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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
-By Warner Todd Huston
As we’ve discussed before, Colorado has several Amendments on its ballot this election season. One of them is Amendment 54. (See full text in PDF format here)
Basically, Amendment 54 is a corruption fighter. It prohibits any company that holds a no-bid government contract from donating to political campaigns. This law would stop politicians from taking kick-backs from companies that receive contracts from the state.
Naturally, the unions in Colorado oppose this Amendment. They are not happy to be told they aren’t allowed to fatten the larder of the politicians with whom they negotiate. It makes it easier for unions to get politicians to do what they want them to do when those politicians have a pocketful of union cash at hand. (this law does not, by the way, stop individual union members from donating to the political candidate of their choice.)
Here is where the Denver Chamber of Commerce comes in. As reported earlier this month, unions made a few backroom deals with ostensibly pro-business groups in order for the union promise of pulling off the ballot Amendments 53,55,56 and 57, all of which were anti-business measures. That being the case, the Denver Chamber has pledged to help the unions defeat Amendment 54.
News is, however, the agreement to lend money to the fight against Amendment 54 is not going well for Colorado Businesses for Sensible Solutions. So far, with only a week or so to go before the elections, CBSS has only raised $2.3 million of the $3 million they promised for the effort.
In any case, it is bizarre that an organization that should be fighting against the union efforts (and has in the past) is now working with them to defeat a measure that would tend to curb corruption and graft. But this is where Colorado has come, anyway.
Colorado: vote YES on Amendment 54!
- By Robert Bluey, Found 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:
The triple-digit numbers of indictments and convictions obtained by OLMS in the 2008 fiscal year demonstrates that criminal activity in unions is still a major problem. This problem points to the critical role performed by OLMS in prosecuting those who steal from their members.
Throughout the course of the past eight years, the Bush administration has made transparency of union finances a priority. The department established an excellent website, UnionReports.gov, which contains a vast amount of information about union financial reports and other documents required under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959. Democrats responded by cutting the office’s budget last year.
Here’s a complete list of criminal enforcement actions in 2008 alone.
Keep in mind that the top priority of a Democrat administration and Democrat-controlled Congress will be passing the so-called Employee Free Choice Act, better known as card check. As the new ad from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce so effectively demonstrates, this legislation will eliminate secret ballot organizing elections. Given the type of corruption that has taken place over the past eight years, do we really want to give union bosses the power to bully workers into publicly signing union authorization cards?
As the Washington Post reports, it seems that in these tight economic times, big labor is admitting that it cannot wait until President Barack Obama comes to its aid by signing the Employee Free Choice Act, thereby dooming many American businesses to economic ruin.
The Post’s story was mostly just re-hash of items we’ve talked about here on the blog for many a month. But one paragraph stuck a chord. After revealing how undemocratic the union’s “card check” ideas are, the Post talked a little bit about what big labor wants to do once Barack wins election.
Aside from the card-check proposal, organized labor leaders say they plan to soon pursue measures that would result in expanded paid leave and health-care benefits, which small-business advocates say could cripple some struggling firms. With allies in Congress and the White House, union officials would also likely push for tougher workplace safety laws and enforcement, tighter restrictions on trade agreements and increases in the minimum wage.
In other words, in these shaky times, labor plans to destroy businesses. And they expect Barack Obama to help them do it.
Yet another reason to oppose this most socialist of candidates.
It the investigation into the corruption of Calif. SEIU head Tyrone Freeman keeps getting better… well, actually worse. Now it is being revealed that Service Employees International Union chief Freeman regularly forced employees of a charity he headed to do political hack work — a practice barred by law.
Six people who worked for either the union or the charity told The Times that Freeman, and others at the labor organization acting on his behalf, ordered the nonprofit’s staffers to join partisan get-out-the-vote drives and other campaign efforts during and after their regular hours. The former employees spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation and legal jeopardy.
The former workers say that employees were required to distribute fliers, walk precincts and staff phone banks for individual candidates and the Democratic ticket during the days leading up to primary and general elections.
Naturally, Freeman is giving that innocent look of “what, me?” He is denying all allegations despite the several workers and other witnesses saying the opposite.
Like the old saying goes, deny, deny, deny.
The many scandals surrounding Freeman has resulted in several firings by the SEIU.
In the meantime, the SEIU has fired four of Freeman’s top managers and assistants. Two other employees either were fired or resigned after being accused of threatening colleagues suspected of speaking to The Times, according to an SEIU official.
I’ts sure to get messier before it’s all over. Freeman had direct ties to SEIU head Andy Stern in Washington D.C.
In an op-ed on newsblaze, Brad O’Leary gives us news of the testimony of a former union organizer that saw the intimidation of workers that the “card check” concept fosters and it pretty much confirms the common sense worries over the institution of the woefully incorrectly named “Employee Free Choice Act.”
As we’ve discussed before, the EFCA includes provisions for “card check,” a plan where union organizers can do away with the secret ballot prospective union members have always had the benefit of having in the past. The secret ballot, a most standard of democratic practices, will be eliminated giving the unions full reign to intimidate workers into agreeing with union desires since the employee’s vote will be open for everyone to see as it is cast.
As O’Leary says, “Workers questioning or unwilling to side with union organizers have been subjected to a wide range of harassment, including fear of losing their jobs, identity theft and having their families targeted.”
O’Leary also notes the testimony of a previous union organizer:
Jen Jason, a former UNITE HERE union organizer, testified before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions on such practices. According to Jason, “In jurisdictions in which ‘card check’ was actually legislated, organizers tended to be even more willing to harass, lie and use fear tactics to intimidate workers into signing cards.”
O’Leary provides a few other facts of note.
According to the Center for Union Facts, “Seventy-five percent of Americans think secret ballots are the most democratic method of choosing a union.” Yet Democrats in the Senate are likely to push for passage of EFCA, given their deep-pocketed support from Unions. According to USA Today, “The Democratic majority in Congress, which was elected with the help of $57.6 million in campaign contributions from unions, has pushed measures to increase wages on public projects, ease rules for unionizing workplaces and cut funding for corruption investigators.”
An Associated Television News / Zogby poll of likely voters also shows that a clear majority (78 percent) of Americans support workers’ rights to a secret ballot when deciding whether or not to unionize. According to the poll, only 15 percent side with the union bosses who want to do away with secret ballots.
Lastly, we will note that Barack Obama fully supports this undemocratic bill and has promised to make it a major item of focus for his presidency. If he gets in, workers all across the country will lose their democratic rights to the secret ballot.
James Jacobs has released his latest in a series of exposes on Organized Crime in the USA. This time in “Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement,” he focuses on how the Mob has infiltrated and distorted the labor movement in the U.S. to its own illegal, violent ends.
Jacobs meticulously chronicles the connections between the Mob and unionism and makes those connections irrefutable. Several reviews out there praise Jacobs for his effort, but a few complain that he isn’t “sensitive” enough to the ostensible goal of unionism, the workers. Of course, worrying about the supposed plight of the workers was NOT the goal of this book. The purpose of this book was to chronicle the Mob’s ties to unions. The “plight” of workers is a wholly other subject.
Check it out at Amazon.com.
From Publishers Weekly
NYU law professor Jacobs further burnishes his reputation for advancing the study of organized crime in America with his latest work of scholarship, billed by the publisher as “the only book to investigate how the mob has distorted American labor history.” This worthy successor to Gotham Unbound and Busting the Mob is an exhaustive, albeit sometimes repetitive, survey of the grip La Cosa Nostra has exerted on the country’s most powerful unions. While many will be familiar with the broad outlines of the corruption that riddled the Teamsters, which is recounted by the author, his summary of some lesser-known examples of pervasive labor corruption help illustrate his thesis that the entire American union movement has suffered from the intimidation and fear the mob used to gain and maintain control of unions. Especially valuable is Jacobs’s examination of the relatively recent use of the RICO law to bring dirty unions under the control of a federally appointed independent trustee, and the book’s posing of hard questions about the mixed success those monitorships have had. (Jan.)
From Booklist
Jacobs, legal scholar and expert on the Mafia, sets out to show how the Mob has distorted American labor history, explaining the relationship between organized crime and organized labor, as well as recent federal efforts to clean up unions. Unions are susceptible to organized crime because they receive a constant flow of funds from members automatically deducted by employers; AFL-CIO rules prohibit challenges to representation once a union has been recognized; and oversight of unions is difficult for both insiders and outsiders because few union members are interested in governance and because violence, intimidation, and control of information make monitoring costly and risky. Jacobs insists the book is prolabor and notes that unions do not have exclusive claim to fraud and corruption, given the well-known examples in corporations and the government. Jacobs concludes that union problems are difficult to solve because “the most distinctive feature of corruption in the labor movement is its association with the infiltration and exploitations of the Cosa Nostra organized crime families.” Mary Whaley
