector workers is unionized, and the number is growing.  Beleaguered state governments are agreeing to union contracts that force non-members to pay union dues.

Mob-Controlled Queens, N.Y. Local Threatens, Ignores Members.  Members of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) want some answers about where their money is going.  That's understandable given the caliber of people running the show.  The president of the 15,000-member Queens, N.Y. school bus drivers' local, Salvatore Battaglia, is facing federal charges of obstruction of justice, having been accused of conspiring with members of New York's Genovese crime family.  He's still in office.  The union's secretary-treasurer, Julius Bernstein, was forced by prosecutors to step down from his post in June; he's due for sentencing late next month for racketeering.  And its pension fund director, Ann Chiarovano, despite pleading guilty in August to obstruction of justice, remains at her job because she is technically not a union officer.

Union corruption and the law:  Some corrupt acts are punishable by criminal laws, most effectively in blatant cases.  Others are best addressed through labor law and regulation, again of limited effectiveness except in the most blatant cases of financial misuse.  The entire control structure is complex and uneven in application, reflecting the particular concerns that happened to occupy regulators during their sporadic bouts of regulation.

Birdwatching, Government style.  Many of you who thought you had the stomach flu this year really had food poisoning from bacteria.  We should treat raw chicken as if it were covered in fecal matter — it's crawling with bacteria.  Keep it away from the salad, and wash the cutting board.  Local 2357 had a different solution:  The government must hire more union inspectors.  Apparently if more people stared at the birds, they'd be better at seeing invisible germs.

Obama picks a fight with Mexico on behalf of the Teamsters

Mexico Strikes Back in Trade Spat.  The Mexican government said Monday [3/16/2009] it would slap tariffs on 90 U.S. industrial and agricultural products, in a trade dispute that underscored the difficulties facing President Barack Obama as he tries to assure business and global allies that he favors free trade.  Mexico said the tariffs were in retaliation for the cancellation of a pilot program allowing Mexican trucks to transport cargo throughout the U.S.  Unions have for years fought to keep Mexican trucks off U.S. highways...

The Teamsters War.  President Obama often campaigned as a trade warrior, and now he's getting his wish.  Mexico announced yesterday that it will raise tariffs on 90 U.S. products, affecting some $2.4 billion in goods across 40 states.  The move was retaliation for the recent decision by Congress, signed into law by Mr. Obama, to close the Southern U.S. border to Mexican trucks.

Mexico Bites Back.  Congressional Democrats have a bad habit of viewing treaty obligations as favors, forgetting that trade is a two-way street.  Now that they've broken NAFTA, the Mexicans are about to educate them.

Avoidable trade war.  Because the United States reneged on a good-faith commitment, we are engaged in a minitrade war with our third-largest trading partner.  And if the Great Depression taught us anything, the middle of an economic downturn is the worst possible time to begin erecting trade barriers.




The so-called Employee Free Choice Act

This subtopic is now discussed on a page of its own, located here.


Little minds don't grasp big-box appeal.  People who buy their groceries from Wal-Mart — it has one-fifth of the nation's grocery business — save at least 17 percent.  But because unions are strong in many grocery stores trying to compete with Wal-Mart, unions are yanking on the Democratic Party's leash, demanding laws to force Wal-Mart to pay wages and benefits higher than those that already are high enough to attract 77 times more applicants than there were jobs at Evergreen Park's store.

Clinton Remained Silent As Wal-Mart Fought Unions.  In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986 and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world's largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.

Making children cry:  How the unions stole Christmas.  Inside a South Florida Wal-Mart last Thursday [12/15/2005], union-sponsored protesters handed out empty, gift-wrapped boxes to children and made them cry, according to multiple witnesses — and it appears that the arrests of two of the protesters may have been part of a grand strategy designed by Big Labor-backed WakeUpWalMart.com.

 Editorial Comment:   If you are a member of a labor union, would you stoop to that level to get publicity for your cause?  I assume most of you would not.  How then can you continue to support organizations that have no moral boundaries?

Union Leader Fraud & Corruption:  Most people don't know just how many crimes are committed every year through which union officials hurt their own members.  The number of reputed and verified crimes is staggering.  Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the hundreds of indictments of union officials for violations of the Labor Management and Reporting Disclosure Act.

Union Demands Washington Workers Be Fired.  On November 2, 2005, the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE), Washington state's largest public employee union, delivered a list of 800 workers' names to the state Labor Relations Office.  The state then notified those employees they would be fired just after Christmas if they did not acquiesce to the union's demands.  Their crime?  Not paying union dues.

Labor Unions Admit They Are Killing American Jobs.  Industrial unions' origins have in nearly all cases involved violent property destruction and deaths as they strove to supplant capitalism and place business management in the hands of the workers.

Union behind illegal immigrant.  Of all the offenders that U.S. District Judge Anna J. Brown has sentenced, a carpenter and union organizer who illegally immigrated from Mexico more than 15 years ago drew one of the biggest crowds.  Instead of spurning Jose Alfredo Cobian of Molalla as a threat to their jobs and wages, fellow union members packed Brown's Portland courtroom last month in a gesture that reveals the changing relationship between organized labor and immigrant workers.

A confounding alliance of unions and illegal immigrants.  It was billed as the biggest act of civil disobedience in Los Angeles history — rivaled only by Californians' defiant use of appliances during peak hours back in the days of the energy crisis.  In reality, it was street theater in three acts with a confusing plotline.  Thursday's march [9/28/2006] encouraged unionization of hotel workers at the Hilton near Los Angeles International Airport, coupled with a call for amnesty for illegal immigrants.  Or, to put it plainly, unions demanded higher wages for workers, while throwing their weight behind an immigration movement that drives wages down.

Taming the Air Controller Union:  Twenty-five years ago Ronald Reagan changed labor relations in America by firing the air traffic controllers for striking illegally over pay, violating their oath as federal employees.  George W. Bush and the Republicans in Congress now face an equally aggressive union.

Unions Played Key Role in May Day Rallies for Illegal Immigrants.  Organized labor since the mid 80s has moved away from its historic opposition to high levels of immigration.  Whereas union leaders for decades had believed — and with more than passing evidence — that a huge influx of unskilled workers from abroad drives down wages, they have come to view immigrants as the salvation of the labor movement.

Did someone mention the Immigration Protest Rallies?

Union Dues Spent on Golf, Cadillac, Resorts, and Even Wal-Mart.
  • Nearly $1.5 million in union members' dues money was spent on golf.
  • The Ironworkers AFL-CIO Local Union 40 spent $52,879 on a new Cadillac for a retiring president.
  • $7.9 million of employee dues money went to resort expenditures.
  • The Boilermakers AFL-CIO Local 374 spent $8,800 of employee dues money on Christmas gifts at Wal-Mart, despite the labor movement's smear campaign against the retailer.
  • Between six AFL-CIO locals, over $50,000 of employee dues money was spent at a single D.C. steakhouse.
  • The AFL-CIO alone spent over $49 million on political activities and lobbying -- much of which is spent quietly on in-kind political expenditures like pro-Kerry brochures and websites.  That's almost $20 million more than it spent on representation activities.

Sewing Discontent:  Globalization continues to be a boon to mankind.  Economic benefits once reserved to residents of the developed world are spreading rapidly throughout the developing world.  Thanks to free trade, companies from rich countries are bringing improvements in health, safety, and environmental quality to their overseas employees and their communities. … Yet another Western export threatens to derail this process.  Labor unions are beginning to globalize, threatening to spread overseas the onerous rules and inefficiencies for which they're renowned in the West.

Union Ordered to Pay Sutter Health $17.3 million.  The jury found the New York-based Unite Here union had acted with "fraud, malice or oppression" when it mailed defamatory postcards about Sutter Health. … Unite Here sent a mass mailing last year claiming Sutter Health used inadequately cleaned bed linens in its hospitals.  The linens were cleaned by a commercial laundry service, which was embroiled in a labor dispute with the union.

Air Controllers Strike Again?  In 1998, the union-dependent [Clinton] administration caved in to today's average controller pay of $166,000 (not counting the most generous pension and benefits in the world), with the top rate of $197,000 exceeding the pay of all cabinet secretaries — and costing $1.9 billion.  That apparently is not enough.

When is a picket line not a picket line?  When AFL-CIO officials cross it.  Even we weren't ready for the union execs' shocking hypocrisy:  the hotel where labor leaders are spending their members' money is currently being picketed by a union in a labor dispute!

Ex-LA labor leader pleads guilty to campaign finance violations.  Former city councilman and ex-labor leader Martin Ludlow pleaded guilty Wednesday [3/8/2006] to breaking campaign laws by secretly accepting $36,000 in union money for his 2003 campaign.

Safeway Employee Hits Union with Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit.  Seattle-area UFCW union officials maintain discriminatory scheme, refuse to honor worker's right to religious freedom under federal law.

Discrimination by Unions:  The Davis-Bacon Act was passed by Congress in 1934 with the strong support of labor unions.  The Act requires construction firms contracting for the federal government to pay their workers "locally prevailing wages," and it was passed by lawmakers with the explicit intention of keeping low-skilled African-American workers out of federal construction projects. … In 1999, Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce testified before Congress on the "racist roots" of the Davis-Bacon Act.

How to Save $40 Billion:  President Obama said in his Inaugural Address yesterday that government must spend to rebuild roads and bridges, but that those "who manage the public's dollars" must also "spend wisely" and "reform bad habits."  With that ambition in mind, here's an idea to save tens of billions of taxpayer dollars in the months ahead:  Repeal Davis-Bacon superminimum wage requirements for construction projects.

Financial disclosure is a wonderful thing.  Gerald B. Ellis, for example, made $116,703 in 2004 as a business manager at Local 627 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, a member of the AFL-CIO.  Local 627 also buys $86,400 worth of legal services from the one-man law firm Gerald B. Ellis, Inc., nicely padding its business manager's income.

[Edwin Hill, President of the IBEW, has an annual salary of $315,827.*]

Unions are Dangerous to Business and Taxpayers.  Every state and community across the nation is now facing powerful public employee unions when it's time to renegotiate public employee contracts.  The unions are aggressive, self-serving, and will strike, shutting down or crippling essential public services when it's to their benefit in order to intimidate and win larger concessions.

What's next?  Unionized vagrants and panhandlers?
 AFL-CIO to work with day laborers.  The nation's largest federation of unions agreed Wednesday [8/9/2006] to work with a network of immigrant day laborer centers to improve wages and working conditions for those who solicit work from street corners across the United States.

Washington State Workers Win Back Their Jobs.  Ten Washington state employees who were forced from their jobs for refusing to pay union dues are back at work.  In June the state employees settled their class-action lawsuit against the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE).  The union agreed to remedy its violations, rehire the fired employees, provide them back pay, and cover nominal damages and attorneys fees.

A phoney pay comparison.  On a recent CNBC show, Maria Bartiromo asked how I could possibly not agree that typical CEO pay was excessive, since the average CEO earns 431 times the salary of an average production worker.  In my typically diplomatic style, I said that was untrue, a bad case of comparing apples to oranges. … Dividing one bogus statistic by another bogus statistic compounds the errors.

Where will the labor defections take us?  The dissidents want to see less money spent on politics and more on organizing and recruiting.  On an individual level, a lot of union members are conservatives, many Christian conservatives, and they are sick of paying dues to an organization that has been a rubber stamp of the left and the Democratic Party.

Should union dues back political causes?  Fred Glass is fighting Proposition 75, an initiative that goes before California voters on Nov. 8.  It would bar public employee unions from making financial contributions to political candidates or causes without its members' annual consent to do so.

State Worker Ousted for Not Joining Union.  Pat Woodward, 64, of Olympia, Washington, was recently fired from her job as a financial analyst for the Washington state Department of Licensing.  The reason?  She refused to give a percentage of her paycheck to a union.  "I decided not to join the union because it would violate my religious and ethical beliefs," Woodward said.

AFL-CIO Promotes Homosexual "Marriage".  The political activism of labor unions is growing, and drifting far from labor issues.  Recently it was learned that the AFL-CIO has endorsed and is using member dues to promote homosexual "marriage."

Metro Transit driver allowed to avoid buses with gay-themed ads.  A Metro Transit bus driver who objects on religious grounds is being allowed to abstain from driving buses that carry gay-themed ads.  Officials with the public transit system said they've made a reasonable accommodation to her beliefs.  But a union leader said the bus company is condoning intolerance, and that drivers were never before exempted from buses carrying other ads they found objectionable.

Unions play Social Security hardball.  Unions are losing members and clout at the bargaining table, but that doesn't mean they aren't still powerful players on the political scene.  Now, Big Labor is trying to stop Social Security reform, even if it hurts union members.

Accusations fly in Teamster race.  When control of one of the country's largest and most influential labor unions is at stake, nothing is left to chance.  So as 1.4 million North American Teamsters decide this month who will be their next president, the campaign rhetoric between incumbent James P. Hoffa and challenger Tom Leedham has rivaled the most heated political election.

Labor's political illusion:  [John Sweeney] wanted to restore union power through politics.  His project was a total failure, and the AFL-CIO is in ruins 50 years after its creation.

Witnesses to the AFL-CIO's Decline:  The AFL-CIO is faced with serious problems:  declining membership, failed political efforts, internal disputes over dues payments and funds for organizing, unions threatening to withdraw from the federation, and a potential challenge to John Sweeney's presidency.  None of this surprises observers of the waning labor movement.

Competing trade unions:  All that competition for union dues is bad news for the AFL-CIO hierarchy, but not necessarily for unions in general, much less for workers in general.  This seems an opportune time to reconsider what a trade union is, and what it can and cannot do.

A tough year for the AFL-CIO.  It's been a lousy year — indeed a miserable several decades — for Big Labor.  With union membership falling to historic lows and the unions' political clout on the wane, even while unions pour, literally, hundreds of millions of dollars into politics, the coup de grace for the AFL-CIO may come at the convention itself.

AFL-CIO Defections May Weaken Unions' Influence.  The defection of two major unions from the AFL-CIO has stirred questions about the possible impact on local, state, and national tax and budget policies.  The Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union dropped out of the AFL-CIO on July 25, during the organization's convention in Chicago.  Four other AFL-CIO unions boycotted the convention.  Most of the unions' campaign cash and foot soldiers have gone toward candidates, mainly Democrats, who advocate increased government spending and higher taxes.  With the apparent split, some political observers are suggesting Democrats will lose valuable support.

Fourth Union Leaves AFL-CIO for Reform Coalition.  For the fourth time in the past two months, a union has withdrawn from the AFL-CIO in favor of a coalition that seeks to reform the organized labor movement.

AFL-CIO Loses Third Union to Reform Coalition.  Just four days after two of the largest unions in the country withdrew from the AFL-CIO, a union representing 1.4 million food and commercial workers announced on Friday [7/29/2005] that it was also leaving the federation as part of an effort to reform the organized labor movement.

Union trouble:  Pilots, flight attendants and other members of different unions are crossing the picket lines manned by members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association.

Union Leaders Accused of Profiting From Insider Trading:  "These guys got rich, basically, off the workers they're supposed to be protecting," said Dan Cronin, spokesman for NRTW. "This is exactly what Enron did."

Meet Union-Buster Nancy Pelosi.  A blockbuster NewsMax Magazine story by best-selling author Peter Schweizer exposes how Democratic leaders passionately fight for liberal policies, but go to great lengths to avoid applying those policies in their personal lives.

The End of Direct Taxpayer Funding for Union Think Tank.  The California Labor Federation claimed a central role in winning taxpayer funding for this program, included in the budget with virtually no attention from Republicans, businesses, or taxpayer groups.  It wasn't long before the Institute for Labor and Employment began collecting leftist academics and former union organizers at U.C. Berkeley and UCLA to serve as the "think tank" for the unions' political agenda at the state and local levels.

Port Fear:  Longshoremen union members will continue to handle packages at America's ports, no matter who owns the facilities.  Oddly, none of these same members of Congress have called for inspecting the disturbing history of these unions.  At least three aspects of Longshoremen history suggest that these union members at our ports might pose a risk to national security.  They have been associated with organized crime, specifically the Mafia.  They have a history of anti-American radical politics and have committed acts of violence.

Grocery Union Hit with Federal Charges  for violating Safeway workers' right not to subsidize union politics.  Union officials refused to provide legally mandated breakdown of union expenditures.  Under the Supreme Court decision Communication Workers v. Beck and subsequent NLRB rulings, union officials must inform employees of their right to refrain from formal union membership and the right not to be forced to pay for costs unrelated to collective bargaining, such as union political activity.

Former AFL-CIO Union Joins Coalition for Labor Reform.  The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners left the AFL-CIO four years ago because it felt AFL-CIO boss John Sweeney was spending too much money and time on politics and not enough on labor organizing.

Union Leader:  Labor Can't Just Back Democrats.  Organized labor should help politicians who will advance labor's cause rather than simply supporting Democrats, says a union leader pushing for changes in the AFL-CIO.

Union Corruption Update.  Local 933 of the American Federation of Government Employees for the last few years has been in financial shambles.  The explanation lies at the top.  The local's leadership operated their union like a personal bank.  A series of investigations, most recently by the Detroit News, reveal a disturbing pattern of embezzlement and other forms of malfeasance.

Union corruption update - the August 29, 2005 issue.  David Feeback's sybaritic ways as president of Local 69 of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees ended several years ago.  This August 23 he got the final bill:  a year and a day in federal prison, and mandatory restitution of almost $90,000.

California's Union Blues.  The controversy surrounds an initiative called "paycheck protection" which is now headed to Golden State voters in a special election this fall.  The measure would require public sector unions to receive written permission from rank-and-file members before spending their dues on political activities.

Elaine Chao is looking out for you!  John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, has said, "transparency, accountability and full and accurate disclosure should be central goals of financial regulation."  Of business.  But try to apply those reasonable standards to Sweeney's own organization, and he sings a different tune.

Anchorage School Bus Drivers Vote Out Unwanted Teamsters Union.  Workers successfully challenge stifling of union-dissenting free speech.

Not Your Father's Labor Union.  Most union members think their dues — which amount to an average $600 per year, allowing unions to take in some $17 billion each year — go to providing better representation at the bargaining table.  But most unions today now spend substantially more of their members' money on politics and other non-contract-related activities than they do on bread and butter issues.  Worse, most members have no say how their money is being spent and many have no idea that their dues are being diverted to far-Left causes that they would never support — everything from abortion rights to opposition to the war in Iraq.

The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire  of 1911 is often misused as a example of the need for child labor laws and safety codes.  It is actually a warning to employers and employees to beware of the misdeeds and negligence of other employees. … The workers were 17, 18, and 19 years old or older.  So workers were not children, would not be controlled by present child labor laws and thus the incident provides no support for child labor laws. … Socialists deliberately lied about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in order to blame capitalism and to cover-up for the usual failures of socialism.

 Excellent   Faltering unions:  The American labor movement is in a mess, and the current leadership doesn't seem to have a clue what to do about it.  … Fifty years ago, more than one in three workers belonged to a union, but this is not your father's — much less your grandfather's — labor movement.  Today's union honchos are more interested in politics than in collective bargaining.  And they've hitched Big Labor's wagon to the Democratic Party, to the detriment of both institutions.

Union Sacks Stadium Sign.  The Madison Square Garden-led campaign to halt construction of the West Side stadium project hit a snag when union workers refused to hang a sign opposing the controversial plan, The New York Post has learned.

[So much for freedom of speech and diversity of ideas.]

Firefighters Versus the Media.  One of the biggest stories of the presidential campaign is being ignored by the major media.  It's how the president of the firefighters union engineered an endorsement of John Kerry for president without asking his members about it.  It turns out most of the members of the union are Republicans who support Bush.

Machinists union employees are entitled to a 25% dues refund.  For 2004, the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers admits that 26.30% of International union dues, 7.98% of district lodge dues and 29.41% of local lodge dues are spent on political, ideological and other non-representational activities for which no employee can be required to pay.

Free Pass.  Amid the uproar over the ads run by the "Section 527" political committee known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the Establishment media have remained eerily silent about the massive union-funded 527s that are spending exponentially more resources.

She's serious.
 Should Democratic Party merge with Communist Party?  If you belong to the Democratic Party, I urge you to take the time to study the platform of your party and compare them to the goals of the communists.  They are one and the same, although this will bring shrieks from the likes of Marxist Hillary Clinton, it is the raw truth.

The People Who Brought You Weekends?  Not Quite.  The government outlawed child labor only once large numbers of parents were doing well enough that they didn't need to send their children to work.

Don't Get into a Lather over Sweatshops.  Economists point out that alternatives to working in a sweatshop are often much worse:  scavenging through trash, prostitution, crime, or even starvation.

Aviation Security:  Are We Looking for Answers in the Wrong Place?  The perpetrators of the violence were not the striking flight attendants but rather other TWA employees, predominantly from the air side of the airport, who supported the striking flight attendants by openly menacing working flight attendants and reputedly sponsoring and participating in acts of violence including assault, fire bombings and even an attempted shooting of a flight attendant through the window of her hotel room while on a layover in Denver.

Images from the Teamsters Attack on Don Adams.  President Clinton came to Philadelphia for a fundraiser October 2, 1998.  Because he was to visit several places in the same general area both his supporters and detractors were spread throughout a several block radius for most of the event.  The assault on Don and Teri Adams occurred just minutes after arriving in front of city hall where they encountered 150 Teamsters.

Union Sheep:  After eight years of Clinton in office the US steel industry was failing.  Many countries such as Russia and China were dumping steel here at below market prices to drive American companies out of business.  All under the Clinton watch I may add.  But what do union sheep do best, they vote Democrat out of habit and the onslaught continues.

Labor's "Enron" Scandal:  Labor leaders like John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO seized on the opportunity to denounce scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other corporations to help drum up support for Democrats in the 2002 elections and shift political power to labor unions.  But then it was discovered that several directors of Ullico, a financial company serving union employees' pension funds, allegedly collected large sums of money in a stock-investment scheme.

Don't Place Stock In Big Labor.  Labor is signaling that it would rather employ a bad fund manager (if he agrees with it politically) than a good funds manager (if he does not).  If this happens, it'll be union members and retirees who lose, not the AFL-CIO leadership.  That fact alone could signal a violation of the unions' legal responsibility to manage retirement funds to benefit their members.

Robin Hood Union Bosses:  Union leaders may think that the pockets of people earning more that $100,000 are a bottomless well from which they can forever draw, but it's not the case.  Plenty of these folks, after all, are already paying twice for their children's education — once in taxes and once in private-school tuition.

How Outsourcing Creates Jobs for Americans.  Some companies are being criticized for outsourcing work from the United States to other countries.  U.S. manufacturers have outsourced operations to countries such as China to lower wage costs and escape from high taxes, burdensome government regulations and intransigent unions at home.

Outsourcing Myths.  America's companies are shutting down factories and offices, and shipping jobs wholesale overseas.  That's how the media have portrayed it.  In reality, outsourcing has created more, better-paying jobs here.

The Great Outsourcing Scare of 2004,  like all protectionist scares, turned out to be one part sensationalism, one part economic ignorance. … If there is a threat to American workers, the U.S. government should get a large portion of the blame.  Taxes, regulations, and mandated employee benefits, when taken together, drastically increase the cost of hiring Americans.

The silver lining of outsourcing overseas:  The truth is that outsourcing is far less of a threat to American workers than they imagine, and there are significant benefits for the U.S. economy.  For starters, there is not a one-for-one relationship between jobs lost here and those gained elsewhere from outsourcing.

Help for Americans.  Since 1992 there's been a loss of 391 million jobs; however, during those years, America created 411 million new jobs, for a net gain of 20 million.  A Dartmouth University Tuck School of Business study found that companies that send jobs abroad ended up hiring twice as many workers at home.  Most new jobs created are higher-paid.

Jobs come and go.  In 1970, the telecommunications industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators.  In the same year, Americans made 9.8 billion long distance calls.  Today, the telecommunications industry employs only 78,000 operators [and we make ten times as many calls].  That's a tremendous 80 percent job loss.  One forgotten beneficiary in today's job loss demagoguery is the consumer.

Liberals and class:  part III.  Sometimes it seems as if liberals have a genius for producing an unending stream of ideas that are counterproductive for the poor, whom they claim to be helping.  Few of these notions are more counterproductive than the idea of "menial work" or "dead-end jobs."

More pieces in the jobs puzzle.  It's true that our country's "loss" of manufacturing jobs has been due partly to our shift from labor-intensive products, such as textiles, to high-tech products, such as pharmaceuticals.  But there are pieces of this jobs puzzle that aren't getting nearly the attention they deserve.

10,000 autoworkers get paid without working.  About 10,000 autoworkers in the United States and Canada are getting full wages and benefits not to work, a Detroit Free Press survey shows.  All are hourly workers on long-term layoff at the traditional Big Three automakers and their biggest supplier, Delphi Corp., who are in so-called "jobs banks."  Most of the companies refused to say how much they are spending to pay all these workers, but it's likely well over $1 billion this year, given the number of workers and typical union wage-and-benefit packages.

Taxpayers are footing bill for union work.  In the wake of a controversy over a police union official who received a city salary while working full time for the officers union, a survey of city government, Muni and BART unions reveals a handful of other officials with similar arrangements, including a San Francisco sheriff's union chief who earned $60,000 a year but worked as little as one shift a month.

Communist Leaders Speak Their Minds:  Many if not all Left-wing organizations, including some labor unions, abortion-rights groups, "gay" liberation groups, "peace and justice" groups and others, have been shown to be heavily infiltrated or influenced by Marxist, Socialist, Trostkyite and Communist ideas, persons and organizations.  All of these groups seem to work together in relative harmony and solidarity.

Democrats' labor problem:  An aide refers to [Boston Mayor] Menino as "the last of the lunch pail Democrats," but that has not stopped him from crossing many union picket lines over the years in order to go about his business.  He realizes that only a small portion of today's working men and women belong to labor unions, and not all those members take orders from their union leaders by any means.  Nevertheless, to most Democrats, the link between the party and organized labor is sacred and indissoluble.

Less is more:  I happen to know a bit about airlines and why they go belly up.  Both my parents worked for airlines for decades.  My mother was personnel director for the "old" National Airlines which used to be Florida's top carrier and a major source of jobs for those who lived in South Florida.  National Airlines grew and grew and grew, until it failed.  Was it a poor economy that did National in?  Nope, it was good old-fashioned bureaucracy, aided and abetted by the firm grip of organized labor.

The war on Wal-Mart:  We know "the customer" isn't some paragon of wisdom and good judgment.  He's not even one thing — he's everybody.  You let "him" choose what suits him best.  Ah!  But only (according to the union) if he shops where the union has a foothold.  It might well mean higher prices, but, if so, tough.

Note:  More information about the war on Wal-Mart is available here.

Looking for the Union Label:  Labor unions are taking money from members and spending it on political candidates that many, if not most, of their members oppose.

Workers don't get to know how their dues are spent.  Judge keeps union bosses' spending of forced dues on politics undercover in election year.

Union Political Involvement:  Most union members were only vaguely aware of the lengths to which their unions went to back the Democratic ticket.  And union officials carried out their activities in ways that kept members in the dark.


The illegal New York City transit strike of 2005:

Struck by the Strike.  One of the principal elements of civil society is the rule of law.  Society depends upon most people obeying the law most of the time, together with tough sanctions for violation.  In this spirit, the full strength of any and all sanctions of the Taylor Law should be imposed upon the leadership of New York's illegally striking bus and subway workers.

You see, The Taylor Law  prohibits strikes by public employees.

Screws Tighten on NYC Transit Union.  The contract covering 33,000 New York transit workers expired last week, and the union called the strike Tuesday morning [12/20/2005] despite a state law banning public employee strikes.

Court Fines NYC Transit Strikers $1M a Day.  The city's subway and bus workers went on strike Tuesday [12/20/2005] for the first time in more than 25 years, stranding millions of commuters, holiday shoppers and tourists at the height of the Christmas rush.  A judge promptly slapped the union with a $1 million-a-day fine.

Despite an Illegal Strike, New York Transit Workers Win.  Barely a week after New York's 34,000 transit workers illegally walked off the job for three days near the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays, the union received a contract offer many people saw as a victory for the union.

Judge Ends Automatic Rake Of Dues for Transit Workers.  The Transport Workers Union must pay $2.5 million for the strike that brought subway and bus service to a standstill for three days last December, a Brooklyn judge ruled yesterday [4/17/2006].  State Supreme Court Judge Theodore Jones also penalized the union by halting its automatic collection of member dues.

Update:
 NYC Mass Transit Local Makes Unorthodox Plea to Avoid Fines.  When Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union of America (TWU) went on a three-day strike during last year's Christmas shopping season, it did more than disrupt the lives of millions of New York City bus and subway commuters; it also broke the law.  And in doing so, it opened itself up to roughly $3 million in fines.  On Friday, April 7, lawyers for the local argued before Justice Theodore Jones of State Supreme Court in Brooklyn that the fines, if levied, would bankrupt the union.  Therefore, stated the defense, the fines should be waived.


Union influence:  Bill Clinton's memoir will hit bookstores later this month, but one story you're not likely to read in its pages involves Clinton's friendship with Arthur A. Coia.  The debonair former president of the Laborers International Union of North America was one of the Democratic Party's biggest contributors when Clinton was in office.  In the first four years of the Clinton administration alone, LIUNA gave $4.8 million to Democrat candidates and the Democratic Party.  Although Clinton had contact with Coia no fewer than 120 times, their association is an awkward memory for the former president given the latter's ties to organized crime and that of the union he once headed.

Union politics:  President Bush's new campaign ads, which feature fleeting images of firemen removing the remains of victims from the attack on the World Trade Center, have ignited a firestorm of criticism from the union representing New York firefighters.  The union's complaints should come as no surprise since the IAFF was an early supporter of Sen. John Kerry; in fact, they were the only union to endorse Kerry before the New Hampshire primary.  Less well known, however, is the IAFF's own exploitation of those fallen heroes of September 11 to advance the cause of forced unionism for all public safety workers.

Watching over the unions:  Howard Dean wasn't the only loser in the Iowa caucuses.  Two of the nation's biggest, most politically powerful unions, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees Union), endorsed Dean.  AFSCME and SEIU are estimated to have spent $2.6 million in Iowa trying to win the state for Dean, who ended up with only 18 percent of the vote.

Unions Turn to Public Sector as Membership Declines:  A new count of union members in 2002 reveals two significant developments:  union membership has declined dramatically, a shift driven by losses in private sector unions, and labor leaders are increasingly reliant on the growth of public sector unions to maintain their clout.

Union Wants to Be Paid for Work It Didn't Do.  Volunteers from the Blackhawk High School recycling club removed illegally dumped tires from Buttermilk Falls State Park in Pennsylvania.  Now union employees of the Beaver County Public Works Department want to be paid for the cleanup.

The Wage Gap Myth:  When women behave in the workplace as men do, the wage gap between them is small.  June O'Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, found that among people ages 27 to 33 who have never had a child, women's earnings approach 98 percent of men's.  Women who hold positions and have skills and experience similar to those of men face wage disparities of less than 10 percent, and many are within a couple of points.  Claims of unequal pay almost always involve comparing apples and oranges.

The wage gap, give me a break.  Feminists keep demanding new laws to protect women from the so-called wage gap.  Many studies have found that women make about 75 cents for every dollar a man earns.  Activists say the pay difference is all about sexism. … But how could this be possible? … If a woman does equal work for 25 percent less money, businesses would get rich just by hiring women.  Why would any employer ever hire a man?

A wage gap?  The Census Bureau did find that women earned 76 cents for every dollar paid to a male (now up to 80 cents on the dollar), but that was a raw number, not adjusted for comparable jobs and responsibility.  A new book, Why Men Earn More by Warren Farrell, goes further, examining a broad array of wage statistics.  His conclusion:  When reasonable adjustments are made, women earn just as much as men, and sometimes more.

The feminist complaint festival:  There's one problem with Equal Pay Day — the premise is bogus.  Department of Labor data confirms that the median wage of a full-time working woman is three-quarters of that of a full-time working man, but like too many statistics, this fact ignores more than it reveals.  This data doesn't account for relevant factors such as occupation, experience and educational attainment.  Feminists may not like it, but the evidence shows that women's choices — not discrimination — cause wage gap.

Is it safe?  President Bush tried to get rid of lazy, burned out, incompetent, uncaring or corrupt federal employees when he set about to establish a Homeland Security Department, but he met solid resistance from leftist union-loving Democrats who claim that if Bush can hire, fire or promote federal employees on merit alone, we'll be "headed back to the bad old days."  Most of us are realistic enough to realize that these are the bad old days.

Big Labor's Massive Political Machine:  Ever wonder how much union dues cash Big Labor dumps into political campaigns?

Single Mother Files Suit After Union Had Her Fired on Mother's Day:  Union officials illegally ordered United Airlines clerk to join union or else.

A Slackening Nation of Work-Avoidance Wimps:  The AFL-CIO's support for federal ergonomics regulations is less about worker protection than union self-preservation.

Given labor's traditional ties with the Democratic Party, it is not surprising that labor PAC donations are largely directed to Democrats.  In 1994, for example, 96% of labor PAC contributions went to Democrats. *

Pilot Errors:  All above-market wage rates forcibly exacted by labor unions cause unemployment precisely as $20 for a pound of cheese would cause its unemployment at the table.  How is this unemployment catastrophe covered up?  Labor unions, using their political power, get the government to pick up the tab:  public housing, urban renewal, the Gateway Arch, moon shots, and thousands of other pyramids — "make work" projects to employ resources which have been coercively excluded from the market.

Big Labor and Big Government:  Big labor is trying to make itself relevant again by attempting to rebuild its declining membership base, and, more importantly, by striving to increase the role of government in the American economy.  Under the leadership of AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney, the union movement has revived its militant organizing activities of the 1930s, updated with a 1990s Madison Avenue message campaign.

I Was a Victim of Union Violence.  They shot me as I opened the door of my pickup truck.  They hit me five times.  ... I didn't have to see them to know they were militants from the local of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union.

Elections, Extortion, and Unions:  The American union movement is not the American labor movement.  In the private sector only 10 percent of the work force is unionized, and that percentage is getting smaller and smaller.  By 2000 private-sector unionization will be down to no more than 7 percent — just where it was in 1900.

California Union and Legislators Receive Fleece Award.  The Pacific Research Institute announced in August [2004] that it has given its California Golden Fleece Award to the California legislature for its treatment of the California Union of Safety Employees (CAUSE).  The union contributed more than $350,000 to state legislators and to then-governor Gray Davis, who responded by personally negotiating with the president of CAUSE a pension increase 25 percent higher than was given to other state workers.  CAUSE lawyer Sam McCall helped write the enabling legislation, SB 183.  McCall openly admitted the deal was a quid pro quo. CAUSE gave Davis $100,000 three days before the bill was amended, $5,000 the day it passed, and $250,000 two weeks after he signed it.

The Feminine Mistake:  The argument in favor of "equal pay for equal work" rests on a concept of labor that was overturned in the 1870's.  It assumes that there is such a thing as concrete human labor, a physical entity that in some way can be measured.  Value is in some way linked to labor, and pay should reflect value.  This was the economic premise of virtually all economists until the advent of modern economics; Karl Marx was the last major economist to hold the labor theory of value.  Modern economics rests on the concept that value is linked to usefulness; the value of labor depends on the value of labor's output.  The distinction between the two concepts of value is crucial.

Political Spending by Organized Labor:  Labor unions have traditionally played a strong role in American elections, assisting favored candidates through their direct and indirect financial support, as well as through manpower and organizational services.  While direct financing of federal candidates by unions is prohibited under federal law, unions can and do establish political action committees (PACs) to raise voluntary contributions for donation to federal candidates.


"Catholics vote for Democrats because their parents and grandparents were Democrats.  Democrats are seen as being for the poor and workers, and the Republicans favor the rich.  Labor issues and money trump everything else.  The Democrats have been extremely adept in waging class warfare and exciting jealousy of the rich.  Moral issues [such as abortion] are not strong enough to break down old stereotypes.  They think the Democrats will take care of you, and they think that government is the answer."

— Rev. Nicholas DeProspero,
Pastor of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church,
Pottstown, PA.

Unions Lurch to the Left in Massachusetts and Embrace "Gay" Marriage.  Pro-family coalition says unions' stance is "outside the mainstream."

Unions and Gangs:  A gang is a bullying group of individuals that draws its strength from numbers for the purpose of pushing other people around.  It operates at the expense of others.  Any such group deserves to be called a gang.  And when it receives legal acceptance and approval, it deserves the title of dictatorship.

Bad Coworkers Seem Safest From Layoffs.  In the age of layoffs, survivors often fall into one of two categories:  folks at the bottom who don't do a lick of work and superstars at the top who behave atrociously.

Michigan Union Accountability Act:  Unions are not very accountable to those who finance them.  It's ironic that unions, set up to empower workers, provide far less financial information to their members—whose mandatory fees support them—than a publicly held corporation must, by law, provide to its shareholders.

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Material about the Teachers' Unions in particular is now on a separate page.

Material specifically about the Minimum Wage is now on a separate page.

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