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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
Over at Tom Blumer’s Bizzy Blog, we can see evidence that the United Auto Workers did, indeed, throw their retirees under the bus in its recent contract negotiations with Ford, GM, and Chrysler. Also, contrary to the way The New York Times reported the story, there was less scaling back other wise as far as the USA is concerned.
Blummer reports that things aren’t quite what they seem…
Let me repeat the key sentences found inside the red box:
For our active members, these tentative changes mean no loss in your base hourly pay, no reduction in your health care, and no reduction in pensions.
…. Unfortunately, in this process our retirees are required to make difficult sacrifices as is explained later in the summary.
In other words, the UAW protected its currently working members, the ones who get to vote on contracts, from any meaningful sacrifice, while hosing its retirees, who don’t get to vote.
How hard were retirees hit? This hard, according to a May local news report out of Detroit:
(UAW President Ron) Gettelfinger said the contract is a difficult one for the active members and retirees, who will give up some 25% of their health care benefits. “This was a matter of salvation as much as we possibly could for our retirees. I am regretful that we had to do anything and I think it’s a disgrace we had to do anything,” Gettelfinger said.
Spare us the pseudo-tough talk, Ron.
Even given the opportunity to cleanse all sins in bankruptcy, GM and Chrysler ended up doing very little to change their U.S. manufacturing day-to-day cost structure. Thanks to press coverage that has been almost completely derelict, almost no one knows this. Nick Bunkley’s piece above continues in that truth-obscuring tradition.
What really happened between the two companies and the UAW confirms and extends what I noted last week (first item at link) when items about post-bankruptcy restructurings began to appear:
In each case, it looks like the bankruptcy plan really consisted of the following:
- “Let’s steal as much as we can from disfavored stakeholders.” In Chrysler’s case, with the help of government intimidation, first-lien non-TARP lenders were fleeced.” At GM, it happened to the unsecured bondholders.
- “Let’s cut things back just enough to make us look like we’re serious, but not enough to be able to emerge profitably.
- “Let’s hope for a miracle in the marketplace.”
It looks like retirees were treated by their UAW “brothers and sisters” as yet another set of “disfavored stakeholders.”
Meanwhile, the marketplace miracle necessary for all of this to even have a chance of working is nowhere to be found, and tens of billions of our tax dollars appear to be headed for a big, fat write-off.
Clink on over to Blumer’s report and take a look at the other info he has on this story.
In Ottawa, Illinois schools superintendent John Harrison committed suicide over the weekend. Ottawa is south west of Chicago in LaSalle County.
The school is suffering a teachers unions trike at this time, but it isn’t known if the strike and controversy is connected to the suicide.
One interesting part of the report on the CBS News site, though, showed one aspect of today’s teachers unions that is galling.
Teachers went on strike Sept. 30. They’re objecting to a school board offer that would require them to chip in for family health insurance coverage. About 1,600 students attend the school.
Seriously? These teachers think they shouldn’t have to pay any part of their own health insurance coverage? I guess we shouldn’t expect teachers to be like everyone one else in the country, eh? Naturally these greedy unions think teachers should get free healthcare all paid for by the taxpayer!
At this point these greedy, anti-student teachers unions are more like criminal syndicates than organizations with the interests of the people at heart!
A rather new group called the Economic Freedom Alliance (economicfreedomalliance.org) is now taking on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) by erecting billboards to target five key Democrat congressmen in hopes of getting their constituents to urge them to drop support of the EFCA.
In one section of Illinois, for instance, the billboards say simply “DoNotLetBillFosterKillJobs.com.” Bill Foster is a Democratic Representative from south west of Chicago who now holds the seat that Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert once occupied.
Other Democrats that the billboards are targeting elsewhere in the country are Democrat Representatives Debbie Halvorson (Ill.) and Ike Skelton (Missouri), as well as Democratic Senators Evan Bayh (Indiana) and Claire McCaskill (Missouri).
The EFA has posted a nicely summed up fact sheet about what the EFCA is and what it does and it’s worth a bookmark.
The organization is chaired by Ron Gidwitz a conservative businessman in Illinois. Gidwitz ran as a Republican for governor in 2006, but did not get the nomination.
Stimulating the economy isn’t nearly as important to President Obama as putting federal dollars into the pockets of his union cronies. Because of Obama’s PLA Executive Order, thousands of jobs are going to unions in states that have few union members.
The Washington Times, for instance, reports that Obama has grandiosely given a $35 million federal construction project to the New Hampshire. But there are strings attached, strings that pull federal pay levers for the exclusive benefit of unions.
In February Obama signed Executive Order 13202 that demanded that project labor agreements be forced on every federal construction project. These PLAs would demand that federal construction projects either hire union labor or pay all workers union wages. Of course, as these non-union workers are getting union wages the government will also be deducting union dues from their paychecks regardless of whether said worker is in a union or not. This is little else than a direct transfer of federal money to union coffers.
And what of this New Hampshire project? Well, the PLA is in play as a matter of course. This $35 million federal construction project will either employ an all-union workforce, or force contractors to pay union wages to non-union workers as well as remove dues fees from said workers.
So what, you might ask? Won’t this help the job situation in New Hampshire? Perhaps a bit, but what it will do is illicitly give unions tons of cash for no reason. After all, according to the Washington Times only has 8.7 percent of New Hampshire’s construction workforce is unionized. This means that the largest number of New Hampshire’s construction workers will not see jobs from this project and if they do they will find their paychecks docked for union dues even though they are not officially in the union. Additionally, it is highly doubtful that any of these non-union workers will ever see any benefits from dues and pension payments that they might make while employed on the federal project.
But even worse than that, these forced union sops will drive up the costs of the project, cause delays, and fill the pockets of corrupt union officials. So the federal dollars going to these projects will not be cost effective. It should be also remembered that these projects are being funded by the taxpayers.
In the end, this is neither about jobs, nor stimulus. In truth, this is simply a massive payoff from Obama to his supporters in the unions made at the expense of the national treasury as well as the exclusion of New Hampshire’s successful small businessmen.
For a little further information on the cozy relationship between the Illinois State government in Springfield and the troubled Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the sort of corrupt bargain to which we are attempting to bring sunlight, we’ve done a little research into some of the funding distributed from our tax dollars to ACORN. In this case, we have some documents on funds given to ACORN for the Illinois Housing Development Authority’s Predatory Lending Database Program (PLD) and related programs.
It isn’t just the taxpayer’s money given to ACORN that is at issue, to be sure. Not only do we see our tax dollars going to this organization that has so often been caught up in instances of criminal voter fraud across the country as well as a $5 million embezzlement controversy, but our state government has allowed this group to help it create government programs and policies, as well.
Why would the state turn to this often times criminal organization to help it create the PLD program? For the answer to that we turn to the 2008 Annual Comprehensive Housing Plan progress report.
The Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) drew on the collective experience of these HUD-certified housing counseling agencies in drafting administrative rules and an application for funding under the PLD program. Several of these agencies have worked with IHDA in the past, and their experience, combined with that of IHDA and IDFPR, ensured a thoughtful, reasonable approach to implementation of the PLD Program.
(See image of Page 40 below)
So, the state agency charged with creating this PLD program went to groups like ACORN and asked them how to write the rules and create the legislation under which such groups would reap financial rewards. It is shades of the fox guarding the hen house.
Page 40 of the 2008 annual progress report referenced here shows that ACORN itself, along with more than a dozen other such groups, received $100,000 for this initial stage of the PLD program.
As time moved onward, Springfield doled out more and more of our tax dollars to ACORN and its subsidiaries. Records from the 2009 and 2010 budget bill, for instance shows thousands going into the PLD program. (Download .pdf of pages from the 2009 and 2010 budget reports)
Additionally, a web search of the website of the Illinois Secretary of State shows several ACORN agencies listed as approved and currently working with the state government. Listed are ACORN Housing Affordable Loans, LLC and the ACORN Housing Corporation of Illinois, and Louisiana. (See Screen Shots Below)
These relationships need to be investigated and a full reporting of them must be given to the people. How many different ACORN subsidiaries are receiving state finding and for what programs? How involved have these ACORN groups been in crafting the legislation and rules that affords them state funding? Which of our representatives have been responsible for giving ACORN this favorable treatment? What results have these programs afforded the citizens of the state?
Join us and Say NO to ACORN.
Sign the petition and tell Governor Quinn that you want a real investigation to end corruption for good.
Page 40 of the 2008 Annual Comprehensive Housing Plan Progress Report
Screen Shots of Illinois Secretary of State Authorized Corporations Listings
Governor Pat Quinn signed Executive Order number 09-15 earlier in the year. This order gave the state government the OK to hand over the private information — the addresses, names, and telephone numbers — of hundreds of families that have developmentally disabled children and other family members with chronic medical problems in their homes. Many of these people are considered home-based healthcare workers by the state and they receive state aid to help them take care of their disabled family members.
Unions like the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) are salivating to take some of this money out of the pockets of these needy Illinois citizens that only want a little help to take care of family members with major and costly medical problems.
Now, with the signing of EO 09-15, Governor Pat Quinn has given these unions the “in” they need to accost these citizens in their homes or on the phone in order to cajole them into joining their unions. Once these unions get done bothering Illinois citizens in their homes, thanks to being given private addresses by Quinn, they will then begin to reap the reward of millions of dollars in forced dues remittances.
Quinn has also agreed that these unions will get a portion of these citizen’s state aid whether they join a union or not.
This whole policy is little more than a direct transfer of state money into the accounts of unions by a governor whose state is nearly bankrupt.
Unfortunately, Illinois isn’t the first Democrat controlled state that has instituted this underhanded sort of union payback. States like California and Michigan have already put these sorts of backdoor payoff policies to unions into action. It cannot be ignored that both California and Michigan are two of the states in the worst financial shape in the country and this sort of union payoff is why. Infuriatingly, this is what Governor Quinn is looking to visit on Illinois.
Not long ago, gubernatorial candidate Dan Proft had a press conference on this issue and invited a few Illinoisans that will be directly affected by Quinn’s payoff to unions to speak to their outrage at Governor Quinn.
Please help us demand that Quinn stop his payoffs to groups like ACORN and the SEIU at SayNoToACORN.com. Sign our petition to demand an investigation into these practices by our government
(**Note** we want it known that we are not endorsing Dan Proft’s bid for governor, but this video is directly pertinent to our issue and that is the sole reason we are linking it here.)
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston