The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees voted Tuesday to officially endorse President Obama in the 2012 election.
Union officials have already said they planned to spend upwards of $100 million to help Obama win reelection, so the endorsement itself is not a surprise.
Tuesday’s vote was so important to Obama’s team that campaign manager Jim Messina attended the meeting. He told the AFSCME board the union’s backing “demonstrates that its workers know President Obama is the only one willing to make the hard choices.”
Big Labor’s courtship with the Occupy Wall Street radicals continues to grow as union bosses of the AFL-CIO approved a resolution calling on its members to treat Occupy encampments in the District and Baltimore as they would a formal picket line. The resolution states the AFL-CIO will support any “unionized or non-unionized worker who refuses to break up, raid or confiscate the belongings of protesters.”
4,000 people associated with the Occupy crowd have been arrested for crimes like rape, destruction of property and drug charges but the union bosses continue to ignore the reality of who they are associating themselves with.
Last year, Carrie Schlaud appeared on a Fox News broadcast along with Committee President Mark Mix to discuss her and other Michigan home day-care providers' efforts to defend their Right to Work. Credit: Fox News
But Union Dons May Get to Keep $4.5 Million Wrung From Providers
Five years ago, bosses of two AFL-CIO unions, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), teamed up to acquire forced-unionism control over home-based day-care providers in Michigan.
The UAW/AFSCME joint-venture union, known as “Child Care Providers Together Michigan” (CCPTM), was set up with the express aim of unionizing “all home-based child [day] care providers in Michigan.”
Then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Big Labor Democrat, was ready from the beginning to pull as many strings as necessary for the CCPTM union. In July 2006, Granholm-appointed bureaucrats helped establish a shell corporation known as the “Michigan Home Based Child Care Council” (MHBCC).
The sole genuine purpose of this venture was to act as the entity against which the CCPTM union was supposedly organizing.
Many of the 40,500 day-care providers targeted by CCPTM organizers report that they never even heard of this outfit until after it had prevailed in a low-turnout “mail ballot” election.
In 2008, forced union fees began being siphoned out of the reimbursement checks day-care providers receive from the government for serving needy families who are unable to pay their own way.
With Right to Work Attorneys’ Help, Michigan Home Day-Care Providers Fought Back (more…)
AFL-CIO boss Dick Trumka speech where he issued the hollow threat to the Democrat Party to take his fidelity elsewhere, is being called Trumka’s Tirade by the Pittsburgh Tribune:
Big Labor boss Richard Trumka has issued an ultimatum to unions’ lackeys in Congress: Meet our unrelenting demands or find another sugar daddy to fund your campaigns next year.
“We will spend the summer holding elected leaders in Congress as well as the states accountable on one measure: Are they improving or degrading life for working families (of union members)?” says the AFL-CIO’s Mr. Trumka.
And Trumka says Democrats may be “controlling the wrecking ball” that’s hurting unions. How’s that for gratitude?
Whereas unions, given their substantial contributions to Democrats in the last presidential election, didn’t get everything on their quite lengthy wish list, they’ve made substantial inroads with Team Obama at the federal level.
Those inroads lead to the National Labor Relations Board. (more…)
When Republicans in Wisconsin reformed the state’s collective bargaining laws, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick rushed to schedule a speech in Wisconsin so he could denounce lawmakers. But when the State House in his own state voted to change the way government employees could bargain for taxpayer benefits he praised the House for its “very important vote.” The Wall Street Journal notices the hypocrisy:
Scott Walker impressions are popular these days, and the latest and greatest aping of the Wisconsin Governor is coming from the liberal heartland. On Wednesday, the Massachusetts state House voted 111-42 to limit public employees’ ability to collectively bargain for health care. Mrs. Trumka, please hide all sharp objects from Richard, the AFL-CIO chief.
The bill sponsored by Democratic House Speaker Robert DeLeo would change the way teachers, police and other municipal employees bargain for health care, giving mayors and local officials the ability to set co-pays and deductibles after a 30-day negotiation period with the unions. If the unions agree to the mayor’s terms, 10% of the savings goes back to the unions. If they object, 20% of the savings goes into a special fund for workers’ health-care costs. The reforms, which are expected to save $100 million in the next year, also require retirees to enroll in Medicare.
Coming in the bluest of blue states, the news landed like ice water on unions, which are shouting betrayal. “These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected, the same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns,” Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Robert Haynes said. “It’s a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber.” (more…)
Former SEIU and IUOE Official, Big Labor Consultant, Former Pacific Northwest Labor College Director, and Former University of Wisconsin School for Workers Director (currently on unpaid leave from the School for Workers)
APPOINTMENT: U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) Director
Current Responsibilities: Overseer of labor union financial reporting and disclosure, union officer conflict-of-interest reporting, and certain employer activities; he is responsible for criminal investigations regarding issues under his oversight such as labor union financial irregularities and embezzlement.
Past and current non-DOL employers: Lund is currently on unpaid leave from his other employer, University of Wisconsin’s School for Workers. The School for Workers is a taxpayer-supported institution with its primary function is to serve as a training center for union officials, such as the union organizers who ginned up the tension in Madison, Wisconsin and across the U.S.
It is reported that, from 2004-2007, Lund worked closely with the AFL-CIO “on [union] financial accountability and transparency issues.” These are the issues Lund currently controls at DOL.
He has been a consultant for the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, BLET , and IUOE, to name just a few. In his position of union trainer and consultant, Lund worked directly with many of the union officials who has recently rewarded with reduced reporting and disclosure regulations that he has instituted during his tenure at DOL. Lund is also in charge of the DOL office which investigates embezzlements and union election fraud, giving Lund the conflicting responsibility for making decisions about union officials he has trained and advised. In addition, Lund oversees union audits and he is now privy to DOL’s labor union auditing and criminal investigation techniques. Soon he will be back teaching these same union officers how to navigate around DOL audits. (more…)
The cards were stacked in favor of workers and against the union bosses in Indiana before Gov. Mitch Daniels decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. His work to kill the effort to give Indiana workers Right to Work protection allowed AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka to declare victory. From the Talking Points Memo:
Trumka told TPM at a roundtable with reporters that despite the hardships he said were faced by union workers, labor supporters and Democrats in general in Indiana, progressive-leaning politicians in the Hoosier state were able to pull off the upset win.
“I mean, they knocked out right to work,” Trumka said, referring to the AWOL state House Democrats, who returned to Indianapolis after winning concessions from the majority GOP.
The news media was all over the fact that Wisconsin judge Maryann Sumi issued a restraining order on Wisconsin’s new law to rein in out of control union bosses but failed to report a critical fact — Sumi’s son works for the AFL-CIO and the SEIU.
