Wisconsin Reality vs. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn’s “Reality Rendezvous”

On March 19, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

Imagine what would happen in Wisconsin if they gave private sector employees the same freedoms.

“Our rendezvous with reality has arrived.”  That is what Illinois Governor Pat Quinn said this week as he unveiled his state budget.  Their economic slap in the face comes nearly one year after we took steps to get our fiscal house in order.

As we were passing legislation requiring state employees and teachers to make modest contributions to their health insurance and pensions to help offset necessary cuts, Quinn and Democrats in Illinois passed massive tax increases.

I told you then that our path, although a more difficult one, was the correct path to take.  Now, it couldn’t be more clear that we were right.  We closed a massive $3.6 billion budget deficit without raising taxes and without massive layoffs.

Illinois, meanwhile, is in even more economic peril because of  tax increases that clobbered their families and businesses.  To try to fix the mess he created, Governor Quinn is out with a budget that proposes the closing of numerous prisons, 60 state offices, laying off 1,100 state employees and cutting Medicaid by $2.7 billion.

It’s so bad that $8 billion in bills would still go unpaid and state worker pensions costs will rise by more than $1 billion.  Even faced with that, Quinn and Illinois democrats are refusing to tackle the issue, instead calling on “task forces” to be created to look into ways to reign in skyrocketing health care and pension costs. (more…)

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Posted in: Economic Impact of Unionization, Economics, Education, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Illinois, Public Employee Monopoly Bargaining, Public Employees, Wisconsin
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Teacher Union Local Hauled-in more than $139 million, Spent Lavishly on Staff

On March 15, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

New York’s forced dues have been very good to teacher union bosses according to a report release by the Education Intelligence Agency.  And, New York teachers aren’t the only ones paying for extravagant union boss salaries and benefits:

Top 36 Teacher Union Locals Took In $337.7 Million. For the first time ever, the Education Intelligence Agency has compiled in one table the finances of the highest-earning teacher union local affiliates in the nation.

Using Internal Revenue Service data from the 2009-10 school year, the table, posted on the EIA web site, contains revenue information and employee compensation figures for each K-12 teacher union local affiliate that accumulated more than $2 million in total revenue that year. The 36 affiliates that met the threshold received $337.7 million in total revenue.

Topping the list was the United Federation of Teachers in New York City with more than $139 million – a 1 percent increase over 2008-09. UFT also had the highest employee compensation expenditures – a 12.8 percent increase to $47 million.

United Teachers Los Angeles ranked a distance second with more than $44.4 million in revenue, while the Chicago Teachers Union ranked third with almost $30.1 million.

The top 15 locals were all either American Federation of Teacher affiliates or merged NEA/AFT affiliates, highlighting the difference in structures of the two organizations. NEA’s state affiliates are the primary source of funds and services while in AFT the locals rule the roost. The highest-earning “NEA only” local was the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association at $4.3 million.

Of the 36 locals listed, 27 saw boosts in revenue over the previous year, but some experienced financial difficulties. The Detroit and Cleveland locals were forced to use dues revenue to cover investment losses. (more…)

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Posted in: AFT and affiliates, Education, Florida, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, NEA and Affiliates, Nevada, New York, Public Employee Monopoly Bargaining
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Union Bosses Raid Pensions

On March 15, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

Taxpayers are footing the bill and business is getting the blame for the pension crisis in California but the real culprit is the union bosses of the Golden State, the Investors Business Daily reports:

Reports from a variety of media reveal California state employees are spiking their pensions to stratospheric levels, leaving nothing for their brother employees. Sorry, can’t blame Wall Street for this one.

In a laudable instance of the mainstream media doing its job, the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, Bloomberg News and City Journal have all exposed “pension spiking” by California public employees. Basically, they manipulate rigid unionized pay and promotion systems to raise their pensions well above what they earned during their working years.

The Los Angeles Times on Saturday pieced together tough-to-get data from Kern and Ventura counties and found a fiscal horror story: In Kern, 77% of public employees with pensions greater than $100,000 actually get more than they did during their working lives.

In Ventura, the figure is 84%. Kern has a $761 million pension shortfall, in part due to the practice.

Both the practice and the lack of transparency are signs of a rotten system. Bigger counties like San Diego and Los Angeles also permit pension spiking. (more…)

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Posted in: California, Compulsory Unionism States, Economic Impact of Unionization, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Labor Organizations, Pension Funds, Public Employee Monopoly Bargaining, Public Employees, SEIU
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Oppressed Federal Government Union Bosses Push for More Forced Unionism

On February 21, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

Put a group of Big Government union bosses in a room and they will inevitably push for more power, more dues money and more coerced unionism.  That exactly what happened when President Obama created a board within the Office of Personnel Management.  The board is pushing for more monopoly bargaining power, Government Executive reports.  ”The Office of Personnel Management’s Labor and Management Relations Council has unanimously approved an outline of a report due to President Obama in May on personnel issues for which collective bargaining is currently optional,” they report.

The Providentially appointed members included:

• Teamsters Public Services Division Director Michael B. Filler;

• American Federation of Government Employees President John Gage;

• National Association of Government Employees President David Holway;

• International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers President Gregory Junemann;

• National Treasury Employees Union President Colleen M. Kelley; and

President Obama, it seems, didn’t bother to appoint a representative of the taxpayers who will surely get milked in this backroom deal.

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Posted in: Big Labor Payback, Economic Impact of Unionization, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Labor Organizations, Monopoly Bargaining, Obama Administration, Pension Funds, Public Employee Monopoly Bargaining, Public Employees
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TEACHERS UNION MANUAL INSTRUCTS HOW TO USE CHILDREN AS ‘PROPAGANDA’

On February 2, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

From The Blaze:

“For more than two years, the Michigan Education Association [MEA] has had a manual that urges its members to use students as propaganda in contract negotiations and also lays out how to organize strikes,” writes Tome Gantert of Michigan Capitol Confidential.

Considering the fact that teacher strikes are illegal in Michigan, some may find it odd that the MEA has been encouraging this sort of behavior. In fact, the MEA has done a lot more than just “encourage” potentially illegal activity. As Gantert reports, the organization produced an anonymously written 28-page manual titled, “Building Full Capacity Locals — Crisis Planning, It’s Never Too Early To Start!”

And of course, what union protest would be complete without the exploitation of children in the bargaining process?

“In terms of a bargaining message, the public responds most positively when we talk about children, quality in the classroom and the future,” the MEA manual states.

The manual even suggests one slogan that it claims has worked for other locals: “It’s not about dollars and cents; it’s about our children.”

Perhaps the most disturbing moment occurs when one section appears to quote almost verbatim Saul Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals.”

Alinsky instructs his followers to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Likewise, the MEA manual instructs teachers to “Pick a target—personalize—and polarize the opposition [pg. 17].” And those are just the verbatim quotes; the entire manual is a handbook for creating, managing, and profiting from crises.

 

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Posted in: Education, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Intimidation Tactics, Michigan, Public Employee Monopoly Bargaining, Strike, Teacher Unions
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As a matter of by-any-means-necessary expediency, Big Labor has long embraced “the necessity for coercion”

On February 1, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

Jeff Jacoby, a columnist for The Boston Globe, blasts Big Labor’s “shameless pretext” for fighting without abandon against Right To Work Freedom:

SOON — PERHAPS AS EARLY AS TODAY — Gov. Mitch Daniels will sign legislation making Indiana the nation’s 23rd right-to-work state. Labor unions angrily oppose the change, but their opposition has no legitimate or principled basis.

State right-to-work laws, authorized by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, are not anti-union. They are pro-choice: They protect workers from being forced to join or pay fees to a labor union as a condition of keeping a job. In non-right-to-work states, employees who work in a “union shop” are compelled to fork over part of each paycheck to a labor organization — even if they want nothing to do with unions, let alone to be represented by one. Laws like the one Indiana is poised to enact simply make union support voluntary. Hoosiers can’t be required to kick back part of their wages to the Republican Party or the Methodist Church or the Animal Liberation Front; the new measure will ensure that they don’t have to give a cut of everything they earn to labor unions, either.

Most Americans regard compulsory unionism as unconscionable. In a new Rasmussen survey, 74 percent of likely voters say non-union workers should not have to pay dues against their will. Once upon a time, labor movement giants like Samuel Gompers, a founder of the American Federation of Labor, agreed. “I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty — the principles of voluntarism,” declared Gompers in his last speech to the AFL in 1924. “No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.” Those words can be seen chiseled on Gompers’s memorial in Washington, DC.

So as a matter of by-any-means-necessary expediency, it is easy to understand why Big Labor long ago embraced what liberal scholar Robert Reich (who served as Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor) dubbed “the necessity for coercion.” In order “to maintain themselves,” Reich said in 1985, “unions have got to have some ability to strap their members to the mast.” Or, as Don Corleone might have put it, to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

But is there any ethical reason — any honorable basis — for the union shop? (more…)

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Posted in: Government Grants to Unions, Indiana, Intimidation Tactics, Monopoly Bargaining, Right to Work, Right To Work States, Section 14-B Taft-Hartley, State Right To Work, Union Membership
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Big Labor Persuasion: Union officials used video cameras in changing rooms, accessed lockers, and resorted to verbal abuse

On January 23, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

Hotel Officials, Union Bosses Hit With Multiple Federal Labor Board Charges for Abusive Organizing Tactics

Union organizers verbally abuse Marriott employees and spy on workers in changing rooms after striking backroom deal with company officials

New York, NY (January 19, 2012) – A group of New York City Marriott (NYSE: MAR) employees – acting on behalf of their coworkers – have filed federal charges against the company and a local union for workplace intimidation and harassment.

The three SoHo Marriott employees filed the charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys.

New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council Local 6 union organizers entered into a backroom deal with company officials that allows union organizers unfettered access to the employees in order to install a union in the workplace.

Abusing this privilege, union organizers are attempting to browbeat the workers into supporting the union through a prolonged campaign of intimidation and harassment.  Meanwhile, company officials deny workers’ attempts to meet on company grounds.

Union officials have used video cameras in employee changing rooms, accessed employee lockers and handled employees’ personal possessions, and have even resorted to verbal abuse.  Union officials even took photographs of a female employee without her consent while she was changing her uniform in an employee changing room. (more…)

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Posted in: Forced Dues, Intimidation Tactics, Monopoly Bargaining, NLRB, NRTWLDF
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