Elena Kagan Supports Forced Union Dues for Politics

Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with nationally-syndicated radio host Lars Larson to discuss Obama Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan’s support for forcing workers to contribute to union political activism.

Big Labor White House Insider Flouts Financial Disclosure Rules

BigGovernment.com reports that Big Labor White House insider Patrick Gaspard (SEIU-ACORN) has failed to accurately report his financials on at least two occasions.  Administration officials continue to mock President Obama’s proclaimed high ethical standards:

Has Congressman Darrell Issa’s request that White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard explain his failure to report a $37,000 payment from his previous employer SEIU Local 1199 evolved into a cover-up?    It’s beginning to smell like it! 

Rep. Issa’s request refers to the same Patrick Gaspard who while working for a Soros-SEIU political committee employed convicted felons to go door-to-door.  In fact, that same Soros-SEIU committee received one of the steepest fines in Federal Election Commission history ($750,000) because its leadership, in Machiavellian fashion, chose to ignore federal laws and take the risk of paying fines if caught.  So, ignoring a few pesky public disclosure laws is not as unlikely as it may sound. 

Questions:

  • How did Gaspard work six days in January for SEIU 1199 h while simultaneously working for the “office of the President-Elect” during “January 1-16” of 2009?
  • How did Gaspard earn, in those six days of work for SEIU 1199, “$17,238.56 [of] carried over leave & vacation,” in particular, after apparently having already been paid 2.5 to 4 months vacation pay in 2008?
  • How did Gaspard earn a 9 week severance payout from an employer (SEIU 1199)? According to available SEIU 1199 financial reports (2000-2009), Gaspard was not paid by SEIU 1199 in years 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004. For the year 2001, SEIU 1199 paid Gaspard only $3,723.  It appears that in at least 5 of the 9 years Gaspard was not on the payroll or worked only a week or two. 

An investigation by the House Oversight Committee is warranted.  Unfortunately with (more…)

Handful of GOP Senators Woo Union Kingpins

Federal Union Monopoly Threatens State, Local Public Employees

(Source: July 2010 NRTWC Newsletter)

Just before the U.S. Congress adjourned for a week-long Independence Day recess, Big Labor House members rubber-stamped legislation that would federally impose union monopoly bargaining over state and local public-safety employees.

The legislation (H.R.413), cynically mislabeled as the “Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act,” would, at a time when government budget deficits are already sky high, hobble the ability of states and localities to keep their expenditures of taxpayer dollars under control.

Incredibly, the House voted July 1 to attach this scheme to a massive spending bill that provides funding for U.S. troops. The Senate is expected to take up this war supplemental bill, with H.R.413 attached, some time this month.

H.R.413 would empower Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) bureaucrats to survey all 50 states and identify which have failed to meet the legislation’s “core standards.” (more…)

Lame Duck; Lame Strategy

Keep an eye out on the period from Election Day to swearing-in day in January because it appears that the House Leadership is looking to cram unpopular legislation like the Card Check Forced Unionism bill down the throats of the American people.  John Fund is on the case.

Big Labor Plays with Fire

National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix makes the case against the nationalization of labor laws to give police and fire unions monopoly bargaining power.  The House leadership has attached the monopoly bargaining provision to the war funding bill and it now heads to the Senate.

The liberal media in the Northeast is dominated by The New York Times, The Boston Globe and the Washington Post.  In a period of two weeks, all three have published articles critical of big labor’s power and influence over the political process.  The latest is a Washington Post editorial bemoaning the power and influence of the teacher’s unions in Montgomery, Maryland.  Fact is the article could be written in most counties in the United States but it’s progress, none the less.  If they really wanted reform, they would endorse a National Right to Work law.

In Montgomery County, teachers union has a grip on politics

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

IN MONTGOMERY COUNTY, candidates for public office who have received the teachers union’s endorsement ahead of this fall’s Democratic primaries must feel as if they’ve won the lottery. The union, with the help of highly unusual cash “contributions” from some of its anointed candidates, sends out glossy, targeted mailings on their behalf. It places advertisements and yard signs. And it distributes thousands of its “Apple Ballots,” listing endorsed candidates, to voters at polling stations on Election Day.

Now the teachers union, known as the Montgomery County Education Association, is going a step further: It’s organizing a poll and inviting its favorite candidates to append their own questions. If the trend continues, union-backed office-seekers won’t have to bother campaigning at all, or even leaving the house. The MCEA will take care of everything. (more…)

When Big Labor plays with fire, taxpayers get burned

Empire State pupils enrolled in K-12 public schools fell by more than 121,000 over the last 10 years, schools added 14,746 teachers and 8,655 non-teaching professionals to their payrolls

 NRTW President Mark Mix commentary in the Washington Examiner:

July 8, 2010 Near midnight last Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow forced unionism apologists in the U.S. House of Representatives disgracefully amended a “must-pass” war funding bill to include language that is designed to force police officers, firefighters, and Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) into “exclusive” union bargaining in every state in the country.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that policies expanding public sector monopoly unionism have played a major role in driving many states to the verge of insolvency. (more…)

From National Review – A Nation of Trentons

http://article.nationalreview.com/437053/a-nation-of-trentons/the-editors

A Nation of Trentons

Government employees’ unions already maintain a death grip on the finances of most state and local governments, and a remarkably bad piece of legislation — the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act — threatens to tighten that stranglehold, imposing the unionization of public-safety workers in the 21 states that currently do not extend that privilege. We are not surprised that most Democrats are supporting the bill, which empowers and enriches one of their most important constituencies; we are surprised and disheartened that some Republicans are backing it.

This bill is bad policy and bad politics. It is bad policy because government employees are overpaid and overpensioned, and wider unionization will make that worse. State and local governments already heave under the burden of their swollen payrolls, while the time-bomb of unfunded government-worker pension liabilities is set to blow a multitrillion-dollar hole in state and local budgets within a few years.

Some states and municipalities are in deep crisis already, while others have managed their affairs with relative aplomb. In most cases, those jurisdictions that have come through the recent recession without descent into utter crisis have been those that enjoy the flexibility and ability to innovate that comes from having a fluid work force — which is to say, a work force that is not subject to the rigidities imposed by public-sector unions. The size of paychecks is not the only concern, or even the principal one, when it comes to the unionization of government work forces: Inflexible work rules, the politicization of the work place, and the protection of low-performing workers are equal problems, if not greater.

Silly Question: Unions Exempt?

Politico is asking “Did Democrats Exempt Unions from the DISCLOSE Act?”  We’re asking “What do you think?”

A Democratic amendment tucked into campaign finance legislation Wednesday night appears to exempt big labor unions from proposed disclosure requirements. The change, inserted by Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.), chairman of the committee charged with handling the bill and a key union ally, would also affect other groups funded by members who pay dues of less than $50,000.