Archive for the 'Warner Todd Huston' Category
July 24, 2008 - 4:26 am - Posted by WTH
In a follow up report to our earlier coverage, the Hudson Institute has unveiled its damning study on the largely ubiquitous insolvency of the pensions plans of the nation’s largest unions (download PDF here)
Excerpts:
At a time when unions are intensifying efforts to organize American workers, it’s troubling to see a widespread pattern of relatively poor performance among collectively bargained pension plans. They perform poorly relative to plans sponsored unilaterally by employers for nonunion employees. Equally disturbing, some pension plans for union officers are better funded than the plans for rank-and-file union members. The disparity raises this question: Do collective bargaining contracts lack provisions for the funding necessary to generate the generous retirement income that unions advertise?
…
Our analysis finds that pension plans for the officers and staffs of union were much better funded than those for the rank-and-file. On average, the 21 largest union pension plans had less than 70 percent of the finds that they would need to cover their total obligations, and none were filly funded. Seven were less than 65 percent funded. Yet 23 officer and staff funds from the same union had 88.2 percent of the funding they would need to pay promised pensions, including seven fully funded plans and another 13 with at least 80 percent of their required funds. Excluding the seven plans strictly for union office employees, staff funds had 98.4 percent of their required funds.
Unions have also been caught using their funds to achieve their political ends. In 2005, the Department of Labor wrote the AFL-CIO a letter telling it to reconsider such practices. Theoretically, pension funds are not permitted to make investment decisions based on politics or public policy. Using pensions as a political tool hurts union members because it may push their retirement funds into lower yielding investments. That diminishes investment returns and thus reduces resources available to pay promised benefits.
….
(My emphasis above)
This is a very interesting report that reveals how little unions really care about their own membership, the “little guys” that unions are supposed to be protecting. Unions have seen the draw of political power and found that bright, shiny object of far more interest then merely protecting the interests of their own members.
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July 23, 2008 - 1:18 am - Posted by WTH
We have been reporting a bit on the Association of Community Organizations for Reform (ACORN) this week on the Union Label Blog and ACORN is an organization that bears close watch. It was reported that ACORN made $2.9 million from organized labor last year and a lot of this money seems to be slipping past Federal regulators raising significant questions of ACORN ties to big labor.
This money paid to ACORN supposedly covered the expenses for a number of shadowy union activities.
- Training organizers to devise and implement anti-corporate campaigns
- Providing “strike support”
- Conducting campaign research and providing staffing
- “Protecting market share”
Some of these services ware also paid on retainer and not just after services rendered.
ACORN has developed very close ties to the labor movement becoming a sort of “one-stop shop for unions looking to contract out labor activities,” according to Maverick Strategies. ACORN’s efforts have thus far flown under the radar for Federal regulatory agencies that act as watchdogs and regulators over union activities.
ACORN has, for instance, worked closely with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Most notably ACORN served to train SEIU staffers in the anti-Wal-Mart efforts the SIEU launched in the last few years.
Some of ACORN’s recent activities are as follows:
- SEIU paid ACORN founder and chief of anti-Wal-Mart strategies Wade Rathke $21,885 in salary and $5,233 in expenses for the role of “campaign project organizer.”
- SEIU gave $50,000 contribution to “Walmart Associations” in the care of Wade Rathke
- SEIU paid a $126,000 “subsidy” to Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now, operated by ACORN
- Change to Win paid ACORN $30,000 for a “public awareness campaign.”
- SEIU twice awarded ACORN a $40,000 “monthly retainer.”
- SEIU paid more than $970,000 to ACORN’s ACLOC program for “training.”
- SEIU Local 5 paid ACLOC $58,487 for an internship phase and for an “organizing partnership.”
- UFCW hired ACLOC as a “consultant for organizing program” at a cost of $429,431
- UFCW Local 876 paid $131,089 for a “community standards program.”
ACORN is also on record as providing direct staffing for various labor union efforts and programs as opposed to mere training and consultancy work, as well.
This close relationship raises questions as to whether ACORN should fall under Federal regulations as a labor organization.
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July 19, 2008 - 11:40 pm - Posted by WTH
A great item from Soren Dayton over at The Next Right.
++++++++++
-By Soren Dayton
One of the branches of the Department of Labor that provides a real services to all Americans is the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). These are the guys who make sure that labor unions are being transparent about their finances. Or they try, when the Democrats don’t cut their budget. But, for now, you get to see how unions spend their money.
Read the rest of this entry »
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July 18, 2008 - 3:21 am - Posted by WTH
Unions have been decrying outsourcing for years. The word “outsourcing” has been used as a boogieman to blame declining union jobs upon for the last decade. Unions, for their part, claim to desire to stand up against outsourcing — especially that of outsourcing jobs overseas — and wish to push the home grown alternatives to outsourcing jobs, namely keeping them in the country and under the control of the union.
Yet what have we discovered here on the blog? Why that the nation’s largest union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has outsourced the design of one of their own web pages to someone in Slovakia, that’s what.
We’ve waited to report this story because the webpage in question presented a time sensitive situation. The SEIU was trying to create what they were calling the “Take Back the Economy Day” and that day was to be July 17th. The SEIU hoped to spur people to “take aim at the special perks and tax loopholes that buyout firms depend on to get rich,” and get people involved to protest the success of “buyout firms” such as Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts.
Well, July 17th has passed us by and we here on the blog are not in danger of accidentally advertising their event in time to assist anyone in joining their July 17th effort.
That being said, here is what we found not long ago. The original SEIU webpage looked quite a bit different than the one that graced the web during the several days before their July 17th kick off day. The major overhaul was interesting in the respect of where the design of the page had come from.
It appears that the original page was designed by a fellow named Milan Kohut who’s business of web design is based in Slovakia, a small Eastern European nation (Near Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic).
But, on July 6th, only a short time before the July 17th event deadline, the SEIU suddenly undertook a major overhaul of the webpage design. Gone was the outsourced work and in was one hosted from here in the USA.
The constant griping about outsourcing by unions is common, as mentioned. But here we had one of the largest unions in the nation outsourcing their web design? Was it so hard to find an American web designer to have created their pages? And why the sudden overhaul eliminating the Slovakian designer’s work?
Curiouser and curiouser, eh?
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July 16, 2008 - 11:24 pm - Posted by WTH
Randi Weingarten has delusions of grandeur. She thinks she should be given the power of a dictator instead of those of a teachers union president. Instead of just teaching kids, Weingarten imagines that she should become doctor, nanny, nutritionist, psychologist, and mother to every kid in America. She imagines that she should be given the care and feeding of all the nation’s kids.
Parents? Who need ‘em when we’ve got Mother Weingarten to trot them off to re-education camps where they will be fed and cared for on a daily basis?
Catch the arrogance, see this nanny-state despot lining up her dream state in her tiny, anti-family mind.
“Can you imagine a federal law that promoted community schools — schools that serve the neediest children by bringing together under one roof all the services and activities they and their families need?” Ms. Weingarten is expected to ask in the speech, a copy of which was provided by the union to The New York Times.
“Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities, child care and preschool, tutoring and homework assistance,” the speech reads. “Schools that include dental, medical and counseling clinics.”
Yes, imagine it. Imagine the billions of dollars needed to bring all these services from government to kids. Imagine the further destruction of the family as it happens, too.
This arrogant woman’s ideas are no less a usurpation of the role of the family, an abrogation of supreme power over our kids unto herself, and an amazing expansion of government power including the bloated budget to do so.
This is a dangerous, anti-American game this woman is playing. But, it reveals the oppressive idea of the role of government indicative of Democrats. They are nothing if not pure Stalinists.
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July 15, 2008 - 12:50 pm - Posted by WTH
A few days ago I posted a story on a recent article in the New York Sun by Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute, that focused on how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) had not fully funded the pension plan of their rank and file members while they had over funded the pension plan of the Union’s chief officers.
Well, today at noon (CT) I was included as part of a conference call on the pending release of the full study upon which that earlier article in the Sun was based, written by by Diana Furchtgott-Roth. This study reviews 21 — the SEIU included — of the largest unions in the country to see where pension solvency stood in general. The results are shocking.
The Hudson study found that by 2005, the last full year of reports filed, 21 of the nation’s biggest unions show that their rank and file members’ pensions are only funded at an appalling 67.7%. Conversely, the pension funds of the union bosses are funded at a much better 88.3%. So, the union bosses — all of who have a separate pension fund than their own rank and file members — have made sure THEIR pensions are funded at a much higher rate than that of their own members. Needless to say, the union bosses administer both their own and the rank and file members’ funds.
The SEIU is particularly egregious in that the union bosses have a pension funded at 103% while to poor rank and file members are only at a paltry 75% funded.
For their part, the SEIU in particular claims that the Hudson Institute numbers are off and that the 2005 numbers no longer apply. The SEIU claims that they have improved their pension status since then and fault the study from Hudson as old news. They also said that those 2005 numbers weren’t correct in any case.
In reply to that criticism during the conference call, Diana Furchtgott-Roth said that the 2005 numbers are the most current numbers on file with the Federal government and that the various unions have not fulfilled their reporting requirements for any more up to date information. (On that note, I have to say this is a situation that is intolerable. These unions are dragging their feet in the reporting duties to the Gov’t, duties that are mandated by law. Also, these reporting requirements are something that Barack Obama has pledged to try to eliminate for his union supporters should he become president. If it were up to Obama the unions wouldn’t have to disclose anything!)
Diana Furchtgott-Roth did ask a pertinent question about the SEIU’s reported 2005 pension numbers. The SEIU claims the numbers did not reflect the pension fund status even in 2005, as mentioned. This caused Furchtgott-Roth to wonder why the SEIU reported fraudulent numbers on their required report to the Feds? It seems unlikely that they would have violated Federal law and supplied false numbers. We can but take their report at face value.
In any case, the Hudson Institute will unveil the full report tomorrow so that we might all take a look at their stats.
One thing that the study does show, however, is that the unions care a lot about the pensions of their own high officers but not very much about that of the poor rank and file membership.
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July 13, 2008 - 7:02 pm - Posted by WTH
It’s amazing to see how a Democrat so warps the word “right” these days. Last week California Democrat Rep. Brad Sherman was only the latest Democrat to take the word “right” and misuse it for his disgusting, partisan ends when he decided that it was a “right” to unionize, but NOT a “right” to eschew a union.
Sherman proposed last weekM that Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley act of 1947 be repealed. This section deals with a real right, that of being guaranteed that you can keep your job WITHOUT being forced by the state to join a union. With a warped sense of “rights,” Sherman wants that section repealed so that states can force employees to join unions.
Sherman wants to repeal a true right and substitute state coercion in its place. Sherman gives us a typical Democrat lie to explain himself saying, “It is time that we let unions organize and time that we allow workers who want to have a union, to enjoy that right.”
Time we “let” union organize? Is Sherman living in 1898? No, what it is really time for is for Americans to know that they have a democratic choice. Join a union if you feel so disposed, but don’t have the iron boot heel of Brad Sherman forcing you to join one just so you might have the privilege of earning a paycheck.
Rep. Brad Sherman is an oppressor of rights, not an advocate of them and unions are his storm troopers.
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July 12, 2008 - 7:00 am - Posted by WTH
We are reminded here on the blog that there is one aspect of the lie that is the Employee Free Choice Act bill that isn’t much discussed. That is the binding arbitration feature of this business/economy killing legislation. Besides the card check aspect where a union can dispense with the ages old democratic system of the secret ballot when employees are voting as to whether or not they even want a union in the first place — leaving employees open to union pressure and thuggery — there is the binding arbitration aspect of this legislation.
The binding arbitration will force business to decide their contract within 120 days of the card check vote should that vote favor the union. If the contract isn’t settled in 120 days, then a federal arbitrator steps in to decide the matter. In other words, it will be taken out of the hands of both union and business owners and will become another illegitimate, nanny state venue of government.
Now, since unionism adds at least 22% to the administrative costs of business that are forced into unionism, this far, far easier path to unionism will surely force many smaller business to fold as well as force thousands of workers into underfunded pension plans all across the state, and later the country if this debacle spreads.
So, there is more in the EFC Act that is detrimental to our economy and way of life than just the anti-democratic idea of card check.
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July 11, 2008 - 9:34 pm - Posted by WTH
Jay Ambrose of the Scripps Howard News Service gives us a nice broadside against “moribund” unionism in Colorado!
________
I live in Colorado, where the very pleasant, personally appealing Mark Udall is running as a Democrat for the Senate while supporting a very unpleasant, unappealing plan to help subvert precious American principles and exploit workers.
His race against Republican Bob Schaffer is an important one that that could help give the Democratic party congressional control of a kind enabling it to do pretty much as it pleases, and there is no doubt about one objective. It’s to breathe new life into the near-corpse of unionism, to resuscitate a deservedly moribund movement that cannot do enough favors for a certain political party that then does favors in return.
Read the rest of this entry »
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July 10, 2008 - 2:20 am - Posted by WTH
It must be nice to be spending 85 million dollars on political campaigns yet refuse to fully fund your own member’s pension plan. That, among other things, is exactly the sort of hypocrisy that it was revealed that the SEIU has been caught indulging in this week. Diana Furchtgott-Roth did yeoman’s work in detailing the state of the SEIU’s underfunded pension obligations in the New York Sun yesterday.
The Sun’s Furchtgott-Roth details the SEIU’s latest campaign against New York financier Henry Kravis of the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts whom they accuse of all sorts of nefarious activities… none of which are actually breaking any laws. But as the SEIU attacks KKR, the Sun shows that they are not keeping their own house in order as they throw stones at others.
The pep rallies are another in a series of SEIU efforts to attack private equity firms. Apart from the silliness of making Mr. Kravis its target when its complaint really lies with Congress, the SEIU would do better to look in the mirror. In its own treatment of workers, especially worker pension plans, it falls short.
SEIU president Stern is trying to use the 30% stake that KKR has in the SEIU’s pension fund management as a club with which to beat KKR into accepting the SEIU political goals.
SEIU President Andy Stern is not above trying to use that business relationship as leverage to pressure KKR to embrace the SEIU’s political goals, either by threatening to harm KKR’s name, as with the July 17 rallies, or by controlling proxy votes in shareholder meetings.
One of the issues that the SEIU’s Stern is all in a dither about is worker benefits and how employees are supposedly not getting their due. So, since this is such a big, big issue who would imagine that the SEIU has a fully funded pension plan for its rank and file members?
You’d be excused if you might have assumed it was… but it isn’t.
Yet in 2006, the SEIU National Industry Pension Plan, a plan for the rank-and-file members, covering 100,787 workers, was 75% funded. That is, it had three-fourths of the money it needed to pay benefit obligations of workers and retirees.
So much for the SEIU caring about their lowly rank and file members. But wait, it gets worse. The pension the SEIU has for their own union leadership and their employees is funded at 103%! So, they’ve taken care of their own pals in union leadership positions and shafted the rank and file membership.
The problem of poor funding occurs not only in the national SEIU pension plan. Thirteen local pension plans, whose beneficiaries are almost all rank-and-file members, were all less than 80% funded, and, of these, six were less than 65% funded. The Massachusetts Service Employees Pension Fund fell from nearly 110% to 70% funded in 10 years, and the SEIU 1199 Upstate Pension Fund fell from 115% to 75% since its inception in 1999.
This is an outrage. Not only have they given sweetheart deals for the union leadership and shafted the rank and file, but Stern and his union pals have the temerity to attack other people for doing the same thing (yet to a far lesser degree) that THEY are!
But, there is an even further level of hypocrisy from the SEIU. Not only are they doing what they accuse others of doing — namely shafting the employees’ pensions — they are attacking KKR even as the SEIU has its pension invested with KKR at the same time. OK, so if the SEIU finds KKR so eeevil, why are they doing business with them?
Were I a union member (perish the thought) I’d be asking the SEIU’s leadership how they can spend 85 million dollars on political activism while my pension is going underfunded. It’s some of the worst, gross hypocrisy I’ve seen for a long time.
Posted in Eric Odom, Site News, Warner Todd Huston | 1 Comment »
July 9, 2008 - 11:02 pm - Posted by WTH
The ex-girlfried of Governor John Corzine (D- NJ), Carla Katz, found herself in a spot of bother this week. It seems she was removed from the presidency of the largest state-worker union in New Jersey because an internal investigation revealed she had “misappropriated” union funds and violated Federal labor laws.
“An extensive internal review revealed probable cause to believe that the local is engaged in ongoing financial malpractice, the misappropriation of union funds, a failure to comply with state and federal law, as well as the CWA constitution, and the suppression of dissent,” CWA’s national board said in a news release. “The CWA national executive board has determined that it has no choice but to take this action to protect the rights and resources of the members of Local 1034.”
Naturally, Governor Corzine refused to comment on the news, but Katz is putting on the faux outrage in her statement.
“This action by the national union is appalling and the charges against our local’s leadership are completely false. It is a travesty that the retaliation against me, and my fellow union leaders, for our opposition to the bad state worker deal, continues in full force,” Katz said. “The national’s baseless and extreme action, done without any notice, tramples the democratic rights of the members of our union under the deceptive guise of protecting democracy.”
The guv and this union member have been in trouble before when gifts from Corzine to Katz were revealed raising the question of the propriety of the gifts.
Here is what the guv’s luv thug is accused of:
- Misappropriated union funds to support her own personal interests and her own union election campaign by using local dues to pay for travel and lodging and other expenses for people recruited to campaign for her.
- Authorized — with little or no oversight — the use of more than $700,000 in union funds to be used for political donations, some of which went to candidates in areas where the local has few members.
- Threatened the employment of an internal critic and retaliated against union members in violation of federal law and the CWA constitution.
- Failed to maintain mandated time records to establish what she has been doing as the top official of her local.
Looks like Katz is finally getting her comeuppance.
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July 8, 2008 - 12:11 pm - Posted by WTH
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July 1, 2008 - 11:10 am - Posted by WTH
There is an interesting little report about a city Supervisor in Amherst, New York and how the city employee unions have demonized him since being elected as a reformer 2 years ago. It is an object lesson in how unions will demonize instead of work with anyone.
When Mohan took office 2 years ago as a reformer, he clearly specified that he wanted union contracts — a huge financial burden for most municipalities — retooled to pare back rich pay packages and fringe benefits.
“Someone has to speak for the people,” he said at last week’s Town Board meeting, where he opposed a police union contract that ultimately passed with only Mohan voting “no.”
Sounds like a fine public official to me! And one thing is sure, the unions sure aren’t speaking for the taxpayers in ANY city in ANY state of the Union. All they want is to rip off the taxpayers as much as possible.
Naturally, Supervisor Mohan’s success at opposing union thugs and paring back thei ill-gotten gains has made him a target of unions.
But the town’s union leaders describe Mohan’s comments as outrageous, offensive and, in some cases, “outright lies.”
In any case, we here at the blog wish Supervisor a long, long, union agitating career.
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