We have warned readers about the pending threat of the lame duck session that will occur between Election Day and Christmas. Big Labor is making a big push to enact their legislative schemes during this time — especially if the ruling party losses control of Congress.
In addition to the Card Check Forced Unionism bill — which union bosses will try to revive during the session — many observers believe the union pension bailout bill will be on agenda, as well.
Forced unionism apologist, Sen. Russ Feingold is trying to create the notion that he is an outsider who is not influenced by special interests. So much so, he is bragging about it in a new campaign ad. Guess what — the regular people he uses in the air are the kings and queens of Big Labor — the union bosses of Wisconsin. Regular folks don’t get compel people to pay them just to get or keep a job.
Like President Obama, Gov. Joe Manchin has an established record of supporting union monopoly bargaining. As a U.S. senator, Mr. Manchin could help Big Labor corral state and local employees nationwide into unions. Credit: blogs.wvgazette.com
Would-Be U.S. Senators Urged to Stand Up to Big Labor Bosses
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin (D) is an unabashed proponent of labor laws foisting union monopoly bargaining on public employees and government agencies.
As recently as this June, in an interview with the Charleston Daily Mail, Mr. Manchin endorsed a state law forcing local school boards in West Virginia to grant a single teacher union the power to speak for all teachers in their district, including those who don’t want to join.
According to the Daily Mail’s account, the governor actually said that such a monopoly-bargaining law would constitute a “solution” to “West Virginia’s education woes”!
Fortunately for independent-minded public employees and taxpayers, West Virginia legislators have up to now refused to send to the governor’s desk legislation handing government union bosses monopoly power to bargain over public employee salaries, benefits, and work rules. (more…)
Unlike Unionized Workers’ Pension Funds, Union Bosses’ Are Secure
Mark Mix: Enactment of a National Right to Work law "would greatly strengthen union officials' incentive to do what's best for the employees they purport to represent, rather than feather their own nests." Credit: C-SPAN
There’s no denying the fact that federal labor law grants union officials extraordinary power over unionized employees. More candid apologists for union monopoly bargaining and forced union dues and fees have long acknowledged that fact.
Authorizing union bosses to get workers who don’t wish to join a union fired for refusing to fork over union dues or fees is coercion, blunt Big Labor apologists concede, but it is for the workers’ “own good.”
In Practice, Forced Unionism Is Impossible to Defend
Big Labor academic Allan Pulsipher once explicitly defended compulsory unionism as a “legitimate form of coercion in a free market economy”!
Reasonable people may disagree about whether it is theoretically possible that a worker could benefit from being forced to allow an unwanted union to have “exclusive” power to negotiate (more…)
President Obama and his congressional allies insist on limiting the ability of corporations and others to spend money in elections. Their lobbyist-loophole ridden fix is the so-called DISCLOSE Act — which would restrict certain spending while allowing big labor union officials to grab forced union dues and fees against the will of their members and spend it anyway they want. Some reform.
But, as we have noted for years, the whole effort is predicated on a myth. Corporations’ political spending is dwarfed by — you guess it — big labor political spending. From the Washington Post: Labor unions have dominated spending on independent campaign ads so far this election season, despite a recent Supreme Court decision that freed spending by corporations.
Police Chief Anthony Batts to Oaklanders: If your home is burglarized, don't call us. Credit: AP
Public-Safety Union Monopoly Undercuts California Law Enforcement
On Tuesday, July 13, Oakland, Calif., became a friendlier place for burglars, embezzlers, car thieves, bad-check passers, extortionists, and an array of other criminals.
That afternoon, Oakland, a major West Coast port city with roughly 400,000 residents, laid off 80 police officers, or 10% of its force, to help eliminate a budget deficit of over $30 million. In response, the city police department implemented a new policy in which officers aren’t being dispatched to take reports for 44 “lower priority” crimes.
Oaklanders whose homes or vehicles are burglarized must now go online or visit a police station to file reports. However, the police department warns them that, even if they do: “There will be no follow-up investigation, and the primary reason for filing the report is for (more…)
Public-Safety Forced Unionism Still High on Capitol Hill Agenda
The American people do not support Big Labor’s legislative scheme to establish a new federal mandate imposing union “exclusive representation” (monopoly bargaining) over state and local police, firefighters, and other public-safety employees nationwide.
And powerful union-label politicians like U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) know this public-safety scheme (H.R.4
13/S.3194) is unpopular. That’s why they have repeatedly tried to sneak it through Congress.
Most recently, in June, Ms. Pelosi and her top lieutenants cut a deal with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and other union bigwigs to attach H.R.413, the House version of the Police/Fire Monopoly-Bargaining Bill, to a massive spending bill that provides funding for U.S. troops.
International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) union boss Harold Schaitberger openly admitted to helping concoct the scheme to tack H.R.413 on to H.R.4899, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2010 Supplemental Appropriations Act, in a June 30 message to officers of his union subsidiaries. Early last month, the National Right to Work Committee obtained a copy of Mr. Schaitberger’s communication.
Firefighters Union Chief ‘Argued Strongly’ For War Supplemental Strategy
Mr. Schaitberger reported that he had “argued strongly” for attaching H.R.413 “to the War Supplemental funding proposal for our troops in Afghanistan.”
The backroom deal between House leaders and the union hierarchy allowed the public-safety forced-unionism measure to come to the floor so quickly that Right to Work members and their allies had virtually no time to mobilize for the vote. (more…)
To treat Washington’s spending addiction, the November elections are the taxpayer’s best chance to stage an intervention. But until then, President Obama and the Democratic Congress are determined to keep pushing strung-out state governments to take one more fix.
Witness yesterday’s 247-161 largely party-line House vote to approve a Senate bill shovelling another $26.1 billion out to state education and Medicaid programs. The White House has promoted the bill as emergency assistance for strained state budgets. But this unique brand of therapy drives states to spend more, not less. The “assistance” is so expensive that several governors were begging for relief even before Mr. Obama (more…)
