Right to Work Blog

Lawyers representing the the big labor National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over financial ties between Bank of America and the Washington, D.C.-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that may be gross violations of federal labor laws. 

The charges allege that Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, whose 234,000 employees SEIU has taken steps to force into a union, offered SEIU at least $88 million in prohibited financial support in the form of loans. Federal law bars loans, gifts and other financial ties between employers and unions attempting to organize their employees. Unions that take money from the companies whose workers they seek to represent are considered “employer-dominated unions.”

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.

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!

The legal eagles at the National Right to Work Foundation have once again have achieved victory for workers discriminated against by both employers and union bosses:

Angela Leitzel works as a field technician for Verizon in Tampa, Florida. Because Florida is one of 22 Right to Work states, Leitzel may not be compelled to pay any union dues, although she must accept unwanted “representation” of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 824 union bosses.

In February, Verizon assembled a team of Florida-based technicians, including Leitzel, for a work assignment in California out of a facility “represented” by Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 9588 and affiliates CWA International and CWA District 9. On February 17, Verizon removed Leitzel from the project, and a company representative informed her that she could not work on the project, because she was not a member of IBEW Local 824.

On March 9, Leitzel was again barred from another team going to California to perform work for Verizon. The company informed her that CWA officials would not permit her to work at the California facility because she was not a member of IBEW Local 824.

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, Leitzel filed unfair labor practice charges against Verizon and the unions. Federal labor law forbids employers to discriminate against employees on the basis of non-membership in a union. Moreover, CWA officials committed unfair labor practices by encouraging Verizon to discriminate against her and failing to inform her of her rights in California, which has no Right to Work law, to refrain from union membership and pay reduced fees, rights established in the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court precedent CWA v. Beck (1988).

The NLRB Regional Director in Tampa agreed with the charges and threatened to issue a complaint against the unions and the company, so they sought to settle the case to avoid a costly and embarrassing legal battle. The settlement guarantees Leitzel full compensation for lost income related to her removal from work, and the company and unions agreed to cease all illegal discrimination on account of union affiliation. A notice to be posted at Verizon workplaces in Tampa and Bradenton, Florida, and in Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, and San Fernando, California, will inform other Verizon employees that such union discrimination is illegal.

“California should take a lesson from Florida: no employee should ever be forced to join or pay fees to an unwanted union,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The only way to eliminate collusion between Big Business and Big Labor to discriminate against independent-minded employees is to eliminate forced unionism altogether.”

The left-wing website Indy Media notes that the SEIU has undertaken “violent shock and awe tactics.” The accusations of violence come from another union — the National Union of Healthcare Workers — who are seeking to divorce themselves from the SEIU.

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

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) is floating her own version of the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, S. 560, that would ask workers to sign cards and then mail them into the National Labor Relations Board as a means of protecting their privacy.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, however, to know that the union activists that pressure workers to sign cards will be more than happy to drop them in the mail.  And of course, this compromise does not address the job-killing arbitration provisions of the bill.

Sen. Ben Nelson seems to get the Card Check quandary:

You  might think that statement would come from a Republican, but it’s actually from a Democrat.

Reports that there might be a deal near on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), or “card check,” as critics and now some proponents call it, appear to be vastly overwritten.

Sen Tom Harkin, D-IA, a lead negotiator, is in talks with the Senate’s newest Democrat, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, but there are MANY more pieces to this complicated puzzle, namely a number of other Dems who do not want this.  Harkin and Specter have known each other for decades, so it is natural they would work together, but Harkin has a heavy lift to get a deal out of this Senate.

Sen Ben Nelson, D-NE, told me he does not see a deal happening this year at all. He sees no way to put a compromise together that’s pallatable.

“You take away the arbitration issue, and you still have the ‘card check’, so that doesn’t work. You take away the ‘card check’ and you still have the arbitration problem. And if both go away, you’re left with nothing. It’s a fool’s errand to do this. I just don’t see an agreement happening,” Nelson said.

Harkin must please a number of skeptical Dem colleagues in the Senate, among them, Dianne Feinstein (CA), Jim Webb (VA), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Mark Warner (VA), and Mike Bennet (CO).

One of them, who asked to remain anonymous because of the intense lobbying campaign underway by big Labor, tells Fox, “You cannot find a way to make this work. I’ve heard all the arguments, and I just don’t see it.”

Still, Harkin said he’s trying. He has Labor and a number of business concerns in the loop and is working hard to find a compromise.

However, a senior Senate Dem Appropriations Cmte aide tells Fox, “This isn’t happening anytime soon, if it even happens.”  And this aide works for a Dem who supports EFCA.

“Card Check” is a top priority for labor unions this year. It is a bill that would make it easire for workplaces to unionize.  Under the legislation, workers would sign cards rather than by voting in secret ballot elections to start a union.  The provision also calls for mandatory arbitration to set the terms of the first contract if companies and unions can’t agree within 120 days.

The whole meaning of this confusing talk is clear!  Keep the pressure on these Senators.  It is the only thing that is holding this forced unionism monster down at this point.

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.

Another union boss of the besieged Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is under federal scrutiny.