Obama’s Labor Secretary, “not just pro-labor, but doctrinaire”

On November 12, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

 

Secretary Hilda Solis’ staff and public comments at AFL-CIO meetings, her recent disparagement of Tea Party members, and her big Labor Ohio comments make it clear that DOL is closed for everyone but Bug Labor Bosses.  November’s Corporate Counsel article provides some new examples:

She is not just pro-labor, but doctrinaire, says Ray Haynes, a former Republican senator who sat on the Health and Human Services budget subcommittee with Solis when they were both [CA] state senators. “She was the tool of organized labor in the legislature,” says Haynes. If they needed something, they went to her, he says: “And she did it every time, regardless of whether it was a good idea or not.”

Aided by $80 million in stimulus funds, the agency ramped up its army of field personnel in 2010—focusing on the Wage and Hour Division (WHD) and OSHA. Solis added 300 wage and hour investigators—an increase of more than a third—and 100 OSHA inspectors.

The agency has recently turned its attention to businesses that allegedly cheat full-time workers by improperly labeling them as independent contractors. Not only do employers not have to pay benefits, but they can avoid paying overtime, unemployment insurance, and taxes as well.

In September, Solis announced a triple threat … The Labor Department, 11 states, and the Internal Revenue Service will begin sharing information in order to cut down on the practice. The department signed memorandums of understanding with the IRS and the states—including Connecticut, Utah, and Hawaii, among others—that will give each independent authority a crack at collecting from employers charged with dodging the law.

“I think about it as the traffic cop approach to law enforcement,” says top Labor Department lawyer Patricia Smith. Drivers who are tempted to speed will ease up on the gas pedal while driving through an area known to be heavily patrolled, she says. By the same token, Smith hopes the coordinated enforcement effort will have a broadened effect on employer behavior.

Whatever the issue—the Labor Department is pushing ahead with an aggressive and comprehensive agenda. That push will continue for at least as long as this president remains in office.

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Payback, Connecticut, DOL, Government Grants to Unions, Hawaii, Obama Administration, Personnel Alert, Right to Work, Utah
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Department of Labor Sells Out Union Members for Big Labor 1%

On November 7, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

The Department of Labor’s efforts to destroy financial disclosure rules designed protect union members and inform them about the spending habits of the union bosses is selling out the 99% to help the 1%, in the parlance of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

The Department of Labor (DOL) doesn’t need to loosen financial disclosure for union bosses to take advantage of union members’ dues. Yet, this is exactly what the Obama administration has done. On October 26, DOL published a regulation that would weaken union members’ protections against fraud and corruption by union leadership.

Under the new regulation, DOL’s union financial reporting document, the Form LM-30, will no longer require financial disclosure reporting by union stewards, leave for workers performing union activities while being paid by their employer, financial dealings with credit institutions (such as loans), and union officials’ payments from union trusts.

It’s not as if these requirements served no purpose. Numerous major cases of union corruption last month bring the timing of the rulemaking into question. Here’s a quick rundown for October:

  • In Chicago, former Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon, along with two union lobbyists, were found to be double-dipping pensions. They secured six-figure pensions from the city of Chicago, based on calculations from their inflated wages for carrying out union activities, rather than from their wage from government service.
  • Union bosses were found greasing the wheels on the Long Island Railroad Workers’ billion- dollar disability pension scam. Ten NYPD officers, who are union officials in the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, were charged for their role in a widespread ticket-fixing scam.
  • The United Food and Commercial Workers’ New York local president, former president, and treasurer were arrested for racketeering, extortion, money laundering, and witness tampering.

The LM-30 was designed to make union finances transparent and hold union bosses accountable to their membership. As stated in Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, “[T]he Department [of Labor] established the Form LM-30 … to make public any actual or likely conflict between the personal interests of union officers and employees and their obligations to the union and its members.”

With this fresh list of corrupt union activities, does loosening union financial disclosure and relaxing compliance procedures protect the hardworking, middle-class union member? No. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. (more…)

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Payback, DOL, Forced-Dues for Politics, Obama Administration
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Longshoremen union president convicted in no-show job case

On October 3, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

The Longshoremen’s union (ILA) continues to be on the Big Labor bad-boy list at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Inspector General’s union racketeering division.  While a union officer, Frank Rago, who was president of Local 1604 and an ILA international representative, “made unlawful payments and falsified documents.” More from the Stoneham Patch:

A Stoneham man and former International Representative of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) was sentenced to one year and one day in prison on charges that he made unlawful payments and falsified documents Monday in U.S. District Court in Boston, according to a U.S. Department of Justice press statement.

At Monday’s sentencing, the court dismissed a second conviction of unlawful labor payments, the statement reads. Rago was also sentenced to three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $216,384 in restitution and $10,000 forfeiture.

Upon being appointed as an ILA representative, Rago secured a no-show job with the employer of Local 1604 members so that he could continue making his prior linehandler’s salary without performing any work, the statement reads. Rago directed that his salary would be financed from deductions from the contractual wage earnings of the Local 1604 members.

United States Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz; Mark Neylon, District Director, Boston District Office for the United States Department of Labor – Office of Labor Management Standards; and Robert Panella, Special Agent in Charge of the Office of Inspector General – Office of Labor Racketeering and Fraud Investigations for the United States Department of Labor; made the announcement Monday.

From a 2008 DOL report that the Obama DOL has discontinued providing:

On September 15, 2008, in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Frank Rago, President of International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1604 (located in Boston, Mass.) was indicted with failure to maintain records and making false entries in union and Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) records. The indictment follows an investigation by the OLMS Boston District Office.

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Posted in: Big Labor Ethics, Court Cases, DOL, Union Corruption
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Obama Labor Sec. Solis as “Clueless” about jobs as he is

On September 13, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

But, she blames Texas’ job growth on the fact that it is a Right To Work state.  From Investor.com’s Ralph R. Reiland:

A Labor Chief As Clueless As The President

On Aug. 31, with job creation grinding to a complete halt, U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was asked this question: “Why do you think there have been so many jobs created in the last decade in Texas?”

She laughed and said, “Come again.”

The questioner rephrased his query, adding a citation: “The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas estimates about half of the jobs created in the U.S. in the last decade have been created in Texas. Why do you think that is?”

Replied Solis, “I haven’t done a lot of research in terms of the economic growth in Texas.”  “Um, it’s a right-to-work state, I know that,” continued Solis, sounding more like a struggling student than a U.S. labor secretary.

It appears that Labor Secretary Solis had no interest in looking at how a state with 8% of the nation’s population had created nearly half of the nation’s new jobs over the past 10 years.

That interchange occurred on the final day of a month in which the United States experienced zero net job growth — the first time that’s happened in the U.S. since 1945.

Solis concluded by saying she was invited to Texas some time back by “advocates” and “stakeholder groups” and held a “summit” in which they talked about things like “wage theft.”

Some might consider ‘wage theft’ the massive unemployment, zero job growth, and the obligating American teens and toddlers to pay for Obama’s failed  ‘job stimulus’ as ‘wage theft.’

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Posted in: Big Labor Payback, DOL, Economic Development in RTW States, Economic Impact of Unionization, Economics, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Labor Day, Obama Administration, Personnel Alert, Right to Work, Right To Work States, Texas
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It’s ‘Labor’ Day, Not ‘Union’ Day

On September 5, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

National Right to Work President Mark Mix makes the critical distinction between “Labor Day” and “Union Day,” a distinction that union bosses chose to ignore:

By Mark Mix

Most Americans realize that Labor Day is about celebrating workers, not union bosses, but that won’t stop Big Labor’s apologists from stealing to spotlight to demand more power.

The fact is that modern unions are built on the legal privilege of compulsion. In 28 states without Right to Work laws, nonunion employees can be fired for refusing to pay union dues. Millions more nonunion workers have no choice but to accept union bargaining over their wages and working conditions.

What’s more, union officials routinely funnel nonunion workers’ dues into political campaigns aimed at defending or expanding their already extensive special privileges. As legislators from Wisconsin to Ohio can attest, this perverse cycle has made it extremely difficult to roll back union bosses’ workplace powers.

Big Labor thrives on a system of government-granted special privileges. But what do workers get out of this arrangement? According to union apologists, they’d be helpless without it. But the facts reveal a different story.

Compulsory unionism makes union bosses unaccountable to rank-and-file workers, whose financial support is absolutely mandatory. After all, why should union officials bother with the hard work of representing employees if they’re sitting on a forced-dues revenue stream guaranteed by the government? (more…)

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Posted in: Boeing, DOL, Labor Day, Legislation, Monopoly Bargaining, NLRB
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US Labor Secretary Bills Taxpayers for Her New SUV… Made In Canada

On September 1, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

From Dr. Perry’s Carpe Diem blog:

In the video above, President Obama’s Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, explains why she recently bought a new Chevy Equinox:

“What better example could I set if I encouraged my staff to go and purchase and seek how we could acquire a vehicle that would for me would send a signal that we’re for supporting our American workers, American-made products, fuel efficient as well.”

One problem: The Chevy Equinox is not built by American workers, because it’s not American-made. It’s built by foreign workers, in a foreign country: Canada. If Secretary Solis wanted to buy the “most American-made possible” to show her support of American workers, she should have considered the two most “American-made cars” available in America today: the Toyota Camry or the Honda Accord (according to Cars.com).

The Labor Secretary could have also considered one of the other top 10 “American-made” cars like the Honda Odyssey, Toyota Sienna, or the Toyota Tundra. But we all know why that won’t ever happen – those cars are mostly built in “right-to-work” states by non-union American workers. And so for political purposes to maintain union support, it’s more important for the U.S. Labor Secretary to support union workers in a foreign country than to support non-union workers in America. That just politics as usual in Washington. Better to support Canadian Auto Workers north of the border than support non-union workers in Texas or Alabama.

Ms. Solis tried to defend her purchase of a foreign import by saying that “66% of its parts were made in America.” Nice try. When Cars.com conducts its annual “American-made” list, it doesn’t even consider models like the Chevy Equinox with a domestic parts content rating below 75 percent.

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Posted in: DOL, Labor Day, Obama Administration, Personnel Alert, Right to Work
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Obama’s Secretary of Labor sued for aiding union bosses concealment of personal benefits

On July 19, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

With the help of National Right To Work Legal Defense Attorney Bill Messenger, UFCW former union steward Chris Mosquera seeks to force U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis to reverse her regulations that rescinded disclosure of union boss benefits, insider deals, and sources of receipts.  Forced-dues fill Big Labor treasuries with cash that all-too-often union bosses turn into private slush funds awarding themselves handsome benefits.

From the Mosquera’s Op-Ed in the Washington Examiner: 

Without stringent disclosure requirements, union members and nonmembers alike are left at the mercy of union officials who have the power to collect dues without being held accountable for how that money is spent.

The public reporting guidelines Solis jettisoned included several common-sense additions to the Labor Management Relations Disclosure Act of 1959.

Under the proposed guidelines, union officials would have to disclose how much individual compensation they receive in the form of benefits, account for any travel and entertainment expenses, and identify union income streams.

The fact is most workers want more information about how their money is being spent by union officials. Last year, a poll revealed that nearly 90 percent of union members support strong union transparency requirements.

Disclosure is a simple but effective tool for fighting corruption and encouraging accountability. If union officials know their spending habits are part of the public record, they’ll be less interested in expensive getaways and more interested in effectively managing their members’ hard-earned dues. (more…)

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Ethics, Big Labor Payback, DOL, Labor Organizations, Obama Administration, Right to Work
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