Pages
Stay In Touch
More
© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
(We’ve talked about PLAs in the past and here is a good piece with an update on the issue from The Bulletin of Philadelphia)
By Bradley Vasoli, The Bulletin
An executive order issued by the Obama administration poses a significant challenge to nonunion contractors, right-to-work advocates and, those groups assert, American taxpayers.
Issued in February, it has undergone several months of governmental review and enhancement and it could begin impacting federal contracting policy any day now. Nonunion outfits are weighing their options to oppose it.
On February 6, President Barack Obama signed an executive order recommending that federal agencies enter into project labor agreements (PLAs) every time they hire a contractor for a construction project costing at least $25 million. These documents are accords between labor organizations and an agency that typically insist that unions gain bargaining rights for the duration of a project.
In practice, this means that 84.4 percent of construction workers – those who are not union-affiliated – are highly unlikely to be considered to work on a federal project in the next several years.
Opponents of this measure, such as the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), say cutting out so many nonunion companies reduces competition in the bidding process and leads to higher project costs…
Go read the rest at The Bulletin.
Are you a union member trying to find out information of the criminal actions and shady financial dealings of your union? Well don’t expect Obama and his toady in the Labor Secretary’s office, Hilda Solis, to help you uncover any illegalities perpetrated by your union bosses.
Solis’ department has just announced that it is suspending the stringent reporting requirements that labor unions must by law satisfy to assure that their financial dealings are legal and above-board. That’s right, unions have just been given a free pass for criminal actions by this president.
This is proof that political donations are the key to get away with crime. So, yes Virginia, crime does pay… at least in Obama’s Washington.
Here is the notice that recently appeared on the website of the U.S. Department of Labor:
NOTE:… Accordingly, OLMS will refrain from initiating enforcement actions against union officers and union employees based solely on the failure to file the report required by section 202 of the Labor-Management and Reporting Disclosure Act (LMRDA), 29 U.S.C. § 432, using the 2007 form, as long as individuals meet their statutorily-required filing obligation in some manner. OLMS will accept either the old Form LM-30 or the new one for purposes of this non-enforcement policy.
Solis’s office is claiming that the previous LM2 form was just too hard on those innocent, kindly union thugs and criminals, so she’s decided to just forget the whole thing. Capone’s Chicago couldn’t have had better friends in high places.
… Oh, and guess where Obama and most of his closest advisers are from? Could it be… mmmm… CHICAGO?
The journalists of Indianapolis want us to feel sorry for them. See, they’ve voluntarily signed a contract that includes a 10% pay cut and precludes raises during this contract’s 2 year term. And they are wining about it.
In a day when papers are failing all across the country, the guild members of Indy journos want us to shed a tear for the fact that they’ve been successful in keeping their jobs. In a day of the highest unemployment in all sectors of the economy for decades, these newspaper folks want us to get all twisted up over the fact that they didn’t get fired. Yes, they are all mad at their employer for not firing them and they are looking for sympathy from us.
Sure they agreed to the contract, but darn it all, they are “angry about it.” And, gosh, they’ve “sacrificed,” man! And they want to be sure that we all know about it.
I have to say, this has to be one of the most amazing displays of self-indulgent hubris I’ve seen in quite a while. Apparently, it doesn’t seem to dawn on these union members to feel grateful that their paper hasn’t gone down the tubes like so many others have. It doesn’t seem to dawn on them that they should feel lucky they have a job at all, either.
There also doesn’t seem to be any hint that these union whiners understand that Indy’s readers are dealing with their own employment situations. The unemployment rate in Indy stands at nearly 9%. Companies are closing throughout the Indianapolis area yet these journos want everyone to feel sorry for them? And they’re still working!
I have some advice for these guys, though. Do your job and quit imagining that anyone in the reading public gives a flying fig about your troubles. And, as the whole country is sacrificing in this horrible Obama economy, don’t come to us thinking that we should feel sorry for you.
You ain’t any more special than the millions of other out-of-work Americans. And, since you actually didn’t lose your jobs, Indy journos, that makes our sympathy for you amount to even less than zero.
So, quit yer whining. Do your job. Give us the news instead of the leftist pablum you’ve been giving us and feel lucky that your useless skills are still commanding a paycheck.
Or, learn to say, “do you want fries with that,” which is a phrase from a job that better fits your skill level, anyway.
Sheese.
An economist is saying that President Hoover set the stage to worsen The Great Depression because of his pro-labor union stance.
Pro-labor policies pushed by President Herbert Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 accounted for close to two-thirds of the drop in the nation’s gross domestic product over the two years that followed, causing what might otherwise have been a bad recession to slip into the Great Depression, a UCLA economist concludes in a new study.
Lee E. Ohanian, a UCLA professor of economics, lays the worst of the Depression at the feet of Hoover who, in his opinion, made the recession “three times worse” by keeping industrial wages too high which “sharply depressed employment.”
Ohanian’s study is being published by the peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Theory in December and was also posted at www.nber.org, the site of the National Buerau of Economic Research.
Hoover’s approach is unlikely to be considered today as a means of responding to economic crisis, but it does illustrate the perils of ill-conceived government policies in times of economic upheaval and confusion, says Ohanian, a macroeconomist who specializes in economic crises.
“Hoover’s response illustrates the danger of knee-jerk policy reactions in a time of crisis,” he said. “Almost always when bad policies are adopted, it’s during a period of crisis. The real risk is picking a cure that turns out to be worse than the disease.”
Of course, President Roosevelt made matters worse by continuing and even expanding many of Hoover’s worst mistakes, many economists are concluding.
As we’ve said many times here on the blog, unions are antithetical to good government as well as economic success.
And now, to today, we can tremble in fear for our economic health as we see a president about to repeat every mistake that Hoover and FDR made by nationalizing industries, forcing a top-down economy, and being a slavish devote of Big Labor.
Democrats do not learn from history.
Roll Call is reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nev) is admitting that the schedule is too crowded to expect the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) to come before that body at any time tis year. “We have too many other things on our plate,” Reid told the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce on August 27.
This comes on the tail of reports that AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka was telling his supporters that the union would launch itself into full support of Obamacare putting the EFCA on hold until that succeeded, as we reported on the 25th.
But be warned. Even while we have a brief respite from the battle over the EFCA, this is not over. The legislation is in trouble and has been put off, yes. But with solid Democrat control of Congress, we cannot expect this to be done. The Democrats owe unions for the billions of dollars raised for Democrats across the country, so the EFCA will not be cast aside so easily.
The battle is not finished.
Whole Foods, Inc. CEO John Mackey made the mistake of writing a piece opposing Obamacare in the Wall Street Journal last week. I say “mistake” only in the vein that it has made of him a target for destruction by union thugs.
As the Associated Press reports, unions have “responded” to Mackey’s piece by calling for his resignation from his own company because he opposes the socialist policies of Obamacare.
The CtW Investment Group, a part of the Change to Win federation of unions that advocates on behalf of workers’ investments in pension funds, said in a statement that it is calling on the Whole Foods board to remove Mackey as chairman and find a new CEO.
“Mr. Mackey attempted to capitalize on the brand reputation of Whole Foods to champion his personal political views, but has instead deeply offended a key segment of Whole Foods consumer base,” CtW Investment Group’s Executive Director Bill Patterson said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which is part of Change to Win, said it will be giving out information to Whole Foods shoppers about health care reform. The group said Mackey’s op-ed was an “attempt to undermine Obama’s health-care reform.”
Why anyone should care what these union thugs have to say about anything is, of course, another thing, but they’ve made the news and that is at least one success for their blather.
The truth is, Mackey is right, Obamacare is a bitter pill for America one that will lead to more ills than cures. Of course, we can’t expect unions to allow that people will have differences in political opinions from time to time without the need to call for someone’s summary execution!
But that’s union thugishness for ya, innit?
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston