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© 2011 The Union Label Blog & Grassfire Nation
-By Warner Todd Huston
Now this is the sort of corruption we are used to seeing in Illinois, eh? This week the Chicago Tribune and WGN TV has found up to 23 retired union operatives that are collecting millions in taxpayer dollars because they had pals in government tweak the state’s pensions laws to favor them.
These former government workers that were government union members got pliant politicians to alter the pensions laws to say that their pension remuneration would be calculated not on the lower pay they received when they retired from government, but from the much higher salary they received when they worked as union operatives. These folks worked as union bosses at the same time as working on the clock for government.
The “luck” of former union boss and Dept. of Streets and Sanitation worker Thomas Villanova is a typical example. Villanova last worked full-time for the city in 1989 and made $40,000-a-year. But he was also a union big wig making $198,000 annually upon his retirement in 2008 at age 56. His city pension, it appears, was calculated on the union salary of $198,000 instead of his real salary of $40,000 — itself obviously a no-show job in the first place.
Villanova stands to make millions off the taxpayers.
Speaking of making millions, as mentioned above, the media folks also found some 20 more government union members that could make a combined $56 million in unearned pensions off the taxpayer’s back.
One of these crooks even retired at 50-years-old, then was hired back by the city for one day so that he could bump up his pension returns!
Worse, I was listening to a local Chicago radio program and one of the reporters involved in this story was saying that there may be several hundred more union/government workers that are similarly getting cushy, undeserved riches from the state pension system.
All this at a time when the pensions system is about to crash because it is so deeply in the red.
Now, don’t imagine that these sort of sweetheart deals between politicians and government unions are only happening in Chicago. These deals are endemic throughout government at every level. From your smallest city to the county, state, and federal government, these union thugs are ripping us all off on a daily basis.
Without question, this is the sort of unethical, even criminal, double dealing that you get when government employees are allowed to unionize. These people are cozy with government officials and other elected folks, donate money to their campaigns so that rules can be changed in their favor, then live off the taxpayers for decades. And for the cash in their pockets, politicians bend to union wishes every time. All the while the taxpayers get raped repeatedly.
Government workers should never, ever be allowed to unionize. Even Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew that!
-By Warner Todd Huston
The lesson: if you are a union member, better to sit on your rear-end and do nothing than find gainful employment.
A poor Chicago-area carpenter who was sick and tired of waiting for his useless union to find him work struck out on his own and got a job with a non-union shop. Big mistake. Once the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters found out they tried to fine him $300,900 for having the gall to find work on his own.
Carpenter Nathaniel Musser is not sitting around and taking this outrageous treatment handed him by the feckless union, either. He’s filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the union with the National Labor Relations Board which will come up in mid-August.
If were Mr. Musser, though, I would not hold my breath that Obama’s union-sold NLRB will side with the poor, put upon worker here. This is the same regulatory board that extra-constitutionally decided that it had to power to prevent Boeing from opening up a new plant in any U.S. state it wanted to merely because the NLRB thought a few union jobs in Washington State might be at risk.
Mr. Musser is a member of the union but the union was offering him no work, so in 2009 he worked for a while with a non-union company. Th union then tried to fine the young man $300,900. Musser appealed the decision and the fine was lowered to a much easier to pay amount… a mere $200,850!
In explanation, Musser says that the union has a policy that members cannot resign from the union and he would have quit to work in a non-union shop if there was a way to do so.
Isn’t that just like the un-American unions? How is it possible in America that once you join an organization there isn’t a way to quit it? How the heck is that Constitutionally justified? What legal or moral compulsion makes you part of the union from the day you join until the day you die?
I hope Mr. Musser wins his case, but with Obama’s union bought and paid for presidency it isn’t likely.
(HT LaborUnionReport.com)
With Chicago sitting in heart the nation, and literally being the den of progressive darkness, is it any wonder that it is also known as the birthplace of the international labor and worker’s rights movement? If you were not aware of this, don’t worry, neither were we. And neither are most Chicagoans. But the truth is, the 1886 Haymarket Riot in Chicago is credited as the place where it all began.
To most, May Day represents the victorious struggle for the eight hour work day. However, there is a deeper history to the international holiday. Striking workers marched all across the country on May 1st, 1886, and it was declared as the eight hour work day by the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions. But in Chicago protests escalated on May 3rd, at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Co. plant, as workers rushed the gates to confront strikebreakers. This lead to a police shooting of two protesters. At another protest the following day at the Haymarket Square, May 4th, 1886, an “unknown” suspect threw a pipe bomb at the police, resulting in an explosion, chaos and gunfire? Eight police officers were killed, sixty were injured and at least four workers were killed, and a number of other civilians were injured…
Read the rest at RebelPundit.com.
Eric Odom (Media Director)
Vanguard of Freedom
Warner Todd Huston