January 6, 2009 - 4:48 am - Posted by WTH
The L.A.Times has been doing great work exposing the corruption in the Service Employees International Union, one of the most powerful in the country, and they had a year end wrap-up of the criminality of the SEIU that is really a fantastic summation of the SEIU’s year in scandal….
A year of triumphs and scandals for SEIU
Union members and President Andy Stern helped put Obama in the White House. But a former top California leader is under federal investigation and a Bay Area local is feuding with the top brass.
-By Paul Pringle
The year might have ended on a purely triumphant note for Andy Stern, who heads the nation’s fastest-growing labor union and played a key supporting role in President-elect Barack Obama’s drive for the White House.
Instead, Stern has seen the Service Employees International Union jarred by a spending scandal and internecine feuding, and more recently by the favor-selling investigation that led to the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
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January 4, 2009 - 11:11 pm - Posted by WTH
Some new tough questions are being asked about Black Lake Golf Club, the luxury golf course owned by the United Auto Workers union in Cheboygan County, Michigan. Along with the multi-million dollar golf resort, the UAW also funds what it calls an “education center” with the funding connected to the resort.
As the UAW cried that it needed a bailout from Congress, its ownership of this luxury resort was revealed to the chagrin of union employees everywhere. Millions of dollars of union member’s dues money have been pumped into this project over the years, but now there are questions being raised as to just where large portions of this funding is disappearing to.
Research by Laborpains.org and Zarko Research and Consulting is raising several vexing questions of the UAW’s resort golf project. Large amounts of money seems to be unaccounted for and it even seems to show that pension benefits are being paid to “shadow employees” that do not seem to exist.
There is also a charge that the UAW is defrauding property tax receipts from the County and township in whose jurisdiction the luxury golf resort is situated. Records show that Cheboygan County and the township of Waverly are receiving property taxes based on a total property value of $13.7 million but on federal tax papers the UAW is claiming that the resort is worth $33.6 million. So, on one hand the UAW is telling the feds that they have a $33million dollar property while only paying local taxes on a value of $13 million.
According to Laborpains.org:
The difference between the UAW’s LM-2 and the Tax Tribunal filings amount to more than $21 million dollars, which would translate to around $770,000 in property taxes the UAW isn’t paying to Waverly Township each year, if you accept their LM-2 appraisal (the township’s treasurer advised me that the rate is around 3.6%).
That’s quite a difference. It should be remembered that these taxes are used for local schools and the like, so the UAW doesn’t appear to be a very good neighbor in Cheboygan County, does it?
But, according to Chet Zarko of Zarko Research and Consulting there is even more hanky panky at the resort than a mere evasion of local property taxes. It seems that there is a very large discrepancy in the reported costs of employee wages and the pension funding at the education center connected with the golf resort project.
It’s that the pension fund expenses appear to be really out-of-line with overall wages. So far out of line that you have to wonder exactly who is doing the work to get pension fund contributions. There’s a key piece of context here - the $5.91 million in pension fund contributions compares $3.25 million in wages. Normally, you’d expect the wages to be much higher than the pension contribution - 10 times or perhaps as little as 5-6 times. But not the other direction. And of the 3.25 million, 2.6 million is “general labor” - there is no way the room custodians and general labor are getting that gold-plated of a pension deal. The other half million is “administrative” wages - but even the hotel administrators are unlikely to be able to get away with such a self-dealing (unless they are something more than that to the union leadership).
So how does the UAW justify this “out-of-line” accounting with the educational center pension funds? Where and to whom is all this benefit money going, anyway?
It appears that there is a lot of shaky record keeping and shadowy operations connected with this Black Hills luxury golf club owned by the UAW. And, again, all the money tied up in this property is the money taken from the pockets of the hard working rank-and-file members of the American auto industry, the same industry in such dire straights this year.
As autoworkers across the country face an uncertain future, as pension funds every day appear on shaky grounds, someone needs to force the United Auto Workers union to account for these millions of dollars in accounting discrepancies.
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January 2, 2009 - 5:21 am - Posted by WTH
The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Big Labor is finding that it might have a bit less of a lock than it thought on its pet legislation, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Apparently, several southern Democrats — those that live in right to work states — as well as some moderates are signaling Senate Majority leader Harry Reid that they are not as interested in entertaining passage of the act as they were when they knew that the GOP was strong enough to filibuster it and when they had a president that stood ready to veto it.
Instead, union leaders now say they are being told card check won’t happen soon. It seems the Obama team plans to devote its opening months to important issues, like the economy, and has no intention of jumping straight into the mother of all labor brawls. It also seems Majority Leader Harry Reid, even with his new numbers, might not have what it takes to overcome a filibuster. It’s a case study in how quickly a political landscape can change, and how frequently the conventional wisdom is wrong.
Of course this little incident illustrates the insincerity of much of what goes on in the Democratic Party. These guys were happy to appear to vote on this measure when they knew that it wouldn’t pass. This way, they could go to their union thug supporters and pretend they were all for their anti-democratic idea in card check all along. But, when it comes to crunch time and they are finally in a position to vote for the law that they claimed they supported, suddenly they reveal that they were simply lying to their supporters. They really don’t support the bill because it is a jobs killer and it takes away people’s democratic rights.
Of course, it would have been better morally to simply admit their real stance on this bill in the first place. Had they have done that, we wouldn’t even be in a position where such an immoral bill could possibly pass. It would have been history long ago.
President Bush pulled this immoral triangulation once, too. He signed the unAmerican and unConstitutional McCain/Fiengold campaign finance “reform” bill expected the Supreme Court to shoot it down. Bush and his cohorts did not support that bill, but he triangulated, assuming that someone else would take the heat for getting rid of it. But Bush was shocked to find that the SCOTUS refused to take the bait and now, because Bush wouldn’t stand up for what is right and hoped to kick that can down the road to someone else, we are stuck with McLame/Fienmold.
When will we get a politician with some moral clarity and a backbone?
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January 2, 2009 - 4:53 am - Posted by WTH
The misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will take away the secret ballot for potential union members and force them to openly declare their preferences for or against a union, causing that worker to be easily open to intimidation by union thugs. This is a law currently in the table in Congress, one that Barack Obama has pledged to push through regardless of how it eliminates one of the oldest democratic rights there is.
But, now Missouri is trying to head off the possible federal enactment of “card check” (the provision that eliminates the secret ballot) by legislating that a secret ballot is protected by state law.
So, the question remains, can a state law supersede a federal law? After all, if Missouri passes their new Constitutional provision, it will come in direct conflict with the federal EFCA law if that bill gets passed in Washington.
Secret ballots would not only be guaranteed but required by Missouri law under a proposed constitutional amendment pitched yesterday.
State Sen. John Loudon, a Republican from Ballwin and co-chairman of the so-called Save Our Secret Ballot, or S.O.S., initiative in Missouri, filed for a citizen initiative petition that would put the amendment on the 2010 ballot.
Information of the S.O.S. initiative can be seen at the website: http://www.sosballot.org/.
The S.O.S. campaign maintains, in part, that:
There is an option: We can use state laws and state constitutions to create protection for secret ballots even if the federal government refuses to guarantee this right. We benefit from the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, who created a federal system so that states can protect rights even if the national government does not.
Let’s give this initiative all the support we can.
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December 31, 2008 - 11:42 pm - Posted by WTH
-By The Heritage Foundation
It has been quite a year for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). As the Los Angeles Times documents today, despite the fact 2008 was filled with SEIU corruption, intimidation, and violence, the largest union in North America still managed to spend $85 million electing Democrats across the country and President-elect Barack Obama to the White House. One shudders to think about the influence this multi-billion dollar racket will have at the federal level in the coming year. But before we get to their coming policy priorities, lets review their performance this past year:
- In April, violence erupted when members of California Nurses Association tried to sneak past SEIU organizers, who were blocking CNA efforts to represent the 6,000 nurses employed by LA County hospitals. Police arrested a CNA organizer for slapping an SEIU organizer and similar battles played out in states like Nevada and Ohio.
- In August, the president of the largest SEIU local in the country, former-Los Angeles local member Tyrone Freeman, resigned after the Los Angeles Times revealed that Freeman fleeced his fellow union members — who make about $9 an hour caring for the infirm and disabled — of over $1 million in 2006 and 2007 alone. When Freeman was first faced with the charges, he sent out “lieutenants” to force other union members to sign loyalty oaths supporting his continued presidency. According to the Los Angeles Times, SEIU national president Andy Stern had been repeatedly made aware of Freeman’s nefarious activities since 2001 but declined to do anything about them. His spokeswoman told the LAT: “Until we read these allegations in the L.A. Times, nobody ever brought before us serious credible evidence of wrongdoing.”
- In November, federal prosecutors revealed that the SEIU was a major player in Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s (D-IL) efforts to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat. Prosecutors have not yet accused the SEIU of specific knowledge of Blagojevich’s scheme, but a trio of SEIU officers who were also Blagojevich appointees have all faced varying degrees of scrutiny in the investigation. There is a well established history of pay-to-play behavior between the SEIU and Blagojevich. SEIU’s Illinois Political Action Committee gave Gov. Blagojevich $908,000, making it the single largest campaign contributor for his re-election campaign. In fact, labor unions comprised 9 of his top 15 donors. In turn, Blagojevich signed a state law handing over 49,000 state child care workers to SEIU local 880, which is run by the notorious community organizing group ACORN. The deal nearly tripled SEIU 880’s income from $7 million in 2005 to $21 in 2007.
This mafia like pattern of behavior by the SEIU should come as no surprise. Both the mob and organized labor have the same business model. US Court of Appeals judge for the 7th Circuit Richard Posner explains:
The goal of unions is to redistribute wealth from the owners and managers of firms, and from workers willing to work for very low wages, to the unionized workers and the union’s officers. Unions do this by organizing (or threatening) strikes that impose costs on employers. … Unions, in other words, are worker cartels. … There is also a long history of union corruption. And some union activity is extortionate: the union and the employer tacitly agree that as long as the employer gives the workers a wage increase slightly above the union dues, the union will leave the employer alone.
At a time when all of our businesses need to be as competitive as possible, parasitic and corrupt union influence is not what our economy needs. But that is exactly what Obama has planned for us. Referencing the SEIU’s support of his campaign for Illinois state senate, Obama wrote in his autobiography: “I owe those unions.” And so Obama is still pledging to support the SEIU’s top priority in 2009, the end of secret ballot elections in union organizing campaigns. A policy proposal that even 1972 Democratic nominee George McGovern believes is a threat to our nation.
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December 30, 2008 - 7:29 am - Posted by WTH
Another anti-EFCA editorial, this time in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
Big Labor Bailout
-By Richard Ebeling
The misnamed Employee Free Choice Act is a gift to Big Labor, intended to make it easier for union organizers to do what they’ve been unable to do on their own — grow their membership.
Much has been written about the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, or “card-check” bill, that Congress is expected to approve early in its new term. But few people have identified the controversial legislation for what it is: a bailout for Big Labor.
For decades now union membership has been declining in the United States, with the exception of public employee unions. In 1945, more than a third of all U.S. workers were union members. By the early 1980s that number had decreased to barely 20 percent of the work force.
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December 30, 2008 - 3:17 am - Posted by WTH
A good one from the Colorado Springs Gazette…
California Democratic Rep. Hilda Solis, as President-elect Obama’s choice to be secretary of Labor, will no doubt bring encouragement and even a touch of joy to union leaders everywhere. Whether the rest of us will have occasion to be pleased is another question.
The larger issue nobody wants to discuss is whether it is appropriate in a free country with a government of strictly limited powers, to have such a personage as secretary of Labor (or of Commerce, Education, Energy, or Health and Human Services for that matter). Given that the point is effectively mooted, however, it might be nice to wish that a secretary of Labor could be concerned with safeguarding the dignity and stressing the importance of labor of all kinds, including unpaid labor as well as intellectual labor, which is the source, through innovation and capital investment, of so much of our prosperity.
It is likely, however, given her record, that Solis will concern herself not so much with broader conceptions of labor as with the health of the union movement per se. She was first elected against a fellow Democrat with union backing and has voted as the AFL-CIO prefers 97 percent of the time while in Congress. Three-quarters of her campaign contributions have come from labor unions.
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December 28, 2008 - 11:40 pm - Posted by WTH
Judge Richard Posner ruminates about the viability of the United Auto Workers…
One of the reasons for the insolvency of the Detroit automakers (General Motors, Chrysler–and Ford, which appears to be insolvent too, despite its denials) is that their workers are paid higher wages, and receive much more generous benefits paid for by their employer, than the workers employed at the automobile plants, mainly in the South, owned by Toyota, Honda, and other foreign manufacturers. The total wage and benefit bill for the Detroit automakers is about $55 per hour, compared to $45 for workers in the foreign-owned plants, and the difference is plausibly ascribed to the fact that the Detroit automakers are unionized and the “foreign transplants” not. (The comparison excludes retiree benefits, a very large cost of the Detroit companies, but not an hourly labor cost.) This difference may seem small, considering that labor is only about 10 percent of the cost of making a car, but many of the workers at the companies that supply parts to the automakers (and the parts represent about 60 percent of the total cost of manufacturing the vehicle) are also represented by the United Auto Workers. Anyway, since the foreign transplants have other competitive advantages over the Detroit automakers, the latter can hardly afford to have even slightly higher labor costs.
When the auto bailout bill was being debated in Congress in November (ultimately it was voted down), Senator Corker said that he would support the bill if it conditioned the bailout on the Detroit automakers’ reducing their workers’ wages and benefits (to which the union would have to agree) to the level at the foreign-owned plants, as well as conform work rules to the work rules in those plants. The significance of the work rules must not be underestimated. As is common in unionized firms, the United Auto Workers has successfully negotiated not only for wages and benefits for the workers they represent but also for rules governing what tasks the workers can and cannot perform, how many workers must be assigned to a particular task, the order in which workers are to be laid off (usually it is in reverse order of seniority, because older workers tend to be stronger supporters of unionization than younger ones because the latter have better alternative employment prospects and so don’t worry as much about job security) in the event of a reduction in demand for the firm’s products, methods of discipline, and so forth. These work rules, collectively “featherbedding,” make it difficult for a firm to optimize its use of labor, and, like the higher wages and benefits that unions obtain, add to the firm’s labor costs relative to those of its nonunion competitors. A December 16 blog by Rand Simberg, http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/detroits-downturn-its-the-productivity-stupid/, presents a shocking picture of how work rules impair productivity at automobile plants at which the workers are represented by the United Auto Workers.
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December 26, 2008 - 12:01 am - Posted by WTH
TV News 4 in Detroit did an excellent expose on a few union bosses that routinely rip off the unions and the auto makers they work for with fake time cards and paid for but unworked overtime pay.
One of the bosses, Ron Seroka, a union job security officer, takes off half a day nearly everyday to go home to lounge around the house while he is on the clock. Seroka punches in at the plant at 6AM every single day and is home by 11:30 AM for some nice leisure time at home. Yet he gets a steady 10 hours pay every single day despite the fact that he is rarely at work.
Seroka’s union boss is even worse. Union chairman Jim Modzelewski buys beer on a daily basis while on the clock and clocks himself in for overtime pay hours before he even wakes up to go into the plant. TV 4 found that after he punches in, he typically leaves for a beer run mere hours later. Again, all this is on a daily basis. He is also paid overtime pay on a daily basis as he sits home drinking his daily beer. With over 2,500 hours of overtime, Modzelewski made a six-figure salary last year. TV 4 also discovered that Modzelewski even played in a bowling tournament while on the clock — as at overtime pay, too!
Together, just these two union chiefs clocked in over 3,500 hours of overtime pay for the year. Makes one wonder how many union bosses are abusing their positions this way, doesn’t it?
The TV news also briefly interviewed an auto business expert that says in the last ten years one in three American union auto workers would not show up to work on any given day while foreign auto plants would see 98 out of 100 of their workers dutifully show up for work. Makes it a bit hard to plan on a work force in the US with unions in control, doesn’t it?
This report is just one more example of how auto workers unions are one of the big reasons that American auto plants are ineffectual, inefficient, and cannot compete with foreign makers. Not only that, but it reveals that union bosses have no accountability and flaunt their criminal and immoral actions with impunity wasting millions of dollars as they do it.
Nice work TV 4.
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December 24, 2008 - 12:12 am - Posted by WTH
The Wall Street Journal recently had an interesting article on the extremely high percentage of teacher’s strikes in the State of Pennsylvania. The Journal noted that Penn. teachers account for an astonishing 42% of all teacher walk outs in the nation.
This, apparently, despite the fact that Pennsylvania’s teachers are some of the highest paid in the nation.
The strikes take place despite the state’s ranking in the top 20% nationwide for teacher salaries in 2006-2007 — the most recent data available — with an average of $54,970. Those paychecks go even further when adjusted for the state’s cost of living compared to top-spending school districts in places like California.
The Journal notes that 37 states have passed various laws that limit or eliminate teacher walk outs but union bigwigs in Penn. have succeeded in burying all attempts to implement such laws in the Keystone state.
What we have here, of course, is an example of a culture of striking that has arisen in the state. Despite that teachers in Penn. have little legitimate reason to be responsible for nearly half the teachers strikes in the nation, these strikes have become a common response to unions not getting their way. That combined with lax rules that facilitate the ease of resorting to walk outs as a first reaction to union talks stalling, we find the culture of constant strikes has developed.
This is also the sort of ultimate logic of unionism and why it has a corrosive effect on the workplace.
Posted in Corruption, Unions Revealed, Warner Todd Huston, teachers unions | No Comments »
December 23, 2008 - 2:44 am - Posted by WTH
Labor Department Secures 900th Criminal Conviction Since 2001
-By Robert Bluey, Originally posted on RedState.com
The U.S. Labor Department last month surpassed 900 criminal convictions for union corruption dating to the start of the Bush administration. The milestone is incredible evidence that union bosses continue to lie, cheat and steal despite greater transparency of their finances.
For the last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) obtained 102 convictions and 130 indictments for cases mostly involving embezzlement of union funds. Restitution totaled more than $3.2 million — money that will be returned to dues-paying union members.
Since 2001 the office has secured court orders of restitution totaling more than $91.5 million. Deputy Assistant Secretary Don Todd made this statement upon releasing the latest numbers:
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December 22, 2008 - 10:33 am - Posted by WTH
We have to start this posting with some questions to each of you dear readers out there. Do you like your vote to be secret? Free of coercion? Known only to you? Well, so does Obama’s new appointment for Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis (D-El Monte, CA). She agrees with you and every other democracy-loving citizen that when it comes to her ballot, she wants it to be a secret one. She’s 100% for her own votes remaining secret from prying eyes.
Unfortunately, she also wants to take away that same democratic right from every working American faced with unionization. Solis, you see, has told everyone that will listen that once she becomes Secretary of Labor she will push for passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and the EFCA will do just that; take away the secret ballot from potential union members. In this she is in tune with Barack Obama because he wants the EFCA passed to pay back the millions that unions pumped into his campaign.
But, in January of last year, Solis, then a Congressman from California, signed a letter criticizing the Congressional Hispanic Caucus for not having a secret vote during their proceedings. Bret Jacobson has the scoop in the L.A.Times:
Solis wrote, “Votes by secret ballot were in order but never taken. We therefore believe that we need to follow proper rules of procedure and hold a vote by secret ballot.” She continued, “It is important that the integrity of the CHC be unquestioned and above reproach.” There’s no way to spin it. It’s a textbook example of hypocrisy, and one that may soon make its way into the law books as well.
So we find a sickening hypocrisy with Obama’s new Secretary of Labor here. When it’s her vote, she is all concerned that it remain a secret ballot. When it is the vote of millions of America’s workers, however, she is all for taking away from them that ages old democratic right.
What might be the concern about taking away the secret ballot for workers and why do they want to take it away in the first place, you might ask?
Advocates of the EFCA want to take away the secret ballot and replace it with a “card check” system to better create more unionized places of work across the country. In this new system all potential union members have to do is present a card to the union reps that say they want to be organized. Further, they want the law to state that a “yes” vote from one worker more than 50% of the employees is enough to force a union into a shop. This “card” however is an open document that everyone in the shop can see. Since it is an open document, this leaves workers voting “no” to union representation open to intimidation by anyone that sees they have done so. These workers will not be protected by the secret ballot because Hilda Solis and Barack Obama want to take that right away from them.
Even worse, there is no provision in the EFCA to make sure that the “cards” voting “yes” are authentic, the law only states that they be presented to the union reps and the employer. There is no way to be sure that the cards signed were actually signed by the individuals and no way to ascertain if they were signed under duress.
This is the world that Barack Obama and his Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis want to create. A world where workers have the oldest democratic right taken away from them, a world where they will be prey for union thugs, and a world where no provision is made to assure that “yes” votes are legitimate.
Is THIS the “change” you were looking for America?
(Photo credit: LATimes.com)
Posted in ACORN, Card Check, Corruption, EFCA, SEIU, UAW, Unions Revealed, Warner Todd Huston, teachers unions | No Comments »
December 22, 2008 - 4:07 am - Posted by WTH
Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Labor is his first gift to labor unions. Hilda Solis is quite a union extremist and has already promised to push the misleadingly named employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) once she takes over her new role in the Obama administration.
A recent Wall Street Journal report reveals that Solis, a California Congressman, has been in the back pocket of unions since she first ran for Congress.
Barack Obama’s pick for Secretary of Labor — Hilda Solis — brings impeccable big labor credentials. The California Congresswoman first rode to power with labor backing against a fellow Democrat, has voted with the AFL-CIO 97% of the time, and got three-quarters of her campaign contributions from unions.
But the WS Journal rightfully worries that Solis will also try to gut the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). In recent years the OLMS has tightened financial disclosure rules on the unions, an effort that is responsible in just one case for catching hundreds of thousands of dollars being illicitly spent by Tyrone Freeman, the head of the California office of the Service Employee International Union.
Union watchdogs fear that Solis will reverse these stricter reporting rules allowing unions to more easily get away with criminal misallocation of funds. And this gutting of the OLMS is precisely what unions have been pushing for. Obama owes the unions for their multi-million support campaign they waged for him during the past elections, so it would seem a natural payback for his administration to acquiesce to these union demands.
So, the man that claimed to want to clean up Washington and bring “change” will be the one responsible for giving criminal unions the cover they so desperately need to indulge in all the criminal behavior they want to indulge in.
That’s some kind of change.
Posted in Card Check, Corruption, EFCA, OLMS, SEIU, Unions Revealed, Warner Todd Huston | No Comments »
