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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
This is an interesting election cycle we are living through, isn’t it? Not long ago, for instance, an amusing little episode of lefty on lefty hatin’ erupted in Chicago between long-time racebaiting activist and Congressman Luis Gutierrez and AFSCME President Gerry McEntee that is simply too delicious to ignore.
Ordinarily, you’d think that a left-wing, Democrat congressman would be fast friends with the president of one of America’s biggest public employees unions. But these two titans of leftism have found themselves embroiled in local Chicago politics.
Despite the assumptions of normal politics, Gutierrez and McEntee ran afoul of each other over next year’s election for Chicago’s mayor. McEntee made the mistake of too quickly coming to the support of former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel just as Gutierrez was talking about forming an exploratory committee for his own run for mayor…
… and fireworks erupted.
As it happens McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, told Politico that he would support Rahm. “If I lived in Chicago, I would vote for him for mayor,” McEntee said.
McEntee is a heavy weight in Democrat circles. In 2007, for instance, he said that he was “the sheriff of the incumbent-protection program” because of all the millions that AFSCME donated to Democrat politics.
As to Gutierrez, early in October he formed an exploratory committee to see if he had a shot at the big seat in City Hall. When he heard about what McEntee said, he blew a gasket.
Mike Elk of a pro-labor website had a sit down with Luis Gutierrez and he had quite a lot to say about McEntee’s early support of Emanuel. “I’m shocked that Gerry McEntee would endorse Rahm Emanuel, considering what Rahm has done to working people,” he told the writer.
“This is the same Rahm Emanuel who said ‘Fuck the UAW!’ ” Gutierrez characterized McEntee’s endorsement of Emanuel as “a disgrace to the labor movement. … What about all my years paying dues as an AFSCME member or all those year walking picket lines as Congressman? I guess that counts for nothing,” Gutierrez continued.
But McEntee wasn’t taking it all lying down, either. He shot back to the editor of the lefty pro-labor site letting him know in no uncertain terms that he was unhappy over the airing of the hard feelings between he and Gutierrez.
McEntee is apparently quite upset about criticism of his decision to endorse Rahm. Sirota said he “received a profanity-laced call from McEntee telling me I “have no right” to have written what I wrote, and that I have no right to question the decisions he makes.” McEntee told me that “these pundits and potential candidates who criticize Rahm are ignoring what the Obama team has delivered for working families all across this country.”
Awwww. It’s a circular firing squad over there on the extreme fringes of uniondom, isn’t it?
And all the hard feelings are now for naught. Turns out Gutierrez has decided not to run for mayor after all.
Likely it’s all sound and fury signifying nothing because as more and more local Chicagoans drop bids to run against Emanuel, what are the chances that Gutierrez continues his mad-on about Rahm? Not much. Like a good little lefty, Gutierrez will go ahead and endorse Emanuel anyway. It’s all set up from the top, anyway, isn’t it?
Leave it to an Obama appointee to the National Labor Rights Board (NLRB) to want to push votes to install unions in the workplace on an accelerated schedule. I guess all the payoffs and special favors that Obama and his cohorts have given to labor unions in these two of the longest years any president ever had have not been enough.
On Oct. 21, NLRB Member Mark Gaston Pearce said that the time period between filing and the holding of elections for new union representation in a company should be “as brief as possible.”
Of course, this shortened election period is nothing but a sop to Big Labor and intended to hurt businesses that might try to put up a fight against the encroachment of unions. As “>Jay Summer of the Labor Relations Counsel website says:
Regardless of Pearce’s stated rationale for interest in a shortened election period, if implemented, the shorter the election period, the less opportunity an employer has to exercise free speech rights and educate employees. The result would be a workforce making a decision whether or not to unionize relying only on what facts the union organizing them chooses to disclose, even if misleading or incomplete. Combined with electronic voting which would almost certainly depress voter participation, the almost certain result is a dramatic increase in unionization. This, of course, was the primary goal of EFCA’s card check proposal.
Naturally it’s all just a piece with Obama’s campaign to give unions paybacks, payoffs, and special favors to pay them back for the millions that they gave to him to run for president. It is also another example of Obama’s essential anti-business ideology.
Pearce was a recess appointment made by President Obama in March of 2010. His appointment expires in 2013.
Meanwhile, in yet another example of Obama’s war against business (and subsequent helping hand to jobs-killing unions), Obama’s Dept. of Labor announced that the Bush “culture of noncompliance” is over and Obama plans to crack down on those evil businesses that have gotten away with things for so long.
Obama Labor Solicitor Patricia Smith told attendees of a conference at Suffolk University Law School that the Labor Department would launch a new era of tougher enforcement of labor laws.
Smith heaped scorn on the pro-business Bush practices.
They relied on trickle-down enforcement; it doesn’t work any better than trickle-down economics. [As a result of reduced enforcement] many employers developed a “catch-me-if-you-can” attitude. Our challenge is to change that attitude.
You can just hear the left-wing ideology underpinning her rhetoric, can’t you?
Smith said that the Obama Labor Dept. intended to increase criminal prosecutions of businesses for perceived violations of labor law.
As we can see Obama’s anti-business crusade continues a pace with his other left-wing policies.
Forbes created an interactive map where Americans can find out what sort of mess their state is in. All you need do is roll your mouse cursor over your state and get the good … or horrible… news.
Forbes finds that the best state is Utah. The debt per capita in the Beehive State is just $447 with an unfunded pension cost of $7,272. Utah is rated by Moody’s at Aaa and has an S&P rating of AAA.
Unsurprisingly the worst state is Illinois. Illinois is a disaster for sure. Illinois’s debt per capita is $1,877 and it’s unfunded pension obligations stands at $17,230. Moody’s rates the state an A1 and its S&P rating is AA-.
But don’t worry. It’s the Obama administration to the rescue with another giant bailout — a bailout that is all too naturally a payoff to the unions that spent millions to elect him president. This bailout is the Casey bill.
The Casey bill essentially takes private pension plans of non-government employee unions and makes those obligations a public debt instead of a private one. Casey would bailout failed union pensions with public money.
Brett McMahon, spokesman for Associated Builders and Contractors, however, offered a few alternate proposals. McMahon made those recommendations in a piece by Connie Hair at HumanEvents.com.
Automatic triggers for remedies for plans reaching critical underfunding thresholds including new rules for authorization of mass withdrawal. Unions would be required to meet certain disclosure standards and subsequently the company would be required to pay the withdrawal penalty.
- Liquidation of plan assets to fund current retirees and those about to retire, with an equitable allocation to participants of the fund’s remaining assets should mass withdrawal occur.
- Increased transparency from the multi-employer pension plans.
- Yearly written notices issued to all participants and beneficiaries when the ratio of the number of retirees, beneficiaries of deceased participants, and terminated vested participants in a multiemployer plan reaches 3:1 or less to the number of the active participants in the plan.
- U.S. Department of Labor requirement to publish on the Internet and index in a searchable format all Form 5500 pension filings.
- Any mention of benefits in collective bargaining negotiations include the funding status of the benefits and the degree to which they are insured by the PBGC (currently $12,870 per year maximum).
McMahon advises dealing with the massive unfunded liabilities from public employee union contracts will be a stickier proposition.
“We’re going to have to pass some kind of specialized bankruptcy law for states. Unions are standing pat, giving no ground whatsoever,” McMahon said.
The Chicago Association of African American Transporters told Governor Pat Quinn that they’d mount a no-to-Quinn campaign if he didn’t pay the back bills owed them by the state. And now, despite the fact that other vendors are still not getting paid and the State is practically bankrupt, the CAAAT has suddenly found all its past bills paid by Quinn’s government.
It sure is pretty convenient that this union miraculously found its bills paid by Quinn just when they threatened to mount a campaign against his reelection, isn’t it?
Capitol Fax reminds us that this newest union payoff comes on the heels of another recent union payoff that Quinn offered to the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) when he promised not to lay any of them off if he wins his own full term in November. This promise prompted AFSCME to make massive campaign donations to Quinn’s campaign.
This is all no less than Quinn’s pandering to union thugs. As the Chicago Daily Observer notes, “According to Quinn’s ‘logic’ if you want to be paid the money you are owed by the state, the best way to get your cash is to threaten to withhold your vote for his reelection effort. That is one interesting way to decide who is highest on the priority list of those who are owed state money.”
It’s hard to knock the CDO’s logic, isn’t it?
But this is all of a piece with Quinn’s tenure in the Governor’s manse. Back in October of 2009, for instance, Quinn tried to hand the SEIU and AFSCME a victory by promulgating a stealth campaign to unionize in-home healthcare workers against their will and without their knowledge.
So, this has been Quinn’s MO in office. Find a union, give it a payoff, and get campaign donations. This is Quinn’s corrupt bargain.
Shock videographer James O’Keefe has released video of New Jersey teachers union members bragging that it is nearly impossible for them to be fired by the state.
Daily Caller reports:
In one video, Alissa Ploshnick, who is identified as a special educator at Passaic Public Schools, seems to verify the worst suspicions of education reformers. “It’s really hard to fire a tenured teacher,” she says. “It’s really hard – like you seriously have to be in the hallway fucking somebody.”
As an example, Ploshnick said, “we had a teacher that just recently was like – you NIGGER,” adding that the teacher was demoted, but is still teaching.
“We think that that’s unconscionable that a teacher could call a student the ‘N-word’ and we can’t fire the teacher,” O’Keefe said in a phone interview with The Daily Caller. “We’ve got Dr. Laura getting fired for using racial slurs. Then we’ve got teachers calling kids the ‘N-word’ and we can’t even fire them.”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/25/new-o%E2%80%99keefe-video-shows-teachers-bragging-about-bulletproof-tenure-rules-2/#ixzz13QKBXviC
Indeed it is!
Check out the rest of Daily Caller’s report.
Last week, it was revealed that the government workers’ union AFSCME is spending $87.5 million to try to keep Democrats from being defeated on November 2nd. Interestingly, some people seemed shocked by this. They really shouldn’t be though.
For decades, America’s union bosses have touted a desire to be more like their European counterparts and they’ve figured out the only way for them to accomplish this is through the political process. As November 2nd quickly approaches, however, the headlines across Europe should give Americans who are footing the bill for the government workers some pause before traipsing down the path to Paris.
- France Paralyzed as Strikes Enter Day 12, screams the Aletho News
- Sarkozy sets the heavy squad on the riots as demonstrations over French pension reforms continue for ninth day, was the Daily Mail’s headline last week.
When it comes to belt tightening, socialism’s apologists (both here and abroad) complain about the ‘breaking of the social contract.’ However, with government unions, the social contract that is talked about is one thatthey themselves have written by gaming the system by electing politicians who have very little regard for who pays the bill—the taxpayer.
At What Cost?
Here in the United States, the union business is a huge industry that rakes in tens of billions every year in union dues. As unions rely more than ever on government largesse, like any special interest group, they are spending hundreds of millions in this election cycle to buy advertising and AFSCME’s $87.5 million is really just a drop in the bucket….
Read the rest CLICK HERE.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston