Right to Work Blog

Karen Hanretty, a television pundit and writer at The Hill’s Pundit Blog nailed Big Labor for spinning the cancellation of their New York Labor Day parade:

It’s official: The parade has been canceled. That’s right, Big Labor can’t seem to organize a parade for, of all things, Labor Day. Or if it did, no one would show up, save a handful of politicians eager to show solidarity — so reports the New York Daily News in its Aug. 16 edition:

“The parade usually draws a flock of politicians eager to be seen supporting labor in the news, but barely any spectators.”

The spin coming from unions over the cancelled New York parade is rich. “The labor movement is in better shape than we have been in years,” said United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. “[The parade] is not the most effective way to celebrate Labor Day.”

Uh, OK. Celebration. Parade. The two seem to go hand-in-glove to me.

I tend to think Bob Burgie, a sheet metal worker quoted in the article, was more honest when he said, “We used to march in it every year, but nobody showed up … Now the union makes going to it mandatory.’”

I suppose if card check ever passes into law, Big Labor will finally have an audience again for its parade — albeit a mandatory audience. Boy, that sounds fun.

California state workers, subjected to forced unionism, will have little to say about the new 50% increase in dues money and “fair-share” payments the SEIU has assessed upon them. Why the increase?

Local 1000 donated $6.7 million in member dues to defeat an initiative on the ballot that would have required unions to obtain written consent from members before money could be used for political purposes. That sent the union into economic chaos.

According to the Capitol Weekly (page 7), the new assessment raised dues to $90 a month leaving members upset with the decision. “To them, we are a huge ATM machine. Because of that they spend, spend, spend,” said Ken Hamidi who is organizing other members to fight the dues hike. Hamidi also notes that a large portion of the dues hike goes right to SEIU headquarters in Washington, DC.

Let’s get this right — the union bosses deplete the members’ dues treasury to fight an initiative that would give workers choice and input into their spending decisions. Then they assess a tax on those members who have no choice so they can spend more money without member input. Sounds like a vicious cycle rectified only by passage of a Right to Work law.

The Dallas Morning News has printed a great summary of the attacks by Big Labor on Texas’ Right to Work Law. It’s worth the read.

It’s a shame when union bosses need the threat of an administrative law judge to do the right thing.

As reported by the Associated Press:

The United Steelworkers union has agreed to drop disciplinary action against four former members who defied a three-month strike last year at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., the workers and the union said Monday.

The workers said they crossed the picket line to support their families. They said they were threatened with $620 fines and subjected to continued dues deductions after they quit the union and got harassed by union members using bullhorns outside their homes.

To settle a National Labor Relations Board complaint, Steelworkers Local 2L in Akron [Ohio] agreed to withdraw the disciplinary measures, erase records of the actions and post the local’s commitment against harassing union-covered workers. . . .

The National Right to Work [Legal Defense] Foundation, which opposes compulsory union membership, represented the former union members.

“The outright contempt that these thuggish union officials have for employees who refuse to toe the union line is despicable,” said Stefan Gleason, foundation vice president.

Roddy Stinson, a columnist at the San Antonio Express-News has an interesting take on the Texas Attorney General’s efforts to protect the Lone Star State’s Right to Work Law from being undermined by the Michigan-based International Union, Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (IUSPFPA):

Sometime between now and Aug. 24 at the federal immigration and customs processing center near Port Isabel, a “Notice to Employees” will be posted …

By order of the 117th State District Court in Nueces County.

Upon request by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas.

Informing the employees that a “permanent injunction” protects them from being threatened, suspended or discharged if they “choose not to engage” in joining the “International Union, Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America.”

One small step for security guard Carlos Banuelos.

One giant leap for Texas’ right-to-work law.

Meanwhile, 840 miles away, a similar notice will be posted at another federal processing center in El Paso under an order by El Paso County’s 171st State District Court.

One small step for security guard Juan Vielma.

Another giant leap for Texas’ right-to-work law.

Henceforth, every security guard at the Port Isabel and El Paso facilities will independently and without coercion decide whether he or she wants to fork over $30 a month to the Michigan-based IUSPFPA.

Please join this independent Texan in a moment of thanksgiving for …

Banuelos and Vielma — whose defiance of the union and endurance of Big Labor Pain have been reported here extensively.

Attorney General Abbott and his staff, who came late to the aid of Banuelos and Vielma, but who on arriving wasted no time and took no prisoners on their way to court to seek the permanent injunctions.

The staff of the Virginia-based National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, whose early arrival at the battle on behalf of Banuelos and Vielma played a decisive role in the successful defense of Texas’ right-to-not-join-a-union law.

Of course, nothing is ever easy or simple when dealing with the federal government, as this caveat in each court order shows:

“In the event (a facility) is determined to be a federal enclave through a final adjudication by a court of competent jurisdiction, the injunctive requirements of this Judgment shall no longer be in effect.”

Here’s why:

The judicial door to the injunctions was opened by a federal administrative law judge, who ruled that the Texas facilities involved in the dispute were not federal enclaves (which are exempt from state law).

The union is expected to appeal that ruling.

So future court actions could lift the injunctions and, again, force Banuelos and Vielma to make a choice between (a) losing their jobs and (b) joining the International Union, Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America and helping to support (in salary, allowances and “disbursements for official business”) …

David Hickey, president — $163,929

Steve Maritas, director of organizing — $120,401

Mark Crawford, regional vice president — $91,304

Bobby Jenkins, regional vice president — $107,101

Kerry Lacey, regional vice president — $92,320

Michael Swartz, regional vice president — $94,696

Dennis Eck, secretary/treasurer — $100,602

Howard Johannssen, senior adviser to the president — $92,991

Not to mention …

The union’s Detroit law firm, Gregory, Moore, Jeakle, Heinen & Brooks — $445,949.

A charity golf outing — $11,871

A “Summit Hotel” stay — $8,392.

Those numbers are from the union’s 2006 U.S. Department of Labor report, so the names, numbers, hotels and golfing sites might change from year to year.

But the Big Labor costs to members will forever remain the same.

The Office of Labor and Management Standards (OLMS) is the part of the Department of Labor that protects workers by tracking how union officials spend the dues and fees extracted from members and non-members alike under the auspices for government granted monopoly bargaining privileges. Understandably, Big Labor officials look at these funds as their own personal piggybanks, and don’t want the hassle that comes with having to document what they do with them. And now, it seems, the Union Boss strategy of funneling much of these often forced-dues funds into the political process is beginning to bear real fruit.

As Brian O’Keefe, in a special to The Daily Standard, put it:

EVEN THOUGH HOUSE Democrats campaigned on promises to improve ethics, promote greater transparency and disclosure, and fight corruption, it now appears they will not require some of their top campaign contributors to live by those same vows.

In a galling political move, the House voted down an amendment last week that would have restored funding for the Office of Labor and Management Standards (OLMS), an office within the Department of Labor. That means OLMS’s budget will be slashed by about 20 percent next year. And OLMS isn’t just any ordinary office. Under the Bush administration, OLMS has led the charge on requiring greater union financial disclosure and transparency and fighting union corruption. . . .

The result is that today any rank and file union member can log on to the Department of Labor’s website and look up detailed financial information about how their dues are being spent. Never have the “average Joes” in labor unions had so much useful and readily accessible information about their unions.

OLMS has also been instrumental in fighting corrupt union leaders. Its work has helped prosecutors win convictions in corruption cases and returned to union coffers money that unsavory labor leaders tried to pilfer.

While all of this might sound noble, one constituency has not been enamored with OLMS: union bosses. Suffice it to say that all of this talk about financial disclosure, transparency, and corruption has made many labor leaders quite uncomfortable. Much of the financial reporting has also brought to light embarrassing information about the ways that union leadership spends members’ dues. Many union leaders would prefer to have their members in the dark about how many golf outings, “retreats” at lavish resorts, and fancy dinners they have enjoyed on their dime.

He goes on to point out:

What makes these budget cuts so obviously related to OLMS’s oversight of unions is that the Democrats have actually added $935 million dollars to the original administration budget request. It seems that the Democrats have no problem with spending taxpayer dollars on DOL. They just don’t want that money to fund oversight of their campaign contributors.

It’s also noteworthy that labor unions are trying so hard to keep their own books secret when they have aggressively lobbied to require greater financial transparency from publicly traded corporations. OLMS’s reporting requirements pale in comparison to Sarbanes-Oxley. It’s clear that labor wants to promote one stringent standard for companies but live by another.

The real losers in this fight however are the rank and file union members. They work hard and pay their dues. They should have the right to know what their leaders are doing and how they are spending their financial resources.

To read the entire article, click here.

We have seen a lot of underhanded attacks by union officials and their front groups to expand their forced-unionism power, but the United Food and Commercial Workers Union’s (UFCW) effort to embarrass Arizona’s Bashas’ Supermarket might hit a new low.

A group calling itself “Hungry for Respect,” funded by the UFCW, issued a report claiming the supermarket was selling expired baby formula. Of course, the group claimed that the report was in the “public interest” and had nothing to do with the fact that Bashas’ was in the midst of negotiating a contract with the union.

To their credit, Bashas’ and its employees appear to be standing tall. As their spokesman said, the union’s real motive is to pressure them into entering a labor contract without conducting a vote among its workforce (remember the Card Check Bill Big Labor is pushing in Congress). He pointed to other grocery store chains, such as Food Lion, which a UFCW-affiliated group accused of selling outdated formula at stores in Virginia in 1995 — allegations that later proved to be trumped up by the union and their front groups. He also said the union’s long-term strategy is to chip away at Arizona’s Right to Work Law.

Bashas’ is said to be ready to take the union head-on, and has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in marketing and advertising to combat UFCW’s message.

Arizona readers take note. Bashas’ appears to be one company that won’t take union intimidation targeting their employees and customers lying down.

With $20.1 billion in aggregate annual receipts, Big Labor has become Big Business with a twist. It gets much of its money through force. Approximately 80% of union contracts contain some form of ‘union security’ requirement forcing employees to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment.” And, after being forced to fork over much of their hard earned wages to Big Labor Bosses, these workers have little say in how the money is spent.

The National Institute for Labor Relations Research recently released a report, “Big Labor: A $20 Billion-a-Year Business. See excerpt following:

A review of union disclosure forms conducted by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research just three years ago found that total compensation for union officers and staff members constituted 35% of total union receipts from dues and fees. The current review shows that total compensation has skyrocketed to just over half of dues-and-fees receipts.

And during federal election years, most paid union officers are assigned to work on political campaigns for months at a time. In every election cycle, the thousands and thousands of union officers and staff members who “volunteer” full time for political campaigns while continuing to collect their forced dues-funded salaries and benefits constitute an unreported, “in-kind” political contribution from Organized Labor to its chosen candidates worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

In addition to paid “volunteer” time, other forced dues-funded “in-kind” political contributions include union propaganda mailings, phone banks, and get-out-the-vote drives. The total value of such contributions cannot be estimated precisely.

However, in a February 20, 2005, op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, union activist Jon Tasini acknowledged that the value of forced dues-funded electioneering dwarfs the roughly $100 million in reported contributions to federal candidates and so-called “527 groups” that the union hierarchy has made in recent campaign cycles.

Mr. Tasini, a former union president and the former national director of the union front group “American Rights at Work,” now heads the Labor Research Association, a New York City-based union consulting operation. In his op-ed, he reported that several “union political experts” had told him that “unions spend seven to 10 times what they give candidates and parties on internal political mobilization.”

So, Mr. Tasini continued, “we’re talking $8 to $12 billion on union internal political mobilization” in “federal elections alone” between 1979 and 2004. No other type of nonprofit organization has sufficient staff to make “in-kind” contributions of anywhere near this magnitude. And business certainly has no parallel political army, since profit-minded shareholders rarely if ever are willing to release their managers from normal business for months on end so that they can politick full time.

The Detroit News has begun posting a multi-part piece on the growing divide between union bosses and union workers. Part 1 of the exposé, “Union Divide,” by Mike Wilkinson and Ron French, contains some interesting facts and figures.

The recent Democrat presidential debate in Chicago left an obvious impression in the mind of one astute political columnist, Al Knight, of the Denver Post — “Democrats Love Unions, and Unions Love Democrats:”

The AFL-CIO summer meeting is underway in Chicago and the nation’s labor leaders have much to celebrate. The Democratic presidential candidates were scheduled to again grovel before organized labor last night and doubtless promise to heed the labor agenda, which includes the creation of a universal health care system.

After all, whenever Democrats meet with organized labor leaders, it is a love fest. Indeed, the love fest has been a central feature of this year’s congressional session. Few things have been more important to Democrats that pleasing organized labor.

Labor organizations want the public to believe that they produced the Democratic victories of last year and are thus entitled to the fruits of the effort. In fact, the election outcome was most likely traceable to other issues, like the Iraq war and Democratic charges that the Republican Congress was corrupt.

Whatever the reason for the victory, the Democrats just can’t do enough for the labor unions.

The House passed the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, which would have eliminated the secret ballot for workers voting on whether to form a labor union. The measure fell just nine votes short of Senate approval, but organized labor still has its passage at the top of its wish list.

Democrats have been working hard in two other areas to satisfy their friends in labor. The first is to cut the operating budget of the Office of Labor-Management Standards, the main government agency that monitors the financial integrity of labor unions. Labor union leaders have complained that the paperwork imposed by the government is a burden, even though less than 5 percent of the nation’s 15,800 unions are audited in any one year.

It should be big news when Democrats locate a program they want to cut, but the budget reductions proposed for the labor agency have attracted little mainstream media attention. Under the Democratic proposal, the budget for the agency would revert to 2006 levels next year despite the fact that the overall Labor, Health and Human Services budget would be $11 billion more than the president has requested.

Unsurprisingly, the Bush administration opposes the overall bill, in part because the changes in union oversight “weaken the agency’s ability to improve union transparency and strengthen financial integrity.”

The second congressional gift to organized labor is the expansion of the Davis-Bacon Act, a Depression-era measure intended to assure that contract workers paid by the federal government earned the prevailing or average local wage.

For a number of reasons, including the way wage surveys are conducted, the Bacon-Davis term of “prevailing wage” has come to mean the “union wage.” Put another way, labor organizations have used the Davis-Bacon provisions to assure that any federal contract pays as close to union wage as possible.

Why is this a problem? It amounts to a federal requirement to artificially increase the price of all affected federal contracts, whether for bridges, subsidized housing or flood control. And it usurps local and state decision-making that otherwise might use the labor market to obtain lower construction costs.

In recent weeks, Congress voted to mandate the Davis-Bacon provisions to the construction of new nuclear power plants, to the construction of ethanol and other bio-fuel projects, to railroad track construction, the development of solar reserves on federal lands, and to any construction funded by the clean water state revolving fund. This fund is used by cities and towns to make repairs and improvements to wastewater treatment plants. The Davis-Bacon provisions will apply not just to federal dollars but to those contributed by the states and localities.

Colorado voters should be concerned about the gifts bestowed on organized labor. The state’s unionized workforce is relatively tiny, just 7.7 percent overall, much of that in the public sector. The national average is just 12 percent. More importantly, even though construction unionism in the Denver metro area is just 6.8 percent, the Davis-Bacon wages are, in fact, union wages.

Given this relationship between elected Democrats and organized labor, it is easy to see why both groups love Davis-Bacon. It is hard to see why any sane taxpayer should.