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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
So what about those union pensions, Mr. Trumka? Your union has severely underfunded your member’s pensions for years. Don’t you care if your members have enough to retire on? Isn’t that what your union promised to them?
Well someone is asking these questions, anyway. Unfortunately, it isn’t the bought-off Obama administration. It’s the Free Enterprise Alliance and they are starting with these billboards in Pittsburgh.
Too bad AFL-CIO bosses don’t care enough about their members to answer such pesky questions, eh?
Of course, the pensions for the bosses and union management are fully funded, so why should Trumka care? Boss pensions are juuuuust fine. As long as he’s getting his, why worry about those foolish, annoying, lowly members?
They are such a bother, youse guys know whot I’m talkin’ about?
Welcome to Obama’s America where you are forced to become a union member even if you had no idea you were being inducted into one. In fact, in Obama’s America you won’t even know you are IN a union until you notice union dues are being withheld from your checks.
This is the case in Michigan where Sherry Loar and Dawn Ives work out of their home talking care of children for low-income families. One Friday the pair realized that union dues were being withheld from the checks they receive from the state for the subsidized daycare they perform for local families.
As it happens, neither woman voted to join a union nor even knew that they’d be forcefully inducted into one. They didn’t even know their job had a union.
“It doesn’t seem right,” said Ms. Loar, who wrote the governor twice for an explanation – and got none.
“I can’t opt out, because I never opted in,” she said, adding that she isn’t necessarily anti-union.
So what happened? No less than stealth unionization. As in California, compliant, left-wing, union-bought politicians have sneaked rules through the state legislature that automatically unionizes thousands of Michigan home child care workers like Loar and Ives. Naturally, none of these workers have even been made aware that they will be forced to pay dues to a union they’d never heard of, nor do such workers have to be told about the unionization. They will just suddenly discover that their money is being stolen by the state and given to union thugs.
At least someone is paying attention, though. The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, a free-market group, is suing the state over this theft of income claiming that workers like Loar and Ives are independent contractors and do not work for the state.
That new union, Child Care Providers Together Michigan (CCPTM), covers an estimated 40,000 home care providers who look after children whose parents receive state child care assistance funds. By the end of 2009, the union stands to receive about $3.7 million in dues, said Patrick J. Wright, director of the new legal foundation, at a press conference held at the Hall of Justice in Lansing.
“If the state is determined to place these day care workers in a union, it needs an act of the Legislature. … If Sherry and Dawn are government employees simply because a few of their customers receive government aid, then doctors, landlords and independent grocers can’t be far behind,” Mr. Wright said.
But this is the era of Obama where unions can simply decide they have “new” members and can get a compliant Democrat controlled legislature to begin stealing money from people to give to their union pals.
In the era of Obama everyone is in the union as far as Democrats are concerned. Does it matter if the employee even knows they have a union for their job? No. Does it matter if the employee is given the freedom to choose if he wants to be in a union? Nope.
It’s all about compulsion, mandates, and forced unionism. Employee’s needs do not apply. Only the needs of union bank accounts are considered.
That is Obama’s America.
This amusing, yet sad, video asks the question “should it be this hard to tell the difference between the two?” You’ll see all sorts of threatening, uncivil quotes and you’ll be asked if a famous Mob Boss said them or if AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said it.
Betcha can guess what’s coming…
Professor Harry G. Hutchison of George Mason University recently took a look at the union favored Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and made a startling conclusion. He believes it will harm minorities.
Saying that the EFCA is “arguably the most transformative piece of labor legislation” since 1935, Hutchinson warns that it will seriously harm the rights of workers and the status of minorities alike.
To start, Hutchinson summed up the provisions of the bill.
One of the newest attempts to transform labor relations is the EFCA. The first to disappear under the EFCA would be a system of union democracy whereby unions could only obtain the rights of exclusive representation for firms if they could prevail in a secret-ballot election. Second, the EFCA would eliminate the necessity of a freely negotiated collective bargaining agreement between management and labor and instead substitute compulsory arbitration.
The results of these provisions, though, would prove disastrous as far as Hutchinson is concerned.
While some labor union advocates contend that law ought to be conceived of as a vehicle to democratize the workplace by redistributing power in labor markets in favor of workers, while concurrently demolishing hierarchical command structures that entrench gender, race and class lines, this proposal would likely expand labor hierarchy, labor market cartelization and diminish the employment prospects of racial minorities. As such, the EFCA is marked by contradiction. This paper deploys Critical Race Reformist theory, economics and apartheid-era South African labor history in order to show that rather than embracing freedom for workers, eliminating poverty, and expanding opportunities for all, this proposal would likely invert such goals and instead operate consistently with the record of exclusion and subordination tied to American Progressivism and the labor movement.
Hutchinson feels that the EFCA is a racist attack on minority workers. It must be reiterated that President Obama and his Big Labor comrades are pushing this bill for all they are worth. So, in essence, Obama and Big Labor are pushing a racist bill.
Prof. Hutchison has an impressive resume including: M.A., Wayne State University; M.B.A., University of Michigan; J.D., Wayne State University; Diploma, University of Oxford; P.G.C.E., University of Bristol.
An interesting admission by James A. Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades in Philadelphia, can be seen in an interview he did with the Philly Inquirer. It is an admission that conforms one of the things that anti-union folks have been saying for years, but one union officials are loath to admit.
While discussing the hard economic times, the Philly Inquirer asked how the recession was affecting the union. In his answer President Wilson admitted that his union uses out-of-work members for “political events.” Wilson mentioned that they lower dues to $1 a month after a member has been out of work for more than six months, but that isn’t just the kind hearted union looking out for its members. No, the union expects something in return for that lowering of dues.
(My bold)
So instead of having the big drop in membership, this way here, we utilize them for political events, we can keep them informed on various things and still keep them as active members.
For a long time those on the anti-union side have claimed that union members are forced to appear at political rallies, told to go by union masters. Here is one union boss that doesn’t seem ashamed to admit that his rallies are peopled with forced union participants.
Boeing’s workers voted overwhelmingly to decertify their union at the manufacturer’s North Charleston, South Carolina plant on September 10.
Naturally, the union blames the evil, evil corporation for this state of affairs.
“We are frustrated that Boeing did not remain neutral and allow these workers to make a decision free from pressure, intimidation and coercion,” he said. “Boeing is playing a perverse game of pitting community against community for the most taxpayer money, and pitting worker against worker for the cheapest possible labor, using these tough economic times to take advantage of both. The IAM will continue to be here for aerospace workers in the United States.”
Could it be the union’s fault? Naaaaah. It HAS to be the evil, evil company fooling the stupid, stupid workers into voting the union out the door. It couldn’t be the union’s fault, right?
Of course not!
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Vanguard of Freedom
Warner Todd Huston