Right to Work Blog

Big Labor bosses in Colorado have been caught with their hands in the cookie jar again. This time, they used $61,600 of workers’ dues money to buy Denver Broncos season tickets.

As the Face the State blog reports:

According to reports filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, over the past two years the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 union spent more than $150,000 of its budget on “entertainment” that included season tickets to Denver Broncos home games.

Since 2006, the UFCW has spent $61,600 on football tickets, about half of which was on two years worth of season tickets to Broncos games. Now who do you think is getting access to the seats? While the cashier at your local grocery store - most likely required to pay union dues as a condition of employment - has ponied up for the tickets through mandatory dues, we’re guessing he hasn’t gotten to enjoy the view from Invesco Field.

Unfortunately, Big Labor was able to defeat a recent Right to Work referendum in the state so workers still have little recourse against this abuse of trust.

A former Albany, New York union boss was sentenced to six months in prison for his role in a firebombing of a concrete plant five years ago.

The May 2003 arson was part of an organized effort by two union officials to sabotage companies that were using non-unionized workers at construction sites.

The sentencing of Michael Kwarta, 32, who had served as a labor organizer and sergeant-at-arms for Local 190 of Glenmont, marked the culmination of a meandering federal investigation into the underworld of Albany’s politically connected laborers’ unions.

The arson triggered a federal grand jury investigation of the union’s ties to elected officials, public contracts and organized crime figures, and also whether top union leaders had authorized the firebombing.

. . .

Kwarta was the third person convicted in connection with the arson. Remarkably, despite widespread knowledge in the union’s ranks that he was involved in the firebombing, Kwarta remained on the union’s payroll until May, just days before he pleaded guilty. He admitted his role as the statute of limitations on charges in the arson was set to expire.

Just think, if some union bosses are willing to firebomb a company for using non-union labor, what do you think they will do to get workers to sign a so-called “union Authorization card”?

A long-time Washington state union boss has written a book with a startling admission. “Smiling Joe” Miller admits he “broke the law all the time” by passing envelops of cash to lawmakers, converted campaign checks into hard-to trace cash, illegally shifted campaign expenses onto the books of labor unions, and did campaign work while on union payroll.

Sadly, this is not “breaking news.” Because union officials enjoy the privilege of compulsion — forcing workers to pay-up or be fired — it is no surprise that this goes on inside the Big Labor Empire. As a wise senator from Arkansas who was overseeing a United State Senate Committee investigating misdeeds in the union movement once stated, “compulsion and corruption go hand in hand.”

Jon Chesto of the Gatehouse News Service in Massachusetts provides a fascinating peek at the incestuous relationship between the Massachusetts political establishment and local union bosses. As we have seen with members of the House of Representatives and even presidential nominee Barack Obama, politicians are using the card check system to pressure companies to unionize and force workers into joining a union without a secret ballot election.

In Massachusetts, according to Mr. Chesto:

Everyone who does business in Boston knows that if you want to build a commercial project of any size in the city, you’ve got to go through the Menino administration and its Boston Redevelopment Authority.

But if the claims made by operators of the Courtyard by Marriott in Dorchester are true, you may have to get a union’s approval as well.

According to a lawsuit that has been filed, the Jiten Hotel Management Firm was trying to get approval to build a hotel but they could not get the attention of the Boston Development Authority. A Jiten vice president, working with then-Brockton Mayor Jack Yunits, lined up a meeting with Boston Mayor Tom Menino in Brockton to discuss the problem.

At the meeting, according to the suit, Menino said the hotel operators would need to sign a card-check agreement with Local 26 to ensure the hotel’s work force would be unionized.

Such an agreement allows a union to be recognized as long as it collects authorization cards from the majority of affected workers. Approve the agreement, the suit says Jiten was told, and the hotel is a go. Jiten had already plowed $3 million into the project, so Jiten president Nayan Patel signed the agreement. The next day, the BRA approved the hotel.

So let’s be clear — in order to get jobs created in Boston you must grease the palms of the union who in turn grease the palms of the politicians. It’s a vicious cycle that harms taxpayers and workers.

In June, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys filed a lawsuit in North Carolina state court on behalf of 16 AT&T employees against Communications Workers of America local union bosses who illegally released their confidential personal information, including their social security numbers as retaliation for exercising their right to refrain from union membership.

As two of the workers explain in the latest Right to Work video report, union bosses had a history of intimidating workers and failing to provide adequate representation.

For more background information on the case, the Foundation’s press release is available online here. The Burlington Times-News’ coverage of the lawsuit is available online here.

The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) points out that Massachusetts’ infamous Central Artery Tunnel union-only project, known as the “Big Dig”, is threatening the solvency of the state of Massachusetts.

The ABC notes:

Despite receiving federal funding, the Big Dig was subject to a union-only project labor agreement (PLA) that required project contractors and subcontractors agree to recognize unions as the representatives of their employees on the job, use the union hiring hall to obtain workers, pay union wages and benefits, and obey the union’s work rules, job classifications and arbitration procedures. . . .

This union-only funding orgy was estimated to cost $2.8 billion dollars, but costs have exploded to over $22 billion.

Union-only jobs cost taxpayers millions of dollars every year — but as in the case of the “Big Dig” — millions easily add up to billions.

According to Amy Westfeldt of the Associated Press:

A union local representing 1,500 crane and heavy-equipment operators has been put under federal prosecutors’ control after more than two dozen members were convicted of mob-related corruption in recent years.

A consent decree between prosecutors and Local 14 of the International Union of Operating Engineers allows a federal judge to appoint two officers who can dismiss and appoint union officials, seize union assets and visit job sites to root out corruption.

The agreement resolves civil racketeering claims brought from past mob corruption cases, including an indictment that sent reputed acting Colombo family boss Joel Cacace to prison for 20 years. . . .

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.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has released a video describing the plight of Patricia Pelletier, a Connecticut worker who recently suffered through a vicious union campaign of harassment, intimidation, and identity theft. To watch the video, click here. To read more on the legal action the Foundation is undertaking on behalf of Mrs. Pelletier, click here.

An article by Ralph R. Reiland of the American Spectator, on “Sharks and Unions,” mentioned a recent “illegal” march by the UAW in Atlantic City, NJ. I understand that Big Labor Bosses would like absolute acquiescence to their each and every demand, but not through the actions of a mob.

The Press of Atlantic City had photos of an estimated 3,000 union supporters marching down Pacific Avenue, the main drag in Atlantic City — illegally, i.e., without a permit — shouting “Negotiate” in support of casino dealers being unionized by the United Automobile Workers.

Vowing that “we’re gonna shut this town down,” Roy Foster, president of the Atlantic-Cape May County AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, yelled “Let’s get ready to rumble” to the protesters before they headed down the street. “I say today it’s an eye for eye.”

Stopping in front of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, the protesters shouted: “Donald Trump, negotiate! Whose city? Our city! No justice, no peace!”