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Labor Unions: Latest Strong Arm Tactics
August 15, 2008 Whose 'Special Interests'?By Thomas Sowell Full article Thomas Sowell RCP Excerpts: We take it for granted that a vote means a secret ballot but it was not always that way. Moreover, it will not remain that way for workers who vote on whether or not they want a labor union, if legislation sponsored by Congressional Democrats and endorsed by Senator Barack Obama becomes law. Before there were secret ballots, voters dared not express their true preferences if those who watched them vote could retaliate-- whether by firing them, beating them up or in other ways.  Custom Search LaborPains.Org LaborPains.Org The Crazy, Mixed Up World of Al Franken and EFCA July 25th, 2008 by Minnesotans for Employee Freedom In the through-the-looking-glass world of Al Franken, taking away the guarantee of a private ballot to Minnesota workers actually gives them MORE privacy. Huh, you say? Well, according to funny man Franken, in receiving the endorsement of the Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council, by our count the 22nd union to endorse Franken, worker privacy would be strengthened by allowing union organizers to strong arm workers into signing a card rather than maintain their right to a private ballot in which they can vote their consciences. In his speech, rather than explain how less privacy was actually more privacy, Franken resorted to what he knows best, name calling. He labeled us a “Norm Coleman front group.” This, like his description of EFCA, is obviously false. Franken and his supporters in the Minnesota DFL party have clearly become a bit unglued by our efforts to tell Minnesotans about EFCA and Franken’s support for it. But calling us names and filing frivolous legal complaints won’t stop us from telling the truth. In fact, it will have the opposite effect. THE HERITAGE FOUNDATION June 12, 2008 Giving Employees Free Choice in the Workplace by James Sherk Full article James Sherk Heritage Foundation Excerpts: Workplace relations and the economy have changed substantially since the 1930s, but federal labor law has not evolved with these changes. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) still reflects a top-down, adversarial view of management–labor relations that is foreign to many workers today. Private-sector union membership has fallen over the past generation as many workers have concluded that traditional unions do not meet their needs. In response, the labor movement is pushing the Employee Free Choice Act. Instead of taking away workers' right to vote on joining a union by secret ballot, Congress should restore employers' and employees' right to explore innovative labor–management relations. Most workers want a voice in their workplace even if they do not want a traditional union. Employee involvement (EI) programs enable workers to participate cooperatively in workplace decisions, but the NLRA prohibition on creating "company unions" is so broad that it bans any EI programs that give workers a real voice. The Act forces workers to choose between a traditional union and no formal representation at all. NEW YORK TIMES Published: June 12, 2008 Full article Louis Uchitelle New York Times Excerpts: Acting quickly after securing his party’s presidential nomination, Barack Obama picked a well-known representative of Bill Clinton’s economic policies as his economic policy director and signaled this week that the major players from the Clinton economics team were now in his camp — starting with Robert E. Rubin.Skip to next paragraphPatrick Andrade for The New York Times Jason Furman is Barack Obama’s economic policy director.Stephen Crowley/The New York Times Robert E. Rubin, right, with President Clinton in 1999 as the president greeted Lawrence H. Summers, the Harvard economist who succeeded Mr. Rubin as Treasury secretary. Senator Obama, Democrat of Illinois, hired Jason Furman, a Harvard-trained economist closely associated with Mr. Rubin, a Wall Street insider who served as President Clinton’s Treasury secretary. Labor union leaders criticized the move, and said that “Rubinomics” focused too much on corporate America and not enough on workers. “For years we’ve expressed strong concerns about corporate influence on the Democratic Party,” John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, said Wednesday in a statement implicitly critical of the symbolism of the appointment, no matter Mr. Furman’s economic skills.
 Colorado’s UFCW Admit 50% of Membership Wants Out But Are Forced to Pay Dues Full article LaborPains.Org Denver Post columnist Al Lewis reports on something the union bosses really don’t like to talk about; the huge percentage of workers they “represent” who want nothing to do with a union. Unfortunately, far too many workers are trapped in a union and forced to pay dues just because some workers, at some point, wanted to join. Workers may come and go, but unions can keep their stranglehold long after a majority of workers have decided it’s not worth the price. And that’s why union boss Ernest Duran is terrified of a Colorado amendment on the ballot that would give workers some measure of freedom: Union Facts.Com Full article Union Facts.Com After the 2006 union-funded campaign that spent an estimated $100 million of members’ dues to successfully recapture Congress for Democrats, the headlines blared: “US unions want election success payback,” “Labor sees opening to reverse declines,” “Labor to push agenda in Congress it helped elect.” Union officials’ top priority? Ending the secret ballot elections process and the associated protections for employees choosing whether to join a union. In March 2007, House Democrats quickly approved the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. Facing declining membership, union officials have turned to the highly questionable practice of organizing new members through a process called “card check.” With card checks, paid union organizers seek to pressure workers to sign cards saying that they support union representation. This persuasion has been documented as frequently including deception, coercion, and harassing visits to workers’ homes. Current law dictates that an employer can either choose to recognize a union when the employer believes there is significant support from employeesor call for an election to make certain that the employees’ true feelingsare recognized.
Union Facts.Com Full article Union Facts.com Unfair Labor Practices The National Labor Relations Board investigates instances of union violations of the National Labor Relations Act and other labor laws. Unfair Labor Practices include instances of bad faith bargaining, excessive dues, violence, threats and many other violations.Please note: We have observed some irregularities in the National Labor Relations Board's assignment of ULPs to a specific union. Alleged Charge Allegations Filed Other Allegations 476 Actions of Picketers 269 Duty of Fair Representation 262 Statements 162 Hiring Halls 105 Reserved Gate Issues 100 Time/Place of Picketing 86 Handbilling 72 Hiring Hall Related 70 Picketing/Strike Actions 64 Language on Picket Sign/Handbill 56 Union Security Related (including Beck) 53 Union Security Related 50 Threatening Statements 43 Coercive Statements 39 Violence/Assaults 33 Resignation of Membership (Patternmakers) 21 Refusal to Bargain (Succeeding Contract) 16 All Allegations against a Labor Organization 15 Harassment 13 Bad Faith/Surface Bargaining (Succeeding Contract) 12 Denial of Access 12 Bad Faith/Surface Bargaining (Initial Contract) 10 Surveillance 10 Refusal to Furnish Information 8 Repudiation/Modification of Contract 8 Unilateral Changes [not Sec. 8(d)] 8 Lawsuits/Grievances 8 Discipline (including charges/fines) 7 All Allegations 7 Unknown 7 Requiring Payments other than dues 7 Discharge 6 Lawsuits 6 Disparagement of Employee 5 Fees Excessive 5 Failure to Sign Agreement 4 All Allegations against an Employer 4 Interrogation 4 Statements/Threats 4 Refusal to Bargain (Initial Contract) 4 Repudiation/Modification of Contract [Sec. 8(d)] 3 Rules: No-Solicitation/No-Distribution Rules 3 Alter Ego or Disguised Continuance 3 Coercive Statements, including Threats 3 Layoff 3 Concerted Activities: Discharge 2 Benefits Altered 2 Rules: Coercive 2 Refusal to Bargain (Succeeding or mid Contract) 2 Union Security Related Actions 2 Violence 1 Wages Altered 1 Refusal to Consider/Hire Applicant (Not Salting) 1 Refusal to Consider/Hire Applicant (Salting) 1 Changes in Conditions of Employment [not 8a3] 1 Bad Faith Bargaining (Initial Contract) 1 Concerted Activities: Union Security Related 1 Direct Dealing/Bypassing Union 1 Notification requirements [Sec. 8(d)] 1 Onerous Assignments/Conditions 1 Interference 1 Interference, (Weingarten) 1 Source: National Labor Relations Board's Case Activity Tracking (CATS) database since 2000UnionFacts.com is committed to 100% accuracy. Please contact us with factual corrections & comments. Unfair Labor Practices The National Labor Relations Board investigates instances of union violations of the National Labor Relations Act and other labor laws. Unfair Labor Practices include instances of bad faith bargaining, excessive dues, violence, threats and many other violations. Allegations Filed Other Allegations 476 Actions of Picketers 269 Duty of Fair Representation 262 Statements 162 Hiring Halls 105 Reserved Gate Issues 100 Time/Place of Picketing 86 Handbilling 72 Hiring Hall Related 70 Picketing/Strike Actions 64 [show all ULP violations] Visit: Center For Union Facts Carpenters (CJA) National Headquarters 101 CONSTITUTION AVENUE NW WASHINGTON, DC 20001 The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America is the largest building trades union in the United States. One of the unions that formed the American Federation of Labor in 1886, it left the AFL-CIO in 2001. This description above uses material from the Wikipedia.com and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. Leadership Top 10 International CJA Leaders & Staff (by Salary) Name Title Total Compensation Douglas Mccarron General President $ 411,949 Andris Silins General Sec/treas $ 351,734 Douglas Banes General Vice President $ 337,551 Randy Sowell Director Of Real Estate $ 326,242 Charles Maples District Vice President $ 257,806 Michael Draper District Vice President $ 256,436 Bobby Yeggy District Vice President $ 252,684 Stanley Solaas Assistant To President 248,859 James Slebiska District Vice President $ 238,843 Rodney Ogle Organizing Director $ 238,516 United Auto Workers (UAW) Part 5
Unions often employ lobbyists to influence legislation in their favor. The amount below represents total lobbying expenditures reported to the Senate. It does not represent the total amount spent lobbying federal, state, and local officials. Total Senate Lobbying Expenditures: $ 14,892,880 (from 1998 to 2005) United Auto Workers (UAW) Part 4 UAW’s Multimillion Dollar Resort Union dues have subsidized the construction of an extraordinarily expensive resort and golf club retreat. The Black Lake Resort and Golf club is luxurious, to say the least. This lakeside resort has 241 guest rooms, 2 full-sized basketball courts, an Olympic size swimming pool, a full gym and exercise room with a sauna, and a golf course designed by Rees Jones, a pricey and well-known golf course architect. While UAW union members are permitted to visit the resort their dues have paid for, they cannot do so at any significant discount—they only receive $18 off the regular price. United Auto Workers (UAW) Part 3 Strike Fund The United Auto Workers have used $1 billion of their worker’s dues to fill an enormous strike fund. No other union finds it necessary to funnel money from their workers pockets to fill such a large and unused strike fund. The next largest strike fund, that of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, is not even half as large. Thirty percent of each UAW member’s dues go towards filling this rarely used pot of money. The interest alone from the UAW’s strike fund has been enough to pay workers on strike in the past. Furthermore, the vast majority of unions other than the UAW are able to effectively negotiate for their members without the use of such huge strike funds. United Auto Workers (UAW) Part 2 Job Banks: Paid Not to Work Thousands of UAW members are being paid between $70,000 to $85,000 per year not to work. (By some accounts, the expense is even larger, costing the “Big Three” up to $130,000 for each job banker). For 4,200 of these union members, their 8 hour “work day” consists of “filling out crossword puzzles, watching World War II movies and even taking naps.” These job bankers “have drawn nearly full pay and all benefits, often for years, no matter the companies’ health.” As shown by the $4.5 billion the “Big Three” earmarked to fund job banks, this practice is costing the companies billions of dollars at a time that they are losing billions. Health Insurance: UAW’s unsustainable spending Negotiating for overly generous health benefits for union members has aided and abetted the decline of the auto industry. The “Big Three” collectively spent almost $10 billion on health insurance in 2002 and the UAW has heedlessly continued to waste money. Some numbers for perspective: $1,500 of the cost of each car pays for health insurance. For each car, more money is spent for health insurance than on steel for its construction. Toyota has far lower health care costs in comparison to the UAW. While healthcare costs contributed to a combined loss of $15 billion for the “Big Three,” Toyota posted a profit of $14 billion. Strike Fund Visit: Center For Union Facts United Auto Workers (UAW) National Headquarters 8000 E JEFFERSON DETROIT, MI 48214 Founded in 1935, the United Auto Workers Union has just under 600,000 members and represents workers from the “Big Three” automotive companies—General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, as well as workers in the aerospace and agricultural industries. Over a 50% Decline in Membership The United Auto Workers Union membership has crashed from its previous high of 1.5 million in the 1970s, to its current total of under 600,000 members. Some Local branches have suffered an even more dramatic hemorrhaging of members: Local 599 in Flint, Michigan has seen its membership atrophy from a peak of 28,000 to a mere 2,500 members today. In an effort to bolster their waning membership, the UAW is scrambling to unionize other sectors as well, such as gaming industries. They have allocated $60 million dollars from their bloated strike fund to aid in collecting new members. From: Center For Union Facts Some facts you should know about the AFL-CIO: Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO and second in command under President John Sweeney, has held his office for more than a decade despite multiple ethical clouds swirling above his head. Trumka was implicated in an illegal scheme to fund Teamsters President Ron Carey's reelection campaign with union dues. Rather than give an accounting of his involvement, Trumka repeatedly pled the Fifth. When he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid appearing at a Congressional hearing in 1998, the Congressional report noted: "Trumka remains the second highest ranking official at the AFL-CIO despite an AFL-CIO Ethical Code provision holding that officials who assert their Fifth Amendment rights are deemed 'unfit to hold union office.'" The New York Times editorialized: "Refusing to testify on grounds of self-incrimination may be acceptable in a criminal trial, but it hardly instills confidence in his leadership of the AFL-CIO." Prior to becoming Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO, Trumka served as International President of the United Mine Workers of America from 1982 to 1995. In 1993, while Trumka was president, a man named Eddie York was shot and killed by a striking mineworker when he tried to drive past a picket line. A little over two months later Trumka demonstrated his remorse when he told the Associated Press: "[I]f you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you're likely to get burned." It seems that any time a major company announces layoffs, the AFL-CIO issues a comment condemning the move. Companies, the AFL-CIO insists, should have a greater commitment to job security -- regardless of competitive challenges. So it was ironic when the AFL-CIO announced in May 2005 that more than a third of its own staff positions were being eliminated to make the organization more competitive and increase its chances of survival. And despite its customary calls for businesses to avoid buying any new plants or equipment when faced with tough times, the union acknowledged that a steep decline in its assets during recent years was due to a $25 million mortgage it took out to upgrade its headquarters overlooking the White House. Visit Center For Union Facts Workers' families, pets threatened because they didn't want the union Scott Barnes did not want to be represented by the California Nurses Association, which sought to impose itself on the nurses at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2002. To express his opinion, he posted these words on a website: "If the CNA is voted in, membership will NOT be voluntary, and YOU WILL have to give them $80 per month whether you like it or not. If the CNA really cared about any of us, they would let their reputation speak for itself, but they have no reputation and they have to force you to join." Subsequently, Barnes began to receive anonymous threatening calls saying that he should stop "f***ing with the union" and that his pet dogs might come to harm if he didn't. Threatening calls were also made to Christine Foxon, another nurse with whom Barnes had co-founded an independent nurses' group. One caller said he knew she "had two young daughters" and she needed to "think about her family and her girls and back off." After one of these calls, Foxon dialed *69 and discovered that she had been called from an office of the CNA. After reviewing the evidence, the National Labor Relations Board found that the union's menacing behavior had made a fair election impossible and overturned the narrow election win by the union. U.S.-Colombia Deal Faces Labor Deceit By MONICA SHOWALTER INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY April 07, 2008 Full article Investors Business Daily Excerpts: Jairo Giraldo Rey's murder near Cali last November gave big labor a seemingly textbook case for why Congress should reject the Colombia free-trade pact, which President Bush sent to Congress Monday, forcing a vote on the contentious deal within 90 days. The 35-year-old union leader's death showed why "the AFL-CIO remains unalterably opposed to passage of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement," wrote AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in a Nov. 8 letter to House and Senate members. The only problem is, Giraldo supported free trade. From: National Legal and Policy Center UNION CORRUPTION UPDATE Monday, March 24, 2008 -- Vol. 11, Issue 6 Full article National Legal and Policy Center Excerpts: NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD (NLRB) NLRB Issues Proposal to Allow Quickie Union Elections Some might call it Sudden Election Syndrome. Others might call it the Stealth Employee Free Choice Act. But a new proposal that effectively would bypass standard National Labor Relations Board-supervised elections could revolutionize labor relations in this country. If nothing else, unions could make out like bandits in their organizing drives and corporate campaigns. The source of this initiative: the National Labor Relations Board. On February 26, the NLRB published a notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register that would allow a union and an employer to file a joint petition for a board-supervised election to be held on an agreed-upon date within 28 days. This document, to be called an “RJ petition,” may have a good many dissenting workers crying foul.
Last year, unions swallowed a bitter pill when Senate Republicans successfully blocked passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a bill already passed by the House in March that would have forced employers to recognize as binding card checks that win a simple majority. In other words, if a union manages to convince at least 50 percent of the employees who are part of a potential collective bargaining unit to sign a card indicating an intention to join, the result would preclude any possibility of holding a secret-ballot election, for decades the template for American union democracy. The RJ Petition would appear to be the NLRB’s way of breaking the EFCA impasse. How workable the plan would be in practice is another story.
Under the proposed rule, no show of interest in joining a union would be required. A union conceivably could set up an NLRB-monitored election without the support of a single worker. That’s quite a comedown from the current minimum threshold of 30 percent. The petition would be filed jointly by the employer and the union. A board-supervised election then would be held no more than 28 days later. Within three days of docketing, the NLRB regional director would notify the parties of its decision to approve the election petition. The board then would send the employer a notice to be posted in the workplace at least three working days in advance of the election. All election and post-election issues would be resolved by the regional director; there would be no chance to appeal a ruling to board headquarters in Washington. Any adjudication would occur after union certification. Finally, the proposal would limit to seven days the period during which employees could file an unfair labor practice charge. On the whole, this looks like a winner of a deal – for organized labor. From: Center For Union Facts Against Members' Politics CNN exit polls showed that 38 percent of union members voted for President Bush in the 2004 election, but more than 95 percent of union funds went to support Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry. A 1999 Zogby poll found a majority of union members—nearly 55 percent—thought people should be given a choice of investing their Social Security taxes in some form of personal retirement accounts. But union officials spent millions of dollars to oppose private accounts in the Social Security system. The San Francisco Chronicle reported: "California unions spent $88,000 (public employee unions' share was $68,000) in opposing Proposition 22, a 2000 ballot initiative that defined marriage as between a man and a woman"; a Los Angeles Times exit poll found that 58 percent of union households had voted yes on the measure. The Chronicle added: "California unions spent $32.7 million (public employee unions' share was $25.7 million) to oppose the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis, yet exit polls found half of union members voted for the recall and 56 percent voted for a Republican candidate to replace him—43 percent for Schwarzenegger and 13 percent for Tom McClintock." FROM; RA REPUBLICAN AMERICAN Full article Republican American One of Al Gore's funniest lies was "Look for the Union Label" being his childhood lullaby, even though he was 27 when it was penned. One of the lines from the song — "We work hard, but who's complaining?" — always gives us a double chuckle because unions are all about work avoidance and whining about minutiae. Examples abound, but the latest comes from Montana. To help its Child Support Enforcement Division do its job better, the state shelled out thousands for new computers. Within minutes, unionized employees discovered the computers were not equipped with solitaire, hearts, minesweeper, etc. Unfair, they complained, because other state employees with older computers have the games. But rather than installing the games on the new computers, their bosses wisely removed all games from all computers. Said one administrator: "We're at work to work. ... Who has time to play games?" Answer: Union members. But with the games gone, they'll have to work a lot harder to make it seem as if they're working hard. Complaints also may be heard from the bumper crop of union bosses convicted or accused of crimes since Oct. 1. They include 49 labor leaders going to prison for embezzling more than $1 million, and 57 others under indictment. Union bigwigs want Congress to pass a bill to reduce the U.S. Office of Labor Management Standards' budget so they can rob the rank and file with impunity LaborPains.org At TeachersUnionExposed.com, the nominations keep rolling in for our “Ten Worst Union-Protected Teachers” contest. Here is this week’s highlighted nomination, sent in by a concerned parent: Two years ago [nominee] was caught in an internet chatroom, sitting at her desk, while the children were left to do whatever they wanted. The only punishment for this offense was to be moved from teaching one grade to a lower grade. One year ago angry parents paid a surprise to [nominee’s] class; she was playing solitaire on a laptop while the students were wandering around the classroom with no guidance. Her punishment was to be moved again into a lower grade. This year, [nominee’s] students began telling their parents that all they had to study for their tests was THE ANSWER KEY that [nominee] gave them!! Instead of teaching the kid anything about the questions and what the correct answers to the question are she was making them memorize the answer key (A,D,D,B,A,C… etc). The Truth About Improper Firings and Union Intimidation by James Sherk UNIONS MAKE RIDICULOUS CLAIMS Full article James Sherk The Heritage Foundation Excerpts: Labor activists argue that Congress should pass the Employee Free Choice Act because employers routinely intimidate and fire workers who try to unionize. Employers, they claim, have retaliated against pro-union workers in one-quarter of organizing elections, discriminating against or firing more than 31,000 workers who wanted to join a union in 2005. This compares, they contend, to just 42 cases of union intimidation of workers in the past 60 years. All these claims are false. Union Allegations Unions allege that employers systematically violate the law by threatening and firing workers who want to join a union. Their proposed solution is the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, H.R. 800), which would replace secret-ballot organizing elections with "card checks" in which workers join a union by publicly signing a card. Card check could expose workers to pressure from both employers and union organizers. Labor activists contend, however, that such union intimidation is exceedingly rare. Nancy Schiffer, the AFL-CIO's Associate General Counsel, presents the unions' case: ###
Ohio Employees File Intimidation Charges Against Union By Randy Hall CNSNews.com Staff Writer/Editor March 28, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - Two employees at a manufacturing plant in Ohio have filed federal charges against their former labor union after going through what one right-to-work organization called "a pattern of ugly union intimidation." Mark Bedenik, a bench hand at the Alcoa Company's factory in Cleveland, told Cybercast News Service on Tuesday that he believes the International Union of Machinists and Aerospace Workers is "using us to set an example" to other IAM members - "basically saying that 'if you don't do what we tell you to do, you're going to pay.'" According to documents submitted to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Bedenik and colleague Matthew Slatten accuse IAM officials of throwing them out of the union illegally and then continuing to take union dues from their paychecks. Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation, said the workers filed the charges "to protect themselves from a pattern of ugly union intimidation at the company." Bedenik said that the situation began last fall, when the contracts of the three unions represented at the plant expired and members of one - the United Auto Workers - went on strike. Members of the IAM and the third, small union went out in sympathy. "We honored their strike for one week" before the company and the IAM reached a tentative agreement that was approved by the vast majority of the union's members, Bedenik noted. At that time, "all of the elected IAM officials said: 'If you want to go to work, you can. There'll be no repercussions, no harassment, no penalties, no hard feelings. If you want to stay out, you can do that, too.'" "Six of us came back the following day" and worked for the next two months, Bedenik said. Eventually, "the UAW agreed to a new contract at the end of December, so everyone came back to work at the start of January." "That's when it all started," he noted. Bedenik said that union officials then placed the six employees' names up on a board "so everybody could see who came in to work during the strike." In addition, the relationships among the IAM members grew noticeably colder. "It's nothing like it was before the strike," he said. "People used to say more to me than just 'hi' and 'bye.'" However, the biggest impact Bedenik felt was a financial one. "According to our contracts, the plant tells the union that they need a certain number of people to work overtime, and the union picks the people for that." The union members with the lowest number of hours are usually selected first. Because the IAM officials counted the hours the six workers put in before January, those employees were regularly passed over when overtime assignments were made, which Bedenik called "unfair and unjust." 'Go fly a kite' After the workers complained, a meeting was scheduled for Feb. 11 to address the situation. "The six of us came in, and other people came in, even union bosses from Cincinnati," Bedenik noted, but "nothing came of it." Once the meeting adjourned, the six employees asked the IAM officials in attendance about their rights to refrain from formal union membership. The officials told them that full membership is a mandatory condition of employment and that resigning from the union would result in their termination from the company. "They basically told us to go fly a kite," Bedenik said. Soon after, Slatten contacted the foundation in hopes of obtaining assistance with the matter. With help from the foundation's attorneys, the six employees filed unfair labor practice charges against the IAM with the NLRB on Feb. 26. The situation worsened earlier this month, when union officials ordered Bedenik and Slatten to attend another meeting. The employees chose not to attend what they perceived as a "trial." "I felt pretty much scared to go," Bedenik said. On March 11, the IAM pulled the two employees' union cards, though both Bedenik and Slatten continue to work at the Alcoa plant and still have union dues taken out of their paychecks. "Union officials want workers to shut up and pay up," said Gleason. "These are just a few of many types of abuse faced by employees in states like Ohio with no right-to-work law to ensure that the payment of union dues is strictly voluntary. "Under the Foundation-won Communication Workers of America v. Beck decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employees laboring under compulsory unionism contracts are entitled to resign from formal union membership and withhold forced dues for everything except the documented cost of monopoly bargaining," Gleason noted. "However, if union officials expel a union member for any reason other than a failure to pay dues, they are not entitled to collect any dues whatsoever from such persons," he added. T. Dean Wright, president of IAM District Lodge 54 in Ohio, told Cybercast News Service that his union is "more than willing to work with the NLRB to come to some kind of resolution" regarding the situation. Wright said he wished the employees had "let our internal process follow through. We weren't even done with our investigation, and they ran and contacted this group and filed charges against us." Bedenik said that he doesn't regret taking legal action against the union. "They should be held accountable when they say 'we're not going harass you, hold hard feelings against you or come after you.' Their word should mean something, especially when they're supposed to be representing you," he added. March 12, 2007 From: CFIF-Center For Individual Freedom SEIU's Dirty Tricks Threaten American Prosperity and Jobs Full article CFIF Excerpts: Private equity investment in the United States has recently come under attack from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The motives for these attacks are bizarre, though not out of character. And like so many of the hit jobs advanced by unions in the recent past — seemingly more out of desperation than for the benefit of workers — the SEIU's latest broadsides are misleading and, frankly, hypocritical. Few could argue the fact that capital investment is precisely what creates new jobs and the kind of growth that directly benefits service employees and other workers over the long haul. That fact is not even lost on the SEIU itself, which manages pension funds for its membership that, on average, invest five to ten percent of their assets in private equity funds. So why are the SEIU and its zealous leader, Andy Stern, obsessed with launching frivolous attacks, which are focused not on the real issues that typically concern union members such as wages or working conditions, but rather on extraneous criticisms designed to smear individual companies supported by private equity? For the sake of pointing out the obvious, the short answer is this: The SEIU isn't interested in the behavior of the specific companies it is targeting at all. Nor is it interested in the capital gains tax treatment of private equity investors that has been the misguided focus of revenue-hungry politicians in Washington of late. No, the SEIU is most interested in strengthening its own power by bullying the owners of these companies into permitting restrictions on the freedoms of individual workers, such as compulsory dues, card-check agreements and monopoly bargaining privileges. From: LaborPains.Org NEA Rings the Dinner Bell Today the National Education Association issued a press release that displayed remarkable candor about the union’s institutional tilt to the left, urging Democratic presidential contenders Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to take the union’s electoral clout more seriously while expressing no interest in appealing to Republicans. According to the teachers union’s release, “[w]ith both [Democratic] candidates scrambling to gather enough delegates to win the nomination, NEA is uniquely poised to play a major role in either campaign.” The NEA’s latest Democrats-only summons is just the latest example of a lengthy trend: between 1990 and 2006, more than 93 percent of donations made by National Education Association political action committees and individual officers went to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s not to say that anywhere close to 93 percent of NEA members are Democrats, however; the NEA’s own “Status of the American Public School Teacher 2000-2001” [PDF] indicates that only 45 percent of public school teachers are Democrats. Excerpts: Vikki Reyes has had it with Locke High, the school her daughters attend in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. She walked in on class one day and recalls “the place was just like a zoo!” Students had taken control, while the teacher sat quietly with a book. Frank Wells has also had it with Locke High. When he became principal he says gangs ruled the campus. He tried to turn things around but ran into a “brick wall” of resistance from the school district and teachers union. Locke seemed destined to languish in high crime and low test scores until Wells, Reyes, and many reform-minded teachers joined with a maverick named Steve Barr in an attempt to break free from the status quo. Their battle is just one example of the charter school education revolt that’s erupting across the nation. Big Labor Ignores Free Trade Proponents From: The Heritage Foundation February 19, 2008 Big Labor Can't Handle the Truth About Colombia by James M. Roberts Full article To James M. Roberts The Heritage Foundation Excerpts: Members of Congress who oppose the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement (TPA) are hurting the very people they claim to be protecting--workers and their families in the United States and Colombia. Not surprisingly, Big Labor is the driving force behind the opposition to freer trade. To counter the Bush Administration's push for a floor vote on the TPA by April, AFL-CIO Executive Linda Chávez-Thompson led a "fact-finding" mission to Colombia in mid-February, which included Communications Workers of America President Larry Cohen and United Steelworkers counsel Dan Kovalik, to "gather information to inform the debate over the proposed trade agreement."[1] Contrary to the propaganda of special interests, the U.S.-Colombia TPA would help the economies of both countries. Failure to ratify would damage the United States' reputation in the region, would hinder progress in the war on drugs, and could push Colombia toward the embrace of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Congress should put national security ahead of partisan politics and ratify the U.S.-Colombia TPA. ### From: LaborPains.org Full article Go to Labor Pains.Org Excerpts: In its rush to collect money from people not yet unionized, Working America, the AFL-CIO’s “community affiliate,” employs some shady characters. As a report from The Independent in Ohio indicates, the group appears to flagrantly disregard laws designed to protect public safety. Wayne C. Christopher, 48, was arrested in Canal Fulton in eastern Ohio for soliciting Working America memberships in a residential area without a permit, having apparently violated a law “meant to protect residents from criminals who may be casing homes and neighborhoods.” So what threat did this Working America canvasser present? Well, he faces two open arrest warrants in Cleveland, “has convictions for rape, felonious sexual penetration and pandering obscenity and is a tier-three registered sex offender.” Full article To Center For Union Facts Excerpts: Clintonites Allege Union Dirty Tricks Hillary Clinton’s campaign is crying foul over alleged voter intimidation in Nevada, after two workers reported that the Culinary Workers Union — one of the most powerful unions in the state and a division of UNITE HERE — intimidated them to vote for Obama. That got former National Economic Council Director Larry Lindsey thinking that maybe Clinton would come to terms with her endorsement of the terribly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. Lindsey wrote in this morning’s Washington Post: I wonder if, having seen such voter intimidation, the Clinton campaign will change its position on doing away with government-supervised secret-ballot elections for union representation. Under the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act, secret-ballot elections to decide whether a plant is unionized would be replaced with a public “card check” system, under which both employers and union organizers would know how each worker voted. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama and former senator John Edwards all support this bill. From: Club For Growth Blog To Club For Growth January 31, 2008 News Alert! Press Release NEWS ALERT: Left-Wing Labor Union Attempts to Rescue Wayne Gilchrest Washington – On the off chance that you had any doubt about Wayne Gilchrest’s liberal record, all doubts can be safely put to rest. Wayne Gilchrest is so liberal—and so desperate to get reelected—the extreme left-wing labor Union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is funding a television ad on his behalf. A press release yesterday states that Republicans Who Care, a sham group fronting for the SEIU, is running an ad attacking Rep. Gilchrest’s conservative challenger, State Senator Andy Harris. But a recent FEC filing shows that the entire $180,000 ad buy was funded by the left-wing Service Employees International Union—the same union that tried to help John Kerry win the 2004 presidential election. In addition to John Kerry, the SEIU has supported the campaigns of such liberal Democrats as: Presidential candidate Howard Dean; Senators Ben Cardin; Tom Daschle; Harry Reid; Chuck Schumer; Barbara Mikulski; and Russ Feingold; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; Rep. Dennis Kucinich; Rep. Steny Hoyer; Rep. Charles Rangel; and self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders. “In other words,” said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey, “Wayne Gilchrest has more in common with John Kerry, Tom Daschle, and Nancy Pelosi than Republicans in Maryland’s First Congressional District.” To make matters worse, the ad is completely disingenuous, attacking Andy Harris’s spending record , when Wayne Gilchrest has been a reliable and notorious supporter of pork in the U.S. Congress. This year alone, Gilchrest voted to fund such outrageous pork projects as California’s Mule and Packer Museum; a Texas zoo; a South Carolina aquarium; a jazz museum; and Maine’s Lobster Institute. In contrast, Harris is a true fiscal conservative who voted against 6 out of 9 state budgets because they spent too much of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars. “On the campaign trail, Wayne Gilchrest claims that he is a conservative, but it is clear that he doesn’t even come close,” Mr. Toomey continued. “Wayne Gilchrest is not a conservative, and one has to wonder how Rep. Gilchrest can even call himself a Republican when the same labor union that supported John Kerry and Howard Dean is funding his reelection effort.” From CapitalResearch.Org Press Release Hands in the Cookie Jar
December 20, 2007 Contact: Larry Farnsworth (202) 232-6574 lfarnsworth@crosbyvolmer.com Union Leaders Caught with their Hands in the Cookie Jar Today’s Convictions Show the Need for More Union Accountability Full article To Capital Research.Org Excerpts Washington, DC – The Department of Labor’s union watchdog office, the Office of Labor and Management Standards (OLMS), today announced the conviction of nine union members found guilty of embezzling union funds and the courts have ordered restitutions totaling over $488 thousand dollars.
The Capital Research Center (CRC) which tracks labor union activity recently held a roundtable summit in Washington with conservative thought leaders from around the country. All in attendance agreed on one thing: Labor Unions cannot be given a free pass, particularly when sitting on billions of dollars of their member’s dues.
One of CRC’s monthly publications, Labor Watch, covers this very topic in its upcoming January 2008 edition. Author Michael Reitz accounts for the efforts of the Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to maintain the current structure of the OLMS. However she has been challenged by liberals in Congress who, fresh off of their victory in the 2006 elections which was made possible with substantial donations from labor unions; have worked to cut the funding of the very agency that is supposed to be making sure labor unions are accountable. From LaborPains.Org Unions’ Next Corporate Campaign: Sadistic Santa’s SweatshopCongress & Labor’s 2007 Hijinks: A Review In his syndicated column summarizing Congress’s “achievements” in 2007, writer George Will includes this round-up of what was done on behalf of organized labor: Bruce Raynor, president of the union Unite Here, expressed organized labor’s compassionate liberalism when he urged sparing workers the burden of democracy: “There’s no reason to subject workers to an election.” The House agreed, voting for “card check” organizing that strips workers of their right to a secret ballot when deciding for or against unionization of their workplace. Senate Republicans blocked this, but the Senate Democrats voted to cripple the Department of Labor agency that requires union bosses to explain how they spend their members’ money. From: National Legal and Policy Center GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES (AFGE) Arizona Former Local President Sentenced for Embezzlement On December 14, Josefina Suarez Gonzalez, ex-president of AFGE Local 1662, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona to five years probation and ordered to pay $27,405 to her union. Gonzalez had pleaded guilty back in June to one count of embezzling union funds following an indictment back in October 2004. The union represents employees at the Brown & Root Logistics facility at Fort Huachuca Army Base, not far from Tucson. The sentencing follows an investigation by the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards. (OLMS, 12/23/06). To Visit that site go to: National Legal and Policy Center National Legal and Policy Center December 4, 2007 ALLIED-INDUSTRIAL WORKERS (PACE) To Visit That Site Go To: National Legal and Policy Center Local President in Tennessee Pleads Guilty to Embezzlement On October 29, Ron Schweitzer, former president of Local 1967 of the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (PACE), pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee to one count of embezzling $58,305 in union funds. He had been indicted in April. PACE merged with the United Steelworkers of America in 2005. The union is now known as Local 05-1967, and at the time of the theft had been based in Ohio. (OLMS, 11/10/07). From Center For Union Facts Don’t give thanks for trying to end workers’ secret ballots Sticking With It To SEIU? In New Hampshire, they’re wondering what they get for all the money they send to SEIU headquarters in Washington, D.C.: The SEA pays $1.6 million a year to be in the SEIU, according to the resolution passed to create the committee. At the same time, the resolution says, the SEIU’s 2005 split from the AFL-CIO has sparked a “loss of solidarity” with other unions in New Hampshire. “The real question is why are we spending that much money and what are we getting out of it,” said former SEA president Tim Decker, a co-sponsor of the resolution. After the split with the AFL-CIO, Decker said, the competition for fragments of the SEA grew fierce. “That means they can’t really protect us from other unions raiding us, other AFL-CIO unions,” he said.
LaborPains.org is power Unions Thursday, November 21, 2007 From Center For Union Facts http://laborpains.org/?p=690">Labor Pains.Org Hillary’s Uniform Support for Teachers Unions The Associated Press reports that yesterday Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told an assemblage of Iowa teachers that paying them according to their performance “could be demeaning and discouraging.” Clinton also fretted about “who would decide” which teachers would receive merit bonuses. This is leadership? Paying teachers more for teaching well is a pretty clear way to improve teacher quality, which pretty clearly affects the quality of a kid’s learning. Teachers unions don’t like the idea for a variety of reasons (and Clinton needs their political machines to keep her “inevitability” up), including the reason that teachers paid like professionals (i.e., according to individual performance) might see less need for a union to bargain on their collective behalf. Fortunately for schoolkids suffering from a lack of quality teachers, however, Clinton did boldly propose a way out of America’s educational morass: school uniforms. As my fellow blogger Bret puts it, you can dress up Clinton’s plans for reform however you like, but it is a naked attempt to protect entrenched union power. Unions Thursday, November 18, 2007 Berkeley Business Sees the Light You don’t hear about many business-minded folks operating out of Berkeley, California, but there are indeed some. One couple that makes lighting fixtures there, though, has been blinded by a thuggish union organizing drive by the honest-to-badness Socialists from the IWW (aka the Wobblies). Here are the details of the ongoing picket, according to an opinion piece in the Daily Planet: And the accusations from the picketers? Union busting, lockouts, ageism, toxic waste exposure, unsafe working conditions, unfair wages… you will see that these were all fabricated to support a plot which brings new meaning to the words “hostile takeover.” So, union busting. What would you do if several of your workers walked into a staff meeting one morning with a representative from the Industrial Workers of the World and announced that your store was now under their aegis? No discussion, no election, no communication with the National Labor Relations Board, no card check, no indication that the other employees wanted to join? What if they demanded a 100 percent wage increase? How about if they demanded that employment be unconditional—no performance requirements whatsoever? Amazingly, each of these things really happened. That’s bad enough, but the author offers an important reminder that the very purpose of the IWW is to “organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, (and) abolish the wage system…” Like many modern organizing campaigns, the Planet article’s author realizes: “Yes, the true intention of the pickets is not to improve their working situation; it is to take over Metro Lighting, or to drive them out of business trying.” This entry posted on Friday, November 16th, 2007 at 4:12 pm by Bret Jacobson and tagged as Anti-Corporate Campaigns.Digg this post! Unions Thursday, November 15, 2007 by Bret Jacobson Understanding RICO 2.0 Thursday, November 8th, 2007 by Bret Jacobson This morning, the Washington Times carries an op-ed from the Center for Union Facts. In our piece, we explain the burgeoning trend of employers fighting back against union’s allegedly extortionate tactics. Here’s a bit: … as times have changed, so has the style of union extortion. These days, it’s less about how a company unloads goods at a port than it is about how the company is perceived in the world of the Internet. With competitors and customers just a click away, billion-dollar brands can be shattered overnight. As older and slower union officials stalked their prey in mature heavy industries, their younger counterparts began devising ways to use leverage in the new world of business by exposing companies to new electronic-harassment campaigns. Union officials have set up Web sites mocking company names, and blogs regurgitate any blip of bad news. They use social-networking sites and text messages to coordinate demonstrations. They plaster YouTube with one-sided, and often misleading, videos of their protests and complaints. The latest RICO cases, filed recently by the Wackenhut Corporation and Smithfield Foods, allege that union bosses have used new media tools to carry out a new style of attack: multiyear, multimillion-dollar campaigns targeting company brands and causing a steady stream of trouble for employees and shareholders alike. The threat has been building for years, but the response is just underway now. Employers and policymakers alike will need to keep a close eye on these lawsuits. UPDATE: More evidence that execs are increasingly fed up with this style of reputational warfare. Reuters reports that a top private equity official is calling SEIU’s rhetoric for what it is: A large union’s efforts at criticizing Carlyle Group and its purchase of nursing home Manor Care is aimed at unionizing employees and not improving patients’ health care, Carlyle Co-Founder David Rubenstein said on Wednesday. Rubenstein’s comments will likely fan the flames between the private equity giant and the workers union, which have grown in recent weeks as the union steps up its protest of the firm and the entire private equity industry. “The SEIU is not happy that 60,000 workers at the company aren’t unionized. They’re campaigning and saying the health care will not be adequate. That isn’t true, in my view,” Rubenstein said, speaking at The Deal’s 2008 M&A Outlook conference in New York. “It’s really an effort to increase unionization, and not so much to worry about patients’ health care.” Tagged as Crime & Corruption, SEIU, UFCW | Digg this post! | Del.ici.ous this post! Dues Money - Accountability = Long Beach Teachers Union Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007 by Jon Berry The Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) is having problems. A majority of the teachers union’s board members allege that the union’s President and its Executive Director have engaged in a variety of misdeeds, such as: * Refusing to hand over financial documents for board scrutiny — TALB Executive Director Scott McVarish allegedly agreed to let a board-hired copier technician photocopy the union’s financial records, but kicked him out of the union office before he could finish * The president’s refusing “to acknowledge nine directors on the board … to consider their properly made motions, their votes and even their presence” * Presenting a TALB-hired attorney’s legal opinion on changing the union constitution (to give the president more power) as if it were an opinion from the California Teachers Association, TALB’s parent union * Using tens of thousands of dues dollars to pay for vote recounts for TALB employees who were running for political office in Long Beach (the expenditures were counted as “bargaining” expenses by the union so that teachers who had chosen not to support the union’s politicking were forced to pay for it anyway) * Filing inaccurate financial reports to cover deficit spending that may leave the union as much as $100,000 in the hole No indictments yet, but we won’t be surprised when/if it happens. SEIU’s Quid Pro Ohio Service Employees International Union (SEIU) The Associated Press has unearthed troubling political goings-on in Ohio, where Governor ted Strickland apparently bent over backwards to accommodate his political backers from the Service Employees International Union. The AP reports: SEIU donated $90,000 to Strickland’s gubernatorial campaign last year, a portion of the $2 million it has given statewide to Democratic party committees and [more...] Full Article: Do you know any former prisoners of war (POW'S) or their family members? If so, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) needs your help. VA is once again reaching out to former prisoners of war not currently using VA benefits and services, urging them to contact the Department to find out if they are eligible for health care, disability compensation and other services. #### In Washington State, another reminder that the union-funded group known as ACORN keeps bumping up against legal trouble during elections. A man will get 30 days of detention for submitting false voter registrations, and: Olson was one of seven workers for a 2006 voter-registration drive conducted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, who were indicted in July on charges that they made up names of voters, forged signatures and turned in bogus registrations to elections officials in Seattle … Two other ACORN workers — Tina Johnson of Tacoma and Jayson Woods of Elkridge, Md. — have pleaded guilty and await sentencing. The cases against the other defendants are pending Union Facts: Affleck Gets Panned center>From: Center For Union Facts The folks at the Boston Herald were kind enough to publish our letter to the editor regarding Ben Affleck’s foray into union activism. In part, we said: Affleck as union front-man is not just another ridiculous role; his script is a dangerous one as it undermines employee rights. Whenever Affleck makes his quixotic attempt for elected office, he will expect (I’d hope) that the voters would choose or reject him based on a secret ballot vote. Hospital workers deserve the same opportunity, without union - or celebrity - coercion. More California Dreamin: A Card Check Win! Congratulations are due California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as well as all farm workers, after the Termination of SB 180, which would have ended secret ballot elections for the state’s farm workers. It’s the first step in the national fight over securing workplace democracy and defeating the Orwellian named “Employee Free Choice Act.” UPDATE: From NAM’s blog: Congratulations to the Governor for vetoing that last bill, which would have deprived farmworkers of their right to determine their association via secret ballot. Cesar Chavez fought long and hard for the secret ballot, but organized labor now finds it inconvenient. This entry posted on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 11:26 am by Bret Jacobson and tagged as Ending Secret Ballots.Digg this post! “Somebody’s got to stand up and represent the kids of this country” Towards the end of an appearance on the Hugh Hewitt show, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney had a few words to say about what a teachers union endorsement means these days: Hugh Hewitt: [Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton] picked up the endorsement of a teachers’ union today. I’m not sure if it’s the NTEU or the American Federation of Teachers. Your reaction to that, Governor Romney? What’s it tell you about what the teacher unions think about politics at the national level? Mitt Romney: Well, no surprise, of course, that the teachers unions are going to get behind the Democrats in this regard, and I have no beef with unions generally. But there are good unions and bad unions. And the teachers unions at the national level are so focused on their members that they’re forgetting that the first responsibility of an elected official is to be caring about the kids. And somebody’s got to stand up and represent the kids of this country, not just the teachers unions… Dues Money - Accountability = Long Beach Teachers Union The Teachers Association of Long Beach (TALB) is having problems. A majority of the teachers union’s board members allege that the union’s President and its Executive Director have engaged in a variety of misdeeds, such as: * Refusing to hand over financial documents for board scrutiny — TALB Executive Director Scott McVarish allegedly agreed to let a board-hired copier technician photocopy the union’s financial records, but kicked him out of the union office before he could finish * The president’s refusing “to acknowledge nine directors on the board … to consider their properly made motions, their votes and even their presence” * Presenting a TALB-hired attorney’s legal opinion on changing the union constitution (to give the president more power) as if it were an opinion from the California Teachers Association, TALB’s parent union * Using tens of thousands of dues dollars to pay for vote recounts for TALB employees who were running for political office in Long Beach (the expenditures were counted as “bargaining” expenses by the union so that teachers who had chosen not to support the union’s politicking were forced to pay for it anyway) * Filing inaccurate financial reports to cover deficit spending that may leave the union as much as $100,000 in the hole Paying Good Teachers Well At first blush, examination of a new survey by the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington doesn’t bode well for the idea of paying teachers according to how their students perform: 60 percent of Washington State public school teachers “strongly oppose” merit pay, and another 22 percent “somewhat oppose it.” Among the study’s findings, however, was this interesting result: “to the degree that teachers have confidence in their principal, they appear more willing to support merit pay.” It’s simple: Trustworthy principals can be relied upon to make fair assessments of who is and who isn’t stepping up to give kids the education they need. And it’s lack of trust in school administrators that teachers unions cite when defending laws that keep principals’ hands tied on critical personnel issues like hiring, firing, and compensation. Improve the quality of principals, then, and you’ll see more teachers open to merit pay (which will in turn improve teacher quality). The only sticking point is that the very same union-supported policies (tenure, seniority-based pay) that insulate teachers from bad administrators also protect those bad administrators from getting fired! Click here for an unfortunate story along these lines. It’s true that there are many bad administrators in schools. The teachers unions will tell you that the solution is to strip them of managerial discretion in determining teachers’ salaries and to make it practically impossible to fire teachers, even the bad ones. That kind of stalemate is no solution at all. We’ve yet to hear of a union leader proposing that it might be better to drop these ridiculous “protections” (which only advance the interests of bad teachers and bad administrators, never schoolkids) and let school districts start acting like every other workplace in the country. THIS WOULDN'T BE CALLED UNION THUGGERY WOULD IT? UFCW to Members: “we can and will retaliate” Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 by Bret Jacobson Call it what you like: clear, concise … maniacal. We just came across a letter (predating the Center for Union Facts’ existence) illustrating how UFCW officials view their members. Described by labor reformers this Sunday as “recent,” it carries the signature of UFCW 324 president Greg Conger, who has been mentioned on our blog before for his dubious representation of members. UFCW’s message to members considering their rights to distance themselves from the union ahead of potentially destructive strikes: “we can and will retaliate.” The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s the heart(lessness) of the letter: While we have not yet established any picket lines, you can rest assured that if you, or any other employee, should cross a Local 324 picket line at any struck or locked out store, we can and will retaliate. You have our guarantee that Local 324 will retaliate and discriminate against any of our members (including “dues paying only” members) who scab in the following ways: 1. This Union will fine you for crossing the picket line and, if you do not pay, this Union will sue you in State Court to collect the fine and our attorney’s fees; 2. This Union will put you on trial for your misconduct before a special Trial Board, consisting of your fellow members, that will be established to punish scabs; 3. This union will publicize what you are doing by publishing your name, and the fact that you are a scab, on the front page of its newspaper, which is mailed to all of our members; 4. This Union will send a letter informing all of our members that you are a scab; and/or 5. This union will place your name on an “Official Scab List” and will post that list on every Union bulletin board in our jurisdiction. From: National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation, Inc. 16 Year-Old Girl Hits Union Officials with Federal Charges After Illegal Threats Against Her Albertsons Job Union officials demand grocery employee’s termination after misinforming her that formal union membership was a job requirement Excerpts and Video Below San Diego, CA (August 7, 2007) – A local employee of Albertsons, Inc. filed federal charges against the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 135 union after union officials unlawfully demanded she be fired from her job unless she joined the union and paid full dues. Sixteen year-old high-school student, Danielle Cookson, a front courtesy clerk for the grocery giant, obtained free legal assistance from attorneys at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The federal charges highlight that UFCW Local 135 union officials are failing to respect employees legal rights and requiring them to join and pay dues to the union as a job condition. In late July, UFCW Local 135 union officials sent a “termination notification” letter to Albertsons requesting Cookson be fired from her position. In their demand, union officials ordered Cookson to pay the forced dues within seven days of the notification, or else she would be removed from the schedule and terminated. From The Center For Union Facts Final Scorecard: No Union, 1,036 - UFCW, 2 Remember the recent story we mentioned about some nurses who weren’t happy with the idea of being represented by either SEIU or UFCW? There are new details today, and we think it’s worth noting. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports: St. John’s nurses had three choices. They could vote for continued representation by their current union, the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 655, or switch to Service Employees International Union, a union supported by the UFCW, or for “neither,” meaning they would have no union representation. A total of 1,036 of St. John’s nurses voted for neither, 685 voted for SEIU and two voted for UFCW. The vote was ratified this week by the National Labor Relations Board. That’s 1,036 people who were unhappy with their current union and two — 2! — who were happy. That’s not all, though. There is a powerful story about the power of union officials to compel their members to pay for “services.” As the Post-Dispatch reports: The results were not a complete surprise. St. John’s nurses accepted an “open shop” clause in their contract in 2005, which means they could opt out of paying union dues. Only about a fifth of the nurses continued paying dues, though the union represented them all. From: Labor Pains.Org Teamsters, Ten Years On … August 22nd, 2007 by Bret Jacobson Ten years ago today: A federal official threw out the contentious Teamsters election because of alleged campaign fund-raising abuses, forcing union President Ron Carey into another race against James P. Hoffa. Most people don’t remember how this scheme worked. The short answer: Carey’s team sent union member money out to “get out the vote” groups for the country’s presidential campaign, which then laundered money back to his internal union re-election campaign. Bonus: one of the groups involved is the ACORN-run “Project Vote,” which continues to run into alleged voter registration fraud all over the map. Double bonus, from Wikipedia: “In 2007, Ron Carey was researching and writing a book based on his experiences. He is critical of the policies of his successor, Hoffa, particulary centralization of authority, business-model organizing, and the restoration of multiple salaries for IBT officials.” From: National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Federal Board to Prosecute Butte-Based Union for Illegal Threats and Dues Seizures at Local Safeway Union officials unlawfully threatened termination and rejected employee resignations from formal union membership Excerpt: Butte, MT (August 6, 2007) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has agreed to prosecute the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 4 union for illegally seizing forced union dues from multiple Safeway employees’ paychecks, unlawfully threatening termination, and rejecting requests to resign from formal union membership. With help from attorneys at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Safeway Inc. (NYSE: SWY) employees Gerald Rasmussen and Carla Crandall originally filed federal charges against the UFCW Local 4 union in April and May, respectively. After an initial investigation, the NLRB combined the complaints into one case and scheduled a hearing for September 2007 to prosecute the union. The employees’ original charges cite that UFCW Local 4 union officials are attempting to enforce a compulsory unionism clause requiring employees to join or pay dues to the union or be fired from their jobs, despite a formal employee election recently stripping the union bosses of their forced unionism privileges. Full Article National Right To Work Legal Foundation Inc. The International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM) union Local 2424 officials backed down and settled federal labor charges pending against them, following challenges by employees unlawfully unionized by “card check,” Federal investigators found that union officials had violated the employees’ rights during card check organizing drive which bypassed the secret-ballot election process. The National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The NLRB charges detailed multiple union violations of the employees’ rights, including "unionizing employees who did not support the union, unlawfully transferring these employees into a union bargaining unit, and threatening employees with termination if they did not join the union." National Right To Work Legal Foundation Inc. Labor Secretary Chao Opposes Cuts to Union Oversight The Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) is the one government program Democrats want to cut. U.S. Labor Department, Secretary Elaine Chao is opposed to this cut. Unions are guilty of dozens of crimes and thousands of unfair labor practices including stealing millions of dollars of the dues of union members. Secretary Chao said" “Less than one-tenth of one percent of the department’s budget goes to OLMS, the one federal entity charged with protecting union members from union corruption, and it is the one singled out for budget cuts,” Charges of violating labor law from 1998 to 2004 Below are the number of Unfair Labor Practices filed against Just Four Well Known Unions Teamsters (IBT) -----------------------------6909 Service Employees International Union (SEIU)--3910 United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW)--2161 Steelworkers (USWA)-------------------------1912 ### Unions: Latest Report Democrats Join With Corrupt Union Officials The Department of Labor for the last several years has had the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) The work of the OLMS is to process and investigate financial disclosure reports required to be filed under the law byOrganized Labor. The work of this office in protecting dues paying union members has been excellent. The office posts all required reports from the union on line. Apparently because of the work of this office union compliance with reporting has improved 775 union thugs have been convicted of fraud, theft and various crimes and $70 million dollars of members' dues have been recovered. Now the House Democratic leadership is trying to undermine this office possibly even do away with it. The staff of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, headed by Senator Susan Colling (R) Maine discussed the looting of ULLICO by top union bosses. The scandal became known publicly over two years ago, yet no one has been prosecuted and no one knows why. ULLICO, formerly known as Unions Labor Life Insurance Company, is governed by 28 directors, almost all of whom are current or former union officials. Many of these directors were involved in a scheme in which $10.6 million was missing. It appears as though illegal stock trades were part of the scheme. The stock took a nosedive in 2000 and 2001. It is believed that seventeen of the twenty eight directors took part in the scheme. Carpenters president Douglas McCarron is accused of receiving $418,888, Plumbers president Marty Maddaloni $234,680, and Communications Workers president Morton Bahr $35,202. Previously the AFL-CIO had promoted its "No More Enrons" campaign, so the news of this scandal did not help that cause. ### Intimidation of workers, by unions, is a serious problem in America. The statistics citing union violations, criminal acts, embezzlement, and racketeering are shocking and revealing. There have been hundreds and hundreds of indictments and millions of dollars in fines. At the center of these investigations, findings and outcomes is the Department of Labor. UnionFacts.com reports the following among union leaders: Indictments FY 2001-98, FY 2002-166, FY 2003-132, FY 2004-109, FY 2005-114. Convictions FY 2001-102, FY 2002-90, FY 2003-152, FY 200-111, FY 2005-97. In 2005, unions were ordered by the courts to pay $23 million dollars plus for “victimizing union members and others.” It is the job of the INSPECTOR GENERAL of the Department of Labor, to oversee, among his other duties, cases of labor racketeering. The IG of that department has been kept quite busy with the task of dealing with union officials who have shown that greed, corruption and mismanagement of union dues is part of their modus operandi. Information from the FBI, states that of the last eight Teamsters presidents, four have been criminally indicted. Now the Democratic Party-beholden to union bosses and union contributions has just voted in favor of removing the secret ballot from workers. Not all news on unions is bad news, we will try to find positive news about unions that serve their workers and America in a positive fashion. Stay Tuned.
FY 2001 Indictments 161 Convictions 92 FY 2002 Indictments 218 Convictions 154 FY 2002 Indictments 181 Convictions 120 FY 2002 Indictments 260 Convictions 143 FY 2002 Indictments 322 Convictions 196 Fines, restitutions, forfeitures, & civil monetary actions FY 2001 $42.5 million FY 2002 $105.9 million FY 2003 $27.9 million FY 2004 $36.5 million FY 2005 $187.9 million Source: Department of Labor Office of Inspector General On July 22, 1993, Eddie York was shot in the back of the head. Eddie York's sin was that he happened to be driving past militant UMW strikers in the area of a work site. He died instantly. Would -be resuers were pummeled with stones by workers from the United Mine Workers. Richard Trumka,President of the UMW reacted by what seemed to be a suggestion that employees deserve what they get, if they work during a strike. Mr. Trumka's quote was "I'm saying if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you're going to burn your finger." The following is information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act relates to abuse by labor leaders. Since 2000, the complaints against labor unions numbers 13,815 relating to discrimination Some listed below include: 4,248 complaints of race discrimination 3,386 complaints of age discrimination 1,820 complaints of sex discrimination 1,642 complaints of disability discrimination 297 complaints of religious discrimination Other Information On Union Crime and Fraud The following headline appeared on the site LaborPains.org Newark Teachers Union Threatens to “Smash Your F***ing Head in” Workers from LaborPains.org recently visited the headquarters of the Newark [New Jersey] Teachers Union Headquarters. The workers were there to pick up copies of the most recent tax documents. The Internal Revenue service has a requirement that labor unions must turn over their tax documents for public inspection upon “request” Anyone who goes in person and asks for the forms is entitled to receive copies the same business day. Near the top of the form on the right side, sitting boldly and prominently are the words “open to public inspection.” According to the person from LaborPains.org, he politely asked for a copy of the NTU’s form and was told ““If I smash your f***ing head in with this toolbox, nothing would happen to me. I’d have a blanket and a cup of coffee, and be out [of jail] in half an hour.” Barbara Bullock was president of the Washington Teachers Union from 1994 to 2003. She was forced out after it became known that she had embezzled millions from the Washington Teachers Union. She apparently spent $1.8 million using unauthorized credit cards and hundreds of thousands in other illegal payments. Ms. Bullock's aide, Gwendolyn Hemphill, spent $492,000 in unauthorized credit card charges and checks. United Food and Commercial Workers-----2161 Teamsters -----6909 Service Employees International Union--3910 Steelworkers --1912 Unions: Washington Teachers Crime
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