Danny Douglas and Jay Campbell, have been sentenced to 18 months and 12 months plus one day, respectively, after being convicted of extortion. It seems the two former United Auto Workers bosses agreed to end an 87-day strike at a GM plant in Pontiac, MI back in 1997 – but only after General Motors agreed to hire Campbell’s son and the son of another UAW official for high-paying jobs they were evidently not qualified for.
Art Education Association of Indiana union official Buffy Rogers at the 45 minute sign wave.
Amanda Hamon of the Indianapolis Journal & Courier does little but regurgitate comments from a hand full of union officials standing around holding signs for 45 minutes. The few ‘facts’ Hamon provides are encased by union officials’ and activists’ propaganda given by inaccurately identified interviewees. There were no inquisitive questions like “How?” in the article. Right To Work laws don’t prohibit wage negotiations; they prohibit employees being forced to pay union bosses against the employees’ will.
The real question that Hamon and other reporters should be asking: Why, if Right To Work is so unpopular, do you need to create these fake protest media stunts and spend millions to fight it? The answer, if these beneficiaries of forced unionism were honest, is that they are fearful that the gravy train is ending. Their self-interested position supporting compulsory unionism is at odds with decades of polling that shows Americans overwhelming believe employees should not be forced to pay tributes union bosses in order to get or keep a job. In fact, a recent Frank Luntz poll confirms that 80% of union members are opposed to compulsory dues.
But the good news from the story, Indiana may become the 23rd Right To Work state in 2012.
A similar [Right To Work] bill prompted Statehouse Democrats to flee to Illinois for five weeks earlier this year… But now, after a Republican-led study committee recently recommended passing right-to-work legislation, it seems the issue is primed to resurface when lawmakers reconvene next year.
The misidentified propagandists in the article:
Eric Clawson, who Hamon described as “a member of the Sheet Metal Workers Local Union 20 in Lafayette,” in reality he is the union’s Business Representative. In Right To Work states, union members have the freedom to quit if they think Local 20 is paying Mr. Hamon or other union officials too much. In fact, employees would have to choice to join or quit for any reason that they feel important.
Sheila Rosenthal, who Hamon described as someone “involved with the American Dream Coalition,” is actually a longtime leftist activist who involved with: Indiana End-the-War Rally, A Greener Indiana, Indiana Peace and Justice Network, Scouting For All’s National Day of Protest Against the Boy Scouts of America, Democracy for America, Indiana AFL-CIO, Lafayette Area Peace Coalition, Kroc Institute for Peace Studies, Lafayette Committee for Israeli/Palestinian Peace & Justice, Grassroots Educational Training (training for organizers like Obama, ACORN, and SEIU). Essentially, Rosenthal is a full-time protestor.
Mickey Kaus picked up an interesting tidbit from a union newsletter:
Corporatism Watch: Blame the Proofreader! Was a representative of the Obama administration “literally sitting in the room” for recent UAW/GM negotiations—as a newsletter to members of a UAW local said. Or was the union report just a “misprint, as an official of the local now claims? … P.S.: Does it matter? The government owns 32% of GM, after all. Why shouldn’t it watch over its investment? I suppose there are two fears: 1) The Obama administration might order GM’s managers to give the UAW a break the union otherwise wouldn’t get, or 2) The Obama administration might try to facilitate any agreement–including perhaps one that includes concessions the UAW otherwise wouldn’t give–by promising to make it up to everyone involved by steering business or favorable government rulings their way or by simply bailing them all out again. Both sorts of favoritism can be accomplished, however, whether government officials are “in the room” or merely get second-hand reports and make a few phone calls. It’s mainly a question of “optics.” …
But given the impossibility of real transparency–i.e., proving to the public that the administration isn’t playing favorites, directly or by remote control–optics are all the Obama administration’s got. …
The UAW, which purchased among other things, a golf course with members dues money, appears to be hitting the financial skids.
The Truth About Cars reports that the union is down to its savings and is running on fumes:
A bloated management, run-away costs, declining market share, imploding volume, a sell-off of assets and investments, headquartered in Detroit – what is it? No, it’s none of the Detroit automakers. It is their former nemesis and current co-owner, the United Auto Workers.
“Two years after the wrenching restructuring of the U.S. auto industry and the bankruptcies that remade General Motors and Chrysler, the UAW is facing its own financial reckoning. America’s richest union has been living beyond its means and running down its savings, an analysis of its financial records shows. Unless King and other officials succeed with a turnaround plan still taking shape, the next financial crisis in Detroit may not be at one of the automakers but at the UAW itself.”
This is the beginning of a special report written by the best in the reporting business, by Deepa Seetharaman and her boss, Kevin Krolicki, Chief of the Detroit Bureau of Reuters, with the help of their team of combat reporters from the Detroit front-lines.
“The UAW might have three to five years before its budget difficulties forced a financial crunch, absent changes. The “hand-grenade” math of the projection gave the union less than a five-year window of opportunity to turn things around by winning new membership at foreign-run auto plants, said the person who saw the internal forecast and asked not to be named because of its sensitivity.” (more…)
Ford Motor Company was the only “Big Three” auto company that did not take government bailout funds. GM and Chrysler became an extension of the federal government in a forced partnership with the United Auto Workers union. As the strongest of the three, Ford is now the target of big labor who has authorized a strike against the company.
As John Lillpop says:
With 14-26 million Americans unemployed and or underemployed, one would expect an ‘attitude of gratitude’ among workers still holding jobs, especially those being paid an average of $58 per hour. However, unionized auto workers in Detroit have grown accustomed to enjoying unreasonable wages and benefits, courtesy of thugs who operate the United Auto Workers union.
Lillpop continues:
When the government stepped in and bailed out GM and Chrysler with an infusion of cash, there were certain concessions made by the UAW. The bailout allowed the companies to survive and even revamp their businesses. It also prevented the union from striking against GM and Chrysler. Through that period, Ford became somewhat of a shining star by not taking any bailout money. Ford’s reward for taking the harder route is that the UAW, in negotiations with all three makers, can strike.
This reason, while perhaps sentimental, is one key negotiating tool that Ford has in Ford’s cap. The perception that the union will punish Ford, the company that did not take a bailout, would leave a stigma on the UAW that could take years to erase. It is the classic mantra that no good deed goes unpunished. This mantra is something that people in America are growing tired of, in particular because of the state of the economy.
The fact is Obama’s pro-forced unionism policies are coming home to roost. While he desperately needs the economy to turn around in order to save his re-election chances, his allies in big labor are now engaging in wildcat strikes in Washington State and are ready to cause even more economic damage in Michigan. If the president would empower workers and not union bosses, he would likely not be facing such daunting challenges.
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
(Source: June 2011 NRTWC Newsletter)
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…)
Meanwhile, United Autoworkers Union Bosses Pocket $3.4 Billion
In late 2008, GOP President George W. Bush “loaned” a total of $19.4 billion in federal taxpayers’ money to the Big Labor-controlled General Motors Corporation (GM).
Mr. Bush assured taxpayers they would get their money back.
But by the spring of 2009, we learned we would never get back any of the money Mr. Bush had handed over to GM shortly before he left office. His successor as President, Democrat Barack Obama, announced GM would never have to settle up with taxpayers.
President Obama simultaneously earmarked an additional $30 billion in taxpayers’ money to by-then bankrupt GM.
In exchange, taxpayers got a 61% stake in the money-losing company.
Echoing Mr. Bush, Mr. Obama and his advisors insisted that, when the government eventually sold off its whole stake in GM, taxpayers would get the entire $30 billion back, and perhaps even reap a profit.
Just last August, the President said it again.
He told a CNBC interviewer: “We expect taxpayers will get back all the money my Administration has invested in GM.”
‘Government Officials Are Willing to Take the Loss’ (more…)
Matt Mayer of the Buckeye Institute debunks the long-term economic growth without Right To Work freedom is sustainable. Mayer uses a Columbus Dispatch reporter Joe Hatlett column that featured Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to expose the fact that corporate welfare and reduced regulations ignore the “proverbial elephant in the room weighing down” compulsory union states like Indiana, Ohio, Illinois,, and Michigan.
From Matt Mayer’s post:
“With Michigan bleeding jobs and tax revenues, Granholm said she followed the corporate playbook in her attempt to close a huge state budget deficit and make Michigan more competitive. ‘In listening to the business community, I cut takes [sic] 99 times, and I ended shrinking government more than any state in the nation. In my two terms, I cut more by far than any state in the nation. And yet, we still have the highest unemployment rate.
There was no correlation.’ Granholm conceded that streamlining business regulations and lowering taxes — Kasich’s economic recovery mantra — are helpful, but they aren’t a panacea…[l]abor costs, help with start-up costs and proximity to markets are other factors.”
Hallett and Governor Granholm fail to mention why streamlining regulations and lowering taxes aren’t helping the northern states (located within 50 percent of the U.S. population and with low start-up costs) compete against the southern and western states. Instead, Hallett ignores the obvious answer and pleads for an end to corporate pork (with which we enthusiastically agree).
The reason Michigan and Ohio can’t compete is that the southern and western states already have fewer regulations and lower taxes, so “catching up” with those states still leaves the proverbial elephant in the room weighing down the northern states. Plus, those states are also pushing for lower taxes and fewer regulations, so the northern states are perpetually behind them. The elephant, which Governor Granholm does hint at, is labor costs, or, more specifically, unionized labor costs (see: General Motors and the United Auto Workers).
As I noted in Six Principles for Fixing Ohio, “Of course, tax and regulatory burdens also impact a state’s economy. Although many of the forced unionization states have heavy tax burdens and many of the worker freedom states have light tax burdens, some heavily taxed worker freedom states (Idaho, Nevada, and Utah) had the strongest sustained job growth from 1990 to today.
Similarly, a few moderately taxed forced unionization states still had weak job growth (Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri). The combination of both a heavy tax burden and forced unionization is deadly when it comes to job growth, as 11 of the 15 worst performing states are ranked in the top 20 for high tax burdens.” If Ohio and the other states from Missouri to Maine want to truly compete with Texas, Georgia, and South Carolina, then those states need to enact laws that protect the rights of workers not to join a labor union to get a job. (more…)