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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
Unionism is failing miserably in this age of a greater world market and an increase in competition for business across the globe. More nations than ever have left behind the 18th century and are taking bold steps into a world made smaller by technology. No longer is but a handful of nations leading the world in manufacturing while the rest wallow in abject poverty. This greater competition is increasing the standard of living in nearly every corner of the earth but because there is so much competition, unions in the U.S. are dying out.
American unions are not conducive to the 21st century and companies shackled by them are finding that either unions have to lose their once overpowering control over production or the businesses simply have to shut their doors as foreign competitors beat them up in the world market place.
But these antiquated, jobs killing unions won’t go quietly into the night and they’ve found their path to existence: government. Unions are growing wildly in the public sector because there are no market forces to curb their excesses.
The latest statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that overall unions lost 771,000 members in 2009 and the percentage of private sector jobs held by union members fell to 12.3 percent, the lowest since unionism became de rigueur in the U.S.
But while they are falling to new lows in the private sector, unions are growing rapidly in the public sector. Government is unionizing at an increased rate.
On private payrolls unions lost 835,000 members and union density fell from 7.6 in 2008 to 7.2 percent, but in public employment unions gained 64,000 members and union density increased to 37.4 percent from 36.8 in 2008.
This is an alarming fact where it concerns the right of the voters to control their own government. As bad as unions are for productivity in the private sector, shy of government interference, at least market forces ultimately serve as a check on union over reach. But when wholly ensconced in the not so real world of government unions have little check on their power.
Unfortunately for the voters, unions wield the great power of deep-pocket, political contributions and their large donations affect lawmakers in a much greater way than the mere vote of individual citizens. It is a vicious circle. Unions donate to politicians to get favorable laws passed and friendly rules put into effect, politicians then acquiesce to union demands in order to get those contributions, then unions turn back around and give even more to politicians who respond with even more favors, all in a never ending cycle of money, power and special interest favors. This continues without end because neither the unions nor the politicians ever pay any price for this incestuous upping of the ante as it is the taxpayers, the ones without any power in this cycle, that pay the price.
In fact, even when voters do attempt to elect politicians that campaign on putting curbs on the power of public employee unions their will is thwarted by the courts to which unions run for cover. California is a perfect example of this. Voters threw out Governor Gray Davis for Arnold Schwarzenegger who told voters that he’d rein in the budget. But even the modest checks on unions Schwarzenegger has tried to implement to solve the Golden State’s budget problems have failed. When he tried to give some public employee union workers furlough days to lower the cost of government the unions ran screaming to the courts, courts that immediately backed up the unions acting against both the will of the voters and of common sense.
Like a criminal racket, the taxpayers are constantly being robbed by politicians to pay unions so that unions can give donations back to politicians only to repeat the cycle. It easily invokes the old idiom of Robbing Peter to pay Paul. And the taxpayers are poor, put upon Peter.
-By Conn Carroll, The Heritage Foundation
(*Note: I don’t usually like to lift whole articles unless the author has sent it into the blog for inclusion here. But this piece by the Heritage Foundation’s Conn Carroll is very good to expose the sham that is Andy Stern of the SEIU. This piece can be found at The Morning Bell. Be sure and sign up for the HF Morning Bell email alerts, they are excellent.)
Last night, Politico reported that Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern is expected to resign and, according to The New York Times, the resignation is about to happen very soon. If Stern does resign, he will be doing so while at the top of his game. Stern told The Las Vegas Sun last year: “We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama – $60.7 million to be exact – and we’re proud of it.” President Obama is well aware of his huge debt to the SEIU. That is why he admits in his autobiography, “I owe those unions.” And it also explains why Stern is the most frequent Obama White House visitor, according to official visitor logs.
Stern’s access to President Obama has already paid huge dividends including: an $862 billion stimulus that prevented states from having to cut-back government union jobs or wages; $2.5 trillion in new government health care spending, much of which will go to unionized health care providers; and the appointment of SEIU associate general counsel Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. The NYT describes the SEIU under Stern’s tenure as “the nation’s most politically active union, with 1.9 million members.” The marriage of politics to union organizing has been great for SEIU membership, making it the fastest-growing union in America.
But what has been great for SEIU’s membership rolls has not been good for the SEIU’s bottom line. Growing union membership through politics is expensive. The Wall Street Journal reports that as recently as 2002, total SEIU liabilities were about $8 million. But by 2008, the union owed more than $156 million, a 30% increase over the $120 million it owed in 2007. And make no mistake, lobbying government is where Stern believes the future of SEIU is. After President Obama’s election, SEIU fired 75 national field staff and organizers so that the SEIU could “reallocate resources … to lobbying and communications in Washington.”
In fact, taking a more critical look at SEIU’s recent growth, The Washington Post reports: “some of its biggest gains in recent years were less the result of shoe-leather organizing and more the result of deals with major employers or politicians — including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.” Specifically, Blagojevich signed a state law handing over 49,000 state child care workers to SEIU local 880, which is run by the notorious community organizing group ACORN. The deal nearly tripled SEIU 880’s income from $7 million in 2005 to $21 million in 2007. This came after SEIU’s Illinois Political Action Committee gave Gov. Blagojevich $908,000, making it the single largest campaign contributor for his re-election campaign.
It is no coincidence that under Stern’s tenure the number of government union members surpassed the number of private sector union members for the first time in our nation’s history. There are two reasons for this: 1) Unions kill private sector jobs, and unionized companies earn profits 15% lower than those of comparable non-union firms. This makes unionized firms less competitive, which is why unionized manufacturing jobs fell 75% between 1977 and 2008, while non-union manufacturing INCREASED 6% over that same time. 2) Government union jobs face no competition. Public sector unionization has exploded in the past decade as leaders like Stern realized politics paid much better than the free market. Under Stern’s leadership, SEIU has become the nation’s second largest government union with over half of its membership drawing a paycheck on the taxpayers dime.
Explaining how organized labor really works, US Court of Appeals judge for the 7th Circuit Richard Posner recently wrote:
The goal of unions is to redistribute wealth from the owners and managers of firms, and from workers willing to work for very low wages, to the unionized workers and the union’s officers. … Unions, in other words, are worker cartels. … There is also a long history of union corruption. And some union activity is extortionate: the union and the employer tacitly agree that as long as the employer gives the workers a wage increase slightly above the union dues, the union will leave the employer alone.
Except that in Stern’s America, union management no longer redistribute wealth from firms to union members. With the majority of union members now working for the government, Andy Stern and his cohorts are extorting money from you, the taxpayer. And where is that money going? Not into shoring up union member pensions. Those are woefully underfunded. No, the Andy Sterns of the world turn around and use their taxpayer-funded government union dues to lobby for an even larger government that can pay for even more government union jobs. Andy Stern’s America is a perpetual government dependency machine.
And don’t think for a second that Stern’s retirement means he is gone for good. Stern is still a proud member of President Obama’s deficit commission. Complete reliance on government growth, crippling debt, and Blagojevich-style corruption. That is what Andy Stern did to the SEIU, and it is what Stern and President Obama will do to this country.
Quick Hits:
- According to the Congressional Research Service, when Congress passed Obamacare, they accidentally revoked their own current health care coverage before the law created any viable alternatives.
- The Los Angeles Times reports that despite public outrage over double-digit health insurance rate hikes, Obamacare does nothing to prevent them.
- According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, taxpayers earning less than $200,000 a year will pay roughly $3.9 billion more in taxes — in 2019 alone — due to Obamacare.
- According to Rasmussen Reports, by a 14-point margin (47%-33%) American voters believe repeal of Obamacare will be good for the economy.
- The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis found that real personal income for Americans – excluding government payouts such as Social Security – has fallen by 3.2 percent since President Obama took office in January 2009.
According to The Politico, Andy Stern, the President of the Service Employees International Union, is resigning his post.
The news comes to Politico from the President of an SEIU local based in Seattle, Diane Sosne. Politico is taking her word as true.
No reason for the resignation is known and Stern has yet to actually make an official announcement.
I expect that Stern is moving to some position in the Obama Administration. Remember that Stern was the number one most frequent visitor to the White House.
More news as it becomes known…
On a panel talking about immigration on April 6, 2010, union chief Gerry Hudson of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) said that his white union members are “so fuc_ing rabidly racist” that is scares him.
I am also a bit amused that this nut is shocked that there is “significant worker opposition to comprehensive immigration reform.” I mean, isn’t that logical? Union workers are afraid that this flood of illegals will take all their jobs away from them! It seems like a “Duh!” to me and I don’t understand why he doesn’t get that? Hudson is so sold out to the Democratic agenda that he doesn’t even understand his own members. The man fails utterly as a union representative.
Apparently the Democrats in North Carolina aren’t sufficiently leftist enough for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). It appears that the SEIU, one of the largest and most powerful public employees unions in the nation, don’t have their hand deep enough in the taxpayer’s pockets so it is starting its own political party in the Tar Heel State, by passing the Democrats altogether.
The party is being called North Carolina First, by which they actually mean North Carolina’s Taxes to the SEIU First. Here is what the union says about their new party:
For too long parties and politicians in Washington have worked more for their own political self interest, or worse, corporate special interests, instead of the hard working families of North Carolina.
That’s why members of progressive groups across North Carolina, including the State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) began work to form North Carolina First to ensure that politicians put middle class families first and not their own special interests.
I mean imagine what this faux political party means, here. It means that we could have an elected official whose first loyalty is to the members of a union that makes its living off the backs of the taxpayers!
At some level we are used to having politicians whose first duty seems to be to steal more and more money from the taxpayers to payoff union pals, but at least we have the veneer of a pol interested in the greater good with the current system. And sometimes the unions do still lose even as they win all too often. But what we’d have with this party, however, is the veneer ripped away and a government of the union, for the union and paid for by the people.
This is the most cynical, un-American effort I’ve seen in quite a while. Let’s hope they fail miserably.
Sadly, wishing for the death of a political opponent is so typical of the left. Pol Pot, Stalin, the Democrat sponsored KKK, the chief tool used by such folks has been terror and violence. While obviously not as murderous as the aforementioned, unions have also been a violent force in history. And in New Jersey, the teachers union has lived down to the violent tendency unions have always evinced.
With a memo to its membership, the New Jersey Education Association prayed that its political opponent, Governor Chirs Christie, would die. The memo featured this:
“Dear Lord … this year you have taken away my favorite actor, Patrick Swayze, my favorite actress, Farrah Fawcett, my favorite singer, Michael Jackson, and my favorite salesman, Billy Mays. … I just wanted to let you know that Chris Christie is my favorite governor.”
Nice sentiment, eh?
But this sort of violence infused, hate-speak is so typical of unionism. Whether in the rarefied air of the teacher’s lounge, or the backroom of some smoke-filled auto worker’s union hall, this sort of violence is espoused with gusto by unionists everywhere. And it is given a pass by Democrats, excused with a wink and a nod.
And they say that the Tea Party folks are hate-filled and violent! Show me a Tea Party flyer, event advertisement, or newsletter with such a sentiment emblazoned across it.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston