March 27, 2008 - 5:50 pm - Posted by WTH
We just ran across this interesting article in the Rocky Mountain News by Vincent Carroll. Carroll bemoans the way that the Denver City council has so completely sold out to unions that even the fact that the city could save money on parking contract management fees makes them think unions are somehow under attack.
After all, kowtowing to union interests has gotten so pronounced that one council member objected last week to a proposed contract with a company to manage airport parking for fear that its modest management fee signified a covert plan to cut union staffing.
“That raised my eyebrows, and right away I thought that I hope that doesn’t come on the backs of the employees,” said councilman Paul Lopez.
In the normal course of affairs, it would be considered good news that the most highly rated bid for a $70 million, five-year parking contract also included the lowest management fee among four proposals. But such is Lopez’s union-centric view of the world - he worked as an organizer before his election last year - that even a management fee can’t be accepted at face value.
Believe it or not, Lopez is only one of several council members who have expressed reservations about the proposed fee for Standard Parking ($510,000 a year, as opposed to bids of $656,000, $790,000 and $1.3 million). It’s as if the company, which also operates parking at airports in Chicago, Kansas City, Cleveland and Portland, wasn’t competent to figure out what fee makes sense to its bottom line.
Council members didn’t only wonder whether the city might be better off paying a larger fee. They lectured the company on its duty to reach a “mutually agreeable” collective-bargaining deal. “Having a union representing our work force out at the airport is very important, particularly in light of the thousands of union members that are going to be flying in and seeing our city with the Democratic National Convention,” declared Chris Nevitt rather superfluously.
Meanwhile, Rocky reporter Daniel Chacon has discovered that Nevitt and two other council members seemingly functioned as informal negotiators on the union’s behalf during a recent meeting with labor leaders and Standard Parking executives. One company official told Chacon he was “a little taken aback” by the pre-meeting hugs between council members and union representatives.
And speaking of overkill, it’s been less than a month since the council approved a proclamation honoring Leslie Moody, president of the Denver Area Labor Federation. (Nevitt once ran a nonprofit think tank founded by the federation.) After three irritated council members made a point of vacating the chamber during the vote, Lopez offered this curious assessment, according to The Denver Post: “I respect their opinion. But there should be no controversy about the need for a living wage or access to health care or affordable housing.”
But of course there is controversy over the definition of “affordable housing” and how to provide it, the definition of a “living wage” and whether government should guarantee it, and the best way to cover the medically uninsured.
But I suppose you’d have to search beyond the confines of the labor federation to locate such differing views.
Amazing how in the hip pocket of the unions the city council is in Denver, eh? A shame, too.
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March 25, 2008 - 6:20 am - Posted by Eric Odom
Organizing unions just got easier…
Longtime South Beloit police clerk Cindy King was initially on the fence when she and fellow clerk Wanda Weston-Johnson began talking about unionizing late last year.
King initially liked the idea of joining a union — most city employees were doing so — then later changed her mind. But the retirement of Police Chief Larry Schultz, combined with changes the City Council made to the employee benefits package, persuaded her to file paperwork with the Teamsters union in December.
“I need the job security, and things are kind of uncertain right now,” King said. “I’ve been with the city for 20 years. I’ve got a lot to lose.”
The women make up a two-person department and were able to file for unionization thanks to a 2005 change in state law that lowered the minimum number of employees needed to unionize from 35 to five, or 50 percent of a department, whichever is smaller.
Although the changes have made it easier for people like King and Weston-Johnson to join forces, the growth in unions has some officials — even those who support organized labor — worried that the resulting costs will be too high.
Nearly three years after South Beloit police officers, citing inconsistent wages and benefits, filed their intent to unionize, they and the city — despite hours of negotiation and tens of thousands of dollars spent on attorneys — have made zero headway on a contract. Meanwhile, union contracts for the city’s two police sergeants, two police clerks and six Street Department workers, all of whom have followed the police officers and filed union papers, also are in limbo.
Read the rest
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March 24, 2008 - 3:56 pm - Posted by WTH
This month a warning was noted on how successful unions have been in cajoling the Healthcare industry in falling to union organizers.
Unions won 72 percent of representation (RC) elections held in healthcare in 2007 - versus a union win-rate of 62 percent in non-healthcare industries. The success rates for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) and various state nurses associations were even higher at 79, 80 and 83 percent, respectively. The SEIU accounted for 47 percent of all representation petitions filed in the healthcare industry in 2007.
A report has been issued by IRI Consultants detailing the danger that this unionizing incursion into the Healthcare industry can be.
The report raises concerns about potential impacts of corporate campaigns being conducted by SEIU and UNITE-HERE against vendors that support healthcare providers, including Aramark, Cintas and ServiceMaster.
Corporate campaigns are designed to damage an organization’s reputation and image by inflicting significant external pressure on an organization in hopes of gaining leverage. Union-sponsored campaigns often aim for negotiating strength or to force employers to accept “neutrality,” “free access” or “card check recognition” that make organizing workers far easier by side-stepping traditional secret-ballot elections overseen by the NLRB.
For more information call Sharon Allen at 312.422.3722.
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March 21, 2008 - 5:59 pm - Posted by WTH
The SEIU (Service Employees International Union) is being cast as a union that turns its back on democracy by internal foes of union president Andy Stern who is fighting for his post as head of the union.
One of the many myths of unionism holds that the very concept of a union is the ultimate democratic exercise. It is, so it’s claimed, the very model of the workers controlling the organization. This idea, however, is something that SEIU president Andy Stern has turned on its head. Stern’s style of leadership has been to implement a far more top down style of running the union.
Under Stern’s direction, as the union has grown to one of the biggest unions in the country the locals are directed by the larger state and even national offices as opposed to at the local level. In other words, the locals no longer have the power to enter into negotiations with their employers at the local level.
This top down style is being opposed by many who claim that the union drifted away from its membership. As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, the secretary-treasurer of the St. Louis local 2000, Tony Condra, is not too happy with Stern’s leadership.
“One thing I think the top leadership forgot is the members are the CEOs, not us,” says Tony Condra, secretary-treasurer of Local 2000 in St. Louis. “That’s how we look at it in Missouri — the members are the title-holders of the whole structure.”
Condra, of University City, is helping lead an effort to reverse some actions of the union’s Washington-based leadership. He says the failure to listen to workers’ voices prompted some local members to file charges with the National Labor Relations Board.
Condra isn’t the only one upset at Stern’s ploicies.
Paula Jones, a member of Local 2000 who works at a nursing home in Florissant, says that contracts negotiated between senior union officials and management at local nursing homes have compromised workers’ ability to advocate for resources and supplies for their patients.
“Workers had lost their voice” because of deals Stern supporters made several years ago with management “behind our back without discussing it with union members,” says Jones, a certified medical technician.
Of course, Stern has the wild growth he’s helped realize for the union. So, will his success win over the membership, or will his heavy handed leadership sink him?
The main question the union is dealing with is this: is a union best run by a centralized leadership out of Washington or should union locals have as much power to deal with their individual needs as possible?
In any case, there is no doubt that union chief Stern is leading the effort to take power away from the local unions and instilling that power in the national offices. This is most certainly an anti-democratic policy and it is not surprising that the locals resent losing so much power.
Now, I have a question of my own. What makes Andy Stern any different than the so-called “fat cats” in the corporations that he opposes? Unions have made hay on the fact that corporate heads are evil for running their businesses with an iron fist, from the top down. Unions always cavil against businesses as un-democratic. Yet, here is SEIU president Andy Stern actually putting in place policies that would invest all power in the top office of the union, stripping the members of all power. How is Stern any different from the model of power hungry corporate head that unions use as a boogeyman?
Your guess is as good as mine, but it does seem that many of the SEIU membership agrees with me there!
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March 19, 2008 - 7:07 pm - Posted by WTH
State Rep. Leo Berman, chairman of the House Election Committee and Tyler, Texas Republican, has asked the state attny general on whether it’s lawful for teachers unions to use dues money for political campaigns.
This is a fight increasingly seen about the states and it is one we here encourage. It is such a slight against free will, free association and democracy to have dues money forcibly removed from members’ paychecks by a union to fund its far left political goals.
In Texas, the contributions for political use is voluntary, but as the state still has to monitor that the voluntary nature stays upheld. So, as far as Berman is concerned, the union is still using state money to fund their union’s political aims and he wants that ended.
The Tyler Republican and chairman of the House Elections Committee says it’s a direct challenge to the Texas State Teachers Association Political Action Committee, which tends to contribute to far more Democrats than Republicans.
The payroll deductions are voluntary, but Berman says it takes state time and resources to administer the deduction system — and that’s what he is against.
“The Democrats have raised a lot of their money through the teachers’ unions,” Berman says. “So through using the payroll deduction process, they’re using state funds, state equipment and state time to raise political money. That doesn’t fit with Texas state law.”
In the request for an opinion, Berman asks, “Is it permissible for government resources to be utilized to process government paycheck deductions for political campaign donations?”
These are excellent questions. Let’s hope that Berman succeeds in his quest to limit the unions usage of public funds for their nefarious endeavors to push a far left agenda using public monies! If Berman is successful this is a great precedent that can be repeated in other parts of the country.
If you want to read more of this story go on over to the Tyler Morning Telegraph.
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March 16, 2008 - 1:30 pm - Posted by WTH
Here is a great read in The Reader’s Digest
Brotherhood of Thieves
Union bosses are picking the pockets of working stiffs.
By Michael Crowley
Pat Tornillo used to enjoy the high life. He was a world traveler who flew off to exotic destinations like India, Bangkok and Australia. On one occasion, he reportedly slept in a $2,000-per-night hotel suite. On another, he used his business credit card to charge almost $4,000 at a single jewelry store.
Tornillo had it made all right — until he was caught with his hand deep in the till. You might guess he was an executive at Enron, or maybe Tyco or WorldCom. Nope. Tornillo was head of the Miami-based United Teachers of Dade, using the dues of union members to subsidize his lavish lifestyle. Even as he railed against low teacher salaries, Tornillo was blowing money on custom-tailored suits, spa visits — even purchases from the Sinclair Intimacy Institute, which peddles “better sex” videos.
But why point the finger at Tornillo alone? An even bigger thief is Barbara Bullock, the former president of the Washington, D.C., teachers union. From 1995 to 2002, she and her accomplices swiped an estimated $2.5 million from her 5,000-member union. FBI investigators seized thousands of dollars’ worth of goods from her, including furs, designer handbags and Ferragamo shoes. The annual dues of hardworking teachers — nearly $650 in 2002 — helped pay for her splurges.
Why even stop at Bullock? There’s so much corruption today among union bosses that it feels like we’re back in the era of Jimmy Hoffa. “There is always something happening somewhere in the country where a union official is treating union dues like his own personal piggy bank,” says David Kendrick, a union watchdog at the National Legal and Policy Center in Falls Church, Virginia. He tracks these abuses in a biweekly newsletter, “and we always have enough stories to put out another issue.”
In the first three months of 2004, the Labor Department reported criminal enforcement actions — indictments, guilty pleas or sentencings — against 34 union officials or employees. In 2003, the total figure was 143. Stan Greer, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Committee, says that in the past four years, the presidents or former presidents of three national unions have been convicted of felonies.
Here’s a bigger outrage: We could stop a lot of this corruption if the Labor Department showed more muscle. Though the government requires unions to submit financial reports, fully a third are filed late or not at all — and the unions are rarely audited.
Read the rest of this entry »
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March 14, 2008 - 12:24 am - Posted by WTH
OK, folks, grab the popcorn and settle in for this hilarious tale of union against union. It’s an epic battle of lies, underhandedness, brute force, and sweetheart deals that pits the California Nurses Association (CNA) against the Services Employees International Union (SEIU). The two unions are at each other’s throats for the prize of representing employees in the Catholic hospitals of the state of Ohio.
Here’s the Beginning of Our Story
Three years ago the SEIU cruised into the state of Ohio to organize the workers in the Catholic hospitals there, cozied up to management promising to make the burden on employers as light as possible, and set out to organize the employees.
By cozying up to management the SEIU hoped to smooth any ruffled feathers that management might have over agreeing that their employees join the union. The plumb SEIU president Andy Stern hoped to pull out of Ohio’s pie was the 8,300 workers in the Catholic hospitals in Ohio, a number that Stern was salivating to add to his burgeoning union’s numbers.
As it happens, the SEIU had worked out a deal with the hospital administrators to the effect that neither the union nor the administrators would assault the employees with all-out efforts against each other. And with that deal in place, the SEIU took the next three years to negotiate the deal.
Success was close at hand with an employee vote on joining the union set to come off this very week.
But the hopes for harmony and love for all was soon to be demolished with the entrance into the story of the California Nurses Association — a group that even The New York Times called “an unusually militant union.”
The Plot Thickens
Just as the SEIU thought everything was going swimmingly, the CNA arrived in town ready to destroy the “rigged scam” of a deal that the SEIU had worked out with the Catholic hospitals administrators.
Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the CNA — source of the “rigged scam” quote — swooped into town as the avenging angel of militant unionism. She insisted that the back room, sweetheart deals that the SEIU made with the administrators would weaken the position that the members would have to negotiate later. She insisted that the SEIU deal would ill serve the new union members and headed a strenuous effort to get the employees to vote the SEIU down and the CNA up.
“This was a top-down deal between an employer and a hand-picked union,” DeMoro told reporters. “There was a gag order on everyone, and as a result this was a banana republic election.”
It All Falls Down
Read the rest of this entry »
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March 12, 2008 - 5:13 pm - Posted by WTH
Teachers for Union Facts over at the Center for Union Facts has a great little promotion going on. They are offering a $10,000 prize for a confirmed report of a failed teacher that still has a job because of union intervention.
The Ten Worst Union-Protected Teachers
Thanks to outmoded, union-defended employment laws and policies, it can be impossible to fire a bad union-protected teacher. That’s why the Center for Union Facts is going to pay the ten worst union-protected teachers in America $10,000 apiece to get out of the classroom - for good. Dedicated, professional teachers have nothing to fear from this contest (in fact, it’s teachers unions who oppose paying better teachers more money); we’re here to showcase the worst of the worst. Tell us your story below!
Go on over to the contest site and report your story of a horrid teacher that should be fired for incompetence but still has a job because of the fetid union that protects him.
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March 11, 2008 - 6:57 am - Posted by WTH
Take the Bus to Broken Nose-ville
The Village Voice has the interesting details of the long history of the mob-like actions indulged in by the corrupt New York School bus drivers union over the last several years and the details are shocking. This on going story gets deeper every day.
But ex-school-bus driver Anthony Rinaldo says he found out that there was more to collect than just grievance forms. In September 2000, shortly after Rinaldo began to work for his union, he went to meet with a school-bus operator, a woman named Rae Fouché. After the meeting, Rinaldo said the bus operator handed him an envelope. “Give this to Sally,” she said.
Rinaldo got the picture. The envelope had that special stuffed-with-cash feel to it. He also knew “Sally” to be his boss, Salvatore Battaglia, who was then the leader of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union and its 15,000 members. Rinaldo did as asked. When he delivered the envelope, Battaglia thanked him.
Rinaldo alleges that ten thousand dollars a week was doled out in his little envelopes.
Of course, like all mob actions, this one when exposed saw a few flunkies and bosses go down to guilty charges while many others stayed right where they were, firmly in control of the union.
But while the top two culprits at the union have been dispatched (Battaglia pled guilty last month; Bernstein died in October at age 86), most of the rest of the executive board from the old regime has remained undisturbed.
As we mentioned before, these union thugs multiply faster than Federal prosecutors can snatch them up. The best way to get rid of these crooks is to burn out the entire den.
There is a lot more over at the Village Voice if you’re at all interested in the dirty details.
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March 10, 2008 - 3:36 pm - Posted by WTH
The New York Times had a great little editorial today…
Educators or Kingmakers?
By David White
IF the Democratic race is settled at the party’s convention this summer — not unlikely, given Hillary Clinton’s victories over Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas — certain delegate constituencies are going to be the object of much affection from the candidates. Most prominent among these is the delegate and superdelegate bloc affiliated with the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions. In 2004, more than 400 regular delegates to the convention were members of the two unions, making up a group bigger than every state delegation except California’s.
Good news for the unions, however, might not be good news for education. The union agenda has often run counter to the interests of students and teachers alike.
Take those collective bargaining agreements that the unions have negotiated in school districts across the nation. As Terry Moe, a professor of political science at Stanford, demonstrated, these agreements have hampered student performance in California. Why? Because they protect ineffective teachers — at the expense of everyone else.
Or consider performance-based pay. Forty percent of teachers leave the classroom within their first five years on the job — in some measure because they don’t stand to gain the same performance-based pay raises available to their private-sector counterparts. Merit pay would help public schools retain good teachers by paying them more. But the unions have fought against such measures.
The same can be said about school choice. Despite compelling evidence that it improves student achievement, the national teachers’ unions regularly stand against the policy.
The list goes on. While politicians are aware of the consequences of having these unions set educational policy, they are also aware that they have millions of members and dollars at their disposal. At a convention where every vote is in play, that union power has the potential to be greater than ever before.
A brokered convention sounds great. If, however, the brokers happen to be the teachers’ unions — unions that have never been shy about extracting promises — the outcome could be an unhappy one, at least for public education.
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March 9, 2008 - 9:18 pm - Posted by WTH
You may recall that we’ve discussed the plight of government officials in New Haven, Connecticut who have been trying to hold corrupt unionized policemen in their city to account for their lawbreaking. Of course, what stands in their way if not the policemen’s union?
Well, it looks like the government officials who are trying to arrange some sort of punishment for these criminal cops have been thwarted from being able to cancel the pensions of the criminals.
The Yale Daily News gives us an update on the good luck of two criminal cops who will still — as of now — be allowed to get their city pensions despite their criminal activities.
But two weeks ago, an arbitrator delivered a blow to these efforts when he ruled that the NHPD could not terminate two of the charged officers, Lt. William “Billy” White and Detective Clarence Willoughby, because they had already filed for retirement, which takes effect immediately. The decision means White and Willoughby are entitled to full pensions from the city, an outcome City Hall officials have said undermines its efforts to overhaul the department.
And guess who thinks this is a good idea? You got it, the union.
But some, including members of the NHPD and union affiliates, argue that revoking benefits would unfairly punish family members of officers convicted of corruption and deny officers the money they contributed to the city’s pension fund out of their paychecks.
Imagine that, eh? So, we in the public are expected to sit back and smile as union members participate in criminal activities, but we should allow them to still receive the pensions that our government dollars go, in part, to fund?
There should be NO consequences for violating the public trust?
Yes, that is precisely what these union hacks and thugs are saying.
Oh, but it’s for the children these union thieves are saying. We shouldn’t penalize the children by taking the pension their fathers or mothers paid in to all those years. See, it’s for the children. Now the unions represent the children?
Sorry, but if these scum bag criminal cops were caught in their crimes, their children are not enough of a reason to let them off scott free. These enemies to good government and the public trust should have thought about all that before they decided to become criminals!
And, who can doubt that if a “bad boy clause” — as the removal of a pension for crimes is being called — was never implemented there would be one less reason for government officials to obey the law. After all, if they get caught, they won’t lose their undeserved pensions. In fact, they will be rewarded for their criminal actions by being able to keep their pensions.
This is yet another reason why unions are antithetical to good government and the public weal and another fine example of why unions should be illegal for government workers.
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March 7, 2008 - 4:47 pm - Posted by WTH
In the military there is phrase for something that gets larger than it started; mission creep. This phrase is a really good one to describe how things often get out of hand. It also describes why unions always go awry. In this case, mission creep describes what happens when a union goes from being concerned with the interests of employees and union members to imagining it has the power or even the place to try to guide American foreign policy.
The Atlantic Free Press brings us the ridiculous tale of the arrogance of the ILWU that has decided it has the right to shut down all west cost ports of entry so that the union can announce its disagreement with the war in Iraq — a war that we are winning at last, by the way.
In a major step for the U.S. labor movement, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) has announced that it will shut down West Coast ports on May 1, to demand an immediate end to the war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Middle East. In a February 22 letter to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, ILWU International president Robert McEllrath reported that at a recent coast-wide union meeting, “One of the resolutions adopted by caucus delegates called on longshore workers to stop work during the day shift on May 1, 2008 to express their opposition to the war in Iraq.”
If anyone can show me where a union has the place to take such an action… well, I’m all ears.
But here they are with the arrogance of those who imagine that they smarter and better equipped than those whom we actually ELECT to lead this country!
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March 5, 2008 - 1:50 am - Posted by WTH
Well, let’s see. There’s the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, elves… oh, and the myth of that says union labor is superior in quality to private labor.
That last one is probably the more pernicious myth because many are convinced that union myth is actually true. People grow out of belief in the Tooth Fairy, but unfortunately too many refuse to shed the absurdity of the superiority of union labor.
BuBut, some people are coming out of their self induced stupor in Connecticut over the shoddy work that their tax dollars paid for on so many public projects.
On Feb. 27, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced he has sued 13 contractors who worked on the $50 million expansion of the York Correctional Institution in Niantic, the state’s only prison for women.
Whaaaa? But, aren’t state contracts handed out exclusively to union contractors?
Yes, Virginia, there is an indictment.
… it should be noted with the exception of work done at York by Naek Construction Co., these projects were the fruits of corner-cutting union labor.
Ooops. So much for the mythical status of “the union label,” eh?
The Attny Gen. was not too happy…
“This work was seriously substandard — ceilings and walls leaking water and cracked facades losing stone,” he said in his news release. “Slipshod design and construction doomed these buildings to deteriorate. These contractors shortchanged taxpayers and squandered scarce criminal-justice resources. I will fight vigorously to hold these companies accountable, forcing them to pay for repairs and related costs, probably in the range of more than $18 million.” He also is asking for civil penalties and for the defendants to reimburse the state for its litigation costs.
On Feb. 15, Mr. Blumenthal sued the 15 firms that worked on the $23 million UConn Law School Library. “Instead of a landmark law library, contractors left a structural mess and legal morass,” he said. “These companies did shoddy and substandard work, sticking the law school with a building riddled with leaks, cracks and defects. Far from lasting 100 years, this structure required massive repairs after barely a decade. The flaws were so fundamental and far-reaching that the building’s exterior must be rebuilt and its moisture protection system replaced. Contractors at every stage — design, construction, installation, inspection — incorporated or ignored obvious flaws, dooming the building to swift deterioration.” He is seeking more than $15 million, plus damages and other costs.
Well, their work might not have been so hot, but you can be SURE they had all the requisite smoke breaks, lunch breaks, break-breaks, mob side-work breaks, picketing breaks, dues embezzlement breaks and all that sort of stuff mandated by the unions.
So, look for that union label, will ya? Just don’t pull on t too hard because whatever it’s attached to will probably unravel on ya!
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