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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
-By Brian Faughnan, RedState.com
Over at Shopfloor, they note that the AFL-CIO is proud enough of international cooperation that they’re bragging about it at their website:
Yesterday at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., union leaders from 45 different countries met with AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and representatives of U.S. union organizations to discuss the union movement in the United States and the need to work together to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s an exciting chance for global cooperation in the fight to preserve workers’ freedom to form unions and bargain for a better life.
Union leaders, representing countries from across the world—Australia, Turkey, Argentina, Italy, Ghana, Sweden and Indonesia, just to name a few—took part in a discussion of the critical issues facing America’s workers.
As Wood notes: “The internal monologue of the foreign delegates: It’s an exciting chance to give our workers an edge by making the U.S. economy less competitive.”
What would the reaction be if representatives of a number of major American companies got together in Brussels with their foreign counterparts to proclaim a united effort to roll back unionization in the U.S.? If that sounds surprisingly specific, it’s exactly what the AFL-CIO is bragging about:
Global union leaders will meet in Brussels, Belgium, in February to develop actions and to support the Employee Free Choice Act, and the effort to support the Employee Free Choice Act will be on the agenda.
Where do those unions get their money? How much will they be spending on the concerted effort to change U.S. labor law? And is the Department of Labor investigating the effort by the AFL-CIO to enlist their foreign counterparts in this effort?
-By Anita MonCrief, TheNextRight.com
Charles Jackson and the management of ACORN released a statement today that seemed to mock a Georgia State Senator. Not only does ACORN treat the poor with wanton disregard but now it seems that elected officials are also treated with disdain.
“Senator Mullis indicates his ignorance by calling for revocation of ACORN’s tax-exempt status; the organization does not have such status.”
Sentator Mullis was correct in calling for ACORN’s tax exempt status to be revoked because it does have one, it just happens to be registered in the name of Project Vote. Civil RICO charges filed on January 7, 2008 allege what the liberal voter registration world has known for years. The complaint details a report done by ACORN’s own lawyer Elizabeth Kingsley. The complaint also quotes part of the document that was leaked to the New York Times.
-By Elaine L. Chao, The Wall Street Journal
When President-elect Barack Obama initially announced his economic team, one important player was conspicuously absent: his pick for secretary of labor.
But America’s work force is central to our economic recovery in the near term and to our sustained prosperity in the long term. Seventy percent of our economy is consumer driven. And most of that consumption depends on workers’ paychecks.
The Labor Department has tremendous resources to protect American workers and help them be more competitive in the world-wide economy. The department also has the power to harm American worker competitiveness through misguided regulations and punitive policies that would cause jobs to go overseas or disappear entirely.
Over the past eight years, the Labor Department has worked hard to ensure that labor regulations protect workers, without needlessly making it harder to create and keep jobs in America.
And our record speaks for itself. Today we have record-low workplace injury, illness and fatality rates. The department set new records in the number of workers recovering back wages owed to them through effectively targeted enforcement and our compliance assistance program. To meet the needs of workers in our knowledge-based economy we launched new programs to bring employers, workers, unions and educators together for new training and new career opportunities. The department also secured record monetary recoveries for workers’ pension plans…
Read the rest at Wall Street Journal.
NBC Augusta is reporting that State Senator Jeff Mullis (R- Chickamauga) is sponsoring legislation to revoke the tax exempt status of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) because of the wide spread voter fraud that the group has been perpetrating over the last few years.
“An organization that chooses to undermine the integrity of our nation’s election process should not be entitled to tax exemption benefits,” said Sen. Mullis. “The excessive amount of evidence against ACORN engaging in fraudulent activity demands that the organization to be held accountable for taking advantage of hardworking taxpayers, and I call on the IRS to ensure that justice is executed in this case.”
Well said. These criminals should not be favored by government with OUR tax dollars either in direct payments (which it woefully receives) nor in tax breaks (which it also gets).
Apparently Mullis is “calling on the IRS and the Secretary of the Treasury to launch an extensive investigation into ACORN’s voter registration activities.”
I wish Mullis all the luck in the world and hope that all Georgians lend him their support.
Sworn testimony indicates union officials misled educators, diverted union treasury funds into political committee
Washington, DC (January 13, 2009) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation announced today it will file a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) asking it to investigate charges made by two Alabama educators who discovered a union scheme to divert their money into the National Education Association’s (NEA) political action committee (PAC).
Claire Waites, the chair of the science department, and Dr. Jeanne Fox, an assistant principal, both work at Daphne Middle School in Bay Minette, Alabama. Waites and Fox are both members of the Baldwin County Education Association (BCEA), Alabama Education Association (AEA), and NEA teacher unions.
In July 2008, Waites and Fox attended the NEA’s annual convention in Washington, DC, as delegates of the BCEA. By telephone, BCEA union president Saadia Hunter informed Waites and Fox that contributions to a “children’s fund” in their names were made from money included in their expense reimbursements for their trip to the convention.
Although Hunter told Waites that these contributions were not political in nature, they actually went to the NEA’s PAC, the NEA Fund for Children and Public Education.
Later, Hunter admitted that the money would be contributed to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Sworn statements by Waites and Fox indicate that the AEA union boss also admitted that the PAC contributions were paid with BCEA members’ dues. However, it is illegal for unions to contribute to political candidates using “dues, fees, or other moneys required as a condition of membership in a labor organization.”
Teacher union officials also violated federal law by encouraging and soliciting contributions under false pretenses and without informing Waites or Fox of their right to refuse to contribute without any reprisal. Federal law also forbids campaign contributions made in the name of another person.
“This union money laundering scheme makes a mockery of federal election law,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation, which has joined Waites and Fox as a complainant. “We suspect this scheme was widely used by the NEA union hierarchy and could involve hundreds of thousands of dollars. We urge the FEC to take decisive action.”
In the military it’s called “mission creep.” That is when you start out doing one thing and end up doing something that has nothing at all to do with what your main function is supposed to be. Unions in New Mexico have just shown mission creep, once again, because, for some reason, labor leaders in that state imagine it is their duty to tell government what sort of taxes should be invented for the citizens of Santa Fe.
These so-called labor leaders have decided to urge government to institute a “transfer tax” on houses that they deem “too big” to be allowed to be sold without confiscatory taxes imposed upon them.
Now, why a labor union imagines it is in its purview to discuss tax policy… well, that is anybody’s guess. At least it should be surprising to anyone that thinks it is only the government’s duty to discuss and create tax policy and NOT a union’s duty. But, as always, someone forgot to mention to the unions that unions have no business imagining tax policy.
Labor leaders are rallying Santa Fe union members to campaign for a proposed tax on high-end home sales.
The ballot measure asks whether the city should levy a 1 percent fee on the sale of homes with a selling price of $750,000 or more. The resulting revenue would be used to provide housing assistance for working families.
So, these communist inspired, class warfare mavens want to attack “the rich” again, eh?
Let us hope that the duly authorized members of the government of Santa Fe will ignore these anti-American union thugs and make a decision based on actual public concern… and then promptly vote down this oppressive tax plan.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston