Note:  You might want to start at the Organized Labor Index Page, especially if you arrived here by using a search engine.

Subtopics on this page:

    Organized crime
    Shadowy connections
    An atmosphere of sleaze and graft
    Occasional violence and constant strife

Top Ten Union Corruption Stories of the Year.  [Scroll down]  The Mafia once again showed they are well and alive.  In May, FBI agents and NYPD cops busted 19 members and associates of the Lucchese crime family for a wide range of crimes dating back 17 years.  Two arrestees, each a top figure in the syndicate, had controlled a number of New York City-area construction unions prior to the beginning of that period.  There also was the inevitable parade of union officials and office employees stealing from the cookie jar.  Indeed, cases of theft in amounts of at least $250,000 were as much in abundance as in any year in recent memory.

Union Corruption 2012: Big Labor's Federal Rap Sheet.  America's labor unions have amassed quite a federal rap sheet in 2012.  According to the Justice Department, union officials nationwide have been arrested for or convicted of embezzlement, extortion, bribery, racketeering, money laundering, fraud, and witness tampering so far this year.

Jill Biden Botched Her Spanish in Front of a Nazi Inspired Flag.  In case you missed it yesterday, First Lady Jill Biden botched her Spanish during an event celebrating labor union organizer Cesar Chavez. [...] But that wasn't the only problem.  During her remarks, the First Lady stood in front of Chavez' infamous black eagle flag.  Chavez used Nazi propaganda and colors as the inspiration for the symbol.  "The story of the black eagle, the movement's symbol, exemplifies Chavez's skill as a tactician.  He researched emblems, including cigarette boxes and Nazi flags, and concluded that the most potent color combination was red, black and white.  He picked the eagle and directed his brother to draw the bird so simply that anyone could easily replicate the symbol," the Smithsonian states.

FBI seeks Kenney campaign records as part of union probe.  Federal authorities have subpoenaed finance records and receipts from Mayor Kenney's campaign committee as part of their investigation into the local electricians union and its leader, John "Johnny Doc" Dougherty, the mayor said Friday [8/26/2016]. [...] The subpoena came, the mayor said, shortly after a series of coordinated FBI raids earlier this month on the hall of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and several houses and offices tied to Dougherty and his close allies, including City Councilman Bobby Henon, a former political director for the union who remains on its payroll.

Feds Raid Home, Office, Pub of Philly Union Boss Tied to DNC and Clinton.  During the Democratic National Convention, the office of Philadelphia's most powerful construction union stood out, decked in an enormous sign declaring "Hillary for President."  But on Friday morning [8/5/2016], the union headquarters captured public attention for a different reason:  a yellow Penske semi-truck parked on the curb outside, packed with dozens of boxes of evidence lugged out of the office by federal agents.  Authorities raided not only the office of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 but also the home of its powerful leader, John "Johnny Doc" Dougherty, who is also head of the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council.  In addition, law enforcement searched a pub run by Johnny Doc and other union bosses, as well as the offices of a labor-connected Philadelphia city councilman.

FBI searches target electricians union, Johnny Doc, Councilman Bobby Henon.  The FBI raided homes and offices across Philadelphia and South Jersey early Friday [8/5/2016] as part of a sweeping investigation of a powerful electricians union and its leader, John J. Dougherty.  The FBI, acting in concert with the IRS, also searched the City Hall office of Councilman Bobby Henon, a key Dougherty ally and a paid union leader.  Federal authorities executed search warrants at more than half a dozen locations, including Dougherty's house in South Philadelphia, his sister's home next door, the Local 98 hall at 17th and Spring Garden Streets, and the Mount Laurel home of union president Brian Burrows.

Suspended Chicago officer charged with murder hired as union janitor.  A white Chicago police officer charged with murder in the shooting of a black teenager has been hired to work as a janitor for the city's police union as he awaits trial, the union president said Thursday [3/31/2016], prompting protests.

Watchdog claims union's legal fight reveals ObamaCare fraud.  Non-profit group Southern United Neighborhoods got a $1.3 million federal grant in 2013 to serve as a "navigator," enrolling people in Affordable Care Act coverage.  The group subcontracted with United Labor Unions Local 100, which, according to Cause of Action, paid members less than it billed the government and, in some cases, paid them to recruit union members.  The watchdog group discovered the alleged discrepancy in court papers filed by union workers suing the labor organization for unpaid overtime.

Watchdog claims union's legal fight reveals ObamaCare fraud.  Non-profit group Southern United Neighborhoods got a $1.3 million federal grant in 2013 to serve as a "navigator," enrolling people in Affordable Care Act coverage.  The group subcontracted with United Labor Unions Local 100, which, according to Cause of Action, paid members less than it billed the government and, in some cases, paid them to recruit union members.  The watchdog group discovered the alleged discrepancy in court papers filed by union workers suing the labor organization for unpaid overtime.  "Southern United Neighborhoods and ULU Local 100, both rebranded ACORN entities, present a risk of violating the law — this time by potentially misusing over $1.3 million of taxpayer dollars for union activities instead of enrolling individuals in the Affordable Care Act," Daniel Epstein, executive director for Cause of Action said to FoxNews.com.

NLRB nominee accused in union corruption case.  Richard Griffin, President Obama's nominee to be the National Labor Relations Board's general counsel, is accused of making false statements under oath in a union corruption complaint in California district court.  The charges stem from when Griffin was the top lawyer for the International Union of Operating Engineers.  The complaint alleges that he gave a false explanation in a deposition for why union officials sought the ouster of a colleague who was blowing the whistle on internal corruption.

Obama's Acorn Cronies To Profit From ObamaCare.  As Mathew Vadum reports on the American Spectator blog, United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 100 in New Orleans, which is run by Acorn founder Wade Rathke, announced on its Facebook page that it's gearing up "to do mass enrollment and help navigate people into the marketplaces in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas under the Affordable Care Act!"  "Local 100's role as a Navigator, suggest(s) the program is less about health care and more about building a new progressive infrastructure," says longtime Acorn-watcher Mike Flynn of Breitbart.com.

Obama's ACORN Pals Cashing In on Obamacare Enrollment.  President Obama's old friends in the ACORN crime syndicate have decided to get a piece of the big-money Obamacare action.  United Labor Unions (ULU) Local 100 in New Orleans, which is run by ACORN founder Wade Rathke, announced on its Facebook page that it's gearing up "to do mass enrollment and help navigate people into the marketplaces in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas under the Affordable Care Act!"  Be afraid.  Wherever Rathke goes, lawlessness follows.

Video: SEIU Leader Openly Discusses Illegal Immigrant Members.  Eliseo Medina, the International Secretary-Treasurer of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), freely and unashamedly admitted that his union has members who are illegal immigrant workers.  Medina made the comments in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News at a rally for immigration reform attended by hundreds of people in Bakersfield, California.

Agenda: How Marxists Are Grinding America Down.  A good history lesson is crucial in understanding that the organized war to destroy America really does go back nearly 150 years — all the way back to the 1880s, which is roughly the time Marxists began infiltrating unions in an attempt to take them over here in the U.S.

Chavez celebrated at SEIU offices in New York.  Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local 1199 in New York City allowed a celebration of the life of the late socialist Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez to be held in their offices Friday.  The event, organized by the pro-Chavez Bolivarian Circle of New York, was held last Friday [3/8/2013] at 6:30 PM and promoted on Facebook.

SEIU Parking Lot Still a Drug Dealers Zone.  [Scroll down]  Eliminating the Post Office problem will leave the first block of Turk and the SEIU Local 87-owned parking lot at Turk and Hyde as the two remaining centers of illegal drug activity in the Tenderloin.

Philly AFSCME President Fired for Getting Caught.  One doesn't typically rise to the top of the heap in the union game through academic achievement, sterling character, or commitment to ethical conduct.  Thus, we shouldn't be terribly surprised at how many of those handed the key to a strongbox containing billions in someone else's dues money come down with a case of sticky fingers.  The surprise, in fact, comes when they're held accountable for their schemes.  Case in point:  Ernest Garrett, until fairly recently, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) District Council 33 in Philadelphia.  AFSCME 33 is the biggest city employee union in Philly, representing mostly blue-collar workers in the sanitation, prisons, and streets departments.  These members already had every right to be peeved by Garrett's $270,000-plus salary during a time when Americans are watching more and more of their budgets eaten up by the cost of groceries, gas, healthcare and household necessities.  AFSCME's national office in Washington, D.C., ordered Garrett's removal following a hearing about allegations from fellow union officers over his penchant for altering staff salaries, hiring more than a dozen friends as employees, contracting with his sister-in-law for catering services and purchasing union-branded hoodies and other apparel from a union ally's nephew totaling half a million dollars.

Are You Happy to Bail Out the Big Unions?  Many Americans, conservative or not, should be angry that unions now hold so much influence over elected officials and Joe Biden that the Teamsters Union, long fraught with ties to the U.S. Mafia and organized crime, is receiving a $36-billion bailout, under the $1.9-trillion American Rescue Plan, after years of mismanaging and stealing from their members' pension fund and the new revelation that the fund was essentially insolvent. [...] Please recall that in 2020, labor unions donated $27.5 million to Joe Biden's presidential campaign.  Look at the timing of this, taking place on December 8, 2022, just a week after forcing a deal on the railroad unions that soured many union workers against Biden.  Sean O'Brien, Teamsters president; Liz Schuler, AFL/CIO president; and Marty Walsh, U.S. secretary of labor, stood by his side during the announcement.  It's clear as day that this was Joe Biden rewarding his political allies, at the expense of ninety percent of Americans who are not members of any union.  It also forces conservatives and independents to pay for the sort of collectivism that goes against their conscience and beliefs, as well as the very principles this country was founded upon.  A smattering of other fairly large unions are going to share in the redistribution of some $58 billion, but many small unions will be left out in the cold.  And one can safely bet that the beneficiaries of this political payoff and the union bosses are smiling from ear to ear, especially since the Teamsters and these other unions were looking at a sixty-percent cut in the final payouts for members.

Awaiting the return of the Time of Trump.  Consider that Trump was a successful builder on the island of Manhattan in New York.  Is succeeding as a builder of skyscrapers in New York City an easily accomplished feat?  Are hundreds of successful builders among the millions that call New York home?  Of course not.  Roadblocks exist to keep the pretenders from participating in building big in New York.  It is said that New York is a town run by the Port Authority, the entity that controls transportation into, around, and out of New York.  I'm a Californian, and even I know that.  Unions control what happens in New York, who gets to play in New York, and they decide if you will have a tough time being successful.  Corruption, graft, and political gifts go a long way in New York.  The ethic of Boss Tweed has never left the city.  If we understand that Trump has succeeded in the swampy underbelly of New York politics, union control, and city governance, it's because he's learned to get things done in spite of the roadblocks erected in the path of anyone wishing to play in that arena.

SEIU Leader Suspended For Six Months Following $44,000 Time Sheet Fraud.  Tony Owens, the former Vice President of Bargaining for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1000 in Los Angeles, was suspended for six months without pay from his California Public Employee's Retirement System (CalPERS) on Monday following an investigation that found that he had committed $44,000 worth of time sheet fraud last year.  In 2018, Owens was elected by SEIU members to become the next Vice President of bargaining, holding that position in addition to his CalPERS IT position.  Owens, in addition to several other leaders elected in subsequent years, were part of the force that removed many allies of SEIU President Yvonne Walker in the lead-up to her eventual replacement in May of 2021.

Dozen FBI officers raid NYPD union office and home of its firebrand president Ed Mullins 'in connection with corruption investigation'.  The FBI has raided the office of one of New York City's main police unions along with the home of its firebrand chief Ed Mullins, as part of an investigation that may be tied to mismanagement of funds.  Close to a dozen federal agents carried boxes of paperwork out of the Sergeants Benevolent Association's (SBA) headquarters in downtown Manhattan Tuesday morning [10/5/2021], according to video from the scene.  They descended on Mullins's Long Island home later in the day, according to the New York Daily News.

FBI raids NYPD sergeants union headquarters in 'ongoing investigation': de Blasio.  FBI agents raided the headquarters of the NYPD Sergeants Benevolent Association Tuesday morning [10/5/2021], Mayor Bill de Blasio said.  It was unclear why the FBI searched the SBA office, located on Worth Street in Lower Manhattan.  De Blasio said the raid was part of an "ongoing investigation," but declined to offer further details.  The SBA represents 13,000 active and retired sergeants of the NYPD.

Union bosses lived high on the hog as COVID devastated membership - report.  Joe Biden has broken every promise he's made on the campaign trail... except one.  That's his vow to be the most "pro-union" president. [...] It sounds like the Soviet nomenklatura.  Workers get stiffed; party bosses party.  Political cash flows for the consultants, NGOs, and their candidates; workers get the shaft.  So much for "we're all in this together."  It's as strong an argument as any for decertifying any union that engaged in [this].  But Joe's got a plan for that, too — the passage of the PRO Act.  That's the vile measure that forces unwilling workers to pay for this hog wallow for union leadership.  It ends right-to-work laws in 27 states, includes a job-killing minimum wage hike, and floods unions themselves with money that, if it's not used for padding union boss salaries, is used for lobbying and will make its way into Democrat campaign coffers.

Cuomo Called Mob-Tied Union Boss a "Good Friend to Me and My Entire Family".  Governor Cuomo wants to be in the White House, but he's more likely to end up in the big house.  There's nothing extraordinary in the allegation that a construction union Boss has mob ties, it would be more shocking if he didn't.  But this continues raising the tally of Cuomo associates in legal trouble to a new high.

Prominent Union Leader Has 'Deep Ties' to Mafia, Serbian Gangs, Feds Allege.  A union leader who Gov. Andrew Cuomo once called "a good friend to me and my entire family" has extensive ties to organized crime and should not be granted lighter bail conditions, federal prosecutors said Monday [12/28/2020].  Cuomo's office called the new allegations against James Cahill "ugly" and "disturbing" and said anyone who breaks the law should be held responsible.  Cahill's lawyer firmly denied the allegations.  Cahill, president of the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council, which represents more than 200,000 unionized construction workers, was among 11 labor officials indicted in October on charges including racketeering and fraud.

Labor Watchdog Calls on Biden to Repudiate 'Corrupt' Union Ally.  A labor watchdog group is urging presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden to reject the support he's received from corrupt union leaders after a top party ally pleaded guilty to embezzlement in June.  National Right to Work Committee president Mark Mix sent a letter to Biden on Thursday, calling on the Democrat to "put the rights of workers above the demands of union bosses" and "disavow the support" from top brass at the United Auto Workers union.  Just weeks earlier, former UAW president Gary Jones pleaded guilty to embezzlement, racketeering, and tax evasion.  Jones, a prominent Democratic ally, admitted to spending more than $1 million in union funds on miscellaneous luxuries such as premium cigars and liquor, fine dining, vacation rentals, golf outings, and clothing.  The union endorsed Biden in April, prior to Jones's guilty plea.

Union Probe Finds Close Biden Ally Misappropriated Millions.  One of Joe Biden's closest labor allies inappropriately siphoned nearly $1 million from a union pension fund as the labor group suffered from a "systemic misrepresentation in financial reporting," according to an internal probe obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.  Harold Schaitberger, the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), which represents more than 300,000 firefighters, is facing accusations of corruption and gross financial malpractice from his closest deputies.  Edward Kelly, the general secretary-treasurer and the number two of the union, detailed the findings of his team's audit in a March 20 internal memorandum.  According to the 105-page document, the audit has thus far found that Schaitberger and Thomas Miller — Kelly's predecessor as the general secretary-treasurer — illegally earned millions of dollars from the union pension fund over the last two decades.

SEIU: We found 39 million N95 masks — and they'll cost you five bucks a pop.  I laughed at this tweet by Tom Elliott:  "There's a non zero percent chance the mafia is involved here."  It feels right.  We're a third-world country now in many respects.  Our nurses wear trash bags because our leaders were too shortsighted and slovenly to stockpile PPE before a pandemic broke out.  We're governed by a nationalist strongman whose battle plan against the virus seems to be to give everyone some hydroxychloroquine and tell them to get back to work.  Of course a society at that late stage of decline might need to turn to the mafia as a key distributor of supplies.

SEIU Union in California Suddenly Finds Mysterious Stash of 39 Million Face Masks.  [President] Trump signed a second executive order to providing authority to address hoarding and price gouging that threatens the supply of medical supplies.  Attorney General Bill Barr put hoarders on notice and said they will get a knock on the door if they are sitting on a large amount of supplies.  "We have started to see some evidence of potential hoarding and price gouging," said Barr.  "So, earlier today the president signed a second executive order providing the authority to address... hoarding that threatens the supply of those necessary health and medical resources."  "If you have a big supply of toilet paper in your house, this is not something you have to worry about.  But if you are sitting on a warehouse with masks, surgical masks, you will be hearing a knock on your door," Barr said.

Former UAW Union Boss Indicted on $1 Million Embezzlement Scheme.  In August of last year federal authorities raided the homes of United Auto Workers (UAW) President Gary Jones who was under investigation in a nationwide corruption sweep.  Today an indictment was unsealed charging Jones with embezzling more than $1 million in union funds.  His former deputy was arrested in September.

Federal probe reveals United Auto Workers bosses spent '$60,000 of union dues on cigars — part of $1M in misused funds.  Former United Auto Workers President Gary Jones reportedly dropped $13,000 in union funds at an Arizona cigar shop in a single day, according to a federal complaint.  The complaint, filed in September against another union leader, mentions that an official purchased a dozen $268 boxes of Ashton Double Magnum cigars and a dozen boxes of Ashton Monarchs, costing about $275 each.  In return, the official, reported to be Jones, was sent a thank you note from the Arizona cigar shop.

UFT director from Queens nabbed after sexting with detective he thought was 14-year-old boy: officials.  A United Federation of Teachers director has been charged with attempting to coerce a minor into sex as part of a sting operation, according to a complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court Friday [9/6/2019].  According to a statement by Detective Damon Gergar, who was involved in the sting, 41-year-old Jason Seto contacted him via a dating app that Gergar says people "primarily use to meet up to have sexual contact."

FBI, IRS Raid UAW President Gary Jones's Home.  A raid by the FBI and IRS was conducted Wednesday at the Canton Township, Michigan, home of United Automobile Workers (UAW) president Gary Jones, federal authorities confirm.  According to the Detroit News, the raids are part of an ongoing corruption investigation into auto industry efforts to influence union negotiations.

FBI raids two UAW presidents' homes as part of nationwide sweep in corruption probe.  FBI and Internal Revenue Service agents raided the home of UAW President Gary Jones in metro Detroit early Wednesday [8/28/2019] as part of a nationwide sweep of sites tied to the autoworker union.  Agents also raided the California home of Dennis Williams, who preceded Jones as UAW chief; the union's northern Michigan conference center; a UAW regional office in Missouri, where Jones was based previously; and the home of Williams aide Amy Loasching in Wisconsin.  The multiagency raids were a major step as federal officials ramped up their corruption investigation of the autoworkers union — which is in the midst of contract negotiations with Detroit automakers.

FBI and IRS agents raid Detroit home of UAW president.  FBI and IRS agents, in a growing investigation of corruption in the US auto industry, carried out raids in at least four states, including at the homes of United Auto Workers President Gary Jones in Michigan and California home of former President Dennis Williams in California.  Investigators are probing into bribes, kickbacks and attempts by auto executives to influence labor negotiations with the UAW, a person with knowledge about the raids told DailyMail.com. [...] The union has been building a retirement home for Williams on the 1000-acre retreat facility, which was paid for with interest from a $721 million 'strike fund' mostly made up of workers dues, according to the News.

LIRR worker who made $256K in overtime logged a dangerous number of hours.  A Long Island Rail Road track worker more than quadrupled his $55,000 salary last year by logging a seemingly impossible — and possibly dangerous — number of overtime hours.  Marco Pazmino raked in a staggering $256,177 in overtime pay for 2018, despite earning a base of just $54,985 — bringing his haul for the year to $311,162, according to new data from the Empire Center watchdog group.  That's more than twice the $135,969 he earned in 2017 — and some 4½ times the $68,677 he made in 2016 doing the same gig at just a few bucks less an hour.

Corrupt UAW Official Was DNC Superdelegate.  A disgraced union official may have to submit his ballot to the 2020 Democratic National Convention from prison.  Former United Auto Workers vice president Norwood Jewell became the highest ranking labor official to plead guilty to violating federal labor law.  Jewell admitted to receiving luxury goods and lavish golf trips from the Chrysler executives he was supposed to be negotiating against.  He is now staring at a possible five-year prison sentence, though the Detroit News has reported that prosecutors are seeking only 15 months of jail time.  Even with the reduced sentence, Jewell may still be in federal prison when the Democrats' presidential nominating convention begins in Milwaukee.

Unions Win Big in City Construction Showdown — Workers Lose.  Once again the people of Santa Barbara lose, workers lose and the taxpayer get to pay for the political donations of unions.  "At issue was an arcane spending authorization of $95,000 connected to an obscure but ferociously controversial labor agreement that gives building trade unions vastly more say in who gets hired and who does not for City Hall construction contracts of $5 million and more.  In the upper echelons of City Hall, no one is really sure how these project labor agreements — or PLAs, as they're called — will actually work.  But there's no doubt in anyone's mind as to who won what's been one of the most intensely waged behind-the-scenes battles anyone in City Hall can remember:  the trade unions.  If the council was honest, it would not allow any of the unions that have contracts with the City to donate to council races.

Embezzlement, Theft Charges Against Labor Kingpin May Cripple Dems' 2020 Machine.  Pennsylvania Democrats are worried about the short-term future of their political machine after authorities charged a Philadelphia labor leader with numerous counts of embezzlement, bribery and theft, Politico reports.  John Dougherty, the business manager of Philadelphia's branch of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), and six other labor officials were indicted on 116 charges related to lavish misuse of union funds and buying influence with corrupt politicians, Philadelphia's The Inquirer and CBS Philly report.

Feds charge Johnny Doc, Councilman Bobby Henon in IBEW Local 98 investigation.  Labor leader and political kingmaker John J. Dougherty and Philadelphia City Councilman Bobby Henon were charged Wednesday [1/30/2019] with embezzlement, bribery, and theft, along with six other people affiliated with Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.  The sprawling 116-count federal indictment alleges that Dougherty, 58, and his associates stole more than $600,000 in union funds and spent it wildly on no-show jobs; expensive meals at restaurants including the Palm Philadelphia; an array of construction projects; and purchases that included big-screen TVs, dog food, and baby supplies.

Cops union USPOA founder sentenced to more than 3 years in Prison in New Jersey.  The founder of the United Security and Police Officers of America (USPOA) on Thursday [8/16/2018] received a sentence of 37 months in prison for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars in union funds for his personal use, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman announced.  Assane Faye, 61, of Toms River, New Jersey, was previously convicted of all counts of an indictment charging him with two counts of embezzling union funds and seven counts of mail fraud arising from unemployment insurance fraud.  Faye was convicted following a three-week trial before U.S. District Judge Peter G. Sheridan, who imposed the sentence in Trenton federal court.

Where can you get paid $466K a year to wash trucks?  On the waterfront, there's a longshoreman on the books who washes trucks.  He gets paid $465,981 a year.  To wash trucks.  Fired when his bosses discovered he wasn't actually showing up when he claimed to be working, he nevertheless regained his job — after an arbitrator concluded it was not unusual in the industry for employees to be paid "without being expected to work all the hours for which they are being paid."

Top Ten Union Corruption Stories of the Year.  [Scroll down]  Scams were abundant.  As with the previous year, the largest of them consisted of third-party fraud committed against union health plans.  In New Jersey, a former president of a United Auto Workers local and an insurance industry executive were charged in federal court in January with conspiring to recruit "straw" participants for Blue Cross/Blue Shield benefits.  The estimated total loss to insurance companies was $6.6 million.  In suburban Chicago, three family members, including a chiropractor, received sentences for their roles in a six-year scam that triggered nearly $11 million in insurer losses.

The Democrats' War on First Responder Services.  Government derives much of its moral authority to tax from its obligation to provide public safety, health and education.  Yet as public-sector pension plans create ever-greater demands upon local and state financial resources, The Democrats' machine funnels so much tax revenue into the corrupt bargain the party made with unions that states and municipalities must rob local public services of funds in order to give their constituents outrageous salary increases, bonuses, benefits and what is called "other pay."  There are two types of demands for this money: salary increases and pensions.  Even while revenues increase, the demand for public pensions and salaries has grown so fast that it has outrun the increases in tax revenue.  And rather than stabilize pensions or go to 401K type plans, municipalities and states have chosen to violate the Constitution and cut back on essential government public services.

UAW Exec's Wife, Auto Exec Charged for $1.2 Million Bribery Scheme.  The Department of Justice announced on Wednesday that federal prosecutors filed charges against Monica Morgan, the wife of the late United Auto Workers Vice President General Holiefield, and former Fiat Chrysler Vice President Alphons Iacobelli for violating the Labor Management Relations Act.  Iacobelli, who was in charge of negotiating with the UAW, allegedly directed $1.2 million to union leaders in the form of jewelry, travel, furniture, and other goods, according to the charges published by the Labor Department on Friday.  Iacobelli went so far as to pay off the $262,219 mortgage balance on the home owned by Morgan and Holiefield, who died in 2015.  The payments came as the union negotiated collective bargaining agreements with the company in 2011 and 2015.

Health-Care Workers Aim to Decertify a Union Suspected of Fraud.  As its membership plummets, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is seeking to unionize home health-care workers, who have never previously organized and do not fit the traditional description of the public employees SEIU typically represents.  The union is making its attempt in states across the country, but in Minnesota, where it has been rife with fraud, the personal-care attendants are pushing back, pursuing one of the largest union-decertification efforts in the history of the United States.

Election Results Gave This Union Millions.  Now State Lawmakers Are Looking Into Voter Fraud.  State lawmakers want Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton's administration to explain its apparent faith in a politically connected union despite evidence of fraud since the union won an election to represent thousands of residents who care for disabled relatives in their homes.  State Rep. Marion O'Neill, chairman of the Subcommittee on Employee Relations, plans to schedule a hearing to ask the head of Minnesota's labor relations agency to detail how an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union recruited home caregivers and the state administered the election.  "I want to see how many [ballots] they actually did send out, and I want to see the original receipts for the mailing," O'Neill told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

Head of New York City corrections officers union charged with fraud.  The union leader for New York City's prison guards and a hedge fund financier were charged on Wednesday [6/8/2016] with orchestrating a bribery scheme involving union retirement and operating funds in a case stemming from a sprawling federal corruption probe.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Norman Seabrook, the politically influential president of the Correction Officers' Benevolent Association, and Murray Huberfeld early on Wednesday [6/8/2016].  According to a criminal complaint, Seabrook invested $20 million of union money in 2014 in New York-based Platinum Partners in exchange for kickbacks from Huberfeld, who worked at the firm.  The men were charged with honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

Top N.J. union official, 2 others admit 'Christmas tribute' extortion from dock workers.  A former official of the International Longshoremen's Association, a former Newark police officer and a third man admitted today to taking Christmas tributes from dock workers on the state's waterfront in return for better jobs and wages, state authorities said.  The three pleaded guilty to demanding the money, from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars, from thousands of union members who worked the shipping terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey, the state Attorney General's Office said.

Top N.J. union official, 2 others admit 'Christmas tribute' extortion from dock workers.  A former official of the International Longshoremen's Association, a former Newark police officer and a third man admitted today to taking Christmas tributes from dock workers on the state's waterfront in return for better jobs and wages, state authorities said. The three pleaded guilty to demanding the money, from a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars, from thousands of union members who worked the shipping terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey, the state Attorney General's Office said.

Failed Md. Democratic gov nominee Brown borrowed $500G from union, missed payment deadline.  Anthony Brown, the Maryland Democratic gubernatorial nominee who lost in an upset in November, took out a $500,000 loan from a labor union late in his campaign and has so far failed to repay the money as agreed, according to a financial report filed earlier this week.  The loan and Brown's failure to meet the Nov. 7 deadline were reported first by The Baltimore Sun.

PEF debit card case kept private.  Officials at one of the state's largest public labor unions shielded a downstate council leader from potential prosecution after she allegedly used a union debit card to make at least $20,000 in questionable purchases — including liquor, restaurant bills and home improvement items.  Several people familiar with the matter, and internal documents filed with the Albany-based Public Employees Federation, indicate PEF's leaders asked to handle the matter as an internal "ethics violation" when contacted several months ago by the office of Rockland County District Attorney Thomas P. Zugibe.  The union represents more than 53,000 state government workers.

SEIU Hit With Second-Biggest Campaign Finance Fine in Michigan History.  The Service Employees International Union will have to pay the second-highest fine in Michigan history for its failed 2012 campaign to preserve forced union dues among home care workers.  Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson said that the politically powerful union agreed to pay the state nearly $200,000 for failing to properly disclose donors and file timely campaign reports.

Former SEIU local leader gets 33 months in prison.  The former president of California's biggest union local was sentenced Monday to 33 months in federal prison for stealing from his low-income members to finance an expensive lifestyle that included being married to two women at the same time.  Declaring that Tyrone Freeman betrayed the "sacred trust" of the workers he represented, U.S. District Judge Audrey Collins also ordered him pay to about $150,000 in restitution and barred him from holding office in any union for 13 years after he is released from prison.

Farm workers union skims three percent in exchange for ... NOTHING.
Hundreds of CA Farm Workers Walk Off Job to Protest Union Grab.  In Fresno County, California, some hundreds of workers have walked away from their jobs at Gerawan Farming in protest at the United Farm Workers, a union that the workers have been forced to join by the state of California.  The union has attempted to seize some three percent of each worker's paycheck based on a union vote two decades ago.  The union has been completely inactive at Gerawan Farming since it was established.  Workers at Gerawan make $10 per hour and receive health benefits.

California teachers sue NEA over forced $1,000 union dues.  Ten California schoolteachers on Tuesday sued the National Education Association and California Teachers Association to escape mandatory union fees in a case that piggybacks on a 2012 Supreme Court ruling against forced union dues.  The teachers, represented by the Washington-based Center for Individual Rights, claim that California's so-called "agency shop" law violates their free speech and free assembly rights and forces them to cough up $1,000 to pay for the union's mostly Democratic political activities.

Michigan Teamster Boss Busted Over Double Dipping.  According to financial reports on file with the U.S. Department of Labor, a local Michigan Teamster boss took in nearly $90,000 in 2011.  Obviously, though, the income Al Sprague made from his members' dues wasn't enough for him because, the Jackson (MI) Teamster boss decided to file for unemployment compensation.  What's worse is that the State of Michigan apparently granted his request for unemployment compensation.

Ex-SEIU local exec convicted of stealing from low-income members.  A onetime rising star in national labor circles who headed California's biggest union local was convicted Monday on federal charges that he stole tens of thousands of dollars from his low-income members.  Tyrone Freeman, who represented about 190,000 homecare workers as a leader of the Service Employees International Union, was found guilty on 14 counts after a 10-day trial in Los Angeles.

Former SEIU union local president convicted of embezzlement.  The former president of California's largest union local was found guilty by a federal jury in Los Angeles on Monday [1/28/2013] of stealing from the low-wage workers he represented.  Tyrone Freeman, who led Local 6434 of the Service Employees International Union, was convicted on 14 criminal counts, including embezzlement of union funds, violating tax laws and mail fraud.

Bakery Union Bosses (& Their Kids) Do Well.  As is the case in other unions, nepotism is something that bakers' union bosses apparently embrace.

Labor union bosses' salaries put 'big' in Big Labor.  There can be riches in standing up for the working class:  The Boilermakers union president earned $506,000, plus hundreds of thousands of dollars more for travel expenses, while the Laborers union president made $441,000.  The Transportation Communications Union leader made $300,000, bumped up to $750,000 with business expenses.  Patrick W. Flynn makes $435,000 a year in his capacity as treasurer of a 13,600-member Teamsters union local, and the $30,000 in business expenses he collects on top of costs associated with carrying out his duties around Mokena, Ill., approach that of a typical worker's entire salary.

Union Corruption Report: October 2012.  On October 16, 2012, in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, John McNamee, President of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 829 (located in New York, N.Y.), pled guilty to one count of embezzlement in the amount of $150,000, in violation of 29 U.S.C. 501(c).  The charge follows an investigation by OLMS New York District Office.

Union Corruption Report: September 2012.  On September 19, 2012, in the District Court for Hunt County, Texas, 196th Judicial District, Rosalin Dukes, former Secretary-Treasurer of American Postal Workers Union (APWU) Local 3607 (located in Greenville, Tex.), pled guilty to one count of credit/debit card abuse and was then sentenced to five years of deferred adjudication probation, 100 hours of community service, and was ordered to pay $18,598.34 in restitution, $285 in court costs, and a $50 Crime Stoppers fee.

Police union cards used to get cop relatives out of minor jams.  New York police union cards, which officers give their friends and family as 'get out of jail free' cards for minor offenses, are selling on eBay for as much as $100 a pop and city authorities are fuming, the New York Post reports.  The union cards are meant to be used to prove that a police officer can vouch for another person, though holders often use them to get out of minor incidents like parking and speeding violations.

Power Hungry: Teachers' Union Wants To Administer Standardized Teachers' Test.  As Republicans are painfully reminded, progressives thrive on deception.  Throw public sector unions into the mix and the worst aspects of Chicago-style cronyism and pay-to-play politics inevitably surface.  Add national teachers' unions, and the potential for a previously unimaginable pay-to-play scam — a scam conservatives might blindly and reflexively support — becomes all too real.

Washington, D.C., Union President Convicted, Faces 183 Years in Prison.  The founder and president of a private security officers' union in Washington D.C. was convicted last week of 18 different federal offenses.  He faces a maximum of 183 years in prison and $2.1 million in fines.  A jury ruled on September 5 that Caleb Gray-Burriss, founder and president of the National Association of Special Police and Security Officers (NASPSO), was guilty of six counts of mail fraud, seven counts of theft from a labor organization, one count of criminal contempt, one count of obstruction of justice, and three union record-keeping violations.

Hey, Fat Cat Unions: Pay Your "Fair Share".  The California Federation of Teachers, an AFL-CIO affiliate that rakes in an estimated $22 million in coerced dues, enjoys nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(5) status.  So does CFT's larger counterpart, the California Teachers Association, which collects a whopping $300 million in annual dues.  While they burn through mountains of dues lobbying for everyone else to pay higher taxes, these Democratic partisan heavies pay nothing in either federal or state income taxes.

The perks of being a union executive.  Wage amounts are usually public record, but are perilously difficult to pin down.  What a union executive makes can be inflated in the record by sick leave accrual or severance payouts, or can be understated because of tax deferments or allowances in lieu of pay.  Still, with that caveat in place, an examination of 2010-11 tax records reveals wages of the highest paid employees of the National Education Association and its state affiliates — defined here as the money reported in box 1 of a W-2 form — ranged from almost $540,000 down to less than $92,000.

SEIU Worker Asks Members To Falsify Signatures To Sink Anti-Union Measure.  The Service International Employees Union — the same union that will be shutting down traffic around Los Angeles International Airport on Thanksgiving Eve — has admitted that a staffer requested that union members stack a legal petition with fake names to sink it.

Paramus-based union leaders arrested on embezzlement charges.  Richard "Buzzy" Dressel — a prominent and influential North Jersey labor leader who served on the boards of the Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation and Bergen Community College — was arrested Thursday [11/15/2012] on charges of conspiring to steer more than $350,000 in union funds to his wife.  Dressel, 63, of Montvale, the business manager and principal officer of Local 164 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, was arrested along with John M. DeBouter, 55, of Oakland, the local's president, after a two-year investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor.

This is an original compilation, Copyright © 2024 by Andrew K. Dart

Labor group says California $20 min wage 'just the beginning'.  A fair wage advocacy group is demanding that California's new $20 minimum wage law for fast food workers be extended to all sectors to help working-class people who are struggling with the state's high cost of living.  FOX Business spoke with Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage to discuss what she described as the skyrocketing levels of home insecurity and food insecurity post-pandemic.  Fast food workers winning a $20 minimum wage, she said, "was just the beginning."  Jayaraman pointed to the exorbitantly high cost of living in the Golden State where, in some counties, an individual would need a $40 an hour salary to live comfortably.

For Teachers' Unions, Strikes Are the New Normal.  Does anyone remember the "Red For Ed" education workers' strikes of 2018-19 across the United States?  The #RedForEd movement began in February 2018 in West Virginia and inspired similar statewide school employee strikes in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Colorado.  Smaller strikes were set off in individual districts in Georgia, Kentucky, and North Carolina, and a strike by faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.  The strikes continued into 2019, with United Teachers Los Angeles and teachers walking out in Virginia, Denver, Oakland, and Chicago.  The strikes averaged about two weeks and led to varying levels of success by the respective state and local governments.  This brief history lesson is important, because the #RedForEd movement laid the groundwork in 2018 for what would be the longest-lasting and most disastrous nationwide teacher union strike this country has ever seen.

UPS cutting 12,000 jobs 5 months after reaching union deal.  UPS says it will cut 12,000 jobs following a disappointing sales outlook for the year.  The layoffs come just five months after the company reached a major union deal.  The job cuts will help the company save $1 billion in costs, CEO Carol Tome said in a call Tuesday morning.  Manager and contract roles will be the most impacted.  Labor negotiations last year threatened to disrupt package deliveries for millions of customers, before a deal with Teamsters was reached.  As consumers feared potential strikes, they took their business to rival companies, like FedEx.  UPS expects to gain most of that business back, but so far has only won back 60% of it, according to CNN.

L.A. Times Employees Go on Strike, Get Whiplash When the Consequences Arrive.  In a move that is sure to affect no one with the good sense to not read The Los Angeles Times, employees of the nation's fifth-largest newspaper went on strike.  The walk-out came amid arguments over layoffs and a lack of pay raises.  Get ready for some whiplash as these spoiled, over-credentialed journalists realize there are consequences to their actions.  [Tweet]  My neck hurts.  Shockingly enough, employers don't typically allow striking employees to use company resources once they walk out.  It would be like striking coal miners demanding access to the break room.  The entire point of the strike is that you leave the building and refuse to work.  These pampered journalists are so used to working from their couches, though, that they have no concept of the real world.  You don't get to go on strike while still using your company's Slack channel to stir up dissent.  Justifiably, the L.A. Times went further, also locking the striking employees out of their email accounts.

Woke Starbucks Just Got Slammed By A Major Lawsuit.  Starbucks is one of the country's largest coffee shop chains.  It is also a company that has long been embroiled in social/political controversy.  From holiday cups to social justice, the Seattle-based corporation has been blasted by Americans for pushing "woke" ideology.  But recently, its support of progressive causes came back to hurt it: the company allowed its workers to form a union, called Starbucks Workers United, and the aggressive logo of the group evokes the idea of BLM/Marxist leaning.  The company was shocked when chapters of this union posted attacks against Israel after it went to war with Hamas.  Starbucks sued the union, demanding it change its name and logo.  In response, the union turned on its employer.

Biden Marches With Autoworkers While Causing Their Problems.  The UAW is demanding a 35% hike in pay and benefits over four years, as well as automatic cost-of-living adjustments, just like in the 1970s, along with a four-day workweek.  The inflationary 1970s are calling Biden, and they want their benefits back — with a post-COVID-19 four-day twist.  According to news reports, Biden told workers, "You should be doing incredibly well."  But he has singlehandedly, through the power of his executive branch, caused them to face job losses and higher inflation.  By changing his policies, Biden could address some of the fundamental reasons for their strike; namely, job loss because of mandatory vehicle electrification and higher inflation resulting from his war on fossil fuels, resulting in higher energy costs.  Both were imposed by the executive branch without support from even the Democratic Congress in place during Biden's first two years in office.

Stellantis tells UAW they'll reopen that plant the union's so hep on.  This may not be shaking out the way the United Auto Workers envisioned after all.  Yeah, their president got to talk tough, and they walked out with a new strategy, striking all 3 major automakers at the same time, one facility at a time.  Striking a blow for the little guy may wind up costing lots of little guys.  Part of the union demands to carmaker Stellantis (Jeep and Chrysler among a myriad of other brands) pre-walkout included reopening the Belvidere, IL assembly plant.  It closed down in February of this year as Jeep Cherokee sales dried up.  The facility is massive.

Teamsters Sacrifice 30,000 Workers: 3 Ways Union Contributed to Yellow Trucking's Demise.  After 99 years in business, trucking giant Yellow Corp. shut down its operations on Sunday, and its 30,000 employees will lose their jobs.  The company's closure follows on the heels of negotiations with the Teamsters union, which represents 22,000 members of Yellow's workforce.  While there are undoubtedly many factors that contributed to Yellow's closure, its forced dealings with the Teamsters were central among them.  Unions are best known for negotiating higher compensation and giving workers representation with management.  But unions actually have a say in — and often contractual control over — all things worker-related, meaning they can effectively usurp a company's management.

Who's upset about the Hollywood strike?  Hollywood's arrogance is nothing short of overwhelming, especially when network television and cable are in a free fall.  Nevertheless, Hollywood insists on pushing woke ideology at every opportunity in a shrinking industry that alienates what's left of its audience with a precipitous decline in quality content, much of it unwatchable.  Their answer:  strike.

Workers at critical West Coast ports refuse to turn up to work amid pay negotiations.  A labor slowdown is plaguing critical West Coast ports as workers refuse to turn up amid labor negotiations, stoking fears of a looming supply chain crisis.  Though no strike is currently underway, several major ports along the West Coast, including the Port of Oakland, the Los Angeles Port, and the Port of Long Beach have been effectively shut down in recent days as dock workers fail to show up to work.  Workers who unload shipping containers are protesting as their union engages in wage negotiations with port management.

Running on Fumes: Macron Forced to Travel With Generator Truck as Unions Literally Cut Off His Power.  French President Emmanuel Macron is now travelling around France with his own electric generator as protesting French unions keep cutting off power during his regional visits, a report claims.  Under massive pressure as a result of his controversial pension reforms, Macron is currently undertaking a public-relations blitz in France in the hopes of rallying the general public to his side.  However, his whistle-stop tours of various regions across the country have not been going well, with the President's visits often being met with protesters noisily banging pots and pans in the hopes of derailing the PR stunt.  To make matters worse, trade unionists with access to the country's national grid have also taken to cutting the power in areas where Macron is stopping in an effort to cause even further chaos for the head of state.

Oh, by the way - longshoremen shut down 2 CA ports today.  This has been simmering since last May, when talks began between union reps, ports, and the shipping industry.  They stalled for months at a time, and the longshoremen have now been working without a contract for 10 months. [...] There are already warnings of disruptions to orders and missed truck appointments going out, but this may not be quite the blow it would have been in years past.  Thanks to both consolidation in the shipping industry and the adroitness shown by East Coast ports adapting to the reality of the COVID pandemic, CA ports just ain't what they used to be as far as primacy.

Union Officials: 'The Main Impediment Keeping People of Color from Construction Sites'.  In recent years, a growing number of activists and pundits who are normally allied with Big Labor have been publicly demanding that public policymakers take bold action to stop America's powerful building-trades union bosses from wielding their special legal privileges to keep good construction job opportunities out of reach for African Americans.  It has now been more than 90 years since William Green, then the president of the American Federation of Labor (a precursor to today's AFL-CIO), and construction union officials prevailed upon Congress to enact the wage-fixing Davis-Bacon Act in 1931.  They wanted Davis-Bacon passed on the grounds that "colored labor" could not be allowed to compete on a level playing field with the white union members in the AFL empire.

Female California police union exec, 64, is charged with running eight-year, global FENTANYL operation from her gated community.  A San Jose grandmother has allegedly been importing fentanyl from India and other countries into the U.S. and has been using her home as a base for the global drug operation.  Joanne Marian Segovia, 64, is the executive director of the San Jose Police Officers' Association, and was charged with attempting to unlawfully import valeryl fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, federal prosecutors said in a statement Wednesday.  If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison.

96% of Disney's 32,000-member Florida union reject its contract offer.  The Walt Disney Company is in a world of hurt in Florida.  Having inserted itself into Florida politics by advocating injecting homosexual sex into K[indergarten through] 3rd grade classrooms, the company just lost its special privilege to act as the local government for its vast real estate holdings around Disney World.  And now, the major union at Disney World has overwhelmingly rejected the company's new contract offer.

French unions threaten "lights out" for MPs, billionaires plus the mother of all battles on Thursday.  It sounds as if things are starting to get pretty testy there.  [Tweet]  Not only are the unions going to protest pension reform in the streets on the 19th, but they're also talking about taking their displeasure to members of the French government and "billionaires" in a very up and personal fashion.

Twitter's Janitors Go on Strike and Elon Musk Personally Cleans House.  Monday, Service Employees Internation Union Local 87 in San Francisco went out on strike.  Ordinarily, a janitor's union local striking wouldn't make national news, but this local provides cleaning services for Twitter headquarters.  It started last week when 20 cleaning crew members were told that Friday would be the last day they were needed at Twitter headquarters.  Twitter headquarters is serviced by a company called Flagship Maintenance Solutions.  As expected, this company devotes part of its website to its role in mitigating climate change and its inclusion and equity program.  From the various accounts, it seems like Twitter had opted not to renew its contract with Flagship after a period of negotiations. [...] Monday, many of the remaining janitors joined a handful of former Twitter employees on the picket line outside Twitter headquarters.  [Tweet]  They were demanding severance and advance notice of layoffs and whatever from Twitter, apparently unaware that Flagship, not Twitter, was their employer.

Biden stabs unions and workers in the back.  Any employee, irrespective of the kind of work they do, deserves a fixed number of paid unplanned leaves.  The purpose of working is to support yourself and your family.  That purpose is rendered meaningless if you cannot avail of unplanned leaves for medical situations or emergencies of the employee or family members.  In rail unions, there's a public interest in their getting this sick leave, too, because workers who don't get paid sick leave are incentivized to show up to work with colds, flu, COVID, or whatever is going around, as they don't get paid otherwise.  Sadly this was the situation with at least some of the 100,000 rail workers across the U.S.

Railroad Workers Get Railroaded Again.  Almost all of the USA's 135,000 railroad workers belong to one of twelve railway unions, and these twelve unions have been working on negotiating a new contract for just shy of three years now.  Yes, three years.  As normal extensions went beyond anything acceptable, and the risk of a massive national strike approached, the Biden-Harris regime first kicked the can past the midterms by forcing union votes on the employers' latest offer, which roughly half the members then rejected.  And then, when they realized that a national strike on the heels of the critical Georgia Senate runoff might be just as embarrassing, they put it in high gear: Democrats in the House and Senate supported the White House plan to force this same contract on the railroad employees, so they could claim an accomplishment — averting a costly and crippling nationwide strike — before the runoff, in order to get Senator Warnock a six-year term.  But was it such an accomplishment, really?

The Morals of a Railway Strike.  A railway strike has supposedly just been averted, by the intervention of Congress, which voted to "enforce a contract" that was previously negotiated only as a possibility and not any final agreement set in concrete.  It really isn't a contract at all, in light of the fact that four of the twelve companies involved in negotiations are still refusing to ratify the agreement and calling for a general strike on December 9.  Part of their grievances are focused on a lack of paid sick days.  This from an industry where the median pay is $30.84 per hour.  One certainly must make certain that he has enough income to provide for his needs and those of his family, and to hold some back for the rainy days and bad times that are sure to come in everyone's life, often at the worst possible moment.  Typically, people simply saw those days of work lost due to sickness as just one of the many pitfalls of life.

Lunchbucket Joe enrages his unions.  Joe Biden, despite his vast wealth accumulated while in office, has always played the regular guy for the proles during those rare occasions when he actually campaigns.  He's Lunchbucket Joe to the working man, Scranton Joe who always looks out for the little guy.  By his own claim, he's "the most pro-union president" in history.  He's also, in Democrat circles, Mr. Electable, because of all his working-class burnish.  Democrats lost blue collar workers with the emergence of the Reagan Democrat in the early 1980s and Joe was there to bring them back.  Unions, of course, loved him, and never hesitated to give him money.  Well, now Big Labor's unions have learned the hard way just who this clown actually is.

Guess Who's Trying To Cause Problems With The Railroad Tentative Agreement?  This morning, in the post on Biden wanting Congress to vote to approve the Tentative Agreement, I ended with  ["][Biden] also wants, again, zero changes.  No adding this or that or the other from Democrats or Republicans.  Who's your bet on the first to attempt to attach ryders to the bill?  I'm going with Squad members.["]  This didn't take long  [Tweets from the Squad!]

Union workers feel let down by 'pro-union' Joe Biden amid rail dispute.  President Joe Biden hails unions at almost every turn, often declaring "unions built the middle class" and that his goal is to be "the most pro-union president" in U.S. history.  But as he urges Congress to intervene in a labor dispute to avert a freight rail strike before the holidays, the president is facing a backlash from labor allies.  Union workers hoped to secure paid sick leave in a final contract, among other assurances, but congressional action pushed by Biden would force some terms they oppose.

Union Workers Lash out After Biden Betrays Them, and I Couldn't Care Less.  A looming railroad strike is threatening to shut down much of the nation's commerce, creating an economic and humanitarian disaster, and Joe Biden is finally making moves to prevent it.  What's his solution?  He's taking the coward's way out, calling for Congress to put union workers in their place despite the fact that they make up a large percentage of the Democratic Party base.  That's going over about as well as you'd imagine. [...] Honestly, I hope Republicans have the backbone to not bail Biden out here by voting in Congress to force the railroad workers to keep working.  He set himself on fire with one of his chief constituencies.  Let him burn.  Maybe, just maybe, these blue-collar unions will finally learn their lesson in the process.

"Red Cup Rebellion" To Disrupt Starbucks Stores As Baristas Go On Strike.  Starbucks workers at more than 100 US stores plan to walk off the job Thursday in a labor action during one of the coffee giant's busiest days of the year, WaPo reported.  More than 2,000 members of the Starbucks Workers Union (SWU) in 25 states, covering 112 stores across the country, will be participating in what is called the "Red Cup Rebellion."

You'd Better Be Prepared for the Perfect Transportation Storm.  Pete (Buttigieg) is nowhere to be found — at least not anywhere near the problems he's supposed to prevent. [...] The Biden administration averted a strike in September by brokering a last-minute deal with the railroad unions.  Now Joe and Pete just need all 12 of the unions to approve the deal to avoid a strike — by November 19.  There's just one problem.  It's an "all or none" situation, and two unions have already rejected the deal.  If the deal falls through, 33 million tons of cargo per week will not be delivered.  That's a lot of baby formula and toilet paper.  Factories will close, store shelves will run empty, power plants will go offline, and construction will stop.  Joe's administration is lining up alternatives to trains if the railroads shut down.  They assure us that if they fumble this — and they may — we'll just ship everything by truck.  But there's a problem with that also.  It would take an additional 460,000 trucks to move the freight that trains move.

Remember That Railroad Strike Biden Supposedly Averted?  Well....  As Townhall covered last month, months of negotiations between America's railroad companies and rail unions ran until the eleventh hour and narrowly averted a massive, economy-crippling strike at the time, a supposedly positive resolution that the Biden administration sought to take credit for after intervening to force a tentative agreement. [...] On Monday, members of America's third-largest rail union voted against the negotiated contract.  For those who remember this song and dance from September, all 12  unions agreed to strike in solidarity unless every union agreed to a deal.  This time around, the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division has said its workers will stay on the job until "five days after Congress reconvenes in mid November," but their vote against a deal means the risk of a strike has been renewed again, sending parties back to the negotiating table.

Are we headed for a rail strike after all?  A month ago it seemed we were headed for a major rail strike as unions were holding out against a labor contract that included a 24% raise.  Amtrak even started canceling trains in expectation of the strike but then, at the last moment, unions accepted a deal. [...] But today it looks like that agreement might be falling apart.  One of the unions has rejected the deal. [...] There are two larger unions who are holding their own vote on the contract by mail.  However, even if they vote to approve the contract, they won't return to work so long as the BMWE refuses to do so.  More to the point, a professor who specializes in labor issues says the BMWE vote probably means the other unions will also be against the deal.

Management ALWAYS balks at salary demands.  It's called negotiation.
NY Times staffers mull strike as management balks at salary demands.  Staffers at the New York Times are openly discussing the possibility of a work stoppage as talks with management have reportedly hit an impasse over the union's demands for a salary hike.  The guild representing journalists at the newspaper also wants management to commit to an 8% annual salary increase year-over-year for a period of four years.  But management has countered with a significantly smaller hike — a 4% increase for the first year followed by a 2% boost for the following two years, according to Insider.  Management has also offered an additional 1% merit-based pay hike.  The labor strife is exacerbating tensions between rank-and-file Times staffers and management, who have been at loggerheads over the newspaper's return-to-office demands.  The [New York] Post reported earlier this month that more than 1,300 newsroom staffers signed a pledge vowing to defy management's edict to return to their Midtown Manhattan cubicles for a minimum of three days a week.

Expert warns Biden's deal to give rail workers a 24% pay rise will lead to more huge settlements.  Experts have warned that Joe Biden's deal to give rail workers a pay increase to avoid major shutdowns on Friday could lead to more large settlements in the future.  The Biden administration reached a tentative deal on Thursday to raise rail employees' salaries by 24 percent, but labor experts say the deal could embolden future strikers.  'This is a very, very contentious time,' Michael Lotito, co-chairman of the Workplace Policy Institute at Littler, told the Wall Street Journal.  'I think that is going to embolden unions to ask for more.'

Biden caves to rail unions to avoid catastrophic strike and hands out immediate $11K bonus and a 24% wage increase.  President Joe Biden said on Thursday that a 'tentative' deal has been reached between US freight rail companies and unions, averting a potentially devastating strike before the pivotal midterm elections.  The agreement, hashed out as a national rail strike loomed at midnight on Friday, will raise rail employees salaries 24 percent from the period from 2020 to 2024, with workers getting an average lump sum payment of $11,000 for the backdated portion of the raise, according to a group representing rail companies.  Biden called the deal 'a win for tens of thousands of rail workers who worked tirelessly through the pandemic to ensure that America's families and communities got deliveries of what have kept us going during these difficult years.'

The Editor says...
When was the last time you got a 24 percent raise, without changing jobs?

Democrats October Surprise May Strike a Month Early.  Most Americans are just learning of a pending railway worker strike that might paralyze supply chains and cripple the economy. [...] The labor dispute that could lead to the first national railroad strike in 30 years could begin as soon as this Friday.  About 60,000 union members who work for the railroad are set to go on strike, including the engineers and conductors who make up the two-person crews on each train.  Even though 45,000 other union members belong to unions that have reached tentative deals with the railroads, a strike by engineers and conductors would bring the freight rail system, which carries nearly 30% of the nation's freight, to a grinding halt.  If this strike happens, Democrats will own it.

Rail union rejects deal to prevent strike being called this Friday as Biden's economic nightmare inches closer.  Amtrak, the nation's cross-country railway system, is canceling all of its long-distance trains ahead of a planned freight workers' strike that threatens to significantly damage the US economy.  The company is not involved in the ongoing labor dispute, but freight companies own almost all of its 21,000 route miles outside the Northeast Corridor, where it owns its own tracks.  Its announcement on Wednesday effectively cancels all planned trips, including those from Washington DC to Sanford, Florida, and the Silver Star from New York City to Miami.  The only area that will not be affected by the train cancelations are those in the Northeast Corridor, between Boston and Washington DC.

Tick, tock, the railway strike clock counts down and Mayor Pete is nowhere around.  [Scroll down] The Biden White House, in the meantime, is going to the mattresses, because there truly seems to be little else they can do, but light candles and pray the three unions still holding out — and they are adamant in their demands — miraculously come on board.  On the other side of the coin, if the unions do sign off on new deals, the inflationary pressures are going to be extraordinary.

The Looming Crisis that Could Cost the Country and Sink Dems Chances in Midterms.  We saw in our earlier report about the inflation numbers that the news was not good for the American consumer — that core CPI went up sharply in August, even with gas prices dropping.  That's not a good sign and an indication that the rosy picture that the Biden team would like to paint of inflation is not reality. [...] Unfortunately, there's another problem coming up that may make it worse, if inflation weren't bad enough.  There's a potential railroad strike that may hit on Friday that could cost the country $2 billion a day and throw transportation of goods and people into a mess.  Biden is trying to head it off.  He knows that if it hits, it could be toast for the Democrats in the midterms because it would further drive the economy into the dumper.

1,300 New York Times Staffers Refuse Order to Return to Office.  More than a thousand New York Times employees are refusing a company order to return to the office at least three days a week, citing inflationary pressures.  Tom Coffey, who sits on the Times's union's contract committee told the New York Post that "people are livid," and said the 1,300 staffers who are refusing to return to the office are especially concerned with commuter costs.

MNA files intent to strike; 15,000 nurses could walk off job.  Leaders of the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) say they are now filing their intent to strike.  The filing follows a strike authorization vote held last month, which union leaders say passed overwhelmingly.  Filing an intent to strike gives hospitals a 10-day strike notice before nurses could walk off the job.

Biden Whips Up the Longshoremen as Strike Fears Rise.  Joe Biden went to the port of Los Angeles on Friday, June 10, to make a speech about the economy.  Nothing odd there.  The stock market is down 15% so far this year, inflation is skyrocketing, and energy prices are so high that the unemployed can't afford the commute if they accept a job.  An administration is expected to address these matters.  Unfortunately, in this case, virtually all the problems are caused by the very positions on which this regime is doubling down.  And of all the indelicate, inopportune times and places to choose for this speech, he headed to the busiest, most important seaport in the Americas, twenty days before the deadline crashes down on the most delicate labor negotiation of the year.

Amazon Union Organizers Say AOC Abandoned Them as She Celebrates Their Victory.  Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island voted to unionize last week, and some of them say Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) abandoned them.  The facility has made headlines since 2020, when workers first began to complain of conditions.  Christian Smalls, who attempted to start a union, was fired.  In February, he was arrested after he was asked to leave the facility.  Last Friday, the Amazon Labor Union he helped found reported workers voted 1518 to 1154 to unionize.  Ocasio-Cortez, whom union organizers have said had their support before abandoning them, celebrated on Twitter.

WTTW cuts off health coverage for striking workers.  A strike pitting WTTW-Channel 11 against members of the electricians union took a bitter turn Tuesday, with the public television station serving notice that it is cutting off the workers' health insurance.  The members of Local 1220 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers said they received notice from WTTW saying their employer-subsidized insurance will end as of Friday, April 1.  No talks have taken place since the strike began March 16.  The workers can continue health coverage by enrolling in the federal COBRA program, which carries high premiums because there is no employer subsidy.  Brett Lyons, business representative for Local 1220, said the union is exploring ways to help the workers, who are not getting strike pay.

UTLA and SEIU Local 99 Grifters Will Not Go Quietly on Dropping Mask Mandates for LAUSD.  After Governor Gavin Newsom lifted his hand on February 15 to ease the indoor mask mandates for unvaccinated individuals — but not for the schools, students and parents continued to hammer him on this selective easing and his continued insistence on maintaining his emergency powers, which allow him to keep these COVID mandates in place.  Hair Gel claimed he would revisit the student mask mandates on March 11, but certain California county school districts had had enough of his Hairfulness' version of selective science.  They independently reviewed the actual science, and their insurance carrier's policies, and proceeded to bypass Newsom to institute their own mask-optional policies before March 11.  So, Newsom lifted his hand again and decided that mask mandates in schools were to end after March 11 after all.  Amazing how that works.

Chicago Teachers Union delegate vows to 'report' members who show up for work.  A Chicago Teachers Union delegate has vowed to "report" union employees who show up to work at their school.  Alex Forgue, a physics teacher at the Chicago Military Academy at Bronzeville, commented on a post inside a "CTU Members Only Facebook Group," stating that he would be reporting members who go into work.  "As a delegate, I will be reporting the names of members who go in," he commented on a post asking members if the Chicago Teachers Union is posting a "scab" list.

Kellogg Plans to Permanently Replace 1,400 Striking Workers.  Kellogg plans to permanently replace some 1,400 workers who have been striking since October, the company announced this week.  Kellogg and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers International Union failed to reach a new contract agreement, leading to the planned change.  "We have made every effort to reach a fair agreement, including making six offers to the union throughout negotiations, all which have included wage and benefits increases for every employee.  It appears the union created unrealistic expectations for our employees," Chris Hood, president of Kellogg North America, said in a recent statement.  "The prolonged work stoppage has left us no choice but to hire permanent replacement employees in positions vacated by striking workers.  These are great jobs and posting for permanent positions helps us find qualified people to fill them.  While certainly not the result we had hoped for, we must take the necessary steps to ensure business continuity.  We have an obligation to our customers and consumers to continue to provide the cereals that they know and love," he added.

Lazy crane operators making $250,000 a year exacerbating port crisis, truckers say.  Crane operators who belong to a powerful union and earn up to $250,000 a year transferring containers from ships to trucks are worsening the supply chain crisis that threatens Christmas by goofing off on the job, frustrated truckers told the Washington Examiner.  The finger-pointing at the busy Los Angeles County ports comes as scores of container ships are anchored off the California coast, waiting in some cases for weeks to unload their freight.  The Biden administration has scrambled to get shipping executives, port officials, and labor to tackle the problem.  While the reasons for the burgeoning backlog are complex, truck drivers say not everyone seems to be working together.

Teamsters employees say union creates hostile work environment against unvaccinated staffers.  The International Brotherhood of Teamsters demands its members' rights not be violated regarding the COVID-19 vaccine mandates, but the union took public measures to pressure its unvaccinated employees into taking the jab or leaving their jobs.  Various labor unions around the country are seeking vaccine mandate exemptions for their own members, but where they stand on their own employees may be different.  In the case of the Teamsters, the IBT holds different standards for its unvaccinated employees who work at its Washington, D.C., headquarters than the members it represents.

America's Ports Problem Is Decades in the Making.  As detailed in numerous reports, American ports and rail terminals are struggling to cope with unprecedented surges of imports from Asia, a situation likely to continue into next year and contributing to both U.S. companies' supply chain woes and broader inflationary pressures.  Shipping containers are piling up by the thousands, leading to higher shipping costs (both ocean and inland freight) and U.S. exporters — mainly of agricultural products — lacking the empty containers they need to send their goods abroad.  Importers are also reeling. [...] Perhaps most notable is the extreme influence that U.S. longshoreman unions — the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) out West and the International Longshoremen's Association (ILA) basically everywhere else — have on port operations.  The ILWU's impact is particularly strong because it controls essentially all longshore labor for all West Coast ports (thus giving the union extreme leverage — strikes or slowdowns affect every port on the West Coast).  Thus, contentious labor negotiations not only lead to occasional, economy-crippling port stoppages (and other non-economic harms), but also longer-term labor contract provisions that intentionally decrease port productivity in several ways: [...]

Massive Development in Victoria, Australia — Major Trade Union CFMEU Goes To War Against Union Leadership and Politicians Over Mandated Vaccinations.  This is a huge development in the battle for freedom in Victoria, Australia.  It cannot be overstated.  The Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) has declared war against their own leadership, John Setka, for not fighting against the mandatory COVID vaccine.  As he was attempting to hunker down in his office headquarters, union boss John Setka physically came under attack from his own union membership over his political relationship with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews.  This is the U.S. equivalent of AFL-CIO members launching a violent uprising against former union President Richard Trumka; and then Trumka running to Joe Biden for help and protection from his own membership.  The CFMEU members are the heavy-hitting blue-collar construction and dirty fingernail workers, and the leadership of the CFMEU are the thug-like mobsters who run the union.  Just like the AFL-CIO or UAW in America, the union leadership in Australia is politically corrupt and disconnected from the members they serve.  Earlier today, the union members organized to confront the union leadership.

Aggressive Teamsters Striking Outside Of Nabisco Factory Gets A Beatdown From Security.  A Portland Teamster filed a federal lawsuit Sept. 14 alleging assault and battery by a guard working for Huffmaster Crisis Response, a Michigan-based strike staffing company hired to police the strike at the Nabisco bakery in Northeast Portland.  Jesse Dreyer, a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 162 union, says a Huffmaster agent beat him while he was picketing with members of the local bakers' union outside the Portland Nabisco bakery on Monday morning.  [Video clip]

Labor union's disturbing sign outside elementary school prompts drastic action from superintendent.  A labor union set up a disturbing display of a casket and a photo depicting a dead person's feet outside of a grade school in New Jersey to protest the district hiring a contractor for a construction project, which sparked the school's superintendent to knock it over.  "For the safety of the children, as the Superintendent of Schools, I really had no choice but to protect them.  I responded immediately to the coffin on school property and knocked it to the ground," superintendent of Edison Township public schools, Bernard Bragen, said in a statement to Fox News.  The situation unfolded on Friday [9/3/2021], after LIUNA Laborers Local 77 had already set up an inflatable rat at the school earlier this week to protest a $9 million construction project at the school.  The district was required to hire the lowest bidder for the project, Pal-Pro Builders of Bergen County, but the union said the group does not hire local workers, NJ Advance Media reported.

Socialist magazine founder fires staff for socialist organizing, confesses he felt ownership of what he'd made.  Seriously this is just one of those moments when a leading proponent of leftist politics reveals himself to be a complete flaming hypocrite.  It's not even contested at this point because, as of two hours ago, he has admitted as much.  If you're not familiar with Nathan J. Robinson, he has a doctorate in sociology from Harvard but is probably best known as a writer who had a long sting as a socialist columnist for the Guardian.  In 2015 he founded his own site called Current Affairs, an online political magazine that promotes his socialist views.  I feel like I should provide an example and I swear this was the first thing I came across on his site with Robinson's name on the byline:  "Manatees Are Better Than Us." [...] Well, it turns out that manatees are definitely better at utopian socialism than Nathan J. Robinson.  We know this for certain because today a group of his former employees announced they had all been fired after they tried to form a worker's co-op.  Apparently doing socialism at the socialist magazine was grounds for termination.

Gigantic Teachers' Union Sues Mom for Asking What the Local Public School Is Teaching Her Daughter.  There was a time when parental involvement in our kids' education was seen as a good thing that all parents should do.  We were invited to meet our kids' teachers and even participated in class once or twice a week.  This was all part of making sure our kids obtained the education our tax dollars paid for.  The COVID pandemic and the moral panic following George Floyd's death destroyed all of that.  Unionized teachers advocated for closing schools and keeping them closed and started sneaking in critical race theory teachings at every level during online classes.  When parents noticed and asked, they tended to get a run-around or worse.  In Loudon County, Virginia, public school administrators and teachers formed a cabal to hunt down and smear parents who questioned them.  Rhode Island mom Nicole Solas wanted to know what her daughter was being taught in kindergarten.  So she asked the school for copies of the curriculum.  She is entitled to that, as a parent and as a taxpayer.  Public school curricula are public documents.

Hundreds of Alabama coal miners protest outside BlackRock's NYC headquarters.  Hundreds of coal miners and union advocates took to the streets of New York City this week in support of workers from Warrior Met Coal mines in Brookwood, Alabama.  Approximately 1,100 Warrior Met Coal mine workers have been on strike against their employer for nearly five months, fighting for better pay and benefits.  According to the United Mine Workers of America, the current agreement with union employees was negotiated as Warrior Met Coal, which was formerly known as Walter Energy, emerged from bankruptcy in 2016.  Union members argue they made numerous concessions in pay, benefits, holidays, overtime and other areas totaling more than $1.1 billion to keep the company afloat and help get it out of bankruptcy.

Washington Lawsuit Isn't About Forgery; It's About the State Conspiring With a Union to Violate the Constitution.  In the real world, if someone stole your checkbook and used it to make an expensive purchase, no one would expect you to keep making payments for years while the retailer who accepted the forged check and the bank that cashed it pointed fingers at one another.  But in the murky netherworld of the government workplace and the unions that purport to speak for its employees, evidently, the standards are different.  Consider the experience of Sharrie Yates, a medical assistant with Washington's Healthcare Authority (HCA) since 2004, who has spent the past three years watching the state confiscate union dues from her pay every month on behalf of the Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE), despite informing the State and the Union that this membership card is clearly a forgery.  But to make matters worse, when Yates subsequently filed a lawsuit against the union and the state of Washington to resolve the matter, a judge at the District Court level somehow managed to conclude that neither could be held accountable.

General Labor Strike Planned Across US.  A general strike (or mass strike) across the U.S. is planned for Oct. 15.  It may involve a substantial proportion of the total labor force across metro areas, towns, and rural communities that could bring the economy to a standstill.  Organizers of the general strike call themselves "National General Strike Day" and appear to be a movement that may involve workers in many workplaces and or unions.  Not much is clear about "National General Strike Day," except their top 5 following on Twitter is the "Party for Socialism and Liberation," "Socialist Rifle Association," "AFL-CIO," "United Steelworkers," and "UAW."  They do blame "capitalism in decline" for why they're striking.

A labor dispute in which no one can win.  It's 8:30 a.m. on Friday, and despite the threat of a summer thunderstorm, 10 men, all members of the United Steelworkers District 10, are holding picket signs on the street.  Almost every car that passes them honks its horn in solidarity with the men positioned in front of Allegheny Technologies, the specialty steel operation that has employed many of them for decades.  Headquartered in Pittsburgh, ATI has more than 50 plants located across the country and the world.  Nine of them are on strike, including locations in western Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.  Despite not having received a raise in more than seven years, the average worker here earns approximately $85,000 a year making specialty steel used in manufacturing metals for razors, computers, medical equipment, oil and gas, aerospace and defense, and electrical energy generation.

Cesar Chávez would have hated the Biden administration.  Biden has issued executive orders that ban enforcing immigration law while simultaneously inviting in a new wave of illegal aliens.  These E.O.s also suspend deporting illegal aliens, even those awaiting trial for felonies and other serious crimes, and signal that all new arrivals will be eligible for social benefits such as health care.  Cesar Chávez's struggle in the 1970s and '80s can help explain the impact this will have on labor markets in general and working-class Americans in particular.  Chávez understood that illegal immigration diminishes workers' earning power.  Chávez, although erroneously described as a civil rights leader, was a labor leader who struggled tirelessly for his Campesinos in the United Farm Workers Union. [...] Chávez's most formidable obstacle was the inexhaustible supply of cheap, illegal labor flooding over the border.

Amazon Bullied Alabama Pro-Union Workers, Changed Traffic Light Outside Warehouse.  For those still underestimating the power of Amazon, this Alabama story should set them straight.  Amazon literally changed the timing of a traffic light outside of one of its warehouses, believed to be done "so that pro-union workers would not be able to canvass workers while stopped at the light" reports The Verge.  The story was first reported by More Perfect Union, which at one point had been dismissed as a rumor.  However, the rumor has now been confirmed as fact.  "A week ago, we broke the story that union organizers in Alabama accused Amazon of working to change traffic light patterns outside its Bessemer warehouse in order to hinder their efforts to talk to workers.  We have pursued that story, and tonight we have breaking news" tweeted More Perfect Union.

Why Does Biden Have A Bust Of An Anti Immigration Radical In The Oval Office?  The corporate press has been churning out puff pieces about the Biden administration since Election Day, and with Biden's inauguration on Wednesday, we're getting a fresh round.  One such article in the Washington Post stands out for what it omits.  The story, a hard-hitting account of how Biden has decorated the Oval Office, mentions that Biden is "nodding to segments of the Democratic Party's base via historic references," and mentions a bust of Cesar Chavez behind the Resolute Desk.  Who was Cesar Chavez?  If you ask a Democrat or a member of the press, they'll tell you he was a courageous labor leader and civil rights activist who helped organize Latino farm workers in California in the 1960s, culminating in the formation of the United Farm Workers union.  Today, he's a folk hero to the left.  What they won't tell you is that he was also a fierce opponent of illegal immigration, which he opposed because it drove down wages for American farm workers and diminished the organizing power of their unions.  He also opposed guest-workers from Mexico, and campaigned fiercely against the Bracero program, a guest-worker scheme put in place during World War II that allowed Mexican farm workers to enter the country legally for employment on American farms and ranches.

Hundreds of Cook County Health Care, Sheriff's Office Employees Strike.  Hundreds of essential workers on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic in Cook County hit the picket line for a one-day strike on Tuesday [12/22/2020].  SEIU Local 73 — the union representing Cook County health technicians, service and maintenance workers, as well as employees of the clerk's office and sheriff's office — said in a statement Friday that its members would be holding a one-day strike, alleging that county officials have "refused to set bargaining dates... and walked out on negotiations" for nearly three months.  "Our members have put their lives on the line to keep Cook County functioning," SEIU Local 73 President Dian Palmer said.  "The complete lack of respect by Toni Preckwinkle and the managers under her supervision is shocking."

Steelworkers Union Sticks It to Trump.  "Let me say this," asserted Leo Gerard, president of the steelworkers union.  "Donald Trump was able to see the steelworker agenda.  What he did is what we've been fighting for for more than 30 years.  And I think what happened is that he's going to have a major impact on our members.  It's going to make it very hard for our members to ignore what he just did and what makes me sad is we've been trying to get Democrats to do this for more than 30 years."  That isn't the kind of sentiment one typically hears for a Republican president from the United Steelworkers (USW) president.  And yet, there it was.  High praise.  High praise indeed.  Gerard held forth in a March 2018 interview with NBC's Chuck Todd, who was taken aback by these encomiums for Trump from a union chief.  Todd no doubt ached to dispel such flights of fancy from such a redoubtable corner of the Democratic Party base.  But this was no flight of fancy.  Gerard knew.  His members knew.  They knew what this Republican president, Donald J. Trump, had done for them. [...] So why in the world is the steelworkers union not supporting Donald Trump in 2020?

Ex-Union President Sentenced for Violent Extortion in Church Brawl Case.  A former union president was sentenced to more than three years in prison for violent extortion on Wednesday after he coordinated a brutal assault on a group of non-union workers at an Indiana church.  Jeffrey Veach resigned as president of Iron Workers Local 395 after pleading guilty to the charges in January — two days after the labor group endorsed Joe Biden.  The 57-year-old Veach coordinated an attack in January 2016 against D5 Iron Works, a non-union company in Illinois, over a construction contract that encroached on the union's perceived "territory."  The attack left one of the non-union workers with a broken jaw that later required multiple surgeries.  "At Veach's direction, the union members conducted a coordinated attack on the D5 workers," the Justice Department said in a release.  "The victims were beaten with fists and loose pieces of hardwood."

Democrats have a plan: threaten their way into the White House.  A coalition of influential progressive groups — including the SEIU, AFT, Color of Change, Indivisible, MoveOn, and Demos — is organizing, the Daily Beast reports, for "mass public unrest": [...] There's a reason these "secret" plans were revealed in painstaking detail to a sympathetic outlet, one that would repeat fever dreams about "MAGA violence after election day."  It's the latest example of the left's campaign of extortion:  If you want the protesting, rioting, and murder wave to end, all you have to do is hand Joe Biden a landslide.  The organizations claim to be preparing for an election "without a clear outcome," or the possibility that President Donald Trump refuses to concede.  Of course, they have also worked to assure an ambiguous election night by pressing for a massive, disorganized switch to mail-in voting, even as public health experts say in-person voting is as safe as grocery shopping.

When 'j'accuse' is just a smear.  Last week, the Chicago Tribune's most prominent writer, John Kass, wrote a column decrying the rise in urban violence.  Its compelling title: 'Something grows in the big cities run by Democrats: an overwhelming sense of lawlessness.'  In today's woke world, it is risky to speak such hard truths about gang shootings, unprosecuted shoplifting, looting, carjackings and more.  This rising lawlessness is often cloaked in the language of protest, racial justice and income equality.  Speaking out against it runs real risks.  You might be doxxed, your home tagged with graffiti, or your family threatened.  If you are a columnist, like John Kass, you might face ostracism from left-wing colleagues, attacks by the reporters' union, and concessions to the mob by your paper's editor, Colin McMahon.  The dispute began when the union representing Tribune writers (of which Kass is not a member) decided to go after him, full-bore.  Their false charge was... wait for it... Kass's column was anti-Semitic.

What it's like to stand up to a police union.  My story is a microcosm of what reformers across the state and country face as they attempt to rein in police unions, which are largely responsible for the systemic police violence making headlines because they protect bad cops from consequences.  As a member of the Santa Ana City Council, I voted in February 2019 against a $25.6 million police pay increase, including retroactive raises and additional money for career officers.  The reason for my vote was simple:  The city could not afford it. [...] In response to my actions, the Santa Ana police union waged a high-priced recall election campaign against me funded by nearly $500,000 in union dues.  The election cost the city almost $750,000 in unnecessary funds, given that I wasn't running for council reelection in November.  The recall was pure revenge.

NY Unions to Amazon:  It Sure Would Be a Shame If Anything Happened to Your Company.  [Scroll down]  New York's far-left collection of socialists, unionistas, and lawmakers have sent letters to Bezos and his top executives to dictate to them how they should run the warehouse that is bringing food and other necessities to Americans who can't go out and get them.  To be clear, they're not just threatening Amazon, the unions have threatened everyone who has come to rely on the ubiquitous company.  As PJ Media's Tyler O'Neil reports, it all started with a warehouse worker who was fired when he declared the Amazon warehouse unsafe for the employees during the COVID-19 outbreak and decided to organize a strike.  Well, that's how the unions tell it.  The backstory is a bit more, ah, interesting than that.  It turns out that the wannabe unionist was under orders not to come to work because he'd been exposed to COVID-19 and was on fully PAID medically-ordered quarantine.  He came to his strike anyway and potentially exposed other people to the virus.  That's why he was fired.

SEIU Members Get Physical With The WRONG Security Guard.  Thursday [3/5/2020], SEIU members entered the San Joaquin County Administration building in downtown Stockton to stage a protest and a fistfight broke out on the sidewalk when some members got a little too physical with the security guard.  [Video clip]

On Labor Day:  Remembering Union Violence In America.  The history of the labor movement in the U.S. is littered with extremists who use violence to get their way.  At the beginning of the union movement, the violence was outer-directed; toward the government, management, or the police who were using violence themselves to destroy the labor movement.  As the movement matured, the abuse became directed inward, targeted towards keeping the rank and file "in line," going after replacement workers, or sabotaging the particular company under siege.

Bernie's campaign union strife is what he proposes for the whole country.  For many conservatives, the labor struggles of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders are greatly amusing.  The senator has never seen a favor to Big Labor that he didn't support, yet his presidential campaign staff complain to the press about their working conditions.  He also neglects to pay them the mythical $15 an hour minimum wage he promotes on Capitol Hill and in his stump speeches.  More incongruous was the senator's response.  He told the press, "It does bother me that people [i.e., union members and officials] are going outside of the process and going to the media. ... That is really not acceptable.  It is really not what labor negotiations are about, and it's improper."  To the contrary, taking the campaign to the media is precisely what modern labor negotiations are about.

Bernie Sanders Campaign Accused of Retaliating Against Staffers for Unionizing.  Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-VT) presidential campaign has been accused of retaliating against staffers for unionizing, as new details of the federal labor complaint made on July 19 continue to surface.  An unnamed individual filed the complaint to the National Labor Relations Board on July 19 and alleged five potential violations, including retaliation, discipline, discharge, interrogation, and repudiation.  Details of the complaint against the Bernie Sanders campaign have been scarce, but Bloomberg Law obtained a copy of the charge, which details the allegations further.

Bernie Sanders campaign hit with unfair labor practices federal complaint.  According to a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board filed July 19, the Bernie Sanders campaign is behaving like a ruthless anti-union corporation of labor history lore. [...] It is not known who filed the complaint, and Bloomberg notes that any person can file such a complaint, so it is not even clear if a campaign employee was responsible for it.  Nonetheless, the complaint automatically triggers an investigation.

Bernie Sanders' campaign workers complaining, fleeing over 'poverty wages': report.  Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders has pledged to American workers that he would institute a $15-per-hour minimum wage if he wins the White House in 2020.  But unionized workers on Sanders' own campaign say they wish he would start now — by paying a higher wage to them.  According to a report, members of Sanders' staff have been using the senator's own campaign rhetoric against him as they try to wrestle more pay from the self-described democratic socialist.

CNN to shell out $70M in settlement over labor dispute.  CNN has agreed to pay $70 million to settle a 15-year-old labor lawsuit brought by over 200 former CNN camera operators, broadcast engineers, and other technicians.  The group of employees sued the network after it replaced them with non-union workers.  The plaintiffs accused the network of cutting them in order to avoid negotiating with their union and violating federal labor laws.

Here's what a real 'reform' MTA labor contract would include.  [Scroll down]  Two weeks ago, John Samuelsen, the public face of the [Transport Workers] union even if he's no longer officially in charge, told management amid an overtime crackdown that "any transit worker that does a lick more than they have to do for you ... is crazy."  Behind the scenes, things are less theatrical.  The union isn't cowed by the MTA's $467 million budget deficit next year, doubling two years after that even with congestion-pricing revenues.  Per usual, it has presented the MTA with a list of "demands," including unspecified raises, plus sweeteners.  It wants exemption from congestion pricing on members' commutes via a new "Universal MTA Pass" — a benefit worth a couple of thousand dollars a year apiece.

Workers at 'Soviet-style' Park Slope Food Coop fighting for union.  It's not all kumbaya and kombucha at the Park Slope Food Coop — where life under its socialist-tinged grocery store is apparently so oppressive that the paid workers are trying to unionize.  Employees of the Brooklyn food collective recently alleged unfair labor practices by the co-op in a filing with the US National Labor Relations Board.  In response, the crunchy-granola collective's iron-fisted management threatened and punished those who support the effort — with one union-busting boss telling workers they "should have a backup plan" if their collective bargaining doesn't bear fruit, according to a copy of the labor complaint filed by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.  The missive was obtained by The [New York] Post through a Freedom of Information Act request.

A History Lesson on the Shifting Political Stances on Illegal Immigration.  When [Cesar] Chavez, the founder of the United Farm Workers union, used the expression "Yes, we can," he meant something entirely different:  "Yes, we can" seal the borders.  He hated illegal immigration. [...] Peaceful protest wasn't Chavez's only tool.  He sent union members into the desert to assault Mexicans who were trying to sneak into the country.  They beat the Mexicans with chains and whips made of barbed wire.  Undocumented immigrants who worked during strikes had their houses firebombed and their cars burned.  By the way, Chavez remains a leftist hero.  President Barack Obama declared his birthday a commemorative federal holiday, an official day off in several states.  A number of buildings and student centers on college campuses and dozens of public schools bear the name Cesar Chavez.

Is Anything Off-Limits for California's Police Unions?  A few weeks ago the Costa Mesa Police Association (read:  Police Union) and their former law firm agreed to pay $607,000 to settle a lawsuit after their scheme against two Costa Mesa city councilmen came to light.  As I wrote in my book, this settlement represents a small but important victory in the broader philosophical war between California's public employee unions' unquenchable demand for more and the handful of public officials willing to stand and say there is simply no more to give.  This result should also give hope to public officials across the state who have been at the pointy-end of the public employee unions' so-called "advocacy" during labor negotiations or an election cycle.

Northeastern Workers Battle Forced Dues.  A pair of healthcare workers in the Northeast have filed lawsuits alleging that labor leaders have blocked them from resigning even after the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory public sector membership is unconstitutional.  William Neely, a Pennsylvania-based psychiatric aide, has accused American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 13 of refusing to honor his resignation.  Neely was a dues paying member of the organization for 15 years before requesting to cut ties in July, shortly after the Supreme Court ruled that government agencies could no longer require paying union fees as a condition of employment.  The union, according to the suit, has continued to deduct from Neely's paychecks because its contract does not honor resignation until June 2019.  "Mr. Neely spoke about his resignation by telephone with various AFSCME and Council 13 officials and staff representatives who acknowledged receipt of Mr. Neely's resignation letters but told Mr. Neely that he could not resign," the suit says.

Fast-Food Workers Union Demands Restaurant to Allow Employees to Wear 'Abolish ICE' Pins.  A fast-food workers' union is demanding that employees of a Pacific Northwest-based burger chain be allowed to wear pins with phrases such as "Abolish ICE" and "No one is illegal."  The workers' union, the Burgerville Workers Union (BVWU), wrote a Facebook post Sunday calling Burgerville's decision to ban employees from wearing political buttons "racist" and urged the fast-food chain to work with the union to allow employees to sport politically-charged buttons while working on their shifts.

Workers from 25 hotels strike in downtown Chicago.  Workers are picketing outside several downtown Chicago hotels as housekeepers, servers, cooks and others participate in a strike as part of an effort to get better benefits. [...] Six-thousand workers are striking, the largest hotel walkout in Chicago history.

Dissent flares among labor unions over Trump.  The leader of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, tweeted her disbelief that AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka may be considering an endorsement of President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.  On Wednesday [8/1/2018], Trumka told Newsmax that he could not rule out an endorsement by the powerful union.  "Every [candidate] will be looked at," Trumka said.  He added, "we will consider every candidate who's running."  The endorsement process by the AFL-CIO has yet to begin for an election that is more than two years out.

After Three Decades Couple Prevails over Union.  When David and Shirley Pirlott filed a federal labor complaint against Teamsters Local 75 on Nov. 8, 1989, the day before the Berlin Wall fell, they did not imagine they would have to wait 30 years to resolve the dispute.  The Pirlotts were finally vindicated in March 2018 when the Wisconsin-based Teamsters local mailed them separate checks of about $3,000 for failing to allow them to opt out of union dues.  The case spanned five presidencies, dozens of National Labor Relations Board members, and numerous appearances before the D.C. Court of Appeals.  In the time it took for the NLRB to issue its decision, the Pirlotts welcomed six grandchildren and four great grandchildren to the world, and Local 75 no longer existed having merged into Local 662.

Worker Seeks to Cut Ties with Union that Smeared Her Husband.  An Oregon state worker has paid thousands of dollars to the union that spent tens of thousands of dollars attacking her husband.  Debora Nearman, a systems analyst at the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, is suing the state and labor giant Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 503 to end automatic paycheck deductions for the union.  Nearman pays about $120 in agency fees — which are supposed to cover only collective bargaining services, rather than political activity — each month to the union.  She paid $1,250 to the union before receiving a $270 refund for political activities in 2017 — the year after Local 503 spent $53,260 to campaign against her husband, Republican state representative Mike Nearman.  "I had a firsthand view of how the union impacts the politics of this state," she told the Washington Free Beacon.  "I was really shocked by how much money they put in my husband's race and the disgusting nature of the fliers they circulated about him."

Let's talk Deep State.  [Scroll down]  To make matters more interesting, in 1962, by fiat, JFK did what no one had dared to do before:  Permitted the unionization, after the Italian Fascist form, of government employees, colective bargaining et al.  Nixon modified it in 1969, but the cat was out of the bag. [...] The unionization of government employees created a new class of American citizen:  A mass of untouchables who ran the daily business of government and who, through the alliance of their unions with the Democratic Party, created a state within the state.  Government contracts flowed in one direction guaranteeing the unions ever increasing revenues, and these let the campaign contributions flow at the same rate; and an army of "operatives" was ready to stuff envelopes, slash tires or, more recently, write absentee ballots.  If an opponent was elected by chance, he or she'd have to confront a sea of molasses slowing their every move.

Liberal Civil War:  Planned Parenthood fights unionization attempt from SEIU.  Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains is fighting a unionization attempt from Service Employees International Union, despite the labor giant's emphatic support for the nation's largest abortion provider.  In November the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the agency in charge of union elections and settling workplace disputes, granted SEIU Local 105's petition to hold an election for joining the union at several abortion clinics in Colorado.  Planned Parenthood objected to the organization campaign and appealed to the Republican-controlled board.  It disputed the fact that SEIU was attempting to organize a micro-unit and improperly excluded Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains (PPRM) clinics in Nevada and New Mexico in an effort to tilt the scales of the vote.

Overheard on Acela:  Teachers' Union President Plots to Shut Puerto Rico Schools From First Class Car.  Teachers' union president Randi Weingarten is plotting a teachers' strike to shut down schools in Puerto Rico, according to a conversation overheard Friday in the first-class car of an Acela train heading to New York.  Puerto Rico is in the midst of implementing school-choice reforms, opposed by Weingarten's American Federation of Teachers.  Last month Gov. Ricardo Rossell signed legislation to increase the number of charter schools and voucher programs.  Weingarten said she does not want to use the word "strike," but wants to use the strategy of recent teacher walkouts in Oklahoma and West Virginia as a model to fight against school-choice reforms.

Public-Sector Unions Deserve To Be Destroyed.  As it is, workers in union-heavy industries are typically under incredible pressure to join — in my experience, few bigger bullies exist in everyday American life than the union boss.  Yet general union membership continues to crater.  Those who resist these efforts are often accused of being "free riders," because they purportedly benefit from collective bargaining but refuse to pay in.  This is an exceptionally peculiar argument coming from organizations for which the central mission, as far as I can tell, is to ensure that the least effective workers are protected at the expense of the most effective workers.

The School Shooting That Resulted In Over 2,000 Killed That The Gun Grabbers Won't Tell You About & Why.  The Santa Mar'a School massacre was a massacre of striking workers, mostly saltpeter works miners, along with wives and children, committed by the Chilean Army in Iquique, Chile on December 21, 1907.  One thing you need to keep in mind as I present what took place is that this was not a mentally ill individual who committed the crime like has been alleged in the Florida school shooting.  Nope, it wasn't a high rolling gambler with bump stocks on his rifles like the Las Vegas shooting of 2017.  It didn't even take place from Islamic jihadis like the Beslan school siege in Russia in 2004.  This was a state-sanctioned, cold-blooded murder of the people who were on strike along with women and children in a school yard.  It was big government trying to force unarmed people to do their bidding.

More Perfect Unions.  Today, when a private-sector union and an employer negotiate their first contract, the union issues all the demands, offering in exchange only more of the labor peace that the employer presumably already enjoyed.  The best that a company can achieve in this scenario is to placate the union at minimal cost.  To a labor organizer, the question "What's in it for the employer?" might seem bizarre — the whole point of organizing, after all, is to improve labor's position against capital.  But even if shifting power toward labor is desirable for organizers, browbeating management into making concessions may not be wise.

Bus Driver Fired Over Adjusting Mirror.  At this point, the whole country is about one senseless regulation away from ending up like fired Pasadena bus driver Margarito Ayala.  Ayala liked to adjust the bus mirrors before driving, so as not to bash into other vehicles or run over pedestrians... ["]Then suddenly he was told to stop.  Only a mechanic can touch the mirrors.["] [...] The Teamsters Union is going to try to get his job back.  Chances are good that this same union was responsible for only mechanics being allowed to touch the mirrors.

Metro Transit Workers Could Strike During Super Bowl Festivities.  Nearly 2,500 Metro Transit workers say they're ready to strike for the full 10 days of Super Bowl Festivities.  ATU Local 1005, who represents transit workers, is set to vote on a contract starting on Sunday, but they say the plan on the table isn't fair.  The last strike was in 2004 and it lasted 6 weeks.  ATU Local 1005 President Mark Lawson stresses that strikes are not all about money.  "We are very serious," Lawson said.

Liberal lechery, it's everywhere.  The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is in the vanguard of the "progressive" movement in America.  As night follows day, or so it seems these days, the SEIU is also in the vanguard of sexually harassing its female employees.

SEIU Ousts Senior Leaders for Abusive Behavior Toward Women.  The Service Employees International Union, the second-largest labor union in the U.S., has fired a senior staff member and accepted the resignation of another following allegations of workplace harassment at the organization.  "These personnel actions are the culmination of this stage of the investigation which brought to light the serious problems related to abusive behavior towards staff, predominantly female staff," an SEIU spokeswoman said in an email.  Kendall Fells, one of the top national leaders of SEIU's "Fight For 15" campaign, has resigned, according to a person familiar with the actions.  Fells declined to comment.  Detroit leader Mark Raleigh was fired, the person said.

San Juan mayor:  Energy company 'threatening not to do their job'.  The mayor of San Juan said the small company tasked with restoring power to Puerto Rico is threatening to pull out their services over her criticism of their contract.  "We've got 44 linemen rebuilding power lines in your city & 40 more men just arrived.  Do you want us to send them back or keep working?" Whitefish Energy tweeted Wednesday [10/25/2017].  The tweet was in response to Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz's request for more transparency about their $300 million contract, which has faced scrutiny because of potential conflicts of interest.

The Editor says...
Hmmm.  They have 44 linemen working on a $300 million contract.  That's 6.8 million dollars per lineman.  That's a lot of overhead.

Top Union Executive in Fight for $15 Resigns After Complaints of Misconduct With Staff.  One of the top labor figures in the Fight for $15 minimum wage campaign on Monday resigned from his senior position at the Service Employees International Union amid complaints about his sexual conduct toward staffers.  Scott Courtney's resignation as executive vice president of the SEIU and a member of the union comes a week after SEIU President Mary Kay Henry suspended him based on preliminary information from an internal investigation.

AFL-CIO's Trumka:  WH Officials We Could Have Worked With on Trade 'Turned Out to Be Racist'.  AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka recently stepped down from the White House American Manufacturing Council, citing President Trump's response to Charlottesville.  And now he's sounding off on "racists" in the White House.  Trumka said there were "two factions" in the White House he observed: the Wall Streeters and the people who had policies on trade he could have supported.  Unfortunately, as he added, there was one tiny problem:  "They turned out to be racist."

Angry White Boys.  [Scroll down]  I was also the target of a years-long picket by Philadelphia Teamsters, who were displeased that I had been involved in starting a business in the city without their permission.  We owned no vehicles and employed no drivers, but the Teamsters insisted that they were entitled to a generous contract nonetheless.  But Teamsters are expensive — so expensive even the Teamsters can't afford to use them, which is why the protest line outside my office was staffed by one lonely picket captain and a bunch of guys hired (at something less than union wages, I expect) from the local homeless shelter.

So AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka is suddenly against violence?  AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka has loudly announced he's resigning from the president's manufacturing council, to protest, of all things, violence.  He's thrown racism, too, in the mix, baselessly accusing President Trump of it, in line with his long history of race-baiting.  But the doozy is his newfound sudden aversion to violence.  Up until now, violence has always been his stock in trade.

Unions plan massive anti-Trump strike.  More than 300,000 workers are planning to walk out of their jobs in protest of President Trump on International Workers Day, according to a new report.  The report by Buzzfeed News said that "350,000 service workers plan to strike on May 1, a traditional day for labor activism across the world, in the most direct attempt yet by organized labor to capture the energy from a resurgent wave of activism across the country since the election of Donald Trump."  The Service Employees International Union, which endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president back in 2015, will be a large component of the protest.

Home Caregivers, Alleging Fraud, Push to Decertify Union That Deducts Dues.  When the union representative came to her door last month, Mary Barton invited the cheerful young woman in because she seemed friendly, and it was raining.  But about two weeks ago, that visit to her home somehow led to $27.90 in union dues being deducted from Barton's benefit check as a home caregiver to her disabled daughter.  "She never said anything about [union] membership, and she just said we would like your support," Barton told The Daily Signal, describing the visit by the union rep who gave her name as Yuliya.  Now, Barton and her husband Mike are warning other caregivers in Minnesota's Twin Cities region not to fall for the same tactics.

Nurses union buses in outsiders to overpower counter-protesters.  At first glance, nurses from Montgomery County, Md., have created a sizable grassroots effort to unionize.  More than 50 turned out at Holy Cross Hospital in Silver Spring on Monday to rally in the cold.  But it was the anti-union nurses that appeared truly grassroots.  Not even half of the pro-union participants sported Holy Cross IDs or nurses' scrubs.  While some were former Holy Cross nurses, others have worked for AFL-CIO, AFCSME, Teamsters and the Democratic National Convention, according to the rally's Facebook event.

O'Hare Airport Workers Announce Strike Date.  O'Hare International Airport workers today announced they will strike on November 29 to avoid disrupting the Thanksgiving holiday travel rush.

Chicago O'Hare airport workers plan Thanksgiving strike.  Hundreds of workers at Chicago O'Hare International Airport are planning to strike during the Thanksgiving holiday, one of the busiest times at one of the country's busiest airports.  Janitors, baggage handlers, cabin cleaners and wheelchair attendants, who are not unionized but are working with the Service Employees International Union, are seeking a wage of $15 an hour.  Some are paid minimum wage, which is $8.25 in Illinois.

Public transit workers in Philadelphia go on strike as contract expires.  Public transportation workers in Philadelphia went on strike at midnight on Monday [10/31/2016] after they were unable to reach a contract agreement with the transit system that provides almost one million rides a day in and around the fifth largest U.S. city.

8 Times Liberals Claimed An Election Was Stolen Or Rigged.  [#1] Labor Union Leader Roseann Demoro:  The national vice president of the AFL-CIO wrote an article for Salon in which she explained how the Democratic Party primary was "rigged from the start."  She explained the debate times, media bias, and vote rigging were what kept Bernie Sanders from clinching the Democratic nomination for president.  Demoro also claimed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid met with casino owners where many caucuses were being held, in order to tamper with the election process.  "The Nevada caucuses were then rigged with massive voting irregularities such as casino owners orchestrating which workers would be allowed to vote and, in clear intimidation, openly monitoring how they voted," she wrote.

U.S. top court rejects bid to revive Wisconsin governor probe.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday [10/3/2016] rejected a request to revive an investigation in Wisconsin into whether Governor Scott Walker's campaign to withstand a union-backed 2012 recall election illegally coordinated with conservative advocacy groups aligned with him.  The justices, on the first day of their new term, let stand a 2015 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision to end the probe into whether the Republican governor and conservative groups violated campaign finance laws.

Companies Finally Start Fighting Back Against Organized Shakedowns.  Exhibit A is a case involving Texas-based Professional Janitorial Service and its years[-]long battle with the Service Employees International Union.  As it has done countless times before, the SEIU targeted the company with a vicious, all out "corporate campaign," designed to ruin the company's reputation and starve it of business, until it submitted to the SEIU's demands.  In this case, the union created fliers, emails, and op-eds to smear the company's reputation.  It sent thousands of letters to the firm's customers claiming that PJS was engaged in disreputable labor tactics.

This Union Employee Has Never Voted for His Union.  Of the 8 million unionized, private sector employees in the United States, 94 percent have never voted for their own labor union representation.  An hourly auto worker at the Ford Rawsonville Plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, Terry Bowman, told The Daily Signal that during his twenty years of employment at Ford he has never voted for the union that represents him.  "I have no power to represent myself in any way, shape, or form," Bowman, a UAW-Ford (United Automobile Workers) employee, told The Daily Signal.  "Everything that I have and do is based on that collective bargaining agreement that I have basically been forced to accept if I want to work at Ford Motor Company."  Bowman, 50, said union representation is forced upon the workers as a condition of employment.

Texas jury slams SEIU with $5M in damages.  How often do you see a labor union get taken to court over their shady, strong-arm tactics and actually be held to task?  If your answer was never then you're in for a pleasant surprise.  The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was dragged before a jury in Houston this summer and accused of waging a smear campaign designed to "kill" a cleaning company because they wouldn't let them organize their workers based on a secret ballot.

New audio:  Ted Strickland jokes that Scalia's death came 'at a good time'.  Ohio Senate candidate Ted Strickland joked about the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Monday [8/8/2016], saying it came "at a good time" for union workers since he was unable to cast the deciding vote in a March case that ended up in a 4-4 deadlock.  According to a video posted on YouTube Tuesday by NTK Network, Strickland made the remarks in Cleveland, telling AFL-CIO members that Scalia's death "saved labor" from a terrible decision in the case, which could have dealt a blow to the ability of public-sector unions to collect fees from those who decide against joining the union and pay for collective bargaining activities.

Philly airport workers vote to strike during the DNC.  Baggage handlers, wheelchair attendants, airplane cleaners, and other workers at Philadelphia International Airport voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to walk off their jobs in protest during the Democratic National Convention this month, according to a union that wants to organize them.  The workers are seeking better scheduling, clarity on sick pay, a more predictable disciplinary system, and to be able to unionize.

Belaboring Free Speech.  A federal judge barred the Labor Department from implementing a new policy that would force companies to disclose any advice they seek during union elections.  Texas District Court Judge Samuel Cummings granted an injunction against the Department of Labor's new disclosure requirements known as the Persuader Rule just days before the rule was to take effect.  Previously employers were forced to disclose their use of consultants and advisers who spoke with employees about the negative effects of unionization during organizing campaigns.  The Obama administration adopted a proposal in March that would force employers to make public any legal advice they sought regarding unionization regardless of whether those consultants actually interacted with employees.

Bernie Supporters Practice Getting Arrested At The Democratic Convention.  The big question this weekend in Chicago is how to turn the Bernie Sanders movement into a lasting element of Democratic politics.  For some of the Sanders faithful on Saturday afternoon, the answer was locking arms on a civic center floor and struggling as "police officers" pulled them apart and "arrested" them.  The People's Summit conference, sponsored by the National Nurses United — a progressive union that backed Sanders to the hilt during his run for president — is aimed at uniting all elements of progressivism into a single effort that exerts pressure on the Democratic Party and its presumptive presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.

The Great CEO-Worker 'Pay Gap' Is Nothing But A Union-Built Myth.  [The AFL-CIO] reports this year that the typical CEO running an S&P 500 firm received total compensation of $12.4 million in 2015 while the average rank-and-file worker was paid just $36,875 — a pay gap of 335-to-1.  But the AFL-CIO can only get such an inflated pay ratio by applying a series of statistical sleights of hand that result in an invalid apples-to-oranges comparison of the total compensation for CEOs to the cash wages of mostly part-time workers.  To start, the AFL-CIO only considers a very small sample of S&P 500 CEOs to get its 335-to-1 ratio.  Using a larger, more representative sample of CEOs produces a much smaller pay gap.

Union flips out over church's school pizza giveaway.  The controversy involves a church that received permission from the Seattle School District to serve free pizza to students at three area high schools.  A union representing public school cafeteria workers in Seattle, Washington erupted with rage last week — warning that the weekly pizza giveaway could result in cafeteria layoffs.

TSA's Union Power Grab:  Thousands Slowing Down Airports.  When it comes to public employee unions, there's no such thing as a coincidence.  All you travelers stuck in mile-long TSA security lines are pawns.  Convenient political pawns.  Big Labor bosses want more power and more money.  Stranded travelers are just the latest victims in this age-old game of D.C. extortion.  Union leaders want you to think the fault lies with a stingy Congress unwilling to fork over enough money to fill screener shortages.  White House spokesman Josh Earnest poured more partisan fuel on the fire last week by blaming the nationwide slowdowns on "the inability of Republicans in Congress to govern the country."

McDonald's workers rally in Times Square for $15 minimum wage.  Hundreds of raucous protesters, including striking Verizon employees, converged on a McDonald's restaurant in Times Square Thursday [4/14/2016] demanding a $15-an-hour minimum wage for fast food workers.

Video surfaces of man urinating on assembly line at Memphis Kellogg facility.  Kellogg is looking into the incident, and the FDA has started a criminal investigation.  The video was shot during the same time the company and the workers union fell into a nasty labor dispute and those employees were locked out.

New York-Area Ports Shut Down as Longshoremen Walk Off the Job.  Thousands of longshoremen in New York and New Jersey walked off the job on Friday [1/29/2016], grinding activity at some of the busiest ports on the East Coast to a halt and threatening to disrupt the delivery of goods across the region.  The walkout surprised many involved in the operation of the ports, according to officials, and the reasons behind the move were not immediately clear.

How the National Teachers Union Usurped a Local Election.  [Scroll down]  The unions promptly sent in a full-time organizer from Detroit, forty-eight embedded operatives from eighteen states, as well as a specialist to help coordinate "blitzes, marches, rallies, and other direct actions," all intended to agitate and disrupt our community.  A Seattle-based strategies firm was hired to "beat these [conservative] b*stards," and children were encouraged by their teachers to walk out of classes in protest.  My daughter's school was marked up with hate graffiti, our board meetings were constantly interrupted by bellicose catcalls, and on more than one occasion we required police escorts to and from our cars.

Bernie Sanders has a Eugene V. Debs problem.  Eugene V. Debs is Bernie Sanders' political hero.  A picture of the socialist union organizer hung in city hall when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont.  A plaque honoring Debs is now by the window in Sanders' Senate office.  In 1979, Sanders even directed a glowing half-hour tribute — released on vinyl record — to "a socialist, a revolutionary and probably the most effective and popular leader that the American working class has ever had."  Debs ran for president five times between 1900 and 1920, earning 6 percent of the national popular vote in 1912.  He spent six months in jail in 1895 for leading a railroad strike despite a court ruling that it was illegal.  He went to prison in 1918 for violating the Espionage Act by urging resistance to the draft during World War I.  Debs led his 1920 campaign from a federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

UAW goons intimidating workers who opt out of membership by publishing their names.  There is a long history of unions intimidating those who don't support them.

UAW unit publishes names of workers opting out of union.  A local United Auto Workers chapter in Warren is singling out workers who decide to opt out of the union.  In a recent UAW Local 412 newsletter obtained by The Detroit News, a list of 43 workers "who choose not to pay their fair share" was published alongside "conditions" that will apply to workers who opt out and no longer pay — or partially pay — union dues.  Listed conditions for "ex-UAW members" range from rudimentary things such as not being allowed to attend union functions or vote in local elections, to having to "pay all unpaid dues and/or dues in arrears as well as an initiation fee" if one decides to rejoin the union.

Racism: 'White Men Must Be Stopped' Says Salon Magazine.  Originally published on Alternet under the equally racist title "The Future of Life Depends on Bringing the 500-Year Rampage of the White Man to a Halt," [Detroit labor activist Frank] Joyce throws punches wildly, using every bit of guilt inducing mumbo-jumbo he can muster up to make his case that white men are biggest problem facing the planet and it's the white people reading his article who need to do the "restraining" of white people.

Reality bites the Teamsters.  The bombshell indictment of five Teamsters accused of trying to shake down a "Top Chef" crew left Mayor Martin J. Walsh fielding awkward questions about City Hall's place in the scathing sweep and his ties to the oft-troubled union.  U.S. Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz slammed members of Teamsters Local 25 for engaging in "old-school thug tactics" after her office said they tried intimidating the TV crew of the popular Bravo network cooking show to give the union jobs while it filmed in Boston in 2014.

All Hail The Unions! Just Kidding, You're Awful.  Again and again they prove that the end goal isn't to get the most children the best education, but to maintain their power and ability to exact dues from every teacher working in the state.  Even going so far as to vote to, in essence, hold hostage Washington students during their yearly strike in order to bend the state to their contract demands.  As it stands right now over 1,000 students will be without schools in the next 20 days if the ruling is upheld.

Why is union holding a teacher's salary hostage?  Diversité is a word high school French teacher Linda Misja knows well.  Hanging in her Pennsylvania public school classroom is a poster that reads:  "Everyone is different.  Respect the differences."  Sadly, leaders of the state's largest teachers union aren't kindred spirits.  They're holding hostage $2,000 of Misja's pay until she agrees to send the money to a charity they choose rather than one she believes in.  Misja, a Catholic, is a former instructor for home-bound teens.  She volunteered to help young mothers make up classes missed due to pregnancy, enabling them to graduate high school.  Now, she wants to fund a charity that cares for teenage mothers in a pro-life environment.  But teachers union officials said no.

Maine Sign Language Interpreter Has to Pay Nearly $1K in Fees Each Year to Legally Work.  Arricka Nowland is no stranger to fees.  Fees to renew her certification as an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter in the state of Maine, fees to renew her national certification with the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID), fees to take required continuing education courses — she's seen and paid them all.  It's all a part of Maine's occupational licensing agenda, or the process by which the state regulates workers, seeking to protect consumers' health and safety interests as well as provide benefits to workers.  In total, Nowland pays nearly $1,000 per year just to be able to work part-time.

Wisconsin Supreme Court ends 'John Doe' investigations.  The Wisconsin state Supreme Court has ruled 4-2 that the "John Doe" investigations targeting Governor Walker and several conservative groups in the state should be ended, and that no violations of the campaign finance law occurred.  Thus ends one of the most bizarre and frightening chapters in the history of American law enforcement.  The investigation into whether the Walker campaign colluded with outside groups was marked by pre-dawn SWAT raids on ordinary people's homes, as the hyper-partisan prosecutor — whose wife was an official with a local teachers' union — sought to intimidate conservatives statewide.

[Offensive] Sign Shows Up At Nation's Largest Teachers Union-Funded Protest.  Despite the name "Wisconsin Jobs Now," the small, radical group has spent considerable time and energy in recent months protesting police tactics. [...] The National Education Association is a major financial donor for Wisconsin Jobs Now.  The teachers union — the largest in the United States — gave $125,000 to Wisconsin Jobs Now in 2014 alone.

Why Don't Liberals Care About Black-on-Black Killing?  [Scroll down]  This ruling-class tolerance for lower-class violence is not new.  We've had urban gangs in America at least since the Irish gangs of the mid 19th century.  We've had Jewish gangs and Bugsy Siegel running Las Vegas.  We've had the Italians and the Mafia.  We've had the black Crips and Bloods for a while and now we've got Hispanic gangs.  And then there are unions.  The point of a labor union is intimidation, and not just intimidation of employers.  The whole point of the strike and the picket is to intimidate workers eager for a job from hiring on at picketed employers.  And liberals are fine with that.

How the dockworker unions are robbing the country.  There's a very solid opinion piece at USA Today this week which speaks to the recent work slowdown (we don't want to say "strike" I suppose) on west coast docks by members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).  They are in the midst of a new round of contract negotiations and have tied up the flow of goods in some of the nation's busiest ports to "leverage" their bargaining position.  This has not been just some minor inconvenience.

How Obama is allowing a union to hold the economy hostage.  PMA claims it has offered to raise the dockworkers' pay by about 3 percent annually over the next five years, from $35.68 to $40.68 per hour, among other concessions.  (In fact, with overtime the workers already make an average of more than $50 per hour.)  But this isn't enough for the longshoremen, who have engaged in work slowages and other acts of sabotage on the job ever since their contract expired in an effort to gain negotiating leverage.

IBEW Incurs Wrath of Sheet Metal Workers' Union For Crossing Picket Line.  San Francisco is generally known as a "union town," where union brothers and sisters share in their gains and losses... together.  Where the union term 'solidarity' still means sticking together.  It appears, though, that times, they are a changin' as the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has gone and done the unthinkable — crossed a fellow union's picket line.

Union President Makes Playground Threat To Congress.  How does the union's belligerent, divisive attitude help government function?  How does it make government better at the few jobs it was intended to do?  The answer to both is it doesn't.  That alone might explain why the union is so strong in Washington that it can breezily intimidate lawmakers.  The capital is no longer merely the seat of government, it is the center of coercion, corruption, power, wealthy bureaucrats, well-heeled lobbyists, special interests, favoritism, onerous rulemaking and much harm.  The idea of keeping government small has been replaced with the drive to make government, not business, the business of America.

$1,200-a-Day Union Workers Force Shut-Down of 29 West Coast Ports.  The Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) announced that loading and unloading operations at all 29 West Coast ports would temporarily be suspended this weekend in response to union slowdowns that brought freight movements at the ports to a near standstill.  PMA members stated that they cannot afford the almost $1,200 per day cost to employ International Longshore and Warehouse Union members to do little work.

United Steelworkers Union tells members to go on strike at major refineries.  The United Steelworkers union told its workers at nine U.S. refineries and chemical plants to strike early Sunday morning, though both sides have said they still hope to reach an agreement over pay, benefits and safety.  Negotiations between U.S. refiners and the union failed to reach a deal by a 12:01 a.m. Sunday [2/1/2015] deadline.  USW workers have been instructed to finish their shifts and then leave nine refineries from Houston, Texas to the Los Angeles, Calif.

Here's One Of Mary Landrieu's Less-Friendly Union Thug Supporters.  The clip [in this article] was recorded last night [12/1/2014] in Baton Rouge, outside of the venue of the debate between Bill Cassidy and Mary Landrieu.  In it, you'll see conservative activist Anita Moncrief, who became famous after acting as a whistleblower in the 2009 ACORN scandals, engaged with a Mary Landrieu supporter from one of the local unions.  Moncrief is in town working with the Black Conservatives Fund in its efforts to beat Landrieu.

Mary Landrieu Supporters Silence Black Activists & Assault Journalist.  Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu and her allies prove once again that the Democrats idea of the First Amendment is shouting down conservatives voices, especially black conservatives.  I've learned that if you stand with those black conservatives, watch out because you might just get smacked by an out of control Democrat.  I was and I have the video to prove it.

SEIU Circumvents Supreme Court Ruling.  In a blatant attempt to circumvent the Harris v. Quinn Supreme Court ruling, the Service Employees International Union has devised a scheme where Illinois home care workers are still required to listen to SEIU officials' union membership pitch and receive membership cards.  These mandatory sessions are paid for by the state of Illinois.  The Supreme Court ruled that home care workers cannot be foreced to join a union in order to receive a government stipend.  But the state government has kowtowed to SEIU union officials and aided in their campaign to force dues on unwilling workers.

40,000 Telecom Workers Don't Want to Join Union but Must Pay Mandatory Dues.  Based on the union's 2014 annual report to the U.S. Department of Labor, CWA had 623,020 members and 43,353 "agency fee payers" as of May 31.  CWA takes mandatory fees from workers in private industry and in taxpayer-funded government jobs.  Many workers who decline union membership can be forced to pay agency fees of slightly less than CWA's typical 1.3 percent dues rate.

Union demands driving railcar jobs out of California, Japanese firm says.  A Japanese company's much-celebrated plans to build a light-rail manufacturing plant in Palmdale appear all but dead after months of clashes with local labor unions and community groups.  Kinkisharyo International of Osaka said it is now looking at factory sites outside California, saying pressure from organized labor has made it difficult to do business in the state.  Union officials and activists, however, argue they are simply trying to hold the company to environmental rules it should be following.

UAW Puts Out List of 'Scabs' in Tennessee.  The United Auto Workers distributed a list of "scab" workers to members at a plant in right to work Tennessee in an effort to intimidate non-union workers, according to one longtime GM employee.  UAW Local 1853 published a "Scab Report," listing the names and work stations of more than 40 workers at the Spring Hill General Motors plant.  The list has found its way into the plant, according to a photo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.  "The following individuals are NON-dues paying workers.  They have chosen to STOP paying Union Dues and still reap the rewards of your negotiated benefits," the sign says.  "If you work near one of these people listed please explain the importance of Solidarity and the power of collective bargaining."

Protests for $15 fast food minimum wage fizzle.  On Thursday, fast food and home healthcare workers across the country walked away from their jobs and joined the "Fight for $15," an SEIU-backed movement demanding a $15 minimum wage and unabridged union rights for fast food workers.  In the past, organizers and participants have largely avoided trouble with law enforcement.  This time, however, protesters came armed with a mandate from on high to engage in civil disobedience to the point of arrest.

Obama's Department of Labor Bans Employees From Talking To The Daily Caller.  As we celebrate the annual day of paid rest arbitrated into our calendar by powerful 19th century New York labor unions, we at The Daily Caller are also celebrating another milestone:  We're banned from talking to the Department of Labor.  Department of Labor (DOL) Office of Public Affairs senior advisor Carl Fillichio placed TheDC as well as National Review on the department's permanent "no-contact list" in a profanity-laden rant at a March 31 staff meeting.

'Top Chef' Host Padma Lakshmi And Crew Flambéed By Boston Teamsters.  The Teamsters picketers were already mad.  By the time Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi's car pulled up to the Steel & Rye restaurant in the picturesque New England town of Milton just outside Boston, one of them ran up to her car and screamed, "We're gonna bash that pretty face in, you f***ing whore!"

United We Dream aka SEIU & Teamsters Occupy Washington.  Whenever we see yet another movement group pushing for immigration reform, or in this case, amnesty, you can be sure someone like SEIU is not far behind.

Billions at risk as West Coast port contract ends.  [T]he contract that covers nearly 20,000 dockworkers is set to expire, and businesses that trade in everything from apples to iPhones are worried about disruptions just as the crush of cargo for the back-to-school and holiday seasons begins.

Government union wants 'Duck Dynasty' fans fired.  A union representing federal employees at Eglin Air Force base in Florida is demanding that two senior management officials be removed from their posts because they put decals on their personal trucks supporting Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson.

Wisconsin Mobs: Thugs in Union Cause.  Law enforcement agencies reported "numerous threats against elected officials," such as:  "We will hunt you down.  We will slit your throats.  We will drink your blood.  I will have your decapitated head on a pike in the Madison town square.  This is your last warning."  "I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records.  We have all planned to assult [sic] you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head."  A note pushed under the office door of Sen. Glenn Grothman read:  "The ONLY GOOD Republican is a DEAD Republican."

The Labor Union that Runs the Media.  One of the major speakers at last week's "New Populism" conference was Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America (CWA), a labor union which represents on-line writers, reporters, editorial assistants, editorial artists and correspondents at major news organizations.  Cohen gave his speech after returning from the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) conference, where Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, was announced as winner of the title of "the world's worst boss" for trying to keep prices low for consumers and opposing union control of his workplace.  Bezos, the new owner of The Washington Post, will have to negotiate with The Newspaper Guild, which merged with the CWA in 1995 and represents nearly 900 editorial and newsroom workers at the Post.

SEIU's 'Occupy' Fast Food.  Global efforts continue by SEIU to convince everyone they should be able to raise a family on McDonald's entry level wages.  Hoping for a global minimum wage revolt, instigating by organizers has taken place all over the globe. [...] Naquasia was not an organic result of a grassroots movement, but a specifically recruited pawn for SEIU.

Employee Rights Act would make unions accountable to members.  For proof that labor unions don't have employees' best interests in mind, look no further than the SEIU's recent decision to snarl rush-hour traffic in downtown Pittsburgh.  This stunt was part of a broader, multiyear campaign to unionize employees at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.  By inconveniencing thousands of Pennsylvanians who just wanted to get to work, UPMC demonstrated organized labor's regard for its own power over the interests of working people.

Union leader representing news industry joins group that shuns news coverage.  Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, is a member of the Democracy Alliance, a Democratic donor network that has raised more than $30 million.  CWA senior director George Kohl joined the network last year.  The group is highly secretive and goes to great efforts to prevent any reporters from covering its activities.  At a recent gathering in Chicago, alliance members called security on Politico reporter Kenneth P. Vogel for trying to interview a member.  That is pretty ironic because one of the groups that CWA represents is ... reporters.

Postal workers plan protest uptown.  U.S. Postal Service workers are planning a protest uptown Thursday [4/24/2014], as they rally against a plan to sell more postal services at Staples without postal service employees.  The 220,000-member American Postal Workers Union has been fighting the USPS for months over the Staples plan.  In November, the postal service began placing counters selling stamps and offering services such as sending packages and priority and certified mail in more than 80 Staples stores.

Obama admin wants to require companies to give workers' numbers, addresses to unions before labor elections.  The Obama administration is poised to change regulations to allow for union "ambush elections" in which workers have less time to decide whether or not to join a union — and in which workers' phone numbers and home addresses are provided to unions.  The administration's National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) proposed rules would allow for union elections — in which workers at a company vote whether or not to unionize — to be held 10 days after a petition is filed.  And what, exactly, would be happening to the unions during those 10 days?  The new rules require employers to disclose workers' personal information, including phone numbers, home addresses, and information about when they work their shifts.  Insiders close to the situation believe the new rules will almost certainly go into effect with few or no fundamental changes.

Labor Fascism in Chattanooga.  As the labor movement tells the story, two months ago, the silly, ungrateful Volkswagen factory workers in Tennessee foolishly rejected the generous invitation of the company and the United Auto Workers to welcome the Detroit-killing union with open arms.  In an election supervised by the federal National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the workers in VW's Chattanooga plant rejected UAW representation by a vote of 712 to 626.  Amazingly, the UAW and the automaker both refuse to take the workers' "no" for an answer.  The two sides are acting in unison to overturn the democratically expressed will of the workers.

Union threatens retribution for House Dems opposing Keystone.  A top building trades union is launching a midterm-election assault on House Democrats who oppose construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.  A letter distributed Friday [4/11/2014] by the Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) to the districts of 27 House Democrats calls for union members to make sure their representative "feels the power and the fury of LIUNA this November."  Their crime:  signing a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry last month urging him to reject Keystone, which would carry oil sands from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries.

SEIU Uses Federal Inspections to Target Houston Small Business.  Union organizers are showing up at Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspections of an open-shop business that has been targeted by the country's second-largest union.  Professional Janitorial Service (PJS), the largest non-union janitorial company in Houston, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) haven't gotten along for seven years.  The company is currently suing SEIU for $9 million, alleging that the union has repeatedly slandered it.

Manufacturing Outrage.  [Scroll down]  The group, which is supported by prominent labor unions such as the SEIU, organized several similar protests in 2011 and 2012 demanding higher wages.  Fast food locations are generally owned and operated by individual franchise owners who pay a set amount to parent companies to do business under the company umbrella.  Wage theft perpetrated by franchisees has attracted increasing attention in recent months after lucrative lawsuits and state investigations into big-name brands, including Dominos and McDonalds.  Mike Paranzino, spokesman for ROC Exposed, a union front group watchdog, said the protesters are trying to force parent corporations to pay up for the misdeeds of franchise owners.

Fast-food protests to spotlight 'wage theft'.  It's part of an ongoing campaign by labor groups to build support for pay of $15 an hour and bring attention to the rights of low-wage workers.

Union reps reportedly intimidate VW employees ahead of vote.  United Auto Workers (UAW) representatives reportedly intimidated workers at a Tennessee Volkswagen facility Tuesday [2/4/2014], one week before employees there are scheduled to cast their vote on union membership.  UAW members paced up and down assembly lines in the Chattanooga VW plant, each wearing goggles and black T-shirts emblazoned with the letters, "UAW," according to The Daily Caller.  The union's battle to bring Volkswagen's 1,600 employees into its fold is already shaping up to be bitter and factious.

Mr. President, Suspend Davis-Bacon.  [The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931] unnecessarily inflates construction costs, imposes wasteful bureaucratic paperwork requirements on contractors, and allocates employment opportunities unfairly.  It would seriously undermine this latest phase of the president's proposed infrastructure program.  But, of course, the statute is the sacred cow of labor unions.

Staples might save Post Office, unless unions get their way.  We all know the Post Office is hemorrhaging money.  So cutting costs is now Job One.  And what better way to cut costs, and enhance service in the process, than by outsourcing their retail operations?  Naturally, the unionistas are teed off.

Unions threaten protests, boycotts over Postal Service's Staples outlets.  The opening of Postal Service retail centers in dozens of Staples stores around the country is being met with threats of protests and boycotts by the agency's unions.

AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka getting 'grief' from members over Obamacare.  Trumka made the comments in response to a question from Politico reporter Mike Allen during a breakfast event hosted by the news website.  Allen wanted to know if Trumka, who has been an enthusiastic backer of the law since it passed, was getting angry responses from rank-and-file members.

Teamsters allege right-to-work laws are 'slavery'.  Michigan labor unions are understandably upset over the Wolverine State's adoption of a right-to-work law and are fighting it in every way they can.  Detroit-based Teamsters Local 214 has gone so far as to argue that it violates anti-slavery laws.

SEIU Prepares Airport Protests to Snag Holiday Travel.  Just when you think your holiday travel is safe, the Service Employees International Union is ready to help ruin the holidays.  Employees of private contractors at New York airports congregated at LaGuardia's Terminal B on Tuesday [11/12/2013] to protest their wages — what they call "poverty wages and poor working conditions."

Supreme Court to Take Up Challenges to Union Practices.  Labor leaders and businesses are closely watching a Supreme Court case to be argued this Wednesday [11/13/2013] that involves a popular strategy used by unions to successfully organize hundreds of thousands of workers.  That strategy — widely deployed by the Service Employees International Union and the Unite Here hotel workers union — involves pressuring an employer into signing a so-called neutrality agreement in which the employer promises not to oppose a unionization drive.

Showdown in Seattle: Boeing vs. Union.  A dramatic showdown is underway in the State of Washington, pitting Boeing against its largest labor union, the International Association of Machinists (IAM).  If the union, voting Wednesday, rejects a proposed contract that includes lower health care benefits, Boeing is threatening to move production of its next generation airliner, the 777X, out of the Puget Sound region, to such locations as Charleston, SC (where it is assembling the new 787) or Texas, right-to-work states where the union's demands would hold no sway.

Big Labor blocking workers from using new right-to-work laws.  Right-to-work laws protect workers against being forced to either join a union or pay dues to one as a condition of employment.  Unions insist on these provisions, called "security clauses," in their contracts with employers, even though they are barred in 24 states.  Michigan approved its right-to-work law in January, making it the 24th and most recent state to do so.

Florida Labor Union Accused Of Breaking Federal Law To Organize Casino.  The Supreme Court will hear a case in November that could drastically curtail the ability of unions to collect personal information of workers they are trying to organize.  Martin Mulhall, a groundkeeper for Mardi Gras Gaming, alleged that the Florida casino traded the personal information of non-union employees to UNITE-HERE, a hospitality union, in exchange for the union's endorsement of a bill that would expand gambling in the state.  Mulhall said that the union used the personal information, as well as access to casino grounds, to wage a 2004 card-check campaign, which would allow the organization of the casino without a secret ballot election.

Tennessee autoworkers claim they were tricked by the UAW.  Autoworkers at a Tennessee Volkswagen plant say they've been tricked into supporting a drive to bring in the union.  Workers at the two-year-old Chattanooga plant informally indicated support for bringing in the United Auto Workers, a decision that could pave the way for letting the powerhouse labor organization represent workers in collective bargaining.  However, since Tennessee is one of 24 so-called "Right to Work" states, plant employees don't have to sign up or contribute dues.

Fraud alleged in auto plant 'card check' union organizing bid.  Eight workers at a Chattanooga, Tenn., Volkswagen plant have alleged that United Auto Workers officials used "misrepresentations, coercion, threats, and promises" in an attempt to organize the plant.  In charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board Wednesday, the eight allege that union officials lied to them, claiming that signing union cards did not count as a vote to join.  In fact, the cards were presented by the union to the company as proof the workers wanted to organize.  The workers further allege that the UAW resisted giving the cards back after they learned of their true purpose.  The workers were told they had to appear in-person at the union's office to get the cards back.

VW Employees Claim UAW Misled Them.  Volkswagen (VW) workers are claiming that the United Auto Workers (UAW) union used "misleading tactics" in its push to unionize a plant in right-to-work Tennessee.  UAW regional director Gary Casteel said on Sept. 12 that a majority of 2,500 workers at VW's Chattanooga, Tenn. plant signed cards endorsing union organization.  Workers came out less than two weeks later alleging that UAW organizers misled employees about what they were signing, according to a complaint filed to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Union Thugs Disrupt Event on Labor Reform; Police Arrest Ensues.  The left talks a good game when it comes to 'choice'.  But, their actions time and again demonstrate that the idea of choice only applies to instances that they determine.  When it comes to a person's choice regarding whether or not to join a union, they will not only argue against that 'choice', they will resort to violent and dirty tactics to force their will and desire for control and union dues upon that person.

With labor negotiations stalled, Star-Ledger publisher again threatens to shut down paper.  With union negotiations at a stalemate, The Star-Ledger's publisher once again today [9/5/2013] threatened to shut down the newspaper by the end of the year if millions of dollars in labor concessions are not forthcoming.

Walmart workers to strike for higher wage, right to unionize.  Thousands of Walmart employees around the country will hold a massive strike on Thursday [9/5/2013], demanding higher wages, the right to unionize and the rehiring of more than 70 employees fired for striking earlier in the summer.  The strike is being organized by a group called "OUR Walmart," according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  It comes on heels of last week's strike by fast food workers with similar demands.

The Editor says...
Here is a bit of advice for the union organizers:  If you are employed by a store, that doesn't make it your store.

Union Front Groups Agitate for Higher Restaurant Wages.  Union front groups turned out hundreds of fast food workers from dozens of cities demanding union representation and $15 minimum wages.  Service Employees International Union, one of the largest Democratic special interest groups, and activists with Restaurant Opportunity Center, a nonprofit union front group, inspired the mass demonstrations that closed down fast food joints from New York City to San Francisco.

Ford gets a lesson in Chicago muscle.  If you wonder why this jobs-hungry city has a reputation as a hard place to do business, read on.  Looks to us like developers of a big Ford dealership planned for the North Side got tutored in Chicago-style political muscle.  It's a familiar story in a city and state where elected officials, in the words of Illinois Chamber of Commerce chief Doug Whitley, treat potential investments as opportunities for "threat, coercion, a union squeeze, a minority holdup, a double-dip, a no-show job, a kickback and a sweetheart deal."

SEIU Man: If McDonald's Strikers Don't Get What They Want, They May Contaminate the Food.  So I guess going to a New York McDonald's isn't a good idea right now. [...] The strike for $15/hour to flip burgers is stupid.  Working the line at McDonald's was never intended to be a full-time career.  It's an entry-level job at low wages to gain experience to help advance to the next, better, job.  Obama's wretched economy is forcing many Americans into underemployment, though, where benefits are scarce and wages are low.

Government unions flex muscles.  Big labor is threatening to strangle the liberal San Francisco Bay Area in order to protect the principle that government workers should be insulated from the effects of rising medical costs and enjoy generous pensions to which they contribute nothing.  Led by the ultra-leftist SEIU, the biggest union representing workers at BART and a progressive movement powerhouse, big labor orchestrated the Bay Area organized left to march and demonstrate at BART headquarters in Oakland Thursday night [8/1/2013].

SEIU threatening San Francisco Bay Area Greenies.  An ugly drama is playing out as the most powerful leftist union in the country is signaling its intention to paralyze the transit backbone of San Francisco Bay Area travel by striking BART, possibly for an extended period, devastating air quality and selling out the progressive coalition allies, environmentalists.

Labor Law Limits Volunteer Help for Sandy Relief.  A state statute now under review by state officials prohibits anyone under age 18 from coming within 30 feet of construction work.  While there is an exception for helping nonprofit organizations with affordable housing, no such exception currently exists for disaster relief.

Union bosses threaten Hurricane Sandy cleanup contractors, their families.  Unionized local employees repeatedly harassed and intimidated non-union workers of a private disaster cleanup firm that won a government contract to restore Long Island, New York, in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.  The vice president of the union even made threats against the wife and kids of one of the workers.  That worker felt it necessary to call the police and pursue other security measures to protect his family, a source told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Top 50 Liberal Media Bias Examples.  [#50]  Unions:  Unions have always been given a pass by the media.  Take AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, for instance.  Trumka has a long history of inciting violence as well as partaking in such.  In the 90s Trumka was even involved in a murder.  Yet the media ignores all this when reporting on his actions.  Unions commit violence all the time yet the media rarely bothers reporting it.  Now imagine if a right-wing group had such a history of violence?  Do you think we'd ever hear the end of it?

AFL-CIO Ignores The Union-Related Inferno That Killed 97 People.  On New Years Eve, 1986, negotiations between Local 901 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters — led by militant armored-truck-robber-turned-union-lawyer, Jorge Farinacci — and the management of the Hotel Dupont had come to a screeching halt when union members rejected management's final offer.  Ten minutes later, an inferno was ignited, sparked by the hands of union militants.

'Do you know a Scab lives in your neighborhood?'  A teachers strike in Strongsville, Ohio, has entered day five — and things are starting to get ugly.  Parma, a town located near Strongsville, was littered with flyers outing a so-called "scab" (i.e. a person substituting in place of one of the union members).  "I got a letter about four in the afternoon Wednesday," Parma resident Dan Dubecky told Fox 8 Cleveland.  "It starts off by saying, 'Do you know a scab lives in your neighborhood?'  It gives the gentleman's name, his address, his telephone number, personal information.  And then it says, 'Why is he a scab?'  And it talks about him crossing the picket line in Strongsville," said Dubecky.

9 Phony Martyrs of the Left.  [#2]  The McNamara Brothers:  No, this isn't a movie about Irish thugs, but rather the true story of John ("J. J.") and James ("J. B.") McNamara, two union members who bombed the Los Angeles Times building in 1911, killing 21 innocent newspaper employees and injuring over 100 more.  Both were found guilty, and James admitted setting the bomb, for which he got life in prison.  His accomplice, John, served 15 years in prison and went back to being a union organizer.

Goon City.  The engineer's assault was caught on tape.  But despite being charged with simple assault, reckless endangerment of another person, and conspiracy simple assault, two union members, Ryan P. Stewart and Philip J. Garraty, each got off with a $200.50 fine and 18 hours of community service.

Goon City — Part 2.  Jamie Lokoff hung up his phone and rushed downtown on a summer day in 2011.  An arsonist had targeted his new bar, MilkBoy, just weeks before it was scheduled to open.  The butcher paper lining the windows had caught fire, alerting a passerby to call 911.  The incident marked a sinister turn in the MilkBoy owners' ten-month battle with the carpenters' union over the construction of the bar and music venue in downtown Philadelphia.

Obama, The Left and the National Football League.  [Scroll down]  Demonstrably, the Left and Unions are joined at the hip in a corrupt manner that embraces extortion, violence, thuggery, threats, criminal acts, often the mafia and always the unspoken truths of "Nice business you got.  Shame if anything happened to it."  My example?  Let's start with Toyota and Starbucks and Jesse Jackson.  Shakedown covers his racketeering skills in detail.  Al Sharpton, the king of boycotts including Colgate, Chrysler and Macy's.  The experience of Sinclair Broadcasting at the hands of the Left's media machine.

Pay Up or Get Sued.  The president of Michigan's largest union is instructing officials to prepare to sue its own members, according to a leaked memo issued after the state adopted right-to-work laws in December.  Steven Cook, president of the Michigan Education Association, circulated an email to local unions officials and staff instructing them to monitor revenue streams in light of the right-to-work laws, which are set to go into effect on March 27, 2013.  The law allows workers to opt out of union membership unless they have an existing contract with their employer.

The Philadelphia Story.  The video [in this article] shows a Philadelphia union keeps non-union engineering contractors off the premises.  He tries to sneak past them to do his job and they crush him against the fence until he passes out.  Then they laugh at him.  When not similarly engaged they also use tire-busters and direct threats.  Maybe that's not news.  What is news is that the video was collected by the Pestronk brothers, a pair of developers, who used it and similar surveillance videos to fight back.  No they didn't go to the police.  They took the videos to the public.

Union Dissidents Fear Retaliation For Speaking Out.  There has been an undercurrent of dissent in the union ever since the company locked the gates of the Wilcox Street plant in November, but the unorganized faction has confined itself to speaking at union meetings and through anonymous flyers and Internet postings.  Until now, no one has spoken openly.

Lawmakers push for new laws to punish union sabotage.  Labor groups are immune from prosecution under the Hobbs Act, a 1946 provision that criminalized extortion and robbery using the threat or fear of force.  Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah) attempted to close that loophole last year with the Freedom from Union Violence Act (FUVA).  The bill never left committee but Lee has pledged to crack down on the sabotage and violence some unions use during labor disputes.  "Union violence and intimidation are serious issues and my legislation is an effort to close the loophole that protects unions from being held accountable for their actions," Lee said.  "Threatening workers and damaging property shouldn't be defended as 'legitimate union objectives' and the law should be clear about that."

Phila. police tie construction-site arson to union sabotage.  The site where Chestnut Hill Friends Meeting is building a new meetinghouse was damaged by arsonists during Christmas week, and police are now "absolutely" sure the attack was the result of a dispute between members of a Philadelphia construction union and the project's nonunion contractor.

Potential port strike shows that Big Labor needs big reform.  Over the past few months, we've witnessed the death of Hostess and its Twinkie (until someone buys the brand), a teacher strike in Chicago, a Thanksgiving Eve strike at Los Angeles International Airport, failed union walkouts at Wal-Mart and New York City's fast food restaurants, and an eight-day, $8 billion strike at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California.

Summary of Saul Alinsky's "Rules For Radicals".  Union organizers are often highly trained.  In many unions this training includes indoctrination in Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."  Saul Alinsky was a ruthless radical organizer.  He would stop at nothing to win.  Before he passed away in 1972 he published a book called "Rules for Radicals" in which he outlined his power tactics and questionable ethics.  Anyone interested in staying, or becoming, Union Free, whether in an organizing campaign or in a decertification or deauthorization election, ought to become familiar with these rules.

Pro-Union Activist Threatens the Michigan Governor: 'We'll Be at Your Daughter's Soccer Game'.  A speaker at a protest against Michigan's right-to-work legislation said that Republican governor Rick Snyder will "get no rest" from pro-union activists if Snyder signs the bill into law.

Union Thug to Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan, "We'll be at your daughter's soccer game".  Remember kids, this is how the left operates.  They want what they want, and if anyone stands in their way, they will be subjected to threats, attacks, intimidation, and harassment.  They aren't above threatening children, or families, or disrupting Church, because even God takes a back seat to the temper tantrums of the petulant left.

Right-to-work proponents demand justice for violence.  Conservative activists and supporters of Michigan's new right-to-work law gathered on the Statehouse lawn Thursday [12/13/2012] to demand justice for what they said were threats, intimidation and entrapment under a tent that was destroyed by union supporters during protests two days earlier by thousands of labor union activists.

MI Union destroys hot dog cart, calls owner an 'Uncle Tom' over right-to-work.  Clint Tarver's hot dog cart, which he has operated since 1996, is another casualty of the union protest against the right-to-work law.  Union members destroyed the cart and called Tarver an "Uncle Tom," among other racist epithets, for serving right-to-work proponents.  After destroying the Americans for Prosperity tent, where Tarver was catering hotdogs, the mob turned there [sic] attention to the hot dog cart.

Union Thugs Demolish Lansing, Michigan Hot Dog Vendor Clint Tarver's Equipment.  Everyone who has passed the hot dog cart knows what a kind and caring individual Clint is.  He never fails to bestow a smile or friendly greeting.  In no way [did] he provoke this attack, nor any of the behavior displayed toward him.

Union Goons Destroyed Man's Hot Dog Cart While Calling Him [Names].  So Mr. Tarver runs a business, semi retires, operates a hot dog cart for so long that it becomes a local icon, then gets himself hired by those Koch minions and somehow gets the unions' tolerant and thoughtful ones to call him names and wreck his business, er, if you're a liberal and buy the alternate history view of Tuesday's events.  That's one of the longest and weirdest false flag operations I've ever heard of.

Liberals: Political violence is okay (if it's for a really good cause).  Liberals are portrayed as nonviolent and peace-loving.  And some of them are.  But some on he left prefer an "ends-justify-the-means" mentality.  And that seems to be on full display right now.

Union Violence In Michigan Is No Tea Party.  The assault on a Fox News contributor protecting women and seniors in a tent is but the latest example of the civil discourse and respect for democracy the president's union supporters really have.

'Democratic Underground' Users Claim Steven Crowder Caused Michigan Union Violence.  Shame on Steven Crowder for brutally smashing his face down upon the tender closed fist of union member Tony Camargo.  Although the network news shows are carefully avoiding committing themselves to real journalism by not reporting on union violence in Michigan, those of us who have access to the censored news via the Web are well aware of what is actually happening.

Union Thugs? No Kidding.  Had King Electrical Services owner John King been shot by, say, a Tea Partyer, there'd be no end to the public pontificating from Washington's politicians and media commentators about their rhetoric or protests inciting violence.  It's quite a different story for the Lambertville, Mich., contractor who woke up in the dead of night a week ago found a silhouetted figure on his driveway spraying "SCAB" on the side of his vehicle.  The figure fired a gun at him before fleeing.

Money pours in to replace hot dog vendor's equipment destroyed at Capitol.  During Tuesday's [12/11/2012] mass demonstrations that attracted an estimated 10,000 to the Capitol lawn, protesters of the right-to-work law the Legislature was passing and voting on tore down a tent rented by the Michigan chapter of Americans for Prosperity.  Witnesses and Internet videos show protesters, some wearing union clothes, using knives or box cutters to cut the tent's ropes.  Clint Tarver, owner of Clint's Hot Dog Cart, said he was trapped inside as the tent came down and damaged about $400 in catering equipment.

Lansing Union Attack Victim: Assailant Wore Guy Fawkes-Like 'Devil Mask'.  Local Lansing Michigan hot dog vendor Clint Tarver was catering for Americans For Prosperity during the right-to-work demonstrations at the State Capitol on Tuesday [12/11/2012], when two men rushed into the tent.  In a video interview with Breitbart News, Clint claims one of the men wore a "Devil Mask."

This is who they are. This is what they do.  As the organized left, right down to Obama himself, ramp up pressure to keep Michigan's Governor Rick Snyder from signing right to work legislation into law, the hired thugs / "labor activists" they deploy to drive home the seriousness of their "suggestions" attack those who stand for fiscal responsibility and real freedom of speech and association — here, the tent of Americans for Prosperity, who have been helping in the effort to turn Michigan into a right to work state.

Union thug violence towards right-to-work supporters in Michigan.  Moral of the story, besides the obvious?  GET A CAMERA.  The Left STILL doesn't get how bad they look when they get recorded Acting Badly.

Union Violence in the Age of Obama.  Not so many moons ago, President Obama urged us all to "make sure that we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds."  He Who Heals advocated "a more civil and honest public discourse" in the wake of the January 2011 Tucson massacre.  As usual, though, the White House has granted Big Labor bullies a permanent waiver from the lofty edicts it issues to everyone else.

Hoffa predicts 'civil war' in Michigan.  Jimmy Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, said Tuesday [12/11/2012] he expects Michigan unions and lawmakers to break out into "civil war" after the state legislature passed right-to-work bills that would weaken unions' power.

AFSCME Openly Threatens WI Businesses.  Business owners are now receiving threatening letters telling them that, if they don't support government-sector unions, their businesses will be boycotted.

Michigan Dem on right-to-work law: There will be blood.  As protests against Michigan's right-to-work laws swelled, pro-union Democrat legislator Douglas Geiss took to the state House floor — and Twitter — to promise violence.

Democrats threaten violence on Michigan House floor.  "There will be blood," State Representative Douglas Geiss threatened from the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives today as the body debated legislation that would make Michigan the nation's 24th right to work state.

WH: 'There will be blood' might not mean real blood.  President Obama's spokesman cited the ambiguity of the statement, "there will be blood," as he avoided condemning the remark made by a Michigan Democrat who opposes the imminent state's right-to-work legislation.

Fox News contributor punched in face at pro-union protests in Michigan.  A Fox News contributor was punched in the face during a pro-union protest Tuesday [12/11/2012] in Michigan, one of a series of confrontations between union demonstrators and opponents on the day the state Legislature approved so-called "right to work" legislation that unions oppose.

Obama's Union Goons Assault Steven Crowder.  President Barack Obama owes conservative Steven Crowder — and the nation — an apology after union thugs, angered by right-to-work laws passed by the Michigan legislature today, assaulted Crowder several times in the capital city of Lansing, causing mild injuries.

MI Pro-Union Crowd Destroys Tent with People Inside.  A group of pro-union, progressive protesters leveled a large tent with people inside during Tuesday's demonstrations outside the Michigan Capitol building in Lansing against right to work legislation.  [Video clip.]

Right-to-Work Supporters Assaulted Multiple Times By Union Mob.  Steven Crowder peacefully confronted union protesters today in Lansing, Michigan when the mob turned violent.  Crowder was punched multiple times and, at one point, when his back was turned to the crowd as he was leaving a confrontation, he was pulled by the collar of his coat back into the mob to be assaulted again.

MI Right to-Work Battle: Union Members Shout Down Tea Party Counter-Protest.  Just a few minutes into the demonstration against Michigan's right to work legislation, Union loyalists show their disdain for free speech by instructing and shouting down members of the Tea Party on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol building.

Right to Sue.  Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder will make Michigan one of the largest right-to-work states in the country on Tuesday [12/11/2012], but opponents have vowed to fight the legislation.  "You can expect the lawsuits.  There's nothing to prevent the unions from filing suit, so they're going to do it," said Patrick Wright, a senior legal scholar at the conservative Mackinac Public Policy Center.

Worker Freedom Comes to Michigan?  As Michigan lawmakers prepare to strike a blow for worker freedom, organized labor is resorting to its old playbook in an effort to prevent the state from adopting "right to work" legislation" aimed at restoring the Rust Belt state's economic vitality.  True to form, the entrenched forces of organized labor that have been gnawing away at Michigan for decades are throwing a big, carefully stage-managed, media-saturated temper tantrum.

Memo To Strikers: You Could Have Killed Your Own Job.  For a week, an 800-member clerks' union shut down most of the vast Los Angeles-Long Beach seaport.  Who's winning?  Workers in Mexico.  Who's losing?  Workers in Southern California.

CA Union Shuts Down America's Largest Ports.  California may find itself in a disastrous fiscal situation, but that won't stop California's newly-empowered unions from flexing their muscle.  In the aftermath of the failure of Proposition 32, which would have prevented public sector unions from funding politicians, the unions are celebrating their confirmed power by striking.

Small union is causing big problems for ports.  The small band of strikers that has effectively shut down the nation's busiest shipping complex forced two huge cargo ships to head for other ports Thursday [11/29/2012] and kept at least three others away, hobbling an economic powerhouse in Southern California.  The disruption is costing an estimated $1 billion a day at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, on which some 600,000 truckers, dockworkers, trading companies and others depend for their livelihoods.

Happy Thanksgiving: Unions Shut Down Traffic to LAX.  Ready to fly out of Los Angeles today to get to your family before Thanksgiving?  Not so fast.  Los Angeles' labor unions have decided to protest on Thanksgiving Eve — one of the busiest travel days of the year — to snarl traffic around Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).  President Obama's favorite union, the Service Employees International Union, is spearheading the obnoxious effort; it's supposed to last from 11 a.m to 4 p.m., virtually the entire day.

NLRB sues to reinstate union saboteurs at nursing homes.  President Obama's National Labor Relations Board asked a judge this week to force a Connecticut nursing home to re-hire employees involved in a labor dispute, including the workers who sabotaged patient homes as they went on strike.  The Service Employees International Union members who worked at HealthBridge went on strike after rejecting the company's final offer in contract negotiations.

Update:
Endangering the Elderly.  Judge Robert Chatigny on Wednesday [12/12/2012] ordered Healthbridge Systems to lay off hundreds of replacement workers in order to make room for the 600 striking members of the SEIU Local 1199, one of the Atlantic region's most powerful unions.  Those workers walked out of their jobs over a contract dispute in July.  Some employees allegedly tampered with the identification materials and medical records of patients, including some suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's, on their way out the door.

Desperate Wisconsin Unions Resort to Alinsky Tactics.  [Scroll down]  Realizing that they could not win using aboveboard tactics, the unions went far beyond peaceful protest, engaging in dishonest, unethical and probably illegal activity.  Doctors were filmed at the protests fraudulently handing out notes to excuse state employees from work so they could protest. ... Efforts are also being made to sabotage the democratic process of the State Assembly.  Republicans took over the Wisconsin State Assembly last fall.  As the majority, they intend to pass Governor Walker's budget.  Yet the unions, with the complicity of the Democrat minority in the Senate, are trying to stop the Assembly from conducting business.  Protesters outside the Assembly are blocking legislators from entering the building to vote.  House Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald adjourned the Assembly early on Friday [2/18/2011] after receiving a call from Governor Walker warning him that he could not assure his safety nor that of his caucus members.

Update:
State board sanctions 11 more doctors for sick notes.  The Wisconsin Medical Examining Board on Wednesday [12/12/2012] sanctioned 11 more doctors for writing questionable sick notes to protesters demonstrating at the Capitol in February 2011.  The board reprimanded six doctors, who also took classes in medical record keeping or physical exams as part of their discipline.  The board said the doctors provided the notes without adequate documentation.

"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."

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