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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
Last year, when Larry Scanlon, the Director of Political Operations for one of the nation’s largest government unions, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), stated “the more members coming in, the more dues coming in, the more money we have for politics,” it was symbolic of a system corrupted by union bosses who enrich themselves at the expense of America’s taxpayers.
While AFSCME and other government unions are settling contracts that require members to pay more for their health insurance and retirement, as well as furlough days, to rein in out-of-control budgets, with the exception of a few states like Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin, the government-union power structure is being left almost wholly intact. Continue reading »
-By Larry Sand
Teachers should think twice before marching in lockstep with this revolting crowd.
Americans have always had a warm spot for teachers. We all have memories of those who have taught us, who were there every day for us and felt like part of our family. But over the past 40 years or so, teachers unions have begun to chip away at the public’s perception of teachers. And this changing perception has accelerated during the recent fiscal downturn.
Education policy expert Jay Greene addresses this phenomenon in The Army of Angry Teachers which was posted on Education Matters, his own blog, and elsewhere last week. The crux of his piece is that typically people tend to look at teachers as an extension of their family. But now during stressful times for teachers, the teachers unions have whipped the rank and file into a state of deep anger. Greene writes “But when the public face of the teacher unions is the Army of Angry Teachers, they no longer seem like Mary Poppins and begin to look a lot more like longshoremen beating their opponents with metal pipes.”
Greene has hit on a major point. Not surprisingly, the post was met with negative responses by, well, angry teachers.
While some teachers may be justified in being angry about this and that, the teachers unions are doing their level best to convince teachers that they are underpaid and underappreciated and if not for the unions, teachers would be receiving minimum wage and spending their time being spat upon by the man in the street. This alleged “teacher bashing” couldn’t be further from the truth, but nevertheless, too many teachers have bought this nonsense hook, line and sinker and have become true believers of all things union. As such, from the inside out, the union’s game plan of making teachers psychologically dependant on them is working quite well. Continue reading »
-By Warner Todd Huston
One of the first things that President Obama did when he walked into the White House was to authorize an Executive Order as a payback to his buddies in Big Labor by implementing project labor agreements (PLAs) for all federal construction projects. That this was his very first action upon taking office shows that he is definitely the president that unions bought and paid for.
A PLA is a set of rules that forces every contractor that works for the federal government to pay union wages, pay union dues, pay into union pensions and operate under union rules even if the company is not a unionized company. PLAs end competitive bidding and cost the government more on every project. These rules are nothing but a freebie, a sop to Obama’s Big Labor pals at the expense of taxpayers and lost jobs.
As the Wall Street Journal says, “PLAs are a form of political bid-rigging that robs taxpayers even in good economic times. Amid today’s limited fiscal resources, PLAs steal money from the likes of education and law enforcement to reward politically connected companies and their unions. They deserve to be outlawed.”
Only about 13% of construction workers belong to unions, and PLAs are a union invention to use their political muscle to organize more companies. Proponents argue that PLAs ensure the speed and quality of construction plans. But PLAs are one of the reasons that Boston’s Big Dig was estimated at $2.8 billion but eventually cost $22 billion. Studies show that projects under PLA contracts on average cost 12% to 18% more than projects awarded by open, competitive bidding. Taxpayers pick up much of this tab.
Fortunately, the states are taking this situation into their own hands and passing various laws and rules to limit or outright outlaw PLAs.
As the Journal notes, several states are “pulling away” from project labor agreements.
Louisiana passed a law this month that prohibits state entities from mandating the use of PLAs. Tennessee, Arizona and Idaho passed similar legislation earlier this year, and Iowa’s Governor Terry Branstad, in one of his first acts after inauguration, signed an executive order ending a state PLA requirement. Legislatures in Maine and Michigan recently passed bills along these lines that governors are expected to sign. These states are joining Utah, Montana, Missouri and Arkansas, which enacted bans in recent years.
Even officials in several heavily Democrat states are realizing that, in this day of deeply in the red budgets, PLAs cost too much and are inherently unfair and un-American.
In Michigan, for instance, Gov. Rick Snyder recently signed Michigan’s historic anti-government-mandated PLA legislation and already reports have emerged that SB165 killed a PLA on a Michigan transit project. Additionally, Maine Governor Paul LePage (R) signed similar legislation (L.D. 1257).
As The Truth About PLAS recently wrote, “PLAs are bad for taxpayers and the construction industry workforce still struggling to come back from more than 15 percent unemployment.”
It is a good thing that the states are taking their own jobs situation in hand and saving their taxpayers money. But we also need to be rid of PLAs on a federal level. Let’s hope this is a grassroots groundswell that will reach Washington D.C.
-By Larry Sand
NEA and AFT ramp up attacks on non-existent teacher bashers, while vilifying those who are trying to reform a failing system
In her address last week at the American Federation of Teachers TEACH conference, AFT President Randi Weingarten came out swinging. In an emotional speech to the faithful, she said that education reform should come from teachers and their communities, rather than from people “who blame teachers for everything.” While the teachers unions have been hammering away at this “blame the teacher” myth for some time now, the rants seem to be intensifying.
Invariably, what is labeled “teacher bashing” is nothing more than anger at the teachers unions for blocking every type of education reform imaginable, as well as the unions doing their level best to block school districts’ attempts to fire bad and even criminal teachers. So to be more specific, these phenomena should be called “teacher union bashing” and “bad teacher bashing.”
Education writer RiShawn Biddle does an excellent job of poking holes in the teacher bashing argument, claiming, among other things, that Weingarten “is just using a rhetorical trick often deployed by teachers unions and other education traditionalists to oppose school reform. They declare that any criticism of the unions and any effort to overhaul teacher quality are forms of ‘teacher bashing.’ And such proclamations end up forcing reformers onto their heels when they should actually take these critics to the woodshed.” Continue reading »
-By Warner Todd Huston
We’ve been talking for the better part of the year about how the Obama administration is using its powers to regulate labor and business relations to attack Boeing aircraft manufacturer for attempting to open a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina. Fortunately, there is one proposed law floating around in congress that would stop some of the abuse of power that Obama is indulging at the behest of big labor unions. It is called the Secret Ballot Protection Act. We need to urge congress to pass it.
To briefly recap, Obama has been trying to punish Boeing — and by extension sending a warning to all American businesses — for having the gall to want to build a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina. Even though Boeing would be brining thousands of jobs to North Carolina, Obama wants Boeing to be prevented from doing so and he wants to punish the southern states, as well.
This may sound incongruous, an American president trying to destroy jobs and business alike, but when the reason is discovered it reveals many things, this most especially: Obama has gotten his marching orders from unions and he is misusing his powers to regulate to fulfill the desires of Big Labor.
You see, Boeing is closing a plant in Washington State because unions there have launched so many strikes, have sabotaged manufacturing, and made the cost of business so expensive that Boeing wanted to give North Carolina, a right-to-work state, a shot at the business.
But then comes Big Labor’s bought and paid for president who decided that he could use his powers to regulate labor to prevent an American business from opening a new branch of its business in one of our own states.
Because Big Labor would lose a handful of jobs in Washington State (only to gain some in North Carolina), Obama decided that an American business wasn’t “allowed” to open a new plant at any location in this country that it wants to open a business. This assumed power is unprecedented and certainly quite un-American.
This isn’t the only illicit use of labor regulations that Obama is perpetrating. He is also using his National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to prevent business and employees alike from having enough time to fully explore the offerings of unions and business when employees are considering whether or not they wish to unionize their workplace.
The NLRB wants to severely shorten the time period between when a union confronts employees and they have to vote upon whether or not they will accept unionization. It currently takes up to 38 days for unions and employers to have the time to inform employees about what they are offering before the employees have to vote. Obama’s NLRB wants to slash that to 21 days.
Such a short period of time hurts business, union and employee alike as less time until a called vote prevents more informed employees.
One other thing that Big Labor wants Obama to install on our work force is something called Card Check (The Employee Free Choice Act, or EFCA). This card check provision would take away from employees the centuries old right to a secret election when they are voting for unionization of their workplace.
Taking away the secret ballot means that employees have to vote in a form that allows everyone to see how they voted. This leaves employees open for harassment from union thugs and employers alike.
One way to prevent the loss of the secret election is to get congress to vote in the Secret Ballot Protection Act [H.R. 972 and S. 217].
There needs to be a slight change to this bill, though. LaborUnionReport talks about that change.
Introduced in the Senate back in January by Jim DeMint [R-SC] and the House in March by Rep. Phil Roe [R-TN], the Secret Ballot Protection Act would ensure that employees have a right to decide on the question of unionization through a secret ballot. More importantly, it would end, once and for all, the deceptive practice of card check which gives union organizers the ability to trick workers into signing their rights over to a union.
Given the current debate over the NLRB’s proposed rules to hold ambush elections, a simple sentence can be added to the bill that states: No election shall take place within 35 days following the filing of a petition, nor on a date to exceed 56 days following the filing of a petition.
By inserting a sentence into the Secret Ballot Protection Act that establishes specific timetables, this would negate management’s alleged stalling during certification elections, as well as negate union stalling during decertification elections.
Things like this can stymie Obama’s misuse of his power to regulate business and labor and prevent his payback to the unions that paid for him to win election.
In this horrid economy, in a day when job loss is endemic, these common sense limits of the jobs-killing effects of unions is something this country sorely needs.
-By Warner Todd Huston
F. Vincent Vernuccio had a great piece in the Washington Times a few days ago revealing the the handbook written by the SEIU that teaches union thuggery to union operatives.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has a 70-some-page manual that came to light in a recent court case.
SEIU is in federal court defending itself against charges of racketeering and extortion filed by one of its unionizing targets, the catering company Sodexo Inc.Sodexo’s court discovery recently revealed an SEIU “Contract Campaign Manual” on “Pressuring the Employer.” Union pressure is nothing new, but what SEIU recommends is not limited to organizing drives and strikes. Rather, the pressure takes the form of a so-called corporate campaign, whereby the union allies itself with outside third parties to raise intimidation to a new level.
Vernuccio explained that the most recent efforts of the SEIU to push businesses to the edge of bankruptcy so that they are vulnerable to being taken over by union operatives even going to the point of secretly getting the businesses to agree to work with the SEIU to prevent other unions from trying to contact its employees.
The manual is meant to guide the SEIUs thugs to win the battle.
SEIU’s manual details how “outside pressure can involve jeopardizing relationships between the employer and lenders, investors, stockholders, customers, clients, patients, tenants, politicians, or others on whom the employer depends for funds.” The union advises using legal and regulatory pressure to “threaten the employer with costly action by government agencies or the courts.”
It details the use of community groups to “damage an employer’s public image and ties with community leaders and organizations.” SEIU recommends going after company officials personally. Not mincing words, SEIU states, “It may be a violation of blackmail and extortion laws to threaten management officials with release of ‘dirt’ about them if they don’t settle a contract. But there is no law against union members who are angry at their employer deciding to uncover and publicize factual information about individual managers.”
Mr. Vernuccio goes on to give several examples of how the SEIU has used the tactics in the manual. But what we have here is the perfect example of the thuggery perpetrated by the SEIU.
Now, we have to remember one other thing that is important. The SEIU is one of the biggest government employee unions, too. These same thugs are running our government through the back door with their union rules and contracts.
Also, don’t forget that the SEIU was one of the biggest supporters of President Obama, too.
This is why government unions should be made illegal like they used to be.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Warner Todd Huston