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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
A few posts ago we spoke about the abuse of PLAs that the Obama administration is pushing for and we’ve often talked about the efforts of Associated Builders and Contractors whose work against PLAs and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) has been exceptional.
Well, ABC has its own site called TheTruthAboutPLAs.com where all the information about PLAs you’d ever want can be found along with all sorts of other great info. There you can find a recent entry headlined Construction Unions Posture for Pension Bailout which is about the pension troubles we were also talking about recently.
So, take some time to look The TruthAboutPLAs.com, folks. There are some great posts over there.
So, what do you do if you are the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and you are accused of violating state election laws? What else but hire the ACLU to try and get those laws thrown out as unconstitutional?
In Pennsylvania, six members of ACORN have been indicted for violating a state election law prohibiting groups from setting quotas for voter registration drives. The ACLU claims that this rule violates the constitutional right of ACORN to utilize “commonplace management tools” and techniques to manage its paid workers.
But the statute is clearly meant to maintain the integrity of the voter rolls, something that ACORN just as clearly violated with its illicit practices to inflate voter rolls with fake Democrat voters.
The statute says, “A person may not give, solicit or accept payment or financial incentive to obtain voter registration if the payment or incentive is based upon the number of registrations or applications obtained.”
During the voter drive, ACORN set quotas for workers that ended up seeing that quotes were met by creating fake voter registration cards.
ACORN and the ACLU, it seems, couldn’t care less about the integrity of elections and the legality of voter registrations.
One thing that this ACLU lawsuit seems to prove, however, is that ACORN admits its guilt in the matter. If it were not guilty of falsifying thousands of Pennsylvania voter registration cards, why then would it need to get rid of the statute in question?
ACORN is obvious indulging a Cover You’re A** moment here and issuing an admission of guilt. ACORN knows it perpetrated vote fraud and now wants to go back and change the law to paper over its guilt.
We’ve mentioned it here and there in the past, but one of the under reported stories about unions today is that few of them have fully funded pension plans and worse, many are in dire trouble. The Wall Street Journal reminds us all of the mess that union pensions are in with a July 27 piece headlined, “Union Pensions in the Red .”
The WSJ reports on the unusual actions of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), one of the most powerful unions in America, as it tries to fix its pension funds.
Only last week, the country’s largest union local re-opened the contract for its 145,000 members two years early and gave up raises and reduced retirement benefits for future hires. The SEIU’s United Healthcare Workers East struck this unusual deal so employers could instead plug a gaping pension hole.
The union is so desperate to replace the pension money it has wasted on other things that it is willing to give up stuff it would never give up otherwise.
Of course, like any union, what it gives up now is only the next item on the agenda to steal back at a later date, so nothing is “gone,” as it were. Just like Congress, no bad idea is ever off the table forever.
Anyway, the pension mess is not just a problem for the SEIU.
In April, the SEIU National Industry Pension Fund—which covers some 101,000 rank-and-file members—announced that its pension has been put into what the feds call “critical status,” or “red zone.” In other words, it lacks the cash to pay promised benefits and may have to cut them. As of 2007, the last year for which it reported results to the government, the fund had 74.4% of the assets needed to pay its benefits.
Thirteen of the bigger plans operated for the Teamsters have, together, a mere 59.3% of reserves necessary to cover obligations. Or consider that 26 pension funds at the food workers union, the UFCW, are at 58.7%. Seven locals at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters fare better at 67%. As a rule of thumb the government considers a fund to be “endangered” at below 80%, and in “critical” status at below 65%, and requires them to come up with a plan to get off probation within a decade.
Naturally, the whole reason for this is because union pension plans can only be funded fully with constant wild growth because they are so over generous. Of course, it would help if unions weren’t constantly stealing money from the pension funds too, but… you know.
The Journal also notes something we’ve pointed out in the past. The pension plans for union bosses are generally doing quite well throughout uniondom. While the lowly employees’ pensions are falling apart and going bankrupt, the pensions for union chiefs are funded at 100% and beyond most of the time.
Obviously the first people in the minds of the union bosses is union bosses and not the membership. I agree with the WSJ. I wonder how union members would feel if they fully understood how little their union chiefs care about them?
Wal-Mart is making unions mad… again. But this time it is for joining forces with one as opposed to merely opposing them. Wal-Mart has recently joined forces with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to help them push through the disastrous Obamacare policies that the SEIU is championing.
While the SEIU is one of the largest, most powerful unions in the country, not all unions are happy with the labor group’s teaming up with the retail giant.
“We’re not too happy with Wal-Mart. We don’t think they should be an example of how to fix the health-care problems in America,” AFL-CIO President James Hoffa, Jr. told reporters.
As it happens, I agree with Hoffa that Wal-Mart’s agreement with the SEIU makes it an imperfect example by which to push healthcare “reform.” You see, Wal-Mart is not pursuing what would be a good policy for the country. It is pursuing what would be a good policy for Wal-Mart and a bad one for Wal-Mart’s competition.
Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest retailer, of course. But that also makes it the richest. And the fact that its pockets are extremely deep means that it could afford the onerous healthcare costs that Obamacare would force on the nation. BUT… its competition could ill afford such expensive government meddling and this would hamper their ability to compete on the massive scale of a Wal-Mart. Consequently, the whole scheme would help Wal-Mart maintain its edge over all comers and leave them with an unfair advantage which can keep them at the top.
And this very point is one that proves how bad Obamacare really is for this country. Not only might it give an unfair advantage to one of the largest corporations in the country, but it will materially hinder the growth and success of all the others.
So, I agree with Mr. Hoffa on this one. Wal-Mart is a terrible example of how to fix healthcare.
What is a project labor agreement (PLA) and why is it bad for our economy? And why is President Obama so intent on implementing these budget busting regulations right in the middle of a depressed economy?
First of all a PLA is a requirement forced on building contractors by the federal government and some state governments. In order for a building contractor to be awarded a government building contract a PLA demands that it must adopt union pay scales and collective bargaining whether the builder is a union shop or not.
Secondly, it should seem pretty obvious why a PLA is a bad thing. Not only does a PLA force the costs of federal construction to rise to satisfy undeserved demands by Big Labor, but to force the 80% of America’s contracting companies to observe costly union contract requirements in order to get a federal contract results in a situation where only union contractors can get federal business. This excludes the largest number of America’s builders from government building jobs in order to favor the 20% of those contractors that are unionized.
PLAs also negatively affect construction workers, as well. In some states, for instance, a PLA forces non-unionized workers to pay union dues — sometimes at reduced rates, but paying nonetheless — while working on a government construction job. So even if an employee cannot in good conscience join a union, the government will force that employee to pay union dues anyway. If that doesn’t violate freedom of association, what does?
Almost as soon as he took office, President Barack Obama repealed a Bush executive order and issued EO #13502 which once again forces all federally contracted building projects to suffer under a PLA. The fact is that President Obama stands in opposition to cost effective use of our federal construction dollars as well as free enterprise.
And why did he do this? Perhaps the millions of dollars raised by unions to fund Obama’s presidential campaign explains why? This is no less than a pay back to Big Labor. Unfortunately the 80% of non-union workers out there are getting the back of Barack’s hand with his pro-union actions.
Taxpayers certainly benefit when building contractors must compete for contracts based on best services and the ability to hold to a budget. But with a PLA the constant cost overruns, budget bloating, and featherbedding so common with union operations becomes the norm and federal dollars are wasted by fraud and abuse.
PLAs may be great to float the fatcat salaries of union bosses, but they are bad for the American taxpayer. (Click HERE for more info on PLAs)
Associated Building Contractors has some great info on PLAs and why they are so detrimental to our federal budget.
Some of the logical points that ABC makes are as follows:
- Despite the fact that non-union companies have their own benefit plans, union-only PLAs require these companies to pay their workers’ health and welfare benefits to union trust funds. Thus, companies have to pay benefits twice: once to the union and once to the company plan. Workers never see any of their benefits sent to the unions unless they decide to leave their non-union employer and remain with the union until vested.
- PLAs require non-union companies to obtain apprentices exclusively from union apprenticeship programs. Participants in federal and state-approved non-union apprenticeship programs cannot work on a job covered by a PLA. This means craft professionals enrolled in non-union apprenticeship programs are excluded from work in their hometowns.
- PLAs require non-union companies to obtain their workers from union hiring halls. This means a non-union company has to send its hard working employees to the union hiring hall and hope the union sends the same workers back.
- Non-union workers may have to pay union dues and fees or join a union in order to work on a PLA project.
Do yourself a favor and look over ABC’s entire presentation. You’ll see much useful information there.
Fidel agrees with Unions, those darn elections are annoying.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston