Right to Work Blog

Under what organizational structure does the President work for the Business Manager?

That question came to mind when reading an article citing comments in a letter by Mark Congi, former President of Laborers Local 91 in Niagara Falls, to U.S. District Judge Richard Arcara. (Newsday, December 21, 2006)

According to the Associated Press (AP) story, Congi claimed he answered to the union’s late business manager, Michael Quarcini. “If there was a problem on a job site, he would notify me and instruct me how to handle it.” Congi is alleged to have written. “(If) he told me to do something, I did it, even if it was unlawful.”

Mr. Congi “was sentenced on Wednesday [December 20, 2006] to 15 years in federal prison for attacking rival construction workers and staging large-scale vandalism at job sites in Niagara County.” The now-former union boss had pleaded “guilty to racketeering conspiracy in August for his role in a campaign of extortion and violence – including a 1997 firebombing – meant to pressure contractors into hiring the union’s laborers.”

This sounds more like a “mob,” than a union.

The fundamentally flawed assumption underlying all U.S. labor policy is that individual working Americans are incapable of pursuing their own best interest and, for their own good, must be forced to have a union official act on their behalf. That assumption is just wrong.

And, as Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek admitted, “Whatever true coercive powers unions may be able to wield over employers is a consequence of this primary power of coercing other workers.”

Employees, forced under federal law, to follow Big Labor’s dictates are doubly harmed when leaders like Mr. Congi use their powers of coercion to break the law.

Connecticut state law bans public unions from organizing strikes or similar work stoppages that could interrupt normal functioning.

But when two Stamford police union officials were questioned about a statistically improbable absentee pattern over a nine day period during ongoing contract negotiations, one denied “orchestrating a sickout” while the other, union secretary Jessica Bloomberg, “took the Fifth on almost every question . . . ”

“Those questions included whether she or any other union officer had any role in organizing the sickout, and whether she mapped out which officers would call in sick or instructed officers when to skip work.”

The “alleged ‘blue flu’ started Nov. 28, when half the 26 patrol officers scheduled to work called in sick. Absences spiked over the next three days, with an average of 23 officers calling [in] sick, according to department records and statistics released by the city.”

Public employees are supposed to answer to the people and their duly elected public officials. Union officials represent a special interest group, and should not be allowed to hold the public hostage to their demands.

We are not sure what is more outrageous — the fact that the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) will spend in excess of $2 million in workers’ dues in the first few hours of the Democrat-controlled Congress, or that the AFSCME Boss, Gerald McEntee, believes $2 million “is not a whole lot of money.”

Because he is spending workers’ money and not his own, $2 million may not be a lot of money, but it gets worse for rank and file union members. McEntee brags that the $2 million is only “a down payment” on a broader economic populist message that he hopes to see take effect after the first 100 hours of the new Congress are up.

If you do the math, Boss McEntee is spending $20,000 of dues money every hour.

Newly elected Wisconsin Congressman Steve Kagen was a beneficiary of Big Labor’s free spending of workers dues money for endorsing government-run health care and other Big Labor agenda items. Now Big Labor has come knocking for support on more issues.

The Appleton Post Crescent reports that, at a Big Labor organized forum, Kagen expressed support for “living wage” legislation that would dramatically increase the minimum wage far beyond what Democrat leaders have proposed and support.

Kagen also proposes “No Patient Left Behind” legislation that would include the government creation of a single national risk pool for the uninsured and pricing control.

Kagen claims he hasn’t made up his mind yet on other issues that are on organized labor’s agenda, such as the “card check” bill. That bill would eliminate the need for an election in the workplace before unions can claim bargaining power over all workers, but said he thinks the proposal sounded “reasonable.”

Elimination of individual rights, especially the secret ballot and allowing workers to be intimidated into signing a union representation card is not “reasonable.” Workers and constituents of Rep. Kagen should let him know it.

Presidential aspirant John Edwards was on MSNBC’s Hardball program, pitching his support for the “Card-Check” bill, but host Christ Mathews’ questions did more to undermine the bill than Edwards’ answers did to support it.

Surprisingly, Mathews, a Democrat who used to work for Democrat House Speaker Tip O’Neill, asked Edwards whether he thought eliminating workplace elections were democratic. Another question recognized the threat of workplace intimidation that will occur should the bill ever become law.

Edwards, of course, carried the labor line, but it was interesting to see Mathews point out some of the major problems with the bill.

Transcript:

MATTHEWS: Are you for the card check?

J. EDWARDS: I am for the card check.

MATTHEWS: You think that’s fair to be able to have four people from a labor union, big people come up to a little person and say you’re going to vote for the union, aren’t you? You’re going to vote for the union, aren’t you?

J. EDWARDS: I think it’s democracy. I do.

New Jersey residents pay the most property tax in the country. The average yearly property tax bill tops $7,000 a year. Even New Jersey Democrat Gov. Jon Corzine supports reforming the tax system but his proposals have been stymied by the state’s government union bosses who threaten to shut the state down if they have to.

Over 7,000 public employees rallied in Trenton last week to protest pension and health care reform that will be used as an offset to the proposed property tax cut. Barbara Keshishian, vice president of the New Jersey Education Association, one of the state’s most politically powerful unions, rallied the crowd, “We keep this state running and if we have to, let me tell you, we can shut it down.”

The Bergen Record has called the state employee pay system, “runaway pay.” They describe the problem as “New Jersey governments are awash in red ink. But from State Street to town hall, no one is tackling the biggest reason for our fiscal woes – what we pay public employees. Focusing on police officers and teachers, we describe a system that has produced $100,000 base salaries for the rank and file, generous pensions and no-cost benefit packages – all at a time when the private sector is going in the opposite direction.

“We don’t blame the workers. They’re paid what government employers are willing to pay them.

“We blame the people who established a system that’s so one-sided that local governments can’t get a break. Those governments sit down to negotiate contracts with police and teachers and its game over before it even begins. The big losers in the process – taxpayers.”

And what is stopping reform of the system – the monopoly unionism system protected by New Jersey’s union elite and their forced dues power.

John Edwards’ presidential campaign seems to be playing third fiddle behind Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, so he has brought on a Big Labor supporting “pit bull,” David Bonior, as his senior advisor; and is likely to make him his campaign manager. Throughout Bonior’s career in Congress, he was known for his unyielding support for Big Labor’s forced-unionism agenda and, unquestionably, he hopes his Big Labor connections will help Edwards.

The Raleigh News and Observer describes Bonior as “a high-profile Democrat whose appointment reinforces Edwards’ efforts to build bridges to organized labor, environmental groups and party progressives as he tries to outflank New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on the left.” Not easy to do, but, Bonior might be up to the task. “Few Democratic congressmen were closer to organized labor, a group that Edwards has heavily courted since 2004. Bonior notes that Edwards has walked picket lines all across the country and, on Friday, received the Paul Wellstone Award from the AFL-CIO, the most prestigious award given . . . .”

On November 30, the Pittsburgh, (PA) Tribune-Review reported two separate incidents of local union funds being embezzled.

Under the headline, “Woman charged with embezzling from Pitt police union,” they reported the grand jury indictment of Carroll L. Phillips, who allegedly stole $7,300 from the union representing the University of Pittsburgh campus police, while acting as the union’s treasurer.

Under the headline, “Fayette man charged with embezzlement,” the Tribune-Review reported, without saying how much, that Stephen A. Kostelac, of Fayette City, has been indicted by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh on charges of embezzling dues payments while serving as secretary/treasurer of Boilermakers Lodge 906, AFL-CIO.

Union coffers, flush with funds gained under federal labor-law provisions that authorize the firing of employees for refusal to pay dues to a union, are often alluring and easy targets for unscrupulous Big Labor officials with access to such funds.

And, Pennsylvania, as a forced-unionism state, denies workers the freedom to decide as individuals whether or not a labor union, like any other private group, deserves their financial support.

Maybe, it’s time for a change.

As anyone following this blog can attest, embezzling from union funds seems to be in vogue.

The Kennebec (ME) Journal reported the embezzlement of more than $45,000 from the Maine Education Association, a nonprofit labor union with its headquarters in Augusta. They also reported the guilty plea entered by Catherine Crosier, an assistant to the controller of the teachers’ union. She is awaiting sentencing.

This is not an isolated case. Unfortunately, workers who suspect their hard earned money is being misused by corrupt union officials can’t withhold their dues in protest, without facing the loss of their jobs.

As long as Big Labor leaders retain the power to confiscate funds from workers under their sphere of influence (members and nonmembers alike), corrupt union officials will continue to abuse their government-granted monopoly bargaining power.

The National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) has just released two new studies that make for interesting reading.

In Compulsory Unionism in Everything But Name . . . , NILRR connects the dots between an 11 year old AFL-CIO internal assessment on how Big Labor might destroy existing state Right to Work laws and the ongoing campaign by AFL-CIO state federations to advance so-called “Agency Shop” legislation to require non-dues paying workers under union contracts to pay agency fees to union locals.

Another new study, Why Are Workers Still Dangling in the “Blue Eagles’s” Talons?, questions why workers, over 71 years after the discredited National Recovery Act (NRA) was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, are still corralled into cartels similar to those the NRA established for businesses.