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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
This from Bret Jacobson of thetruthaboutefca.com
Important news out of the BNA Daily Labor Report (no link available):
Unions participated in fewer resolved representation elections conducted by the National Labor Relations Board during the first half of 2009 than the same period in 2008, but the percentage of elections won by unions increased substantially, according to NLRB data analyzed by BNA PLUS, BNA’s research division.
Unions won 73.1 percent of 588 private sector elections held during the first half of 2009, up from 66.5 percent of 813 elections held during the same period in 2008. The BNA PLUS survey only tracks elections conducted by NLRB, not organizing outside of NLRB processes.
Wow, 73 percent is a serious winning percentage. To put that in perspective, consider that in the most recently completed season:
- Only 4 NFL teams won that often
- Only 3 NBA teams won that much
- 0 baseball teams won that much … in fact, no team has ever won 118 games (the toll needed to hit the 73 percent threshold for a 162-game season) in the nation’s pastime
And union officials still want to rig the rules to avoid letting employees vote in elections that Big Labor won 73 percent of the time?
According to FollowTheMoney.org unions were some of the most generous with donations to political candidates and causes during the 2007-2008 donation cycle, the last cycle full reporting is known for. A close second place goes to the energy industry with Indian interests coming in third.
Out of the top 50 highest amounts given to political efforts unions donated $223,533,678 to political causes showing that, while unions make up less than 20 percent of the American work force, they account for some of the largest in political donations.
Unfortunately, many of those top donors are public employees unions meaning that our tax dollars are caught in a revolving door with tax money going to public employees who then turn around and donate some of that tax money right back to politicians and their campaign funds in order for those politicians to themselves turn right back around and pass laws that give public employees unions more money!
Six categories dominate the top 50 highest donations to political causes in 2007-2008. Unions; energy interests and public utilities; Indian interests and tribes; gambling interests; healthcare industry groups; political organizations.
Here’s the break down:
- Unions = $223,533,78
- Energy/Public Utilities = $214,103,620
- Indian Tribes = $170,276,962
- Gambling Interests = $69,108,107
- Healthcare Groups = $39,897,713
- Political Organizations = $6,432,826
That is an awful lot of money floating around out there going to politicians and political causes, isn’t it? Of course, the shame of it is that this money has to be spent at all. After all, the only reason these groups (many of them extremist left-wing groups) are throwing all this money around is because government has taken on more power than it should. Cut legislation, cut regulation, and take power away from government and you’d see most of this many millions of dollars going to improve business, grow the economy, and make our lives better. Instead, as government steals away more power from us and forces itself upon our daily lives more every year, these groups must spend more to guard their interests.
You can’t blame lobbyists for this obscene waste of money, people. THIS is ALL the fault of overweening government involvement in our lives.
We take this day off to be with our family and we hope you are doing the same. Remember, all our work here on The Union Label Blog is for our families so that we as workers in America have the right to make a living for them without union oppression. So, have a great Thanksgiving and we give thanks for your readership.
The Chicago Tribune printed a letter to the editor that perfectly describes the disconnect that state workers have between their pensions and the political process. These state workers stare wide-eyed in faux innocence pretending that they themselves, as individuals, are wholly innocent of the mess that is our state pensions are currently in.
But the truth is, the financial ruins that our states are in ARE the fault of state workers. It is their fault directly and without question. Their protestations of innocence is a lie. Sadly, it is a lie they tell themselves and they believe it.
Here is what former state employee Earl Shumaker of Sycamore, Illinois wrote to the Chicago Trib:
As a longtime reader of the Tribune, I was disappointed that your editorial left out some critical information pertaining to the public pensions.
Please don’t blame the Illinois workers for this problem. The problem lies directly with past and present politicians of both parties.
Of course, the employees should be blamed for the pension problems, at least in part. You see, these pension troubles are caused by their employee unions just as much as they are caused by the politicians in the state capitol.
In fact, the politicians and the unions are simply different sides of the same coin. Every year the public employees unions spend millions of their member’s dues money on donations to politicians. In 2008, for instance, unions wasted $223,533,78 on donations to politicians and political causes. These politicians then turn around and enlarge benefits and give state employees pensions that far exceed that of private industries. In return, the public employees unions give even more money to these same pliant politicians.
Granted that the politicians make matters worse by raiding the pension funds for their welfare programs and other favorite and equally unnecessary government programs, and that isn’t the fault of unions and public employees. So, unions and the employees aren’t solely responsible for this sorry state of affairs, to be sure. But Mr. Shumaker is completely wrong to say that he as a state employee is utterly blameless for the mess our pensions and state budgets are in.
Can we blame the employees for what their unions do? As the Obamaites love to say, yes we can. The unions only do what they do because the employees let them do it.
Of course, there should be no such thing as a public employees union in the first place. This pension mess is a perfect example of why that is true. What is a union for, after all, if not to “get” as much for an employee as possible quite despite what the employee is worth or whether or not the “getting” is fiscally responsible.
In the private sector the ultimate break on unions is the health of the business. If the business goes under because of union excess, then everyone loses. Therefore, at least some stop on unions exists in private businesses. But in government there is no stop to union excess at all. Government is obligated to continue spreading money around regardless if it is fiscally responsible or not. Therefore, there is nothing to stop these unions for “getting” more and more every year.
Unions are antithetical to good government and they should be wholly eliminated from government.
Unfortunately, Mr. Shumaker and his fellow union members and state employees are ignorant of the fault they deserve to be assessed. But their ignorance of their own culpability does not absolve them of fault. This isn’t just true in Illinois. It’s a fact all across the country.
-By Warner Todd Huston
Ruinous PLAs Coming Your Way Lucas County, Ohio!
Magie Thurber is reporting that Lucas County, Ohio County Commissioner Ben Konop is trying to force unions on non-union labor in his jurisdiction. What about freedom to chose? Forget it. Konop as big brother knows better.
On Tuesday, the commissioners will discuss an agenda item ominously entitled “Incorporating Project Labor Agreements into Bidding Specifications for all County-Supported Projects.” (Download PDF) Apparently the commissioners will be pursuing PLAs in all contracts in Lucas County’s future.
What is a Project Labor Agreement or PLA? I discussed this back in February right after President Obama signed his Executive Order 13202 pushing PLAs and in October after New Hampshire faced this situation. Obama’s EO demanded that every federal construction project force a PLA on its contractors. Essentially, a PLA requires all hired contractors and their employees to pay union dues, work under union rules, and pay into union pensions (even though they will never get any benefits from them) whether they belong to a union or not. This forced unionism is to be enforced despite that up to 84 percent of all contractors in the country are not part of a union.
This forced unionism raises the costs of government projects, causes delays to construction deadlines and fills the pockets of corrupt union officials that work hand-in-hand with pliant government officials who then find union campaign cash coming their way. A PLA is essentially just a payoff to unions as there really is no legitimate reason to force non-union businesses to operate under union domination. PLAs are little else but a direct transfer of government funds (your tax dollars) straight into the hands of corrupt union officials and their bank accounts.
I mean, imagine how you would feel if you were a non-union employee and in order to be allowed to work you are told that you have to pay union dues all the while knowing that you have no vote in the union, no choice on the matter, and that you will never benefit from the union pension that your dues money is supposed to be paying for. How would that make you feel?
Fortunately there is hope. New Hampshire recently saw a Dept. of Labor project canceled because PLAs were to have been forced on the state’s contractors.
Now Maggie does a fantastic job of fisking the summary paragraph of the Lucas County PLA agenda so I won’t rehash all of that. But I do have one thing I’d like to point out. But first, here is that summary:
Whereas this Board of County Commissioners is responsible for facilitating funds for social services, employers who contract to construct county-supported projects are effectively compensated with public dollars and should pay their workers enough so that those same workers might not also rely on taxpayer-funded social services. Applying project labor agreements on all county-supported construction projects, which will ensure workers on those projects are paid prevailing or union-negotiated wages, will also create more opportunities for our local working families, promote fair-bidding practices, protect area standards, avoid disruptions, delays and labor disputes, and create a higher level of workmanship on the aforementioned projects.
If this isn’t the most warped logic to force a transfer of government money to unions you’ve ever seen then… well, you aren’t paying attention!
Look at what this union supporting political hack is saying. He’s saying that he wants to force unionism on all contracts so that the “public” won’t go on welfare. So, he wants to take government money to pay workers so he doesn’t have to take government money to pay people who won’t work? Notice, though, that government money is still going out the door! This fool is just shifting the government money from the welfare office to the funds that pay for building projects. What’s the difference? Only the tiny mind of a Democrat can see the difference.
But, let’s face the truth here. The true crime of this whole thing is that Commissioner Ben Konop is proposing that the county take money away from welfare so that he can give it to his favorite union pals. This guy wants children to starve so that his union thug buddies can get some government cash! This truly is a new age of Obama! Welfare recipients come in second to union chiefs.
It’s called “pink sheeting,” a practice employed by union bosses to bully their membership to vote the “right” way. The practice consists of forcing employees to reveal deeply personal information about themselves — such as abusive relationships, addictions, or legal trouble — so that these items can be used against the employees at a later date to elicit cooperative behavior.
Union members are denouncing the practice of pink sheeting while union chiefs, particularly those of the hotel employees union UNITE HERE, are either denying that they use the method or saying that the practice has been stopped.
More than a dozen organizers said in interviews that they had often been pressured to detail such personal anguish — sometimes under the threat of dismissal from their union positions — and that their supervisors later used the information to press them to comply with their orders.
Naturally, UNITE HERE officials claim this practice doesn’t happen.
John W. Wilhelm, Unite Here’s president, condemned the tactics. “I have zero tolerance for inappropriate intrusions into people’s private and personal lives,” he said. “I have not personally used these techniques, and I have taken a very strong stand against them.”
One of the excuses union leaders have given for the emergence of this controversy is interesting, too. It reveals another long-standing “practice” of sorts going on behind the scenes in uiniondom of late. Wilhelm claims that this whole thing is but a campaign perpetrated by rival union the Services Employees International Union (SEIU) to discredit UNITE HERE.
This is a piece with the sort of goon tactics that SEIU President Andy Stern has been employing all across the country. Stern has been methodically attempting to destroy every smaller union in order to absorb them into one mega-union and he doesn’t care at all how it gets done.
In California he’s hired intimidation squads to force in-home healthcare workers to vote for the SEIU (here and here), not to mention the underhanded tactics he’s employed to destroy the NUHW healthcare workers union in the Golden State. An SEIU thug recently tried to intimidate a Boy Scout in Pennsylvania. The SEIU tried to force private citizens in Illinois into a union without their consent… and these are only the recent outrages perpetrated by Stern’s union thug squads at the SEIU.
Still, despite UNITE HERE President Wilhelm’s protestations, multiple members of his own union, and folks in supervisory positions to boot, have attested to the pink sheeting practice.
In an open letter released in October, four hotel workers attested to the practice saying, “This practice is a cynical and manipulative system of control. It is a tactic designed to keep those involved in the union’s work from straying from the directives of the union leadership.”
This all testifies to the fact that unions are not the free associative organizations that they are painted as. It shows that coercion, even violence is perpetrated by union chiefs to keep employees in line. Unions are essentially anti-American in practice and organization and this is just one more example of that truth.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston