Right to Work Blog

With Washington State quickly developing a reputation as a big labor fiefdom, SEIU boss Andy Stern has set his sights on the Evergreen State in his effort to limit the state’s investment in private equity companies.

The Wall Street Journal notes:

The SEIU recently filed a citizens initiative to the Washington legislature to limit the state’s investment in private equity companies. Under the proposed SEIU-drawn rules, the State Investment Board, which manages $62 billion in public pension money, would be required to consider certain “societal criteria” before it could invest in the likes of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts or the Carlyle Group.

On the SEIU political checklist are a private equity firm’s “lack of transparency, poor employment practices, environmental impacts and other indicators of irresponsible corporate behavior.” The Investment Board would also have to encourage private equity to comply with the SEIU’s vision of “corporate responsibility.” That means firms would have to release data on revenues, taxes, and executive compensation, provide “living wages and benefits,” recognize a “collective bargaining representative” at each portfolio company, and mitigate “climate risk,” which is to say be politically correct on global warming. The Investment Board itself would also have to “support changes to tax laws that eliminate unfair advantages” to private equity, and more.

In other words, Washington state pension funds would for all practical purposes be barred from investing in private equity. State Investment Board Executive Director Joe Dear concluded as much when he told a local newspaper that “No private equity firm that we want to do business with will do business with us under these terms.” He predicted this would “cost taxpayers and beneficiaries millions in higher taxes and contributions.”

And he has the data to prove it. Nearly $14 billion of Washington’s investments are in private equity, which has provided returns of 12.6% over the past decade, compared to 7.9% for pension holdings as a whole. Barring private equity would “destroy our ability to invest in our highest-returning asset class,” said Mr. Dear. The losers would be union pensioners who depend on those returns for retirement income.

Mr. Stern’s real agenda here is to coerce private equity firms into giving his union a free hand in organizing workers at their portfolio companies. Having failed to organize those workers in elections, or to negotiate unionization deals with private equity management, Mr. Stern is now seeking political retribution. His strategy is to demonize the industry in public and promote damaging legislation until the companies give in. . . .

Investment boards should be focused in on one goal — achieving the best return for investors and taxpayers possible. Playing Big Labor politics with seniors’ retirement funds is a recipe for disaster.

As you watch the Democrat convention in Colorado, keep in mind that over one quarter of all delegates are union activists. With a receptive audience, the AFL-CIO promises to “. . . charge up delegates for the convention and a hard-fought election season. They’ll discuss the Labor 2008 grassroots political program and key issues in the election, . . . ” including the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill.

Big Labor’s organizers will brief delegations as to why the law is priority number one for the union bosses.

It’s sad but true, the party that claims to champion voting rights for all now supports repeal of secret ballot elections for some. With so many union operators pulling the strings at the convention, there is little hope the Democrat party will stand up for workers’ right to choose whether or not they want to join or pay dues to a union.

As pointed out by Charlie Butts of OneNewsNow.com: “A considerable amount of funds raised toward defeating California’s Proposition 8 — which would define marriage as between one man and one woman — has come from two unions.” But despite the fact that California is not a Right to Work State, workers can do something about it.

In an interview with OneNewsNow.com, Stefan Gleason with the National Right to Work Foundation explains that:

“In this situation, many teachers may be very outraged to find out that their money is being diverted into this kind of a left-wing and controversial social cause,” he contends.

Gleason says union members need to learn their rights because unions are not letting them know. He explains that if members object on religious grounds, they need to submit a list of two or three organizations they can support, and they then agree with the union on a charity. “And the union may or may not agree to that. There may be some back-and-forth, but it has to be a mutually agreed upon charity,” Gleason adds. “It has to be one that does not conflict with the employee’s religious beliefs.”

The California Teacher’s Association is one of the unions supporting retaining homosexual marriage, which in May was legalized by the state supreme court.

An audit of the Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB), California, confirms that workers’ dues money that was to go to the general fund was used for election campaigns, according to the Long Beach Press Telegram.

The audit found that:

Political expenses appeared to have been paid with money designated for the union’s general operations, and not from separately maintained accounts reserved for political causes.

The amount of campaign spending appeared to have exceeded the totals approved by the union’s two governing bodies. . . .

. . . [A]uditors found that TALB appeared to have used $39,629 from its nonpolitical accounts for campaign purposes, according to a copy of the audit, which was based on the firm’s review of financial documents and employee interviews.

Of that total, $10,667, which had been designated for bargaining expenses, apparently was spent on political items such as postage, a banner, campaign photography, legal services and other purchases, the auditors concluded.

They concluded that the money should have been allocated to the union’s separately maintained political fund.

Because union members designated specific amounts of their dues for politics, the use of TALB’s financial resources for political activities “would be considered a misappropriation of funds,” auditors concluded in their written findings.

Also part of the $39,629 total was a nearly $29,000 check from TALB general funds made out in August of 2006 to attorney Fredric Woocher for the payment of legal fees. An invoice from Woocher’s law firm did not specify the exact purposes of the legal services that were provided, according to the auditors. . . .

Workers in California do not have the Right to Work and are coerced into joining the union and paying union dues even after mismanagement of their funds.

In a breakthrough appellate court ruling, Iron Worker Union officials can now be sued under anti-trust laws for running a union kickback scheme known as “job targeting” which has diverted $500 million in workers wages over the past 5 years.

Job targeting schemes are primary tools used to secure a Big Labor cartel over billions of taxpayer dollars used in federal contracting (as well as many private construction projects). They are used to freeze non-union contractors out of getting work, while lining the union bosses’ pockets with the wages of construction workers.

Attorney Mike Avakian, General Counsel of the Center for National Labor Policy, brought the cutting-edge suit for several New England companies, and National Right to Work Foundation attorneys submitted an amicus curiae (.pdf) brief because job targeting schemes severely undermine non-union employees’ interests . . .

Read the rest of this entry online at the Foundation’s weblog.

Writing for the New York Sun, Diana Furchtgott-Roth has discovered that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) dramatically under funded the pension fund for its rank-and-file members.

. . . [T]he SEIU National Industry Pension Plan, a plan for the rank-and-file members, covering 100,787 workers, was 75% funded. That is, it had three-fourths of the money it needed to pay benefit obligations of workers and retirees.

In contrast, a separate fund for the union’s own employees, numbering 1,305, participants was 91% funded. Even better, the pension fund for SEIU officers and employees, which had 6,595 members, was 103% funded.

In other words, the pensions of the union bosses are secure while rank-and-file members’ pensions are at risk.

FactCheck.org, the non-partisan “consumer advocate” for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics has declared recent AFL-CIO attack ads against Sen. John McCain as “false.”

The ad campaign, financed with mandatory union dues of workers, claims McCain voted against veterans’ health care benefits when he actually voted repeatedly to increase them.

The union bosses aren’t telling the truth? No surprise here. They believe that the upcoming elections in November may be their best chance in decades to get more legislative power to compel even more workers to pay dues and fees.

Apparently the end justifies any means in Big Labor land.

The Providence Journal profiles the power of Rhode Island’s union bosses and finds:

Rhode Island’s labor unions are losing members faster than they can add them.

But organized labor continues to have a powerful voice in state politics, due in part to a web of creative alliances that include the state Democratic Party, environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and progressive social organizations such as Marriage Equality Rhode Island.

We have news for the Journal — this fact is not isolated to Rhode Island.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) usually knows bad legislation when they see it, and the police and firefighter monopoly unionization bill is no exception:

Unions keep losing membership as a share of the national workforce, which explains why organized labor’s main political focus is changing the rules to force more workers into unions. Witness a bill that Senate Democrats are pushing this week to require that hundreds of thousands of local police and firemen submit to collective bargaining.

Under current law, every state has the ability to set policies that govern its public workforce. In some states, police, firefighters and paramedics belong to unions that collectively bargain for their contracts. In others, unions representing public-security workers can bargain over pay, but not over benefits or work rules. And in some others, these workers can choose not to belong to a union.

Democrats want to change this for the entire country. A bill that passed the House last year would make the top officials at local unions the exclusive bargaining agents for public safety officers in every town or city with more than 5,000 people. They would also have the authority to bargain for everything — pay, benefits and work rules. The goal is to give labor the whip hand with local governments, and further coerce nonunion members to join the dues-paying ranks.

Sixteen states have considered legislation like this since 1996 and voted it down. The bill, pushed hardest by the International Association of Fire Fighters, would impose it nationwide, superceding all of these state laws. This arguably violates the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which leaves to the states any powers not specifically given to the federal government — which presumably includes a state’s labor relations. It would also conflict with constitutions in states like Michigan, raising the threat of protracted legal disputes.

As “unfunded” federal mandates go, this is also a doozy. Unions that organize private companies are at least subject to market competition. If they make their employers uncompetitive, the union workers lose their jobs. Public unions have far more clout because there is no competition for government services; they are by law a monopoly. This is especially true of police and firefighters, who can do great harm to public safety if they strike. Unionization gives them enormous clout that drives up costs and eventually the tax burden.

Even Democrats admit this, which is why the bill includes a strike ban. But such prohibitions have never worked. Union officials call strikes anyway, then negotiate amnesty as a condition of ending the work-stoppage. This is what happened in 2005 when New York transit workers broke the law by going on strike and shutting down the city. They paid no price and still got their raise.

The bill’s mandates would also complicate the task of post-9/11 public security. Federal emergency plans rely on the cooperation of local “first-responders,” who need the flexibility to adapt to local problems and circumstances. Work rules negotiated according to national union standards make no sense when the safety needs of New York City are so much different than those in Fargo.

Local officials nationwide are fighting the bill, and the Bush Administration has promised a veto. But the House passed it 314-97, and it may be veto proof. That leaves the Senate, where the bill has 11 Republican co-sponsors, most of whom are up for re-election this fall. Oregon’s Gordon Smith and Minnesota’s Norm Coleman seem to believe that the unions will go easier on them in November if they throw them this concession. Right. If Republicans can’t even oppose monopoly unionization, who needs Republicans?

“Half of Colorado’s United Food and Commercial Workers would stop paying union dues if they could,” according to the union’s boss, the Denver Post reports.

In a May 1 letter to members, Ernest Duran warns that the right-to-work initiative headed for Colorado’s November ballot would decimate his ranks of dues-paying members.

“If this amendment passes, we will enter all future negotiations divided,” Duran wrote. “In my opinion, we will enter with less than 50 percent of the workers as union members.”

In other words, if given a choice, most union members would keep their dues money in their pockets. No wonder union bosses insist in coercing people to join.