Right to Work Blog

The Sacramento Bee investigative team finds that big labor contributors got deals from the California Retirement Fund while a union boss sat on the board of directors.  This all begs the question:  why else would companies make hundreds of thousands of contributions to a union campaign fund?

Sean Harrigan, a union boss with the United Food and Commercial Workers, is under scrutiny by the Securities and Exchange Commission, ProPublica reports.  

In a nutshell, it appears that financial firms showered nearly $1 million in political cash on the United Food and Commercial Workers union in California while Harrigan sat on the boards of big public pension funds in the state.  Harrigan’s union pulled about a third of the $3 million it raised from 2001 to 2006 from players in the financial industry. About $500,000 came from donors who had business dealings with CalPERS, then the nation’s biggest pension fund. Campaign contributions have figured in a wide-ranging investigation of pension fund kickbacks in New York, where Attorney General Andrew Cuomo issued an indictment naming several prominent investment firms that allegedly took part in a vast pay-to-play scheme.

Projo quote of the day:

“This was a big mistake by the Obama administration,” said Cochran. “In 77 years, never has not one federal official attended the mayors’ annual meeting.”

Flush with cash taken from workers without their consent, the SEIU is bombarding California’s airwaves with a $1 million television ad campaign supporting new taxes on oil and gas, tobacco and liquor.  At the pace at which the SEIU is spending money for television commercials, the faster way to cure the state’s deficit might be to tax television ads!

Union bosses representing Los Angeles police officers are demanding that editorial writers for the San Diego Union-Tribune be fired because of the newspapers stance on labor issues.  The LA Times has the story:

The union representing Los Angeles police officers is pressuring the owner of San Diego’s biggest newspaper to change the paper’s editorial stance on labor issues or to fire its editorial writers.

The feud is rooted in the recent purchase of the San Diego Union-Tribune by Platinum Equity, a private Beverly Hills firm. 

Platinum relies on a $30-million investment from the pension fund of Los Angeles police officers and firefighters, along with large sums from other public-employee pension systems across the state, to help fund its acquisitions of companies. As Los Angeles Police Protective League President Paul M. Weber views it, that makes the League part owner in the flagging Union-Tribune — and League officials are none too happy with the paper’s consistent position that San Diego lawmakers should cut back on salaries and benefits for public employees to help close gaping budget deficits.

“Since the very public employees they continually criticize are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replaced,” Weber wrote in a March 26 letter to Platinum Chief Executive Tom Gores.

Weber, in an interview, emphasized that the League is not demanding changes in the paper’s news coverage or in its staff of reporters. “It’s just these people on the opinion side. There is not even an attempt to be even-handed. They’re one step away from saying, ‘These public employees are parasites,’ ” he said.

Bob Kittle, editor of the Union-Tribune’s editorial page, rebuffed Weber’s comments. Although his staff has written several editorials critical of the benefits and pension commitments city leaders have made to San Diego’s five public employee unions, he denied Weber’s charge that the paper is out to hurt public employees.

“We are not anti-public safety or public employee,” he said. “All of this has to be considered within the context of what the city can afford. A bankrupt city can’t provide any public safety very well.”

Kittle said no one at Platinum or higher-ups at the paper had contacted him about the union’s request.

In a recent interview with the Union-Tribune, a Platinum executive indicated that the League was wasting its time.

“Platinum has no editorial agenda,” he said. “We will rely on the newspaper’s professional staff to ensure that its pages appropriately reflect the values of the community it serves.”

joel.rubin@latimes.com

The Obama Administration demanded California return stimulus funds if it goes forward with a new contract with the SEIU union, but evidence suggests the SEIU used its influence in Washington to sabotage the agreement.

Jim McElhatton of the Washington Times reports that one of the biggest beneficiaries of Labor Department financial disclosure rules is the AFL-CIO.  And wouldn’t you have guessed it?  The AFL-CIO has its own Associate General Counsel running the Secretary of Labor’s Office. 

However, Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which provides legal services to workers who say unions have violated their rights, called the rollback of union financial disclosures troubling.

“The department’s decision not to protect simple union disclosure protections creates increased vulnerability for American workers and should serve notice to legislators that now is not the time to grant union bosses more unchecked power over workers and our economy,” he wrote in a recent letter to the department.

He said the AFL-CIO would “benefit greatly” from the delay or rollback of expanded reporting rules. “It immediately allows the AFL-CIO to avoid financial disclosure that is beneficial and necessary to rank-and-file workers who are forced to pay union dues and fees to keep a job,” he said.

Jim Coppess, associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO, discounted the criticism. He said the Labor Department’s recent moves did nothing to affect the transparency of union financial reports or the ability of federal regulators to monitor expenditures.

Paul Carpenter of the Pennsylvania Morning Call was called out for using the term union goon in describing the murder of a union worker on orders from United Mine Worker bosses.  But Mr. Carpenter isn’t backing down, nor should he.

Mr,. Carpenter reminds readers that ”there is a new federal lawsuit involving a union with a history of corruption even worse than that of the UMW.

It cites officials of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) and the Teamsters Union, which represents some PTC employees.

The lawsuit says PTC Chairman Mitchell Rubin, two other PTC officials and Teamsters official Mark Rowe had PTC employee Donald Kovac fired because Kovac violated an ”unwritten rule” that union employees ”had favored political connections” and ”would be afforded favorable treatment” in grievance cases.

In this case, Kovac acted against a toll collector who assaulted a motorist, in full view of a video camera.

When Teamsters Local 77, based in Montgomery County, challenged Kovac’s action, the suit says, Kovac was ordered by a PTC manager to reinstate the toll collector; when he balked, it was Kovac who got fired — with Rubin’s approval.

One peculiarity was the way Kovac was fired on Nov. 20. He was driving a PTC vehicle as part of his duties, the lawsuit says, when a Pennsylvania state police trooper was sent to pull him over on the road and tell him he was fired.

So it seems that if a Teamsters member beats up a motorist, it will be the guy who bothers the bully who winds up fired — and it is now a function of the state police to enforce the rules of the union goons.

A PTC spokesman said he could not comment on the litigation, even though I asked general questions about whether the PTC had ”unwritten rules” to coddle politically connected union people. I also contacted Teamsters Local 77, repeatedly, but the people there did not get back to me.

Thanks to the efforts of the National Right to Work Foundation, Utah teacher unions no longer have the right to use government resources to collect money for partisan political activities.

From the Deseret News:

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday reversed itself and ruled to uphold a Utah statute prohibiting union officials from using payroll deductions to divert teachers’ and other government workers’ money into union electioneering.

“Utah has a legitimate interest in avoiding the reality or appearance of government entanglement with partisan politics,” according to the ruling, and Utah’s Voluntary Contributions Act “plainly serves the state’s interest in separating public employment from political activities.”

Five Utah labor unions and one association of labor unions – representing several thousand Utah public employees – brought the suit against Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, seeking a declaration that the Utah VCA, a law passed in 2001, is unconstitutional as applied to all public employers other than the state itself.

After initially siding with union attorneys who argued the law somehow violated the constitutional rights of the union, the 10th Circuit Court put the case on hold pending the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling involving a similar Idaho statute.

“The recent Supreme Court’s decision and now this 10th Circuit ruling makes clear what should have been obvious: Union officials have no constitutional right to use government resources to line their pockets,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation, which advocates for right-to-work states, including Utah. “It is bad public policy for government bodies essentially to act as bagmen for union political monies.”

Despite bipartisan abandonment of taxpayers and workers by members of Congress from both parties who are trying to curry favor with police and fireman unions, the Winston-Salem Journal understands what the real issues are:

The U.S. Congress shouldn’t be meddling with the decisions that city and town leaders must make regarding local government salaries.

Yet that is exactly what Congress is trying to do with legislation that would require all cities and towns of more than 5,000 population to bargain collectively with the leading union that represents public-safety officers — police, firefighters and emergency-service workers.

The bill was moving toward Senate approval last week when Republicans suddenly stopped supporting it. Senate leaders now say they will try to work out a compromise and bring the bill back to the floor.

Although President Bush has promised to veto the bill, it’s entirely possible that there is enough support in Congress to override that veto.

At the very least, an override vote will be close because, for a pro-union measure, the bill has had a good deal of Republican support. (North Carolina’s two senators, Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, and 5th District Rep. Virginia Foxx have opposed the bill as it has moved through Congress.)

Even if a Bush veto is upheld in Congress, this is not likely to be an issue that will go away. But it should.

The bill is offensive for a number of reasons.

The first and foremost is that it is probably unconstitutional. That annoying 10th Amendment, the one that reserves for the states all powers not explicitly enumerated for the federal government, is still on the books. There’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that gives Congress the authority to mandate collective bargaining.

In the past, the amendment has been used as the constitutional basis for a lot of bogus arguments — mostly to oppose the civil-rights movement — but this is not such a case. Setting salaries for government workers is a state and local matter.

In North Carolina, public employees do not have the right to bargain collectively. The N.C. State Employees Association has just affiliated itself with a union, but that doesn’t mean it has the right to hold negotiations with the governor and legislators over salaries and benefits. Congress should not come along and decide that it will change the labor structure in this state.

With HR 980, the Congress is also passing a huge unfunded mandate for cities and towns. Collective bargaining would put upward pressure on salaries, and the federal government would not help with them at all. If Congress wants to do something to raise safety officers’ salaries, it should send some money to cities and towns for that purpose.

Congress is meddling here, involving itself in an issue that is best handled by towns, cities and states.

Let’s hope there are enough votes to sustain a Bush veto if the bill passes the Senate. This is an idea best forgotten.