Unions

His Mightiness the Empty Suit, in the getting-dingier-by-the-day White House, is constantly holding forth, sagely saying NOTHING in front of gaggles of “journalists”, who dutifully report NOTHING, while the would be NEO-STAZI in the Suit’s administration attack the only news and information outlets that do say SOMETHING about what the President, the administration and that zany and dysfunctional but extremely dangerous Congress, led by Nancy “Stretch” Pelosi and that ever popular Harry “I ain’t got a prayer of re-election” Reid, are up to. While the people of America continue to suffer the throes of a completely jobless “recovery”, with a recession that shows every indication of being worse despite what all the liberal pitchmen in the administration and the media lapdogs are saying. The FACTS are that there are no jobs and the REASON that there are no jobs is that small business is scared to death. The government has a plethora of more than onerous taxation, regulation and punitive laws waiting in the wings, custom designed to destroy the private sector. Job growth does not come from unionized segments of the society and hasn’t since the days of Henry Ford. Trade unionism is a cancer which can destroy. Trade unionism destroyed Great Britain’s economy and it hasn’t recovered to this day. Unions by their very nature are antithetical to GROWING anything…they produce very little other than protecting their own interests. They have a tendency toward protecting the least well qualified as opposed to the most…the government unions are a prime example. The service and automobile industry unions are others. Meanwhile, the stock market continues to show increases in value. WHAT gives? Simply, they are increasing profit margins by laying people off and consolidating operations. Job growth comes from private business…in the larger context of the economy large business does not create nearly as many jobs as the small business entrepreneur. These jobs are not being created specifically because of the anti-business, anti-American policies of the Obama White House and the Marxist Obama administration and Congress. 500,000 new jobless claims is 500,000 JOBS LOST TO THE OBAMA ECONOMY. He can’t blame the Bush administration for this and hasn’t been able to for six months or more. Suspicious minds would conclude that there are more sinister activities and purposes afoot here than our usually trusting minds can easily wrap themselves around…or want to believe…

Semper Vigilans, Semper Fidelis

© Skip MacLure 2009

This week you can probably expect a big push in the media for the cynically misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (Card Check), which I've written on before. One element of that push which will be getting coverage is an article by Seth Michaels on the AFL-CIO Now blog which heralds the fact that:

"A coalition of major investors who oversee more than $750 billion in assets is joining the fight for workers’ freedom to form unions by asking major corporations what they’re doing to protect and enhance the ability of workers to form unions."

Wow, that sounds pretty serious. That's a lot of investment money. It must mean that stockholders and important players on Wall Street are really concerned about making sure that unions can bully workers into joining by taking away their right to a secret ballot.

In fact, stockholders and major investment groups have not actually taken leave of their senses and decided it would be great to further burden businesses with rapacious union interference in our current harsh economy. What you actually have here is a classic example of how propagandists can use legtimate seeming sources to support their positions and create the impression of a popular movement or widespread support where it does not actually exist.

In the article there is a link to a press release from Domini Social Investments which further heralds this letter which has been sent to various Fortune 100 companies in support of EFCA by a group of "major institutional investors" controlling $757 billion in assets.

The effort here is to create an impression of widespread support in the financial community for Card Check. The core deception in this propaganda effort is that the letter is actually signed by a very limited group dominated by investors controlled by or closely associated with the unions promoting the legislation. The major signers on the letter are actually mostly international union pension funds or organizations representing union pension fund managers. Also signing the letter are a variety of specialty investment groups which invest in "socially responsible" businesses (unionized businesses), but they control only a small fraction of that $757 billion in assets and they are on the list mainly as a smokescreen for the union-controlled investment groups who hold the vast majority of the assets referred to.

In fact, the top signer on the list and the one with the largest assets is the AFL-CIO Employees Staff Retirement Fund, so the AFL-CIO is using their blog to promote this letter from "a coalition of major investors" without bothering to point out that they themselves are the major investors in question. Everything in the article is true as written, but the appearance that the unions have found major allies in the investment community for Card Check is entirely deceptive. The progressive angels of Wall Street who have joined them in their fight turn out just to be the unions themselves in a not very clever disguise.

What's more, the letter itself is hardly the clarion cry for EFCA which the AFL-CIO would have you believe. The letter actually makes an effort to look like it originates with the UNPRI a United Nations labor practices workgroup. The letter also does not actually endorse EFCA in any way as the AFL-CIO website suggests, but actually just solicits companies for their input on various labor issues. The letter says clearly:

"Please note that, although individual investors represented in this letter may have taken a view on the legislation, the group as a whole has itself not formulated an official position."

In reality the UNPRI and perhaps even many of the signers on the letter don't actually support Card Check at all. The letter also describes what policy towards unions and workers rights ought to be:

“The freedom to form or join a union of one’s choice or not, and to bargain collectively for the terms of one’s employment, are fundamental human rights that we as global investors recognize and respect.”

Who could disagree with that statement? It's broad enough that almost anyone would sign off on it, and would apply to the position of those who oppose the EFCA as well as those who support it. In fact, the main argument against Card Check is that it limits worker freedom to join unions by taking away the secret ballot which protects their free choice. So it could very well be that many of the signatories oppose the EFCA and it's certainly true that the group as a whole has not take a position on it and the letter is not an endorsement of it.

The letter actually seems to originate with a company called Boston Common Asset Management which like many of those signing the letter is a strange amalgem of investment firm and advocacy group. They're a worker owned collective which manages "socially responsible" investments, but seems to devote more of their time to lobbying for and promoting various left-wing causes. This business model raises all sorts of questions, like where they get the money to fund their advocacy work and how much of their customer base and revenue comes from union sources. Adding to my suspicions is that what appears to be the draft version of a similar letter to selected congressmen clearly originated on the AFL-CIO site, suggesting that these letters are being written by the union and passed on to these other groups for publication. Further research may turn up more evidence, but looking at the websites of these "social investing" groups I find it hard to believe that they could attract a great deal of money from legitimate private investors. My suspicious nature makes me wonder whether any of the groups signing the letter represent anyone other than domestic and international union interests.

What this example shows us is that when you have enough money and resources you can effectively generate your own news. Your shills issue a letter, you then hail that letter in your own publicity as a newsworthy event, you misrepresent it to make it seem more significant than it is, and then with any luck the compliant media picks up on it. With the letter released on Thursday, we'll see if that happens this coming week.

Meanwhile, in contrast with the score of shills advocating Card Check in this letter, 3100 businesses have sent their own letter to Congress opposing the passage of EFCA.

We've talked about it several times here on the blog; the hostile takeover of smaller unions. It has been Andy Stern's main modus operandi (President of the Service Employees International Union or SEIU). The idea is to roll into the territory of a local, smaller union, make back room deals with the employers to get their assistance, and then lead a forced take over of that smaller union eventually to vote it out of existence. Thereby the little unions that might stand in the way of the mega unions are eliminated and the mega unions now controlling everything from the top down get more even more massive.

It's a perfectly legitimate strategy, of course... except for the fact that it makes the lie to every purported "principle" that unions claim to have. Local control becomes dashed and democracy summarily eliminate, yet local control and democratic process are the central themes of unionism. Without them they are little different than the supposedly evil corporate maters bent on domination that union claim their employers are. If a union member cannot feel that his local representatives are actually there for him then that impersonal attitude is no different than uncaring masters of industry.

Yet, this strong-arm takeovers of smaller unions is the current rage among big unions. And it is being noticed.

Last week there was a big pow wow of 12 of the nation's biggest unions. They mean to join together to work toward enlarging unionism in the American workplace. But the smaller unions are balking because they know that the larger the union group is the more chance they will be eliminated.

The 12 could not agree upon a plan to create a governing council and one of the reasons is power.

The larger unions want to create a powerful executive committee, and one divisive issue is how much power medium-size and small unions would have. The small unions oppose demands that they be forced to merge into larger unions.

And they are right, too. If this council or umbrella organization is created it will naturally tend to aggregate more and more power unto itself and that power WILL tend to eliminate smaller, weaker entities.

If unions start such an group, small unions are doomed. And, we will see that unions aren't at all interested in democracy or local control. They are only interested in amassing power, the sort of power that will corrupt unions hopelessly.

Let's hope these smaller unions are smart enough to understand that.

Be sure and Visit my Home blog Publius' Forum. It's what's happening NOW!

President-elect Barack Obama has laid out a plan to “create or save” three million jobs during his first two years in office. His plan is to increase government spending, deficit be damned, by at least $775 billion dollars over that same period. While the projects he plans to invest in are things that we Americans can all use, the stimulus plan will be a flop. Here’s how I got here:

Let’s start with the money. Obama plans to increase government spending without any increases in taxes, so that negates his use of PAYGO budgeting. At the same time, the total amount of money per job that he creates or saves will come out to more than $258,333 per job. There are business executives who don’t even make this money for their job, yet Obama, who has never held a private sector job in his lifetime figures the cost of a job to “create or save” at more than one quarter of a million dollars.

Any reasonable businessperson, like myself, will tell you that if it cost that much money to save a job, we would rather sooner terminate the job immediately. The problem here is that Obama and the other people in government have no real concept of what it costs to run a business, generally speaking. The purpose of a business is not to make customers happy or to employ as many people as possible. The end goal of a business is maximizing their profits and making their shareholders money. Those who do not live by that mantra of making money for the company and stockholders quickly go out of business.

The two things that the average person on the street does not realize are how much one billion is and how much one trillion is.  For the concept of one billion dollars, imagine that on the day of the birth of Jesus Christ you were given one billion dollars and had to spend $1,000 each day onward while gaining no interest, you would be still be spending money for at least the next 700 years.  By comparison, one trillion dollars is one thousand times one billion.

Second, according to the CIA Factbook, the current Gross Domestic Product (GDP, or the total value of all goods and services produced inside the borders of the United States) currently sits at $14.334 trillion. In other words the stimulus is only 5.4 percent of GDP. From here, that percentage goes down fast.

In the Highway Spending Bill that Congress recently passed, less than 26 percent of that money was spent within the first fiscal year. If this holds true, it then means that a value of less than one-and-a-half percent of the nation’s GDP will be infused in to the economy within the first fiscal year of the stimulus bill’s existence. For an economy that will be going in to a deep recession throughout 2009, this does not bode well for Obama.

The end result is an increase in inflation thanks to the increase of the deficit to a level that will approach or exceed two trillion dollars this fiscal year and a slow-to-respond stimulus bill that will actually, when implemented, cause the death of many jobs.

However, that is only half the story about Obama’s economic plans for America. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to get Obama to sign the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) which is Orwellian by name, but will cause considerable damage when implemented and enforced. Barring a miraculous filibuster by the Republicans in the Senate, America’s workforce will become unionized and small businesses will close their doors.

What’s more is that the unions will get the ultimate payback from the Democrats they helped get elected. Their membership and union dues received will increase which will give the unions considerable influence in American politics and with their membership. Also, the union bosses will be able to oversee how each of its members votes in a union election, bringing to an end the secret ballot. If the Senate Republicans cannot stop this bill, small businesses in the United States will either have to shell out more of their money to meet the demands of the unions or they will close their doors, or both.

If this comes in to play, the projections for an unemployment rate of nine percent will look good to Americans because the unemployment rate in the USA will be higher than at any time since Ronald Reagan’s first term following the horrific economic policies of Jimmy Carter. The only difference is that Reagan was able to lower the unemployment rate from its peak in December 1982 of 10.8 percent to 8.3 percent in December 1983 and ultimately to 7.2 percent the very month he won a 49-state landslide win against Walter Mondale. By contrast, Obama won his election with an inflation rate of 1.07 percent and an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent in November 2008.

Finally, research from economists at UCLA determined that the Great Depression lasted seven years longer because of the New Deal. Obama wants to implement the New New Deal almost from the moment he takes office. Considering that the double-digit unemployment rates did not end until 1943, this means that had the New Deal not been implemented by President Franklin Roosevelt, the Great Depression would have ended in 1936 leading to an easy reelection.

The reality is that Obama doesn’t have the luxuries that FDR had when he was President, yet he wants to take us back to the past with an economic policy that exacerbated and extended this long economic slump. If this plan flops (and it will), just like FDR, Obama will come back with a sequel of New New Deal II which will be used as a means to “save” his job during a time of economic distress.

If the Republicans are able to do anything, it will be to vote against the stimulus package and to attempt to block the EFCA. Should this happen, they will have the ability to say that these things are prolonging the economic crisis and that they fought it all the way. If not, they will be on the same side of the line as Obama and the Democrats in 2010 and again in 2012 which could pave the way for two terms of economic agony.

It’s almost crunch time and the Republicans need to fight the expansion of big government early and often, then turn around and use it as a means to defeat Obama and Obamaism when given the opportunities to do so in 2010 and 2012. If not, they will become a permanent minority party with previous successful Presidents like Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, and Ronald Reagan as distant memories of what was once great about America, but never will be again.

It’s time for the GOP to be ready to fight Barack Obama when he’s wrong (like on these matters) and Obamaism. 

Does everyone remember that scab Reagan? Good. Then you'll know what I'm referencing when I say that 20% of our air traffic controller workers have quit in the past eight years. It's a crazy job, keeping the planes in the air. But GOD FORBID they ask for a union.

INSTEAD,

Let's try mandatory overtime!

Let's try decreased pay!

Less Vacation!

Less Training!

(all screws tightened under our current president, I might add)

If you fly, your life is at stake. After hearing about this -- and I do know about doctors working 30 hour shifts! I might think twice before flying stateside. Yet another thing to thank Saint Reagan for, I guess.

you can thank me for this public service announcement after the next plane goes down.

And three cheers for the people who used their OWN cell phones to direct traffic since the recommended backups weren't even Installed in TN!

The hard reality is that the Big Three automakers could be facing bankruptcy if they don’t get a combined $14 billion in “loans” in order to stay in business and support their business model. However, the reality is that this is really a bailout of the United Autoworkers who need this bailout to keep their wages and benefits even as General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler go down the tubes.

Everyone has been talking about how we need manufacturing jobs and not bankruptcy of the Big Three. However, I will give you the reason why Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler need to pursue a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. I give you Delta Airlines.

As early as 2004 and in to 2005, Delta pursued cost-cutting measures that ended up cutting service, but did nothing for both executive pay and the pay received by union employees working for Delta. Everything came to a head with the company’s Chapter 11 filing on September 14, 2005 citing fuel prices and high labor costs.

While the company was in bankruptcy, unionized airline pilots took a cut in pay of 14 percent, executive officers took one of 15 percent, and CEO Gerald Grinstein took one of 25 percent. Also, the company laid off somewhere between 7,000 to 9,000 of the 52,000 employees.

On April 25, 2007, Delta had their bankruptcy strategy approved and emerged from bankruptcy five days later. This proves that a Chapter 11 filing will not kill a company, but restructure it so that it can function free of constraints from management and the unions and make a profit in order to stay viable.

According to the Heritage Foundation, GM, Ford, and Chrysler are paying $73.26, $70.51, and $75.86 in per-hour wages and benefits respectively. By comparison, the foreign carmakers like Toyota, BMW, Nissan, Honda, and Mercedes are profitable thanks to their locations in right-to-work states like Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina at a fraction of what the Big Three pay in wages and benefits. This does not include the new Kia plant that will employ 2,500 new autoworkers in West Point, Georgia at just $17 per hour in wages. On a side note, the average American makes only $25.36 per hour in the same category.

Business executives and owners (past and present) are irritated by the difference in the earnings between the two biggest car-selling companies in the world, GM and Toyota. Last year, both companies sold 9.37 million cars each. The difference became the labor costs with GM posting a loss of $38.7 billion (a loss of $4,130.20 per car sold) versus Toyota making a profit of $17.7 billion ($1,889.01 in profit per car sold). The Big Three are fighting a losing battle thanks to the UAW who wins if the bailout passes.

What would be simple to avoid any bankruptcy would be for both sides to agree to necessary pay cuts. The UAW isn’t willing to do it because they will lose all leverage in negotiating. Where are the CEO’s telling these union thug bosses that they can either have their jobs at a lower wage or have no jobs at no wages?

All of this has led to Americans losing sympathy for the unions, who have been noticeably absent in the media’s coverage of the ongoing behind-the-scenes work on the bailout. As it would turn out, there are reasons why the American people no longer want to support the unions.

First, more Americans work in white-collar jobs that pay higher wages and provide more benefits because of the skill and education required to obtain and keep those times of jobs. When Americans were making more money during the 1980’s during the Reagan years and the new types of business leaders that were making changes for the better while maintaining and increasing profitability, the sympathy for unionization went out the window and down the drain.

Second, there are the list of high-profile unions that have gone on strike and why they did. Consider that in my lifetime, the biggest strikes were in Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and the Screenwriters Guild. All of them wanted just one thing: more money.

When you have even the bluest of blue-collar workers being told to support millionaires on strike, even they begin starting to think the unions have outlived their usefulness. No longer are they fighting overbearing bosses, dangerous working conditions, or oppressive hours. The unions are fighting for the almighty dollar and for political influence and clout.

It’s time to tell the automakers to drop dead to force bankruptcy so that we can restructure the costs of the manufacturing sector so as to compete with the global economy. As long as we are bailing out failed companies in pro-union states thanks to the unions at the expense of taxpayers in successful right-to-work states, America will never be able to compete with the rest of the world.

The Left has a pretty consistent policy towards regulation: More, please; anytime, anywhere.  If there's a problem, it must be the job of government to regulate.

• NYTImes, 2001: "The union officials said they feared that Ms. Chao would adopt toothless, voluntary recommendations for American corporations that would fail to prevent the 1.8 million injuries estimated to be caused each year by repetitive motions."
• NYTimes, 2001: "But labor unions and many public- health advocates say federal regulations are needed because not all corporations can be trusted to protect workers."
• NYTImes, 2003: "Politicians score easy points by railing against big government and excessive federal regulations. But a three-part series in The Times this week by David Barstow and Lowell Bergman showed that workplace safety rules are in fact far too weak, and dramatically underenforced."

This must be those harmful consequences of deregulation.

The rate of workplace injuries and illnesses in private industry declined in 2007 for the sixth consecutive year, the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported today. Nonfatal workplace injuries and illnesses reported by private industry employers declined from 4.4 cases per 100 workers in 2006 to 4.2 cases in 2007.

And since miners are often invoked as a symbol of workplace safety problems, the record on mine safety for the past few decades...

There will be many sad and deplorable stories to come out of this bailout farce. One of them has been the brazen opportunism of the Labor Unions. The magnanimous bailout proposal from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) was, in fact, just a rent-seeking wish list.   Take this proposal, for instance:

An Economy That Works for Everyone

Following the longest period of wage stagnation in American history, we are in an era of historic income inequality. Between 1980 and 2004 CEO pay went up 700% -- but American workers’ wages saw little change.

By enacting The Employee Free Choice Act at no cost to taxpayers, government has the opportunity to set a framework for the private sector to ensure we have an economy that works for everyone—not just those at the top. American workers should have the chance to freely choose whether to join together in a union at their workplace so they gain a voice on the job, wages that support a family, and better benefits.

Never mind that the "wage stagnation" is largely a myth (among many other things, wages are only one part of total compensation). The Employee Free Choice Act (aka: Card Check) isn't about "free choice", it is about lower barriers for Union organizers. It is far easier for them to pressure people, on the spot, to sign a card than it is to persuade workers to sign a secret ballot.

You might expect that the SEIU would lobby to tilt the playing field to their advantage, but the really shocking thing is this: the SEIU claimed removing the secret ballot would cost $0.00.

Of course, we know what they really mean: it won’t cost the government anything; the costs of this regulation would come out of someone else’s hide.

That is a bailout alright, but it had nothing to do with the subprime mortgage problem. It was a cynical ploy to get the government to bail out the increasingly desperate unions.

One month ago today, the Wall Street Journal ran an opinion piece pointing out that the ironically-named Employee Free Choice Act actually makes it “more difficult for [Americans] not to join a union,” while states that resist this kind of regulation have higher growth in per-capita income, higher rates of job creation and lower unemployment.

This is far from an exception for the Unions.  Their ongoing lobbying for "green collar jobs" - which are generally just existing jobs that have been reclassified to benefit Unions - is a farce, as well;  the Texas Workforce Commission pointed out the many ways that is a charade in a recent report.

Unfortunately, Unions see their opportunity to conscript Americans workers and manipulate jobs into Union hands.  They know the stakes in 2008; that is why they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect their stooges.  The cost of this will not be $0.00.

Bob Herbert says "many Democratic voters" are ambivalent about Obama because they are racist.   The Hill says AFL-CIO leaders are worried that racism will prevent largely-Democratic Union members from voting for Obama.  In fact, one AFL-CIO leader says racism is the only reason that the largely-Democratic Union workers might not vote for Obama.

Anybody else notice that all the "racism" stories seem to be about...Democrats?

A friend of mine is on the bus that is hown in the linked video:

http://www.wgme.com/News/story_detail/story_detail_8.shtml?readmore

.  Here is what he reports:

 Hi all.  I just came from a press conference held by the US Chamber of Commerce in conjunction with the Maine State Chamber of Commerce.  It was held in Portland and dealt with the EFCA.  I spoke on behalf of ABC Maine and also got in a few words about FEA.  After the news conference we went on the US Chambers special bus to Monument Square in the center of Portland.  There were at least 75 union members holding a protest rally against the Chamber and in support of the EFCA.  The interesting thing is the protest was organized by the Maine Democratic Party.  There were about 15 of us on the bus and nobody wanted to get off so I led the way.  We were heckled, swore at, and called some names.  One of the young ladies from the chamber tried to set up some tables and put leaflets and information on it and the protesters kicked the tables over on the lady who was not hurt.  We then were interviewed by ABC, NBC, and CBS about the EFCA.  With the noise in the background I pointed out to the media that this protest is exactly why businesses have to work to defeat this bill.  When you disagree with organized labor they resort to bullying, intimidation, and peer pressure.  Why would any business want to subject there employees to that type of intimidation and bullying that was going on right across the street.  I will send you the clip once I get it.  They looked like morons which they are.

I sure am glad that  Maine's union workers, as few as they are, have the time to take out of their busy work days to go do a good ol' fashioned protest! 

No wait, I know, they are so productive that they actually sped up the line and finished early!  I didn't see them wearing all of their mandatory protective gear or properly warming up to avoid 'ergonomic' injuries either.  Somebody file a grievance.  You can find the shop steward asleep in the parking lot....making time and a half.