The Union Label - May 31st
Posted on May 31, 2006 at 1:49 am by Chuck Muth
LATHICHARGE!!
The Times of India reports that “hundreds of teachers” marched on the home of a school director recently, protesting various policies. According to the paper, after the “agitating teachers” of the Punjabe Government Teachers Union broke through barricades, “police resorted to mild lathicharge” to control the group.
According to my Online Dictionary, a “lathi” is a “club consisting of a heavy stick (often bamboo) bound with iron; used by police in India.” In other words, police gave the protesting teachers a good “caning.”
Hmmm. I’m getting an idea here…
ANOTHER REASON NOT TO LIKE THE SENATE IMMIGRATION BILL
“The most unsettling aspect of the (Senate immigration) bill is the insistence by Big Labor of expanding ‘prevailing wage’ rules to include many of these temporary workers. This is clearly a sop to Big Labor, and an attempt to stack the deck in favor of union shop companies over merit firms.
“’The unions should not take the serious work of immigration reform as an opportunity to pass a racist and protectionist ‘prevailing wage’ agenda,’ said Ryan Ellis of the Alliance for Worker Freedom. ‘Prevailing wage rules have been used in the past to block employment of Chinese railroad workers, African-American construction workers, and now largely-Latino essential workers. It’s wrong, and it needs to be fixed in conference.’”
- Alliance for Worker Freedom press release, 5/25/06
HIRED-GUN SHOOTS NON-PROFIT HOSPITALS
The Center for Tax and Budget Accountability says that “Chicago area not-for-profit hospitals get three times as much money in tax breaks compared with what they dole out in free health care to poor and uninsured people.”
Sounds like a pretty damning report…until you find out that the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability received over $95,000 to conduct the “study” from two bodies of the SEIU (Service Employees International Union), “which has been a thorn in hospitals’ sides because of their efforts to unionize workers.”
“The Service Employees have simply been trying to do everything they can to undermine the good work hospitals are doing and trying to use state and local government as leverage to get the labor-management playing field imbalanced in their favor,” Howard Peters, senior vice president of the Illinois Hospital Association, told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Nah, they wouldn’t do that. Would they?
HAMMERS AND SKULLS
“It’s difficult to imagine that the members of Carpenters Local 13 in Chicago are happy with their leaders’ attempts to secure cozy jobs for their embarrassingly unqualified sons. In exchange for rounding up campaign dollars for Mayor Richard Daley’s re-election, Local 13 Secretary-Treasurer Tom Ryan was able to procure a building inspector’s job for his 19-year-old son Andy, at $50,000 a year. Local 13’s president, Mike Sexton, scored the same gig for his 23-year-old son Kevin.
“Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin called Ryan up and got a good laugh for her efforts: ‘Tom Ryan, whose father before him was a honcho in the union, claimed his son was practically ‘born with a hammer in his hand.’ Kind of like arguing a child of a brain surgeon didn’t need medical school to open somebody’s skull.’”
- Center for Union Facts, 5/26/06
UNION “NEVER HELPED ANYBODY”
“Chances are you haven’t heard of Silver Capital, a small, now-defunct Chicago-based company that used to manufacture mirrors, frames and glass-cutting boards. Silver Capital’s workers were mostly Mexican immigrants, working for substandard wages and zero benefits–no healthcare, no pensions, no sick days. . . . If only they had a union, right?
“Actually, Silver Capital workers did have a union. They were members of Teamsters Local 743, a 13,000-member local representing workers throughout Chicago. ‘The union never helped anybody,’ says Marcela Garcia, who worked at Silver Capital for seventeen years. ‘You’d go to them with a problem, they’d say, ‘It’s not my problem. Talk to the company.’
“So when Silver Capital announced in September 2004 it was closing down for good–and offered employees like Garcia little to no severance–workers took matters into their own hands. They struck: a one-day walkout without union approval.
“Union leaders responded quickly and decisively. Local 743 vice president José Galvan (who did not respond to calls for comment) went straight to the picket lines–where he told the workers that if they didn’t get back to work pronto, he’d call immigration. Welcome to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT)…”
- Columnist William Johnson in The Nation, 5/30/06
TEAMSTERS VS. FEDEX
“FedEx is an important target for us.”
- James P. Hoffa, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is trying to organize the nearly 15,000 drivers in the FedEx Ground division, New York Times, 5/30/06
“The Teamsters will do and say anything to increase membership and revenues. We have nearly 15,000 ground contractors who go to work every day, make good money and serve our customers well. Something is very right about that or they wouldn’t be doing it.”
- Maury Lane, a FedEx spokesman, New York Times, 5/30/06
“Unions at their inception were great, They helped many people out of poverty. But now they drive costs up for most products and they hurt productivity.”
- Edward Prestas, a FedEx Ground driver, New York Times, 5/30/06
THIRD TIME THE CHARM?
“When the International Brotherhood of Teamsters opens its convention in Las Vegas next month, General President James Hoffa will face dissident opposition. To some, Hoffa’s re-election seems a given. Challenger Tom Leedham, after all, has tried twice already to topple Hoffa. He lost in 1998, with 40 percent of the vote, and again in 2001, with 35 percent of the vote.
“But Leedham supporters think his moment has arrived. . . . ‘(Hoffa’s) popularity’s way down, his promises are tattered,’ said Ken Paff, who heads the rank- and-file Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the grass-roots strength of Leedham’s campaign.
“…Despite their differences, Hoffa has joined Leedham in being portrayed — and presenting himself — as a reform-minded leader. Hoffa opponents say his new image covers up more of the same: lackluster organizing, big officer salaries and residual corruption.
“…Leedham also urges eliminating dues waste — noting the number of Teamsters officers getting multiple union salaries has increased from 18 to 148 since Hoffa took over. The Teamsters for a Democratic Union says 368 officials make more than $100,000.”
- Alison Grant of the Cleveland Plain Dealer
READERS WRITE
“The Chicago and Houston plumbers locals have shafted me out of my retirement pension and I recently read about the president and treasurer of the United Association, (which covers all plumbers and pipe fitters locals in the country) got rid of them for taking money and investing in hotels in Florida. The president received over 1 million dollars severance and the treasurer about half a million. I’m 80 now and have nothing. Tell me about unions.” - Robert Stivanson
“I am a retired Teamster. One thing good the union did was endorsing candidates for public office. I always voted for the opposite candidate, with the exception of Ronald Reagan. I think many of the members did also.” - Barney
“Dear Chuck, I’m surprised that you have not commented on the ridiculous waste of FBI manpower and the taxpayers money spent on the search for Hoffa’s remains. Who cares! With all the problems we face, terrorism, illegal immigrants etc., why are we wasting millions on such nonsense! If the Hoffa family and the crooked unions want to look for that felon, let them pay for it! They have plenty of shovels!” - Richard Hatfield
