Right to Work Blog

CORRECTION

Our blog noting ABC’s Ben Brubeck’s blog on a Vegas union’s pension seems to have come from false statements by the union’s spokesman.  According to the update and correction: 

Laborers chief Tommy White wants to make one thing perfectly clear: His union would like to build Las Vegas a new city hall — but not with nearly $80 million from the local’s pension fund, as one of his deputies told the Sun last week.

That deputy, Tom Morley, has been suspended for “speaking out of turn,” White said.Morley, who makes $104,000 a year as political director and spokesman for Laborers Local 872, told the newspaper the union had voted unanimously to use its pension fund to finance up to half the cost of a proposed city hall. City officials estimate the project’s price tag at $157 million, meaning the union would have put up nearly a quarter of its pension fund.

see updated story with union correction

The Department of Labor granted special pension waivers to the Plumbers when their pension dug an $800-million-dollar hole in the sand.  Now, the Vegas Laborers want to risk 25% of their underfunded pension on a new Las Vegas town hall.   Besides the obvious problems of risking laborer pension participant’s retirement, some of the money came from forced contributions to the Laborers Union’s pension fund through Project Labor Agreements. 

And, the union wants to force another union only project labor agreement to again force non-union workers to contribute to the Laborer’s pension in order to work on the town hall project – a project that many in Las Vegas see as an unnecessary expense for and burden on Las Vegas Residents and businesses already suffering in the Obama economy.  Ben Brubeck’s blog post and the Las Vegas Sun provide additional information:

A Las Vegas Sun article demonstrates how the Laborers Union Local #872 is willing to gamble with their union’s pension fund in order to secure a union-only project labor agreement (PLA) on a new Las Vegas city hall (”Old Vegas-style financing offered for city hall,” 7/17).

A spokesman for Laborers Local 872 said the union hopes to fund at least 30 percent of the beleaguered construction project, which could ultimately cost more than $250 million. The union has been the most aggressive advocate for a project the city describes as a linchpin to downtown redevelopment, and hopes other locals will follow its example…

…In return for its investment, the union would require a labor agreement ensuring its workers would be employed on the project.

It’s not unusual for a union to finance a project with their pension plan funds in exchange for union-only agreements. However, evidence indicates it may not be a responsible investment of pension funds

Case in point is the union-only construction of the Hollywood, FL Westin Diplomat Hotel and Resort which, according to an industry publication, was funded in part by an $800 million investment from the National Federation of Plumbers, Pipefitters and Journeymen’s pension fund – an amount that was nearly 20 percent of the pension fund’s total assets at the time.

The hotel opened in February 2001, almost 18 months late and at a cost almost $400 million above projections after two years of construction. The pension fund fired the original developer and pension plan trustees were sued by the U.S. Department of Labor under auspices of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), a conflict of interest statute designed to prevent the trustees of a multiemployer national pension fund from engaging in self-serving actions and to ensure fund investments are prudent.

According to reporting by Engineering News Record, the suit eventually led to an Aug. 2, 2004, settlement with the Labor Dept. where trustees Maddaloni and Patchell paid an $11-million civil fine. The settlement allowed union leaders Maddaloni and Patchell to keep their union posts, but they had to resign as trustees of seven pension funds.

It is doubtful that the Laborers Local #872 have learned from the Diplomat Hotel debacle as it has been reported that the union’s members have packed City Council meetings, and its leadership spent $200,000 this year to sink the efforts of a rival union that sought to derail the project.

The Culinary Union, the state’s largest and most powerful labor organization, lambasted the new city hall as fiscally irresponsible, especially at a time when the city faces deficits and has announced cuts in public services.

Labor experts said it’s not unusual for a union to invest in municipal projects, but the size of the union’s potential investment raised eyebrows. According to the city’s latest estimates, the new city hall will cost $157 million, which means the union would put up $47 million to $79 million, or nearly a quarter of its pension fund.

“That’s unusual,” said Ron Seeber, a labor and industrial relations professor at Cornell University. “To have a significant amount of chits in one basket like that seems to stretch the boundaries.”

It’s unusual and fiscally irresponsible, especially when your union pension plan is in the endangered status.

Like hundreds of other union pension plans across the country, the laborers fund recently notified participants that its plan was “endangered,” meaning less than 80 percent of the union’s retirement obligations are funded. The laborers fund also took a hit in the Bernard Madoff scandal: the plan joined a class action suit in April, alleging it lost millions of dollars because of a financial management firm’s investment in Madoff-connected funds.

Why is the NEA so powerful? NEA general counsel Bob Chanin admits its by pure political power:

Despite what some among us would like to believe [the NEA is effective] not because of our creative ideas; it is not because of the merit of our positions; it is not because we care about children; and it is not because we have a vision of a great public school for every child.

The NEA and its affiliates are effective advocates because we have power. And we have power because there are more than 3.2 million people who are willing to pay us hundreds of million of dollars in dues each year because they believe that we are the unions that can most effectively represent them; the union that can protect their rights and advance their interests as education employees. …

When all is said and done, NEA affiliates must never lose sight of the fact that they are unions. And what unions do first and foremost is represent their members.

The Wisconsin legislature has passed legislation that has been signed by pro-big union governor Jim Doyle that would grab 3,200 research assistants in the state university system and unionize them through a card check scheme.

Reid to Railroad Forced Unionism Bill Through the Senate — ? 

Roll Call newspaper (subscription required) is reporting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) is “sketching a process for railroading the bill [Card Check Forced Unionism Bill] through the floor as quickly as possible to prevent Republicans from rallying a major campaign against it, senior Democratic aides said.”  

The scheme would require a deal cut with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the union bosses and even a group of holdout Democrat Senators including Pryor and Lincoln:

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has been working for months to put together a deal on “card check” legislation, which would make it easier for workers to unionize. Democrats had originally hoped to move a bill that would include not only that language changing how workers vote to join a union but also a provision requiring workers and employers to submit to binding federal arbitration to settle labor disagreements.

Business groups and Republicans have spent more than a year — and tens of millions of dollars — attacking the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, and by this spring, Harkin had lost not only the handful of Republicans that had supported similar bills but also a number of moderate Democrats. The bill essentially stalled in March, when then-Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) announced he would oppose it. Specter has since switched parties.

Since that time, Harkin and a small group of Democrats — including Arkansas Sens. Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln — have held on-again, off-again negotiations in an effort to restart the legislation, including the possibility of moving the arbitration provisions alone.

Despite news reports earlier this month that a deal had been cut, negotiations are continuing. “There’s no bill yet,” Lincoln said late last week.

As Harkin tries to build a consensus Democratic bill, Reid has been thinking through a strategy to pass it that would require not only the support of all 60 Democrats in the Senate, but also the physical presence of ailing Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) for floor votes, since Republicans are likely to filibuster the legislation.

Cutting off debate on the bill would likely ignite a major partisan firestorm, and top Democrats will look to make their move as fast as possible, according to the Democratic aides.

“This is not the kind of thing where we could have a long, drawn-out rollout. We’d have to say, ‘Here’s the deal,’ and then get to the floor and get it passed before anyone can mobilize against it,” one leadership aide said.

The leadership aide argued that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) would also have to agree to the deal before Reid would be willing to bring it to the floor, since any major changes to the bill in the House or in conference would likely make final passage impossible in the Senate.

If the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill were a Broadway play, negative reviews would have closed it down months ago.

Even the new version of the bill isn’t passing the smell test from America’s newspaper editors.  Take this one from the Investor’s Business Daily entitled “Son of Card Check”:

Card check may be a dead issue, but companies aren’t yet free of the union threat. An anti-business provision of the perversely named Employee Free Choice Act is still under consideration.

If the card check process were to become law, the traditional method for forming a union would be replaced with a pro-union system.

In current practice, workers vote to either join the union or reject it through a secret ballot. A simple majority carries the vote. Under card check, a work force would become unionized if a simple majority signed the cards that are used to measure workers’ interest in voting on unionization.

It’s not hard to imagine that without a secret ballot, workers would be intimidated into signing cards and joining the union.

To their credit, a few moderate Democrats in the Senate believe card check is undemocratic. Their resistance is giving the majority leadership reason to strip card check from the bill. Without the moderates’ support, the Democrats don’t have the 60 votes they need to send the legislation to the floor for a vote.

But this doesn’t mean congressional Democrats have given up on passing out gifts to the unions that help elect them.

New legislation would contain a provision from the earlier bill requiring federal arbitrators to set the terms of the initial contract if labor and management can’t agree on a deal three months after a union is certified. Based on Washington’s history of pro-union bias, chances are good rulings will favor organized labor.

In addition, lawmakers are likely to attach language instituting quicker elections, giving businesses less time to show workers what they’d be getting into, and drop the standard needed to call an election from a simple majority of workers signing cards to 30%.

It’s possible the bill could include, as well, a rule that forces employers to grant labor organizers access to company property.

Businesses, workers, investors and consumers are worse off when shops are unionized.

Labor contracts cut into profits, curb growth and eclipse companies’ futures, which hurt all parties; potential workers are priced out of jobs; consumers pay more for products and services from unionized companies and often get less quality in return.

Government needs to get out of the business of propping up unions, which means politicians need to stop taking their generous campaign contributions. Organized labor’s declining membership and failing power are evidence that it’s not essential to economic advancement or a rising standard of living.

This is an important story in these times of Big Labor’s takeover of the Federal government.  This documented true story that contains Card Check abuse, SEIU physical violence against workers, SEIU abuse of the NLRB system, orchestrated false allegations, and a corrupt Clinton appointee; and you can see and hear about what happens when Big Labor Bosses control a president’s administration like they do today.

Mr. Randy Schaber’s story begins with the discovery of an ongoing SEIU Card Check Forced Unionism scheme that included harassing employees at their homes.  Mr. Schaber offered to hold an NLRB sanctioned secret ballot election.

The SEIU organizers replied, “We will never let your employees have a secret ballot election.”  Then, Mr. Schaber began to feel the pain that SEIU’s corporate campaign is designed to inflict.

Randy’s employees were physically assaulted during this SEIU organizing campaign.

To hear Mr. Schaber tell the story in his own words, we recommend that you listen and watch his full interview (click links to video clip 1, video clip 2, and video clip 3); for a brief description view his shortened interview.  You will be amazed at the abuse of federal power coordinated by SEIU in the 1990’s when they had less control of the White House than they do today.

For more information, you can download the edited version of the U.S. House of Representatives Report and the U.S. Department of Labor Inspector General’s Report that discuss SEIU’s corporate campaign and the U.S. Department of Labor’s abuses that Mr. Schaber suffered, and it eventually resulted in the dismissal of a Clinton appointee.  

The following are quotes from that U.S. House of Representatives report:

Abuse of power at the Department of Labor

CONCLUSION

Based on the Office of the Inspector General’s investigation and the testimony of other witnesses at the hearing, it is obvious that Mr. Richard F. Sawyer abused his position as the Secretary’s Representative by intervening on behalf of the SEIU in its campaign to organize the janitorial workers of Somers.

This information establishes several irrefutable facts:

(1) Mr. Sawyer contacted officials of Somers’ largest client, and specifically discussed the Department of Labor’s active and on-going investigation of Somers.

(2) Mr. Sawyer contacted the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour investigators to request information on the status of the Somers’ investigation and to complain about the progress of said investigation.

(3) Mr. Sawyer improperly provided the SEIU with specific information regarding the Department of Labor’s active and on-going investigation of Somers—information that was used by the SEIU both privately and publicly to pressure Somers to capitulate to the union’s organizational demands.

(4) Mr. Sawyer contacted high-ranking officials within the Wage and Hour Division’s national office to complain about the progress of the Somers’ investigation.

(5) In response to Mr. Sawyer’s repeated contacts, high-ranking officials within the Wage and Hour Division’s national office assigned five additional investigators to the Somers’ investigation and directed investigators to give Somers special attention.

(6) The Somers’ investigation was kept open well beyond the point the lead Wage and Hour investigator deemed warranted by the facts.

(7) Despite the involvement of no less than six investigators and 500 hours of investigative work, the Wage and Hour Division discovered only $317.44 in FLSA violations.

These facts clearly illustrate that Mr. Sawyer was engaged in a conscious effort to use his position as the regional representative of Labor Secretary Robert Reich to assist his former employer, the SEIU, in its efforts to organize the janitorial workers of Somers. As such, the Subcommittee believes it wholly appropriate that Mr.  Sawyer’s employment with the Department of Labor was terminated.

The Subcommittee also remains concerned about the extent to which other Department of Labor employees had knowledge of, supported or assisted Mr. Sawyer in his efforts to coerce Somers into signing a union contract with the SEIU.  As noted previously, Mr. Sawyer’s position as a Secretary’s Representative falls under the purview of the Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs and his official Department of Labor job description clearly states that the ‘‘Incumbent reports directly to the Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs * * * [and] consults with the Director on decisions or matters which appropriately require personal attention.”  Based on this description of Mr. Sawyer’s supervisory controls, it is reasonable to expect that high-level Departmental officers, like the Director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, would have been aware of Mr. Sawyer’s actions concerning Somers.

It is also reasonable to assume that Ms. Geri Palast, Assistant Secretary of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs, would also have knowledge of Mr. Sawyer’s actions.  If not, the Subcommittee cannot help but question the efficacy of the Department of Labor’s supervisory controls with respect to the Secretary’s Representatives.

Corporate campaigns

John Sweeney, President of the AFL–CIO, declared a new direction for the international labor unions that the Federation represents. Mr. Sweeney declared that labor would become far more militant in the pursuit of organizing and collective bargaining objectives.  The term used to organize formally non-union corporations became known as ‘‘corporate campaigns.’’ 

A ‘‘corporate campaign’’ has several distinct elements.  Two of the most prominent elements are:  having the target company perceived negatively by the company’s investors, customers, employees and the public, and initiating enforcement and oversight actions by federal, state, and local governmental agencies. In other words, organized labor in a ‘‘corporate campaign’’ does not necessarily target the employees of the corporation as it had done historically, but rather focuses on corporate management.

Perhaps Stephen Lerner, Organizing Director of the Service Employees International Union, said it best – 

Instead of asking, ‘How do we win a majority of (employee) votes?’, we should be asking, ‘How do we develop power to force employers to recognize the union and sign a contract.’

During the course of the 104th Congress many concerns were raised by targeted corporations regarding the tactics used by organized labor and their attendant relationship with the NLRB.  Employers argued that the NLRB was favoring organized labor and was indeed a willing pawn in the ‘‘corporate campaign’’ strategy.  As a result of these repeated and serious allegations, the Subcommittee conducted two hearings and one round-table discussion.

The first hearing held by the Subcommittee invited NLRB Chairman Gould, General Counsel Feinstein, and a variety of small and large employers to recount their personal experiences.  The second hearing held by the Subcommittee focused on the ‘‘corporate campaign’’ technique of salting – the placing of professional union organizers or members in a nonunion facility to harass or disrupt contractor operations, to increase costs, or to organize.

These two hearings raised a number of concerns for the Subcommittee including the following:

• Organizing nonunion employees into a unified union membership is not necessarily the objective of union organizers;
• Resources are not an obstacle for the unions when it comes to public relations;
• The cost of frivolous complaints and other federal agency charges fall on the businesses and the federal taxpayer while the unions have no direct accountability or cost; and  
• Jeopardizing jobs and employer viability is ultimately more important than ensuring that workers have good wages, safe worksites and fulfilling jobs.

In conclusion, the pursuit of injunctive relief, the NLRB’s handling of ‘‘salting’’ cases and the public comments of the NLRB Chairman have served as ample evidence that the NLRB may be biased against the regulated employer community.

(REPORT ON THE ACTIVITIES OF THE COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES DURING THE 104TH CONGRESS, 1/2/1997)

The secret ballot provisions in the Card Check Forced Unionism bill are a “trojan horse” for more onerous, burdensome and coersive measures contained in the legislation, according to the National Review:

In its original form, the mendaciously misnamed and thoroughly anti-democratic Employee Free Choice Act would strip American workers of the right to conduct secret-ballot elections on the question of whether to organize a union. In place of a traditional one-man/one-vote secret ballot, the EFCA would impose a regime of union-boss thuggery known as “card-check,” wherein labor organizers (who may also be the employees’ supervisors) pressure workers to sign off on a union-organizing petition, a much easier way to reach a serviceable majority. Democrats have now signaled their willingness to remove the card-check provision from EFCA but, as in the case of the cap-and-trade legislation, the marquee proposal is only one poison arrow in a quiver full of venom. With or without card-check, EFCA is a bare-knuckles power play by Big Labor and the Obama administration — a bill that needs killing.

The name of the legislation is straight out of Orwell, but the content is pure Kafka. The worst provision — worse, in fact, than the card-check gambit itself — would allow the National Labor Relations Board to impose contracts on businesses that cannot come to an agreement with a union. If a union enters the picture and the owners of a business are unable to negotiate a satisfactory contract, then the NLRB is empowered to impose “binding arbitration,” meaning that the government will write the contract and force the firm to abide by its terms. This amounts to extortion. President Obama has picked a like-minded lawyer culled from the ranks of the Teamsters to chair the NLRB, and another Obama NLRB pick, Craig Becker, is a labor radical who wrote that “federal policy should not acknowledge employees’ ‘choice to remain unrepresented.’” Given that these are the people who will be making the calls, businesses find themselves in a double-bind: They are at a disadvantage when negotiating with union bosses because the unions have every reason to believe that arbitration will be handled by one of their own. So business owners are left either to negotiate with the unions from a position of weakness or to throw themselves on the mercy of the union-dominated NLRB. Heads the Teamsters win, tails the Teamsters don’t lose. 

“This bill will bring about dramatic changes, even if card check has fallen away,” said one AFL-CIO honcho to the New York Times. Indeed it would. In addition to empowering government to force contracts on private parties, EFCA would mandate that businesses give union organizers access to their property and would restrict businesses’ ability to argue against union-organizing proposals. The organizing-campaign period would be shortened, thereby curtailing debate, and business owners would be prohibited from holding mandatory meetings to discuss union-organizing proposals with their employees. Which is to say, businesses will be forced to open their doors to union organizers, but will not be able to make the case against them on their own property. This is perverse, especially in a country whose constitution is alleged to protect citizens’ freedom of association, not to mention their property rights. 

Big Labor, especially the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), owns the Obama administration and the Democrats’ congressional majority. SEIU alone gave in excess of $80 million to Democratic candidates in the last cycle and was the Democrats’ largest single donor. EFCA already contains a good deal of labor’s legislative wish list and is sure to acquire more of it as it wends through the legislative process. Ex-Republican Arlen Specter, nominally a Democrat but really representing a party of one, was a critical player in stopping EFCA during its last push. Senators Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln have been key Democratic opponents, but their commitment is less than adamantine. If EFCA passes, the decisive vote may end up coming from the newly installed senator from Minnesota, Al Franken, the first of many pranks this joker is likely to pull on us.

Republicans don’t have the numbers to stop this bill on their own. But it is a bad bill nonetheless, and those in Congress who would resist the further regimentation of American economic life have a responsibility to oppose it, loud and long.

With pro-big labor Democrats behind closed doors trying to put lipstick on the Card Check Forced Unionism pig, SEIU labor boss Andy Stern is screaming “not so fast.”  Stern does not want to give up on the provision eliminating secret ballot elections.  In fact, he is demanding a vote on an amendment should the bill gut the provision.

Our readers know that the secret ballot election provision is bad, but not the worst provision of the bill.

Big Labor’s apparent decision to drop the card check provisions from the Card Check Forced Unionism bill leaves the forced unionism provisions in the bill alive and well.

The Wall Street Journal’s take:

Politicians don’t typically broadcast their defeat, and when they do it pays to watch for the blindside hit. That’s surely the case with last week’s reports that six liberal Senators are abandoning part of labor’s top priority, “card check” legislation.

The legislation to eliminate secret ballots in union elections has in fact been comatose for weeks, since Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas declared their opposition. So the real purpose of this “concession” is to shift to Plan B, which is to repackage most of what labor wants with new ribbons and wrapping. The bill that Senators Tom Harkin (Iowa), Mark Pryor (Arkansas), Mr. Specter and others are now considering would still give unions the whip hand in negotiations with management.

One proposal would slash the time for an organizing vote, requiring that it be held within five or 10 days after 30% of workers had signed cards asking for a union. The median time today is 38 days. Organizers want the rush because they know the more time workers have to learn about a union, the less they usually want one. Once employees hear the other side of the story, support dwindles.

This also explains a Big Labor demand to bar companies from requiring their workers to hear management’s side during a union campaign. Labor supporters say this creates a “captive audience,” but these meetings are one of management’s few opportunities to address workers, since companies are barred from the sort of outreach allowed to union organizers — such as visiting employees at home. At the same time, Senators want to give union organizers access to company property.

Democrats also aren’t giving up on binding arbitration, which would let a federal arbitrator impose a contract if management and a newly established union at a work site aren’t able to agree within 90 days. The provision would encourage unions to make maximum demands and play for time, knowing that an arbitrator could force management’s hand. Binding arbitration also denies employees a vote on a contract.

Labor is desperate to rig the bargaining rules because most workers show time and again that they don’t want a union. Americans know unions promise higher wages and benefits and more job security. But workers can also see what has happened to such highly unionized industries as steel, autos, airlines and many others. Unions couldn’t save those jobs, and in fact they contributed to their demise with contracts that made the industries uncompetitive. Most workers would also rather not hand over a chunk of their paycheck in mandatory dues to finance the political agenda of labor leaders.

Democrats and the AFL-CIO are hoping that if they dump the unpopular secret ballot ban from card check, they can get to their magic number of 60 Senators. The business community and Republicans shouldn’t be fooled and let Democrats from swing states off the hook. Card check under any cover is still a job killer.