Here is a story that shows exactly how a union will lie, cheat and violate the law to get their way. Apparently UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, is trying to force the Cintas Uniform company in Mason, Ohio to accept union representation. And, they don’t care what they have to do to get that done… even IF the Cintas employees consistently vote the union down and don’t want to have anything to do with them!
As the Cincinnati Enquirer reports the union “wants to skip the customary secret-ballot and force 17,000 Cintas workers to join the union and pay dues. But Cintas and its workers have said no thanks.”
So, what has the union done to force the issue?
Unite copied license numbers from Cintas workers in Pennsylvania, to snoop in personal information and harass them at home. The union has been ordered to pay the workers $2,500 each. Unite also published a false press release that caused Cintas stock to drop $300 million, according to a defamation suit by Cintas that is going to trial in Warren County court.
Harassing the workers that they want to represent? Seems a bad way to start a relationship, doesn’t it? That and their tactics violating the law, and all that.
UNITE also tried to use the accidental death of a worker as a tool to force their agenda, despite that the company responded very well to the accident.
“Eleazar Torres Gomez was working in the Tulsa laundry’s automated washroom. He was caught on a conveyor and dragged into an industrial dryer - where he was trapped in temperatures up to 300 degrees for at least 20 minutes. He died on the scene of trauma and thermal injuries. Cintas CEO Scott Farmer issued a press release blaming Mr. Torres Gomez for his own death soon after the fatality.”
But Gomez was caught in machinery and pushed into a dryer after he climbed onto a conveyer to clear a logjam of wet laundry - a violation of training and safety rules. Farmer expressed grief and condolences, and did so again at the shareholder’s meeting, when union officials brought up the accident.
Farmer explained recent steps to improve the Cintas safety record, which is 30 percent better than the industry average. Cintas is disputing a $2.78 million federal fine for the accident, and is being sued by the victim’s family.
And the Cintas workers have rewarded the company with their loyalty and their rejection of the unions efforts to get a toehold established.
The closing line of the Cincy Enquirer story is a fitting end to this episode, so I’ll just repeat it here…
“Remember Eleazar Torres Gomez”? Sure. His death could prevent another fatal accident. But exploiting a dead man’s mistake is a creepy way to beg for union dues.
A gaggle of State Senators in the State of Washington have signed a letter written on official state Legislature letterhead threatening to remove state funding from an Olympia-based health care service, Behavioral Health Resources. The problem is, this harassment is illegal and has landed these union thugs masquerading as legislators in hot water.
Several Democratic legislators may have violated state ethics laws when they signed a letter scolding a private nonprofit mental-health-care provider for using “hostile” and “anti-union” bargaining tactics in recent contract talks.
The letter, which was sent this month to the director of Olympia-based Behavioral Health Resources (BHR), was written on official Washington state Legislature letterhead.
The Legislative Ethics Board has ruled recently that it is illegal for lawmakers to use public resources to advocate for one side in a private dispute.
Oopsie!
So, how did this come about?
The letters were done at the behest of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1199, which at the time was in the midst of a bitter contract fight with BHR.
Not only are these so-called legislators lending their power to union thugs, they didn’t even bother to write the darn letter themselves!
In the letters, which actually were drafted by the SEIU, the lawmakers touted the funding increase for mental-health providers. Instead of giving workers the pay raises lawmakers intended, the letters said, BHR was demanding cuts in benefits and job protections.
Finally, the lawmakers reminded Masterson “your agency is funded largely through the state budget. … As elected officials responsible for that budget, we call on you to change course, and to negotiate a fair settlement with your unionized staff.”
Obviously, these faux legislators didn’t have the first clue what was really going on with the labor dispute they were asked to intervene in. Worse, they didn’t care if their actions were even illegal as they simply assumed their power in government made their action right. As usual, for a Democrat, the ends justifies the means. Legality be damned!
Now, tell us that Democrats aren’t in the pockets of big labor? Tell us that Democrats are only interested in the truth and in being fair and honest lawmakers.
If THIS isn’t the wolf guarding the hen house, what is? After all, expecting the government — known for voter fraud since Aaron Burr strode the halls of Congress — to make sure a union election is run fairly shows how really bad it has gotten for the unions!
Still, that said, the government are pikers compared to the fraud perpetrated by unions over the years. And this story is just another example of union corruption and vote fraud.
A slate of reformers has been elected to head the Teamsters’ 12,000-member Local 743, where last month its president was indicted for helping steal the last election.
Members elected all but one trustee of the 743 New Leadership Slate headed by Richard Berg, who received 1,112 votes for president, narrowly beating opponent Reginald D. Ford, who garnered 1,058 votes.
“This is great,” said Berg, who lost in his last bid for president. “It’s been a long time coming. The 743 New Leadership slate has been part of the rank-and-file movement that has been tying to rid our local of corruption and give the union back to our workers. We’ve very pleased.”
The union represents transportation, clerical, food service, nursing home and manufacturing workers.
The election was supervised by the U.S. Labor Department.
In September, federal prosecutors indicted Local 743 President Richard Lopez along with three other union members alleging they schemed to defraud the local by diverting hundreds of ballots that had been returned to the union by mail because the addresses were old or no longer good. The four were accused of changing the addresses in a union database and having the ballots sent to friends, relatives or associates who weren’t union members.
Berg filed a complaint with the Labor Department, which found the ballots had been diverted. In a July settlement, union officials admitted a controller shredded the eligibility list, noting that might have affected the outcome of the election.
“Our first priority is to clean all the corruption out of 743 and then use the resources to give full representation to the members,” Berg said.
Well, let’s hope these rank and file fellows can clean up their union and lead their fellows to a more legitimate representation.
David Denholm of the Public Service Research Council gives us the update on the OLMS:
On Thursday, October 18 the Senate voted 47 to 46 to kill an amendment by Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions to the 2008 Labor-HHS Appropriation Bill, H.R. 3043, that would have restored funding for the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) to its 2007 level.
Two Republican (In Name Only) Senators, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Ted Stevens of Alaska, voted with the Democrats to defeat this amendment.
The OLMS is the only government agency charged with monitoring labor union finances and rooting out union corruption. It has been doing an excellent job. So excellent, in fact, that the Union Bosses’ friends in Congress are reducing its funding, despite the fact that they found reasons to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more than the President requested in other parts of the Labor-HHS appropriation bill.
Now is the time to begin urging President Bush not only to veto H.R. 3043 but, just as importantly, to mention the need to restore OLMS funding in his veto message
My fear is that if he doesn’t make a strong point of this the Democrats will cut a few hundred million dollars of fat from the bill and return it to him without restoring OLMS funding.
Folks, we need to get our representatives in Congress to understand that we won’t allow the Democrats to cover for union corruption anymore. If the Dems want to claim that they are the ones that want to eliminate the so-called “culture of corruption,” then we must hold their feet to the fire and actually live up to their words.
But, the defunding of the OLMS that the Dems are involved in certainly makes the lie to their claims to care about fighting corruption!
Just a quick note about the “success” rate of unions and their audit compliance from Ed Morrissey.
The OLMS points out far too many “inconvenient truths”, as one Democrat might put it. For instance, it reported that only 43 of 643 union audits showed financial compliance. That’s a whopping 6%, meaning 94% of all unions can’t pass a financial audit. It doesn’t seem very surprising, since millions of worker dollars end up at the Democratic Party. If a group of publicly-held corporations had a 6% failure rate for their financial audits, the Democrats and unions would scream bloody murder, let alone a 94% failure rate.
Now, imagine how the left would be all over that if such a failure rate were to be had from groups supporting conservative causes. They’d be all over it with their “Republican culture of corruption” rhetoric, for sure.
Remember how the left was all up in arms about Enron? Amazing how silent they are about unions, isn’t it?
In another sure sign that unions are desperately “looking for any allies it can get” (in the words of Bret Jacobson of the Center for Union Facts), the Teamsters are trying to enlist the aid of leftist bloggers to help them get the union word out.
There was much ado, for a moment, when news broke that far-lefty bloggers were talking with Teamsters officials about getting out the union bosses’ propaganda. Campaigns and Elections has the story, and we were happy to help out with some thoughts:
“This is just the latest sign that the labor movement is feeling weak and looking for any allies it can get,” said Bret Jacobson, a senior research analyst at the Center for Union Facts, a conservative antiunion group. “The real underlying reason for this is that union officials are having a tough time creating alliances with moderates, so they have to join forces with radicals like those in the blogging community.”
One stumbling block to this burgeoning political alliance could be their discord on issues like oil drilling in the Arctic. While both groups say they agree more often than not, it is far from a match made in heaven.
“Just announcing a grand alliance,” Jacobson said, “doesn’t make it workable.”
Why do I say its a “sure sign” that the unions are desperate? Why else would they allow their message to end up in the hands of people they don’t fully control? These leftist bloggers ostensibly may be on the side of the unions, but the unions cannot be 100% sure that they can control what these bloggers say. And it has been seen that lefty bloggers love to eat their own when these DailyKoz types have the slightest hint that things aren’t going satisfactorily.
This lefty blogger thing could easily blow up in the union’s face, but here they are doing it anyway. It just shows that they are desperate enough to relinquish some amount of control of their message.
This could be an interesting mistake on behalf of the union.
Bucks County AFL-CIO president Tom Bates posted a You-Tube video bragging about all the great things that a pair of Bucks County Democrats are going to do for unions. “Great” things like assuring heavy union contracting for country construction and shutting out non-union contractors and legislating health care plans crafted to union bosses desires.
But, even as the AFL-CIo has donated $47,000 to the Bucks county Democrat Party Campaign Committee, Democrats claim there is no quid pro quo.
But, someone forgot to tell good ‘ol Tommy Bates…
Nah. Dems aren’t going to pay the AFL-CIO back for all their campaign donations. REALLY they won’t!
First the left in the House led by Nancy Pelosi attacked the union watchdog group, the Office of Labor Management Standards, by trying to cut its budget. Even though it is one for the few successful government offices, prosecuting corrupt union officials, the Democrats in the House tried to cut its budget as a payback to unions that don’t like being held accountable. Now the Senate Democrats are getting into the act.
Amid debate on H.R. 3043, the FY2008 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill, the Senate is patting itself on the back for providing in their version of the bill $9.6 billion more than president Bush requested. But there is one little area they want to cut: the OLMS.
While the both the Senate and the House are seeking to raise spending on all sorts of programs, including all those in this bill in question, the OLMS faces a 4 percent cut in its budget.
Gee, why do ya think that is? Why, its because the Democrats want to help unions escape prosecution for their wide spread fraud, of course.
Cutting the budget of OLMS will only serve to benefit union bosses at the expense of hard working, dues paying union workers. Again, we ask for your support of the Sessions amendment which would restore the much needed funding to OLMS so that this important agency can continue protecting America’s workers.
Imagine the pressure of being asked by union thugs to vote for them to represent you. Then imagine that your ballot is open for them to see it after you cast it. Then ponder this question: how safe would you feel voting against a union thug if he could see your vote?
That is the purpose of the secret ballot. Cesar Chavez, the famed California farm worker organizer, fought long and hard for secret ballots. Of course, then it was to keep the corporate farmers from knowing if a potential union member voted in favor of the union. But, regardless, the secret ballot cuts both ways because now it is the union, rather than the employer, that has more propensity to abuse the worker’s best interests.
But, California’s farm workers already have the secret ballot, right? Yes, they do. But SB180 sponsored by the United Farm Workers wanted the secret ballot eliminated. And it is for the simple reason that they wanted to be able to intimidate any worker that would vote against the union.
Well, thankfully Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed this abomination.
Congratulations to the Governor for vetoing that last bill, which would have deprived farmworkers of their right to determine their association via secret ballot. Cesar Chavez fought long and hard for the secret ballot, but organized labor now finds it inconvenient.
Just so. A victory for union members and democracy has been won.
It was claimed that 150 members of the Baltimore teachers union had gathered to protest in front of school system headquarters to protest an issue the union has with school Chief Andres Alonso. The story in the Baltimore Sun tries its best to make it seem a united cause by teachers but one upon reflection it becomes obvious that the 150 protesters were not who they pretended to be. In a teachers union of 12,000 members a showing of 150 is bad enough a representation but when many of the 150 protesters aren’t even teachers, well, doesn’t that say how little support this union has on the issue? So, if many of the so-called protesters at this rally weren’t even members of the union in question… just who IS the Baltimore teachers union representing?
At issue is whether the schools should require teachers to spend at least 45 minutes per week in planning sessions with colleagues. The union says that teachers don’t have time for planning for their own class work, much less time to be forced to meet with colleagues. Alonso claims he won’t budge from his position and therefore the union wants him fired.
Not earth shattering conflict, to be sure and the fact that the issue isn’t moving too many of Baltimore’s teachers to protest shows that. Yet, even as they can’t get much support from their own members the union is still pressing forward with their own agenda.
Here is what the Baltimore Sun says about the makeup of the 150 protesters. Two of the 150 were a city councilwoman and a national union official, neither of whom represent the actual teachers of Baltimore. Read the rest of this entry »
The folks over at FreeRepublic have reported that at one of their pro-troops vigils in front of Walter Reed Army Hospital, a union member told them that he was ordered by his union to attend the nearby anti-war protest.
WASHINGTON, DC, September 28, 2007— The DC Chapter has suspected all along that the dwindling handful of anti-war protestors outside Walter Reed are paid to show up. This week, one of their newbies came by our troop-support rally at the gates by mistake, and spilled the truth: a labor union had recruited this worker to show up at the lefties’ phony “vigil.” The worker’s remarks clearly revealed that standing outside the Walter Reed Army Medical Center with anti-war signs wasn’t a personal choice, but a workplace commitment demanded by a union representative.
Our rally must have looked a lot more attractive, even at a glance—in fact, that’s what this unionized worker said. I’m going to avoid describing this person’s looks or gender, to avoid making trouble. Why? Because this office worker’s confusion appeared sincere, revealing that the decision to be there wasn’t intentional; in fact, the person didn’t really seem to know what either demonstration was about.
The fellow that the Freepers spoke to was a member of the O.P.E.I.U., the Office and Professional Employees International Union, Local no. 2.
So, why, exactly, is a union forcing their members to attend anti-war rallies?
What is your concept of a union dues payment? Is it a single, democratic fee paid at the same rate for all members, a payment that ensures the equal treatment of all union members? If so, you’d be wrong if you were an SEIU member. Because, for the SEIU, your dues are not a single standard payment for all your members, but it is a payment calculated on how much you make… just like income taxes are.
According to a blog about the nursing profession the SEIU district 1199 is violating one of the most dearly help ideals of any union; that it is interested in “equal treatment” for all.
Dues in SEIU District 1199 are 1.75% of gross pay, or $1.75 for every $100 you make.
So for every $1,000.00 grossed, the dues will be $17.50. I have several clients who are Ohio IPs and these nurses can gross from $50,000 to $80,000.00 a year or more.
An Ohio IP Nurse with SEIU labor representation who grosses $50,000 year may pay $875.00 a year for labor dues. This is speculative at this point but based on the figure provided on the SEIU 1199 website, which doesn’t mention a cap.
So, does the higher dues paid by members who make more money assure them that they somehow get MORE services and representation by the union?
Um, no.
Do those nurses who make more money and have to pay more in dues get first consideration in union adjudications?
Certainly, no.
And, how could they? After all, a union is supposed to be working for ALL their members, not just the highest paid ones. If the union gave deferential treatment to their richest members, that would be just as wrong as if they ignored their highest paid members.
So, what reason could they possibly use to justify sticking a higher payment to their highest paid members? There is no greater benefit to the members… and aren’t the members what the union is there for in the first place?
This isn’t fair representation. It’s legalized theft.
From the University of Chicago, economist Gary Becker and legal scholar Richard Posner on the decline of labor unions in America, reacting to the UAW-GM settlement. Becker makes a point new to us:
Not that long ago, there was strong support for unions in American academia and among American intellectuals, as well as among blue-collar workers. Scholars who emphasized the negative side of unions, such as Chicago economists Henry Simons, H. Gregg Lewis, and Milton Friedman, were looked upon as crackpot reactionaries. Academics and intellectuals are still generally pro-union, but with little enthusiasm. They have seen that strong unions promote the earnings, and health and retirement benefits of their members who tend to be well paid-production workers at GM start at close to $30 per hour- without doing anything for workers who earn much less. As a result, no current union leader has the prestige, name recognition, or media attention that Walter Reuther, John L. Lewis, and Jimmy Hoffa did several decades ago.
