Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on June 09, 2010, 07:54:22 AM
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SEIU has been part of another thread for quite some time now, but I am thinking the subject of unions needs its own thread.
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- The Foundry: Conservative Policy News. - http://blog.heritage.org -
Morning Bell: Unions Just Flushed $5 Million of Your Tax Dollars Down the Toilet
Posted By Conn Carroll On June 9, 2010 @ 9:31 am In Enterprise and Free Markets | No Comments
It is not every day we get to agree with the Obama administration. But after Sen. Blanche Lincoln defeated Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter in the Arkansas Democratic Senate primary runoff election, after the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME poured millions of dollars into Halter’s campaign, a senior White House official told Politico [1]: “Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members’ money down the toilet.” But it wasn’t just “their members” money that those unions were wasting. This year the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirmed that for the first time in the history of the United States, a majority of union members work for the government, not the private sector [2]. To be exact, 52% of all union members work for the federal or state and local governments. That means more than half of the $10 million that unions wasted just in Arkansas first came from your tax dollars. And the waste goes well beyond Arkansas.
In his ongoing battle with teachers unions, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) recently told [3] a town hall in Robbinsville: “My argument is not with teachers in New Jersey. My argument is with a union who collects $730 a year from every teacher and school employee in the union in mandatory dues. And if you don’t want to join the union here’s your option: you can be out. You pay 85% of $730 … to be out. It’s like the Hotel California. You can check in anytime you like but you can never leave. That raises for the teachers union, get ready, $130 million a year. What do they spend that money on? … $6 million in negative advertising against me since March 16th. Think about that. That’s a little over two months they have spent $6 million on New York TV and Radio, Philadelphia TV and radio to attack me. That’s dues money that is coming from their teachers, mandatory no choice, and from all of you because those salaries come from your property taxes and your state income taxes.”
Christie’s fight with government unions is over his constitutional amendment that would limit annual property tax increases to 2.5 percent. Government unions hate this policy because lower taxes mean less government spending which means less dues from government employees. At a meeting with conservative journalists yesterday at The Heritage Foundation, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels called government unions “the new privileged class in America.” He told Politico [4] earlier this week: “We used to think of government workers as underpaid public servants. Now they are better paid than the people who pay their salaries.”
As Heritage fellow James Sherk has documented [2] this battle between government unions and the people who pay their salaries is playing out across the country. In Maine, the Maine Municipal Association, the SEIU, the Teamsters, and the Maine Education Association collectively spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to campaign against a ballot initiative that would have prevented government spending from growing faster than the combined rate of inflation and population growth. In Illinois, AFSCME Council 31 ran television and radio ads pushing for tax increases in their “Fair Budget Illinois” campaign. In Oregon, government unions provided 90 percent of the $4 million spent advocating two ballot initiatives to raise personal income and business taxes by $733 million.
When a private sector company agrees to an unwise labor contract, it goes out of business (unless it gets bailed out by the government). But government never goes out of business, and in fact, always grows. In 2009 private-sector unions lost 834,000 members while public-sector unions actually gained 64,000 members. This is untenable. Something must change before government unions bankrupt this country.
Quick Hits:
According to a Treasury Department report to Congress, the ratio of debt to the gross domestic product will rise to 102 percent by 2015 [5].
According to Rasmussen Reports [6], 84% of Americans oppose a three percent (3%) tax on monthly cell phone bills to help newspapers and traditional journalism.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wooed Hugo Chavez ally [7] Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa Tuesday.
Turkey hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad [8] at a regional security summit meeting in Istanbul yesterday.
Members of Israel’s National Student Union are organizing a “reverse flotilla” [9] to bring humanitarian aid to the “oppressed people of Turkish Kurdistan” and to members of the “Turkish Armenian minority.”
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Article printed from The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.: http://blog.heritage.org
URL to article: http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/09/morning-bell-unions-just-flushed-5-million-of-your-tax-dollars-down-the-toilet/
URLs in this post:
[1] Politico: http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0610/White_House_official_Organized_labor_just_flushed_10_million_of_their_members_money_down_the_toilet_.html
[2] for the first time in the history of the United States, a majority of union members work for the government, not the private sector: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2010/01/Majority-of-Union-Members-Now-Work-for-the-Government
[3] told: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ksLlAi3iIc
[4] Politico: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38183.html
[5] the ratio of debt to the gross domestic product will rise to 102 percent by 2015: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN088462520100608
[6] Rasmussen Reports: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/business/general_business/june_2010/74_oppose_taxing_internet_news_sites_to_help_newspapers
[7] wooed Hugo Chavez ally: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/world/americas/09diplo.html?ref=todayspaper
[8] hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/09/world/middleeast/09turkey.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
[9] “reverse flotilla”: http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=177789
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Marine to be fired for not giving money to Democrats
June 10, 10:15 AM · Robert Moon - Conservative Examiner
AP Photo/Mel Evans
In yet another demonstration of how incapable liberals are of competing on a level playing field, Retired Maj. Stephen Godin, who runs a high school ROTC program in Massachusetts, is being given an ultimatum: Pay $500 in union "representation" money (i.e., give money to Democrats) or be fired.
Godin refuses to be brow-beaten into paying involuntary union dues, saying, "It's the principal of the matter. I think they're trying to extort money from me. They do nothing for me."
But in Massachusetts (as well as dozens of other states), his rights go straight out the window. Despite our Equal Opportunity laws, if you don't want to join greedy, self-serving union parasites as they needlessly bankrupt the system at every turn (see here, here and here) while keeping Democrats from having to get campaign contributions legitimately, you simply don't get to have a job.
http://www.examiner.com/x-35976-Conservative-Examiner~y2010m6d10-Marine-to-be-fired-for-not-giving-money-to-Democrats
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Unions and Dems. Yes it seems like a viscous cycle. People are forced to join unions, give dues, and invariably every union I am aware of spends money getting Democrats elected who in turn are obliged to cow-tow to the unions and probably willingly do so to keep the cash and other support coming.
In NJ the teachers union do this and *always* support the Democrat.
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Here is data on union political spending. http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=P
While labor spends freely, it is very compared to http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=K01 or http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=F09 or heaven forbid http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=H01!
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It seems to me if you want to opt out of the union's political activities, you may.
"Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), as amended by the Taft-Hartley Act, a union may only require that employees either join the union or pay the equivalent of union dues. Nonmembers who object to that requirement may only be compelled to pay that portion of union dues that is attributable to the cost of representing employees in collective bargaining and in providing services to all represented employees, but not, with certain exceptions, to the union's political activities or organizing employees of other employers."
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And when they cheat on the proportion that goes to political activities, are you really going to invest your life in fighting it?
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It seems to me if you want to opt out of the union's political activities, you may.
False. They get around this by demanding "fair share" payments. I know because I refused to join the SEIU in the late '80s. When I was duking it out with them they claimed that "fair share" amount was 85 percent of the normal dues and it was the portion devoted to collective bargaining and other supposed benefits. When several of us asked them to show us their budget to prove this, they refused to.
It was a very interesting times. Got to contend with sundry locker room attitude adjustment efforts and deal with various other intimidation attempts. Finally beat it by becoming management, but have seen the underbelly of the SEIU and know it's as un-American as it gets.
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I can say from personal experience that the only thing I could count on Teamsters Law Enforcement League membership was the regular deduction of dues from my bank account. I was slugging it out with a corrupt police administration at the time, and they did nothing for me.
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It seems to me if you want to opt out of the union's political activities, you may.
False.
Actually, BBG the answer is TRUE. Read the Law... It is quite clear. As you pointed out, as per the law, they reduced your dues by 15%. As Crafty questioned, is this the correct amount? I don't know; in non election years, maybe less, but probably in election years, maybe more.... But, the answer is TRUE; you can technically opt out of the political activities portion of dues. Period.
GM; I am not defending unions here per se and definitely not the Teamsters, however my neighbor behind me is a LAPD Captain. We've had discussions about this;
he's true blue, and conservative, but he acknowledges that the Police Union does help it's members; i.e. hours, pay, and particularly in time of need. Just his opinion, I guess, but I have a very high respect for the LAPD and frankly, given the politics, I think having a union to represent the police officer is important. I don't know about their political contributions. My other neighbor, a Judge, happened to join us one night over drinks and he too agreed. "The Police Union looks after the police officer; that's their job". And it's important in my opinion.
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All I can comment on is my own personal experiences with unions. I'd hope they were more useful to police officers elsewhere.
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Yet false as they devoted more than 15 percent to political activity and refused to open their books until we took them to court. By the time that resolved I was management, but those still in the class were refunded a substantial portion of their accrued dues. The percentage eludes me 20 years later, but I think it was in the neighborhood of 75 percent.
All of which is besides the point as the SEIU is comprised of corrupt thugs that really ought not be forcibly underwritten by anyone.
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Labor Bosses Have Egg on Their Faces
Linda Chavez
Friday, June 11, 2010
Labor unions were big losers in this week's elections, but you won't hear them admit it. After pouring $10 million into a campaign to defeat incumbent Democrat Sen. Blanche Lincoln -- who won anyway -- the AFL-CIO hailed their embarrassing loss as "a tremendous victory" for working families. And the Service Employees International Union, which spent more than $3 million to oust Lincoln, is signaling it will sit out the Senate race in Arkansas in the fall, as well as several congressional races where more centrist Democrats will be on the ballot.
Ever wonder why unions have become so irrelevant in recent years? They've been hemorrhaging members for six decades and now represent only 7 percent of private-sector workers and 12 percent of the total labor force. And they've basically given up on representing their members' interests, instead devoting most of their efforts and money to currying political favor and access.
But exactly what do the billions in members' dollars spent on politics actually buy? The SEIU's Andy Stern (who stepped down as president in early May) demonstrated he was a lousy kingmaker in Arkansas, but he still managed to visit the Obama White House more often than any other person on the planet in 2009. And that is really what it's all about. Labor bosses don't give a hoot about the workers they represent. They push a left-wing agenda rooted in their own ideological proclivities, regardless of whether it helps or hurts working men and women.
And the Arkansas Senate race is a perfect example. The SEIU and Big Labor in general were big fans of Sen. Lincoln until she did the unthinkable -- she sided with the voters in her state rather than her labor backers on a couple of key issues.
Arkansans didn't think much of Big Labor's proposed card check legislation, which would abolish secret ballot elections in determining whether employees want a union to represent them at the bargaining table, so Lincoln didn't back the bill. According to national polls, 74 percent of voters say they oppose card check, and the percentage of persons in union households who oppose the legislation was identical. But that hasn't stopped the SEIU and other unions from trying to punish anyone who dares disagree.
The same holds for voter opposition to a public option in health care reform, which the unions claimed Lincoln opposed -- though she came down on both sides in the public option debate, depending on what was politically expedient at the time.
But why did unions push the public option in the first place? In addition to being wildly unpopular with all Americans, it wouldn't have helped union members one whit. Union workers already have health insurance -- and many have so-called Cadillac plans whose benefits are far more generous than any government program could offer. A public option would have meant higher taxes and no benefits for union members.
Even Big Labor's political allies are getting fed up with the unions' tactics. After Lincoln's victory against her labor-backed opponent, an anonymous White House spokesman told Politico newspaper, "Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise." Of course, that won't stop Democrats from continuing to use unions as cash cows for their political campaigns. Without union contributions, Democrats would not have won the White House and control of both houses of Congress.
According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Government, six out of the top 10 donors in federal elections since 1989 are unions -- amounting to almost $191 million in direct contributions, more than 90 percent of which has gone to Democrats. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. Unions also spend money by organizing get-out-the-vote drives, printing and distributing campaign literature, and running their own advocacy ads. And they disburse thousands of campaign "volunteers" -- who are most often on union-paid vacation or administrative leave -- to provide shock troops for union-backed candidates.
But union members have little say about which candidates their unions support, and they don't always vote for the candidates their unions endorse. In the hotly contested Massachusetts Senate race earlier this year, 49 percent of union households backed Republican Scott Brown to 46 percent who backed the union-supported Democrat Martha Coakley.
Union dues still help fund Big Labor's political juggernaut by paying the political union operatives who run the show and paying for efforts to persuade union members how they should vote. So, while labor bosses may have egg on their face after their embarrassing losses this week, it is labor union members who foot the bill, whether they want to or not.
http://townhall.com/columnists/LindaChavez/2010/06/11/labor_bosses_have_egg_on_their_faces
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2nd post:
The NYC Teachers Union's Local Office... in Boca Raton?
By Rick Hess on June 10, 2010 9:41 AM | 6 Comments | No TrackBacks
New York City's teachers may do well to ask why their union, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), has an office in Boca Raton, Florida. A recent article in the New York Post figured that rent alone for the Boca Raton branch costs UFT members $183,603 per year. That's not peanuts for a union fretting about its financially strapped members.
One reason for the Boca branch, as I noted a little while back, is that the retirees in the UFT are more active in UFT elections than the current teachers. The UFT website notes, "The UFT maintains an office in Boca Raton to service our retired members in Florida. These members make up a potent voting bloc, last year helping to elect two new members of Congress with favorable positions on our issues." NYC teachers may wonder whether their retired brethren are allies, or a competing constituency.
It turns out that the Boca office also helps retired teachers more easily take advantage of their "retention rights," a little known contractual clause that gives priority to established teachers, regardless of effectiveness, in "per session" extracurricular activities (that is, time not included in the contracted school day). Per session activities include vacation day camps, adult ed, summer school, and coaching.
Retention rights mean that coaching assignments or summer school instruction work a lot like taxi medallions. They give the holders a death grip on the position until they choose to relinquish it. The UFT contract states that, "Teachers with at least two years of continuous satisfactory service in a particular activity shall have priority for retention in the same activity for the following school year." NYC Department of Ed's Regulation of the Chancellor C-175 confirms that this provision applies to retirees as well, noting, "Persons who are not primarily employed by the DOE (e.g., retirees and part-time employees)...may claim retention rights under the Teachers' Agreement."
In other words, former teachers who desire a few extra bucks for greens fees or lawn care can up and keep returning to New York City to teach summer school--bumping current teachers from these per session jobs. And, so long as they keep doing it, they can keep doing it.
One reliable source in the NYCDOE estimates that there are "hundreds of teachers who take advantage of retention rights." At the per session hourly rate of $41.98, with average summer school lengths ranging from 60 to 150 hours, the average per session teacher is earning between $2,500 and $6,300--that's probably a million bucks or more a year that snow birds are claiming from current teachers.
Especially when cash is scarce, giving retirees the right to lay claim to summer jobs that would otherwise go to current employees seems foolish--forgetting for the moment even about whether these folks are still sharp in the classroom. This is a clear case of where the UFT is serving dueling masters--current teachers and retirees--and seems to have opted for the latter.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/rick_hess_straight_up/2010/06/the_nyc_teachers_unions_local_office_in_boca_raton.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RickHessStraightUp+%28Rick+Hess+Straight+Up%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
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There was a time I suppose when organizing workers made sense because the greedy capitalist had too much power as perhaps the only employer within commuting distance of a town and whatever paltry sum they paid is what you had to accept or not work. For one thing, that is NEVER the case with a public employees union. There is no greedy capitalist involved - just the will of the people / consent of the governed - and it can't possibly be the only employer in town because the public sector necessarily feeds off of a private sector, that is until it destroys it. A city hall or county highway department for examples can't pay below market wages by definition. They compete in the market for workers. They may pay a little less in exchange for the safety/security or convenience of actually getting to leave the office at a fixed time but if no one fills those jobs the pay would go up to market level - without a union.
We all know this I think but when unions 'negotiate' 'successfully' with private companies, it is not win-win. It is a parasite or disease destroying its host. I had to explain to one union member 'employee' of United Airlines on 'disability' pay who hadn't worked in years why companies like that go bankrupt. Bankruptcy was the only way to clear the exploding obligations that they could no longer stay in business and honor. In the case of General Motors I think the ratio was 10:1 of the number of people's healthcare they were paying to the actual number of people working. It just doesn't work and there was no relief valve. These unions forced unaffordable contracts on these companies with the threat of shutting down operations until they really did shut down operations.
The hospitals in our metro are currently fighting with the nurses union over 3% pay increases, pension issues and work rules. The average pay before the increases is $78k during this economic recession/depression for everyone else, the pension benefits are guaranteed - unheard of in the real world, and the work rules tie the hands of the doctors and hospitals from innovating or trying to improve utilization or efficiency in order to afford the high salaries and benefits. The hospitals by state law are non-profit, so again there is no greedy capitalist to protect against. Just the embattled consumer stuck with the bill until the sick system, with no check or balance, implodes.
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Taking On The Unions In Calif. — And Winning
By STEVEN GREENHUT
Posted 06/11/2010 06:40 PM ET
A political candidate can take on the public-employee unions in a nasty street rumble and emerge bloodied but victorious. That's the message from Tuesday's election to fill a board of supervisors seat in Orange County, Calif.
It was a race that could have statewide and even national implications because of the particularly gutsy role the Republican Party played in directly challenging union power.
The county's two most powerful public employee unions, the Orange County Employees Association and the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, spent upward of $1 million in independent expenditures on behalf of their candidate, Anaheim Councilman Harry Sidhu, a go-along, get-along Republican who promised to drop a county lawsuit challenging a 2001 retroactive pension increase for deputies.
Most of the union money went toward hit mailers against Shawn Nelson, a Fullerton councilman who played a key role in stopping an egregious pension hike in his city and the conservative choice for the seat.
County supervisor races don't usually generate that level of spending. But the unions — with their nearly bottomless pit of cash from dues-paying members — dropped one mailer after another championing Sidhu and depicting Nelson as a man who wants to free child molesters because his law firm does criminal defense work.
The unions had so much money, they even bought radio spots on Los Angeles talk radio — an astounding use of funds, given that Orange County accounts for only a portion of the L.A. radio market.
But the unions had to make a point. Nick Berardino, president of the OCEA, told the Orange County Register that his union went after Nelson because he doesn't "tell the truth about us being a reform union" and because Nelson "vilifies us to get votes."
My sense is the union had to strike hard against Nelson because of his hard-line stance in favor of pension reform and because of Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh's line-in-the-sand manifesto.
In January, Baugh gave a speech to the county Republican central committee deploring the influence of unions and berating Republicans who "have been just as guilty as Democrats" in giving in to pension increases and debt spending.
"I don't want to see Republicans voting the so-called right way on the pension issues facing us today," he said. "I want to see Republicans taking political risks by offering pro-active solutions that include creating two- or three-tier pension systems that would allow us to get our books back in order. For elected officials, this means risk and political courage to place your principles above your office."
He said the party will no longer endorse candidates who receive support from public employee unions.
Baugh and the party got behind Nelson, an outspoken pension reformer and county GOP elected official of the year. Nelson refused union support and embraced Baugh's controversial stance. Sidhu not only made a promise to the unions (regarding the county lawsuit), but also sat back and enjoyed enormous union support in the form of independent expenditures even though he signed the no-union-support pledge.
More than a supervisor seat was on the line. Baugh's manifesto and the party's credibility were put to the test. Few people, however, expected the amount of union support that would flow Sidhu's way, or the number of establishment Republicans who backed Sidhu — in my view because they preferred the malleable candidate who might be more amenable to their lobbying.
I talked to Nelson, Baugh and others involved in the race right up until Election Day, and everyone was on pins and needles. Many OC political observers believed Sidhu would prevail, given the union onslaught.
In the end, Nelson won big and Sidhu barely edged out low-spending, second-tier candidates who weren't viewed as serious factors in the race. Nelson will fill the seat immediately, given that the seat is vacant after another libertarian-oriented pension reformer, Supervisor Chris Norby, was elected to the state Assembly.
As the top two vote getters, Nelson and Sidhu will face off again in November to fill the seat for the next four years. But it's clear union spending accomplished little, and it's unlikely the unions will spend so much again after getting beaten so badly Tuesday.
The OC race, coupled with the failure of national unions to unseat Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, reminds us that it's possible to stand up and beat the unions in a head-to-head battle, especially in the current political climate, where the public is increasingly frustrated by overly generous pensions and mounting debt. The key is having the courage to stand up and fight.
May this be the first of many such battles.
• Greenhut is director of the Pacific Research Institute's journalism center in Sacramento and author of "Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation."
http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/537131/201006111840/Taking-On-The-Unions-In-Calif-and151-And-Winning.aspx
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Union Contract Can Exempt Health Plan From ObamaCare
On Monday June 14, 2010, 7:11 pm EDT
Under new rules, your employer can't change insurers without losing your health plan's exemptions from ObamaCare regulations.
That is, unless a union negotiated your coverage. The administration has granted a special exception to those — and apparently only those — health care plans.
A health plan is deemed "grandfathered" if it was purchased before March 23, 2010, and no major changes are made later. Such plans are exempt from most ObamaCare requirements.
But new rules, officially announced Monday, make it hard to keep that status. IBD previously reported that the Obama administration estimates that 51% of all employers — 66% of small firms — would have to relinquish their current coverage by Jan. 1, 2014.
Hail The Collective
But the rules that limit grandfathering are less stringent for unions. Under the regulations, if "an employer or employee organization enters into a new policy, certificate, or contract of insurance after March 23, 2010 ... then that policy, certificate, or contract of insurance is not a grandfathered health plan."
However, that rule does not apply to health care plans that are part of collective bargaining agreements negotiated by unions and set up by March 23, 2010. As long as the collective bargaining agreement is in force, the health plan retains its grandfathered status even if the employers and unions agree to change insurance carriers.
The regulations include an example of a union-negotiated plan that enters into a new group policy "with Issuer Y for the plan year starting on January 1, 2011." In this case, "the group health plan, and the group health insurance policy provided by Y, remains a grandfathered health plan."
Thus, unions could switch to another carrier that offered similar benefits at cheaper prices without losing grandfathered status. Non-union employers that changed insurers would face benefit mandates, caps on out-of-pocket expenses and limits on age-based premiums.
Gerry Shea, health policy analyst and special assistant to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, downplayed the language's import, characterizing it as "boiler plate stuff."
"This is not something that we particularly lobbied on but we did say that, like other changes, there should be a collective bargaining transition period," Shea told IBD. "This is typical for any major change in federal law that affects employee benefits. Not just health care, but other ones too."
According to analysis accompanying the rules, up to 69% of employer plans — 80% for small firms — would forfeit grandfather rights in the worst-case scenario.
Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., said, "This is an egregious example of the lengths the Obama administration will go to shelter unions from any negative consequences from ObamaCare, while putting the cost and burden on everyday, hard-working Americans."
Gingrey, who is also co-chair of the GOP Doctors Caucus, added: "While up to 80% of workers in small businesses will be forced off of their current plan, unions are given 'special status' to negotiate better rates for their members."
Working Hard For Big Labor
This is hardly the first time that President Obama has gone to bat for Big Labor, which backed his candidacy in 2008. He guaranteed the UAW pension funds during Chrysler's bankruptcy and crafted a deal where the union got a 55% stake in the company.
Obama appointed union ally Hilda Solis as Labor Secretary and used a recess appointment to put Craig Becker, a former lawyer with the Service Employees International Union, on the National Labor Relations Board.
During the health care debate, legislation included a 40% excise tax on high-cost "Cadillac" coverage starting in 2013. Unions initially won a deal with the White House and Congress to exempt collective bargaining deals until 2018. The final health law delays the excise tax until 2018 for all.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Union-Contract-Can-Exempt-ibd-1066584418.html?x=0
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Revolt Against the Blob
New York City teachers’ unions have created an indefensible system, and they don’t appreciate being forced to defend it.
Eva Moskowitz has become an expert at being hated.
It started a few years ago when the “bleeding-heart liberal,” as she describes herself, served on the New York City Council as chairwoman of the education committee. In an excess of public-spiritedness, she subjected the contract of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), as well as the contracts of the principals and custodians, to critical scrutiny at public hearings. Her life would never be the same.
Moskowitz still talks of those contracts with outraged astonishment. When she visited schools, she would ask what sounds like a set-up for a joke: “Does your custodian change your light bulbs?” The answer: Not quite. They would change the bulbs, but not the ballast — which starts the current in a fluorescent bulb — because that’s not in their contract.
Custodians can paint the walls of a classroom only up to ten feet high, after which the official painters must take over. It’s like Christian sects squabbling over space in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
A teacher can be fired only after an elaborate arbitration procedure. Since the union approves the arbitrators, it will nix anyone who has been notably unforgiving of teacher malfeasance in the past. Only ten teachers were fired out of 55,000 tenured teachers in 2008.
All of this is indefensible, and the unions didn’t appreciate being forced to defend it. Some of Moskowitz’s witnesses backed out for fear of their jobs. “I felt like I was in a Godfather movie,” she says.
The UFT took its revenge by defeating her in a race for Manhattan borough president in 2005. But it is not yet rid of this meddlesome woman. As the hard-charging CEO of the Harlem Success Academy, a network of four — soon to be seven — charter schools, she is on a righteous mission to demonstrate how education can work unencumbered by the insane constraints of the established system.
It’s amazing what you can accomplish, she says, when you design your schools “around teaching and learning and don’t think of yourself as an employment program for grown-ups.”
Almost all of Harlem Success’s students are black or Latino, and three-quarters qualify for free and reduced-price lunch. Last year, 100 percent of Harlem Success’s third-graders passed the standardized state math exam, and 95 percent passed the English test, far outpacing the local school districts and ranking the school 32nd among all of New York state’s 3,500 public schools.
For Moskowitz, it’s the result of “high behavioral and high academic expectations.” For her critics, it’s another reason to hate her. The union imports activists to protest her schools. Last year, a charming mob greeted Harlem Success children arriving for the first day of school with chants of “Don’t be fooled, abort charter schools.”
This union bullying is a thread throughout the affecting new documentary The Lottery, which follows four Harlem families who enter the annual, heartbreakingly oversubscribed lottery to get their kids into Harlem Success. Newark mayor Cory Booker says he can no longer attend such events because they are so sad for the kids who don’t make it. Anyone watching The Lottery who doesn’t carry a UFT membership card will feel the same way.
Moskowitz didn’t set out to be a union target. “I’m not a Milton Friedman,” she says. “I just think kids are getting screwed by a system that’s horrible.” She is now part of a nationwide revolt against the union-dominated education blob, running the gamut from liberal reformers like her on the left to fiscal conservatives like Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey on the right. For the unions, it should be a worrisome sign that you can engage in a conspiracy against the public interest for only so long before creating a backlash.
As a Harlem Success parent said over and over again in a rejoinder to protesters outside one of the schools: “My baby is learning.” Courtesy of the education establishment’s Public Enemy Number One.
— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.
http://article.nationalreview.com/436331/revolt-against-the-blob/rich-lowry
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2nd post:
Congress Wants To Bail Out Union Pensions
by Connie Hair (more by this author)
Posted 06/15/2010 ET
A new bill introduced by Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania would set up a taxpayer bailout of underfunded, multiemployer union pension plans.
The Pennsylvania senator recently introduced the latest in Orwellian-named Democratic bills—the “Create Jobs and Save Benefits Act of 2010.”
Multiemployer plans were designed to let union members move from union job to union job and keep the same pension plan. But if a company participating in the plan as part of its collective bargaining agreement were to go bankrupt, the other participating companies in the plan are forced to fully fund these Cadillac union pensions.
The vested members with no participating company are called “orphans.” Casey’s bill seeks to partition out these “orphaned” union members, putting taxpayers on the hook for their full retirement benefit funding.
As previously reported on HUMAN EVENTS, Democrats plan to federalize pensions while bailing out their union supporters who’ve botched funding pensions for their rank-and-file members.
Democrats are not content with a one-time bailout of these failed multiemployer pension plans. Now, Casey’s bill would make a line item on the federal budget through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to fund these union pension bailouts annually.
Currently when one of these funds is in distress, the PBGC has the power to partition out these orphans and pay a guaranteed benefit of $12,870 at taxpayer expense, similar to what the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) does when a bank goes belly up.
At a recent Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP) hearing, Charles Jeszeck, an acting director at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), said that union multiemployer pension plans are in deep financial trouble.
A chart found on page 12 of Jaszeck’s written testimony clearly illustrates that by 1998, there was only one active worker in the multiemployer pension plans for every retiree.
“In 1998, the multiemployer plans overall got to one worker for every retiree,” Brett McMahon of the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a national trade association, told HUMAN EVENTS. “They’re much worse now. The Teamsters in particular right now are about four retirees for every worker. The coal miners are about 12 retirees to every worker. When you hit one to one it is impossible—actually even earlier than that—it’s impossible to recover.”
Jeszeck testified at the hearing that unless union membership grows exponentially, the multiemployer pension funds are headed for collapse.
“The future growth of multiemployer plans is largely predicated on growth of collective bargaining,” Jeszeck said. “Without a new stream of contributions, plans will increasingly have to tap into assets to meet benefit obligations and, everything else being equal, will generally lower the plans’ funded status.”
One of the largest of these multiemployer funds, Central States Funds, is in such bad shape that UPS paid $6 billion in penalties to extricate itself from employee participation in the fund.
“All that got them was the right to leave the plan. It transferred no benefits to their employees,” McMahon said. “They now have their own plan, though, which is doing great because it’s properly funded and they’re not responsible for everyone else’s employees.”
According to the financial and analytical report compiled for a January 2009 trustee meeting, by the end of 2008, Central States had approximately 80,000 current participating workers and over 200,000 retirees.
The fund is headed for an implosion.
“A collapse of this sort of Ponzi scheme was foreseeable 25 years ago,” McMahon said.
The Casey bill seeks to bailout and then expand participation in these defined benefits plans that give unions control over the funds, as opposed to a defined contribution plan such as a 401(k) where employers contribute and individuals control their own retirement investments.
Further, union members are indentured to their unions, unable to accept other work at the risk of forfeiting these pension benefits outright.
In May, the PBGC partitioned the Chicago Truck Drivers, Helpers and Warehouse Workers Union (Independent) Pension Fund which now sets the pensions for the new partitioned plan workers at the federally guaranteed benefit level of up to $12,870 per year after 30 years of service.
According to the PBGC, “The Chicago plan’s administrator applied for partition because the plan was running out of money to pay benefits. The shortfall resulted from the bankruptcy and withdrawal from the plan of 52 contributing employers from 1982 to 2004, which reduced the plan’s funding levels.”
“If a union knows that if they drive a company into bankruptcy, which they clearly have a talent for doing, they can still say to those union members that taxpayers will cover your full retirement bill, removing further incentives for a union to work productively with an employer,” McMahon said.
There are 57 contributing employers left in the Chicago plan and no new employers agreeing to enter into any multiemployer benefit plan.
With union-controlled, multiemployer pension plans clearly becoming a failed model, the Associated Builders and Contractors—representing 25,000 construction and construction-related firms employing over 2 million people—offers guidelines on how to deal with the problem:
• Immediately freeze the troubled multiemployer pension plans to new entrants, followed by paying out the remaining assets among those already enrolled based on the length of time people have been invested in them.
• Amend the existing Employee Retirement Income Security Act provisions that allow termination of a multiemployer plan if all contributing members of a plan withdraw (a mass withdrawal).
• Require yearly written notices to be issued to all participants and beneficiaries when the ratio of the number of retirees, beneficiaries of deceased participants, and terminated vested participants in a multiemployer plan to the number of active participants in the plan for each such year is 3:1 or less.
Casey’s bill seeks to bailout the union plans on the taxpayer dime to give unions more leverage to drive up membership. That’s the Democrat plan: continue the Ponzi scheme by expanding it with taxpayer dollars.
Connie Hair writes daily as HUMAN EVENTS' Congressional correspondent. She is a former speechwriter for Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and a former media and coalitions advisor to the Senate Republican Conference.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=37491
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To Protest Hiring of Nonunion Help, Union Hires Nonunion Pickets
Jobless Recruits Get Minimum Wage 'To March Around and Sound Off'
By JENNIFER LEVITZ
WASHINGTON—Billy Raye, a 51-year-old unemployed bike courier, is looking for work.
Fortunately for him, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters is seeking paid demonstrators to march and chant in its current picket line outside the McPherson Building, an office complex here where the council says work is being done with nonunion labor.
View Full Image
Jennifer Levitz/The Wall Street Journal
A protester pickets a building contractor outside the McPherson Building in Washington last month.
"For a lot of our members, it's really difficult to have them come out, either because of parking or something else," explains Vincente Garcia, a union representative who is supervising the picketing.
So instead, the union hires unemployed people at the minimum wage—$8.25 an hour—to walk picket lines. Mr. Raye says he's grateful for the work, even though he's not sure why he's doing it. "I could care less," he says. "I am being paid to march around and sound off."
Protest organizers and advocacy groups are reaping an unexpected benefit from continued high joblessness. With the national unemployment rate currently at 9.5%, an "endless supply" of the out-of-work, as well as retirees seeking extra income, are lining up to be paid demonstrators, says George Eisner, the union's director of organization. Extra feet help the union staff about 150 picket lines in the District of Columbia and Baltimore each day.
Online postings recruit paid activists for everything from stopping offshore drilling to defending the Constitution.
In California, one group is offering to pay $10 and up per hour to activists to hold signs in demonstrations against foam cups and plastic bags.
In Bellevue, Wash., the Faith and Freedom Network plans to hire activists for about $10 an hour next month to promote statewide candidates with Judeo-Christian values for the fall elections, says Gary Randall, the group's president. Recruits will knock on doors and will be dispatched in large groups, hoping to draw media attention, he says.
Pierce Hutchings, a Chicago businessman and baseball fan, staffed a rally at Wrigley Field on the Cubs opening day in April by posting an ad on Craigslist offering $25 of his own money to anyone willing to show up.
The cause? To protest plans to erect a big Toyota advertising sign in left field. The sign drew criticism from many Chicago residents and merchants who said it would impede their rooftop views of games. About 50 people showed up, put on yellow "No Sign @ Wrigley" T-shirts supplied by Mr. Hutchings, and urged passersby to call their local elected officials. The sign was put up anyway.
While the money offers some relief for the unemployed, plugging a cause, even one that seems worthy, can be dispiriting.
"I told one guy today that I was fighting global poverty, and he looked me in the eye and said, 'I don't care,'" says Stephen Borlik, a new college graduate posted outside a D.C. subway stop recently as a $13-per-hour street fundraiser for CARE, the antipoverty nonprofit organization in Atlanta.
Mr. Borlik moved here in May after graduating from Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant. He is living with his brother while looking for a job. "It can be extremely frustrating sending out résumé after résumé and getting no response. It almost makes you not want to do anything."
To keep his job at CARE, Mr. Borlik says, he must hit a weekly quota of new donors giving a minimum of $20. A CARE spokeswoman says "team members" in the organization's "Face-to-Face" fund-raising program have a goal of two new donors per day.
In Atlanta, Timothy Baker, a 40-year-old unemployed warehouse worker, says his money-making strategy has been to walk picket lines for $8.50 an hour for the Southeastern Carpenters Regional Council. "It's something to do until you find something better."
While many big unions, including the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, frown on using nonmembers in picket lines, "we're not at all ashamed," says Jimmy Gibbs, director of special projects for the Southeastern Council. "We're helping people who are in a difficult situation."
For four hours at the recent Mid-Atlantic carpenters' union protest in D.C., about 50 picketers-for-hire—some smoking cigarettes, reading the paper, or on their phones; a few leaning on canes—walked in a circle outside the McPherson Building. The place is home to a Starbucks, a spa and offices. "Some days, the beat is very good," said James Harff, chief executive officer of Global Communicators LLC, a public-relations concern, tapping one foot in his second floor office. Other days, he can hardly hear himself think.
"Low Pay! Go away!" and "That Rat Gotta Go!" the union stand-ins chanted as other workers banged cow-bells and beat on a trio of empty plastic buckets. Eric Williams, a 70-year-old retiree who said he needs extra cash to buy groceries, wore a sign saying that Can-Am Contractors, a nonunion Maryland drywall and ceiling concern, "does not pay area standard wages & benefits."
The target of the campaign is the Chicago School of Professional Psychology, which is opening new classrooms on the second floor of the McPherson Building, and is having renovations done, including dry-walling by Can-Am.
"It is bizarre," says Lynne Baker, a school spokeswoman, about the union's hiring of nonunion picketers.
Inside, Juan Flores, Can-Am's foreman, said his nonunionized workers are paid fairly. Of the protesters, he said, "I don't blame them—they need the money, but they look like they are drunk or something."
The union's Mr. Garcia sees no conflict in a union that insists on union labor hiring nonunion people to protest the hiring of nonunion labor.
He says the pickets are not only about "union issues" but also about fair wages and benefits for American workers. By hiring the unemployed, "we are also giving back to the community a bit," he says.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704288204575362763101099660.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_news
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The SEIU’s Friendly Inquisitor
NLRB member Craig Becker is voting on cases related to his former organization.
Carole Jean Badertscher was a California nurse who just wanted to go to work and take care of her patients — but the SEIU was determined not to let that happen. The union’s contract with Badertscher’s employer, the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, had expired, and the union had called a strike in response. Badertscher and other nurses, unwilling to abandon their patients for the sake of a stronger SEIU hand in contract negotiations, resigned from the union and went to work. In turn, she was threatened by the union bosses, who promised to have her prosecuted under California’s antique professional-strikebreaker statute, which was long ago pre-empted by federal law. Badertscher and other nurses were told that they would be fined and could be thrown in jail for months.
But there was more at stake in the case for the SEIU than the right to bully nurses in the Pomona Valley. The SEIU local had also informed hospital employees that they were legally required to keep paying union dues. If the hospital’s employees stopped paying their dues, the SEIU chapter would be starved of its income — and it was not about to let that happen. The national SEIU, which takes a piece of the locals’ dues, would take a hit, too. So the local SEIU bosses distributed a flyer full of false and misleading information. It read, in part: “You may have been mislead [sic] into believing that you are not obligated to pay dues and fees during the period of negotiations. This is untrue and retroactivity may occur prior or upon ratification of the contract. Please ask yourselves why all the anti[-SEIU] leaders are still paying dues. Could it be they don’t want the possibility of owing more in a lump sum?” Translation: The SEIU owns your paycheck and will come after it.
When Badertscher sought legal relief from the threats and paycheck-plundering of the SEIU, her lawyers did not expect to find themselves arguing their case in front of the man who was the SEIU’s own chief lawyer until a few months ago, when President Obama named him to the National Labor Relations Board. Craig Becker, former general counsel for the SEIU, was a controversial appointee to start with, owing to his radical and anti-democratic views on union power. But surely, Badertscher’s lawyers thought, he’d recuse himself from a case involving the SEIU.
Becker refused to do so. In fact, he was part of a three-member panel that reviewed the SEIU/Pomona Valley case, and he has made it clear that he intends to continue involving himself in cases involving his former employer.
“There are 13 or 14 cases in which we’ve sought recusal for Craig Becker,” says Patrick Semmens, legal information director for the National Right to Work Foundation (NRWF), which represented Badertscher. Becker has been highly critical of the foundation, Semmens says, casting aspersions upon its mission and good faith. “But the main thing in this case is the SEIU connection. In other cases, he’d written briefs on the issues in question in the course of litigation in his role at the SEIU.”
So far, Becker has accommodated the NRWF in exactly one case in which his recusal was sought. “In that case, Becker had signed the legal brief and was the counsel of record,” Semmens says. “If you can’t recuse yourself from that . . . well, then when would you?”
In the Pomona Valley case, Becker published an opinion in which he concluded that he was not obliged to recuse himself because, even though he had been general counsel for the SEIU, he had not, in the past two years, represented the local chapter in question. The distinction between the national SEIU and the locals is a questionable one. The SEIU’s national body exercises a high level of control over the locals. In fact, the SEIU is the locals — the union’s constitution defines the SEIU as an organization that “shall consist of an unlimited number of Local Unions chartered by it, and the membership thereof, and such affiliated bodies as may be established from time to time.” More to the point, the finances of the national SEIU are directly dependent upon those of the locals, and the SEIU is an organization with money on its mind: It funds itself through a “tax” on dues paid to local chapters, the rate being $7.65 per member per month. With 2.2 million members nationwide, that’s a substantial monetary motive: nearly $17 million a month. So bottom-line-oriented is the SEIU that workers granted lifetime memberships, retirees, and others paying less than the full dues to the union are barred from voting under the SEIU constitution.
The Obama administration has made a lot of fuss about its high ethical standards, though it has taken many opportunities to skirt them. Big Labor has insinuated itself deeply into the administration, and no union more so than the SEIU. But imagine for a moment that this was not a labor-relations case. The Obama administration is full of Wall Street veterans, too. Imagine that a former Goldman Sachs executive had been named to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and was ruling on Goldman issues under the argument that he hadn’t worked in the division in question. There would be a whole Chinese opera of discord.
“The basic rule, which applies to all federal employees, is that there is a one-year period in which they cannot deal with issues involving a former employer — or former clients, in the case of lawyers,” explains SEC spokesman John Heine. “President Obama announced a policy that the period was going to be extended to two years for presidential appointees, which would include any commissioner.”
But apparently it does not include Craig Becker at the NLRB.
“We think he should be recusing himself in all these cases,” Semmens says. “The Obama administration has made much ado about its ethics pledge. It’s quite clear that you can’t do anything on issues relating to your former employer, but here’s Becker saying, ‘That doesn’t apply to me.’ The SEIU’s forced dues are dependent on the outcomes of these cases — it’s obvious that they have a strong interest in the outcomes.”
Semmens isn’t alone in his concern. Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) requested that the NLRB’s inspector general investigate Becker’s non-recusals, and a report on that investigation was released on Tuesday. The report concluded that Becker had not acted improperly, since the local affiliates are separate legal entities. So, the next time the federal government asks the CEO of a fast-food corporation to render legal judgment on the conduct of an independently owned franchise, that apparently will pass federal muster. (I wonder, can we get McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner in charge of Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity crusade?)
In the Pomona Valley case, Becker voted to give the SEIU chapter the gentlest of slaps on the wrist. Finding that they had violated the law, the NLRB ordered them to . . . hang a sign up in their office, reading, in part: “We will not restrain or coerce you in the exercise of your right to refrain from protected union activity.” We will not restrain or coerce you: But if they do, they’ll be defending themselves in front of a friendly board.
— Kevin Williamson is a deputy managing editor of NR.
http://article.nationalreview.com/438404/the-seius-friendly-inquisitor/kevin-williamson
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Chutzpah:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqm5RRBCmiw[/youtube]
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Big Labor’s Legacy of Violence
When it comes to terrorizing workers, the head of the AFL-CIO knows whereof he speaks
To mark Labor Day 2010, President Obama will join hands with AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka in Milwaukee, and they will pose as champions of the working class. Bad move. Trumka’s organizing record is a shameful reminder of the union movement’s violent and corrupt foundations.
The new Obama/AFL-CIO power alliance — underwritten with $40 million in hard-earned worker dues — is a midterm shotgun marriage of Beltway brass knuckles and Big Labor brawn. Trumka warmed up his rhetorical muscles this past week with full-frontal attacks on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He indignantly accused her of “getting close to calling for violence” and suggested that her criticism of tea-party-bashing labor bosses amounted to “terrorizing” workers.
Trumka and Obama will cast Big Labor as an unassailable force for good in American history. But when it comes to terrorizing workers, Trumka knows whereof he speaks.
Meet Eddie York. He was a workingman whose story will never scroll across Obama’s teleprompter. A nonunion contractor who operated heavy equipment, York was shot to death during a strike called by the United Mine Workers 17 years ago. Workmates who tried to come to his rescue were beaten in an ensuing melee. The head of the UMW spearheading the wave of strikes at that time? Richard Trumka. Responding to concerns about violence, he shrugged to the Virginian-Pilot in September 1993: “I’m saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you’re likely to get burned.” Incendiary rhetoric, anyone?
A federal jury convicted one of Trumka’s UMW captains on conspiracy and weapons charges in York’s death. According to the Washington, D.C.–based National Legal and Policy Center, which tracks Big Labor abuse, Trumka’s legal team quickly settled a $27 million wrongful death suit filed by York’s widow just days after a judge admitted evidence in the criminal trial. An investigative report by Reader’s Digest disclosed that Trumka “did not publicly discipline or reprimand a single striker present when York was killed. In fact, all eight were helped out financially by the local.”
In Illinois, Trumka told UMW members to “kick the s**t out of every last” worker who crossed his picket lines, according to the Nashville (Ill.) News. And as the National Right to Work Foundation, the leading anti-forced-unionism organization in the country, pointed out, other UMW coalfield strikes resulted in what one judge determined were “violent activities . . . organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”
Trumka washed off the figurative bloodstains and moved up the ranks. As AFL-CIO secretary, he notoriously refused to testify in a sordid 1999 embezzlement trial involving his labor-boss brethren at the Teamsters Union. No surprise. Thugs of a feather: Trumka’s violence-promoting record echoes the riotous Teamsters strikes dating back to the 1950s, when the union organized taxicab companies to target workers with gas bombs, bottles, and fists.
And now, Trumka is spearheading a Democratic get-out-the-vote campaign by far-left groups — publicized in the revolutionary-Marxist People’s World — to “energize an army of tens of thousands who will return to their neighborhoods, churches, schools and voting booths to prevent a Republican takeover of Congress in November and begin building a new permanent coalition to fight for a progressive agenda.”
Take those as literal fighting words. The bloody consequences of compulsory unionism cannot be ignored.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/245597/big-labor-s-legacy-violence-michelle-malkin
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The Unions wonder why they only have something like 10% of the non-gov labor market? The previous 2-3 posts are about the size of it. More and more people are recognizing that unions are a 2 edged sword, they help when you have a truly abusive employer, but they can also cut when they are working politicaloly to maintain that bargaining power...........
I Think the rust belt was created by the unions when they negotiated wages so high, that the product produced by their labor could no longer compete in the market place. The companies started to move the plants offshore or to cheaper labor areas in the USA, and that was the begining of the post modern- service sector economy we have now.......
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Bwahaha:
http://reason.com/blog/2010/09/21/the-new-threat-to-unions-is-un
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The casinos in vegas almost routinely ask picketers for union cards. If they have a card- they have legitamate business, if not, the police are called to get the Loiterers removed..........
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SEIU pushes rapists, thugs as home health care aides in CA
Ed Lasky
Now we know - as if the Bell salary and pension scandal has not already taught us - why California is a mess. The bigger the government, the more absurd the taxing and spending becomes.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Scores of people convicted of crimes such as rape, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon are permitted to care for some of California's most vulnerable residents as part of the government's home health aide program.
Data provided by state officials show that at least 210 workers and applicants flagged by investigators as unsuitable to work in the program are nonetheless scheduled to resume or begin employment.
State and county investigators have not reported many whose backgrounds include violent crimes because the rules of the program, as interpreted by a judge earlier this year, permit felons to work as home care aides. Thousands of current workers have had no background checks...
In addition, privacy laws prevent investigators from cautioning the program's elderly, infirm and disabled clients that they may end up in the care of someone who has committed violent or financial crimes.
"We are allowing these people into the homes of vulnerable individuals without supervision," said John Wagner, director of the state Department of Social Services.
And who is fighting to keep the rules and regulations as they are? Need one ask? The public unions. The Times fingers another set of culprits responsible for this mess, "lawmakers with ties to unions representing home health care workers are wary of making changes to a program". Can anyone name the union behind standing foursquare behind this absurd program? Barack Obama and the Democrats favorite one: The Service Employees International Union:
A spokesman for the Service Employees International Union, which represents most of the state's home healthcare workers, referred questions to Wilkins. SEIU is consistently one of the biggest donors to the Democrats who dominate the Legislature, contributing millions of dollars to political committees that the state Democratic Party and its leaders use to win legislative seats, register voters and even fund lawmaker retreats.
Members' wages from the home aide program provide millions of dollars in dues revenue that the union can use to fund such operations.
California is in the grip of the SEIU. Democratic politicians are in their pockets. Our most vulnerable group of people are in danger. Does the SEIU and the Democratic politicians care, seeing that the are permanently hooked into the spending spigots of unions' Political Action Committees and are addicted to the free labor provided by union members come campaign season? Nope. What the unions care about are dues paying members and what Democratic politicians care about are getting their cut of taxpayer dollars. The fiscal problem has been put on our shoulders since so much of the stimulus program went to paper over problems states - mostly blue ones - have created for themselves.
The role of the SEIU, one of the biggest donors to Democrats across the nation and whose former leader boasted of the amount of union dues that went to elect Democrats and Barack Obama (and also noted he expected payback) is a blight across America. Andy Stern, who headed the SEIU for years, was the most frequent visitor to the White House in 2009 and now serves on the commission supposedly created to examine the deficit.
Home health aides are a big market for them. The union is trying to get state legislators to force their unionization, As Obamacare is implemented, more taxpayer dollars will flow to such home health care aides. Nice deal - except for the patients and the taxpayers - but who cares about them?
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2010/09/seiu_pushes_rapists_thugs_as_h.html at September 24, 2010 - 01:32:21 PM CDT
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No Volunteers, Please, We’re Unionized
Public-sector employees vs. parents in Petaluma, California
30 November 2010
Prior to giving a speech on civic participation for a group of city and county employees just north of San Francisco, I chatted with a county volunteer coordinator about her job. “It sounds like fascinating work,” I offered. “You must interact with a lot of different people on a variety of projects.” It was an interesting job, she said. “But,” she continued—lowering her voice to a near whisper—”you have to be real careful when you bring in a volunteer to help on certain jobs, that they can’t be seen as taking work from unionized employees.” She explained that her formula for placing volunteers in needed assignments had to incorporate the type of work and the time commitment. “I usually have no problem [with the unions] if I bring someone in for a couple of hours each week,” she allowed, “but I’m pushing it if it moves beyond five hours—even if the volunteer is willing to take longer hours.” She concluded: “And, of course, you’ve heard what’s happening in Petaluma with the school district?” I hadn’t.
Petaluma is one of those idyllic small cities (population 58,000) that dot Route 101 on the way north from the Golden Gate Bridge through the wine country. Most of us have seen the town on the silver screen without realizing it, as it’s been the setting for over a dozen movies from American Graffiti to Pleasantville. But Petaluma, struggling like most municipalities in California under the current fiscal crisis, has found delivering public services—from education to public safety—anything but pleasant.
The Petaluma City Schools district has trimmed millions from its budget over the last two years, as the deficit-ridden California state government has decreased its local support by 25 percent. The cuts have meant layoffs for district employees at all levels, from teachers to playground supervisors. In response, parents and concerned Petalumans have stepped forward to try to fill the non-teaching gaps, volunteering their time to maintain school services. The volunteers have worked in new roles identified by the school administration, but they’ve also stepped in to perform jobs eliminated by budget cuts. But those positions are unionized by the California School Employees’ Association (CSEA)—and that’s where the problems started.
When volunteers began to help answer phones in the office and support the school librarian at Petaluma Junior High School, CSEA Local 212 president Loretta Kruusmagi immediately objected. Representing 350 clerical and janitorial staff in the Petaluma school district, Kruusmagi betrays not the least concern for the kids her union supposedly serves when she glowers: “As far as I’m concerned, they never should have started this thing. Noon-duty people [lunchtime and playground assistants]—those are instructional assistants. We had all those positions. We don’t have them anymore, but those are our positions. Our stand is you can’t have volunteers, they can’t do our work.” Notice the possessiveness with which Kruusmagi regards these “public servants.” Nice to see that it’s “all about the kids” at the CSEA.
Like so many other public-sector unions across the country, the CSEA has proven unwilling to accept the new reality that budget shortfalls are imposing on local governments. That reality, as New York’s Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith has described it, is this: “The steady increase in the quantity and cost of public services, coupled with the needs of an aging population and public pension costs have produced a long term, structural deficit.” The Petaluma clash and others around the state are illustrating how public-sector unions work against citizens in budget-ravaged times.
The school-district leadership finds itself caught between the volunteers and the union, seeking to pacify both parents and the CSEA. Meanwhile, important positions lost to budget cuts that volunteers could handle remain unfilled. Deputy Superintendent Steve Bolman is left to quote from the union contract and labor law: “It’s not policy, this is law. [Volunteers] can’t do work ‘usually, ordinarily or regularly done by classified employees.’” For her part, Kruusmagi sounds a little sketchier on the legalities: “I can’t cite the exact thing,” she says, “but there are state rules. I believe it’s in [education] code that volunteers are not allowed at schools.”
The volunteers are rightly furious. Cathy Edmondson, the parent of a Petaluma Junior High student, and a volunteer who helps around the school office, retorted: “I guess the anger that I feel about it is, even though the union has contractual rights to what goes on, they don’t have the right to abridge my rights as a parent, volunteer, and taxpayer.” Lynn King, another parent and manager of the volunteer program, is more diplomatic: “Schools are losing personnel because of budgetary cutbacks, kids are being underserved by these budgetary cutbacks, so we are trying to do what we can.” Volunteers are continuing to work until the parties in Petaluma can work out an agreement of some kind, though it’s not clear how they will—especially when Kruusmagi says flatly, “They are not going to have volunteers at all.”
The work of volunteers in providing and supporting local services has been a hallmark of American citizenship since the nation’s founding. Alexis de Tocqueville described this characteristic most famously: “In America I encountered all sorts of associations of which, I confess, I had no idea, and I often admired the infinite art with which the inhabitants of the United States managed to fix a common goal to the efforts of many men and to get them to advance to it freely.” But Tocqueville never met Loretta Kruusmagi.
Tocqueville’s observations on America’s civic participation were based on what he saw of our natural habits and on the contextual necessity of his time: there simply weren’t governing structures to deliver many needed public services back in the 1830s, so Americans had to fall back upon themselves. As local-government budgets feel the financial squeeze, this do-it-yourself ethos is making a comeback throughout the country. CSEA’s tagline is “Essential Work. Extraordinary Workers.” No one disputes the first sentence, but in Petaluma, volunteers now seek to be the latter. What happens in Petaluma will provide a glimpse of whether public-sector unions have learned anything from the nation’s ongoing fiscal difficulties. Are they willing to be part of a collaborative solution, or does their self-interest trump all?
Pete Peterson is Executive Director of the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy.
http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon1130pp.html
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ligent English farmers of old once shared a motto about the blessings of work: "Industry produces wealth, God speed the plow." Indolent New York City union officials who oversee snow removal apparently live by a different creed: Sloth enhances political power, Da Boss slow the plow.
Come rain or shine, wind, sleet or blizzard, Big Labor leaders always demonstrate perfect power-grabby timing when it comes to shafting taxpayers. Public-sector unions are all-weather vultures ready, willing and able to put special interest politics above the citizenry's health, wealth and safety. Confirming rumors that have fired up the frozen metropolis, the New York Post reported Thursday that government sanitation and transportation workers were ordered by union supervisors to oversee a deliberate slowdown of its cleanup program -- and to boost their overtime paychecks.
Why such vindictiveness? It's a cold-blooded temper tantrum against the city's long-overdue efforts to trim layers of union fat and move toward a more efficient, cost-effective privatized workforce.
Welcome to the Great Snowmageddon Snit Fit of 2010.
New York City Councilman Dan Halloran, R-Queens, told the Post that several brave whistleblowers confessed to him that they "were told (by supervisors) to take off routes (and) not do the plowing of some of the major arteries in a timely manner. They were told to make the mayor pay for the layoffs, the reductions in rank for the supervisors, shrinking the rolls of the rank-and-file."
Denials and recriminations are flying like snowballs. But even as they scoff at reports of this outrageous organized job action, the city sanitation managers' unions openly acknowledge their grievances and "resentment" over job cuts. Stunningly, sanitation workers spilled the beans on how city plowers raised blades "unusually high" (which requires extra passes to get their work done) and refused to plow anything other than assigned streets (even if it meant leaving behind clogged routes to get to their blocks).
When they weren't sitting on their backsides, city plowers were caught on videotape maniacally destroying parked vehicles in a futile display of Kabuki Emergency Theater. It would be laugh-out-loud comedy if not for the death of at least one newborn whose parents waited for an ambulance that never came because of snowed-in streets.
This isn't a triumphant victory for social justice and workers' dignity. This is terrifying criminal negligence.
And it isn't the first time New York City sanitation workers have endangered residents' well-being. In the 1960s, a Teamsters-affiliated sanitation workers' strike led to trash fires, typhoid warnings and rat infestations, as 100,000 tons of rotting garbage piled up. Three decades later, a coordinated job action by city building-service workers and sanitation workers caused another public trash nuisance declared "dangerous to life and health" in the Big Apple.
New Yorkers could learn a thing or two from those of us who call Colorado Springs, Colo., home. We have no fear of being held hostage to a politically driven sanitation department -- because we have no sanitation department. We have no sanitation department because enlightened advocates of limited government in our town realized that competitive bidders in the private sector could provide better service at lower cost.
And we're not alone. As the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan reported: "The largest study ever conducted on outsourced garbage collection, conducted by the federal government in the 1970s, reported 29 to 37 percent savings in cities with populations over 50,000. A 1994 study by the Reason Foundation discovered that the city of Los Angeles was paying about 30 percent more for garbage collection than its surrounding suburbs, in which private waste haulers were employed. A 1982 study of city garbage collection in Canada discovered an astonishing 50 percent average savings as a result of privatization."
Completely privatized trash collection means city residents don't get socked with the bill for fraudulently engineered overtime pay, inflated pensions and gold-plated health benefits in perpetuity -- not to mention the capital and operating costs of vehicles and equipment. The Colorado Springs model, as city councilman Sean Paige calls it, is a blueprint for how every city can cope with budget adversity while freeing itself from thuggish union threats when contracts expire or cuts are made. Those who dawdled on privatization efforts in better times are suffering dire, deadly consequences now.
Let the snow-choked streets of New York be a lesson for the rest of the nation: It's time to put the Big Chill on Big Labor-run municipal services.
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Yup. I hope a through criminal investigation is conducted. At least two people died because EMS couldn't make it through the snow.
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And this is why FDR even in the 30's was against public employee unions. They hold taxpayers hostage. No surprise.
As ususal the taxpayers are spit on by our complicit elected officials and the unions who have this attitude they are entitled:
***Union Snow Saboteurs Caught on Tape: Criminal Investigation Launched
Fire it up 32
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Call it the "blizzard backlash."
Criminal investigations are under way to find out why it took so long to dig out from last week's massive snow storm.
Videos released exclusively to CBS 2's Marcia Kramer suggest that the clean-up job may have been dirtier than once thought.
One video is now in the hands of prosecutors. It shows two sanitation trucks driving down 155th Street in the Whitestone section of Queens after the blizzard without removing the snow.***
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Unions dominated by organized crime. I've had longershoreman patients who tell me about this. I suggested to one black patient who has arthritis to go for some sort of supervisory position. His response, Blacks don't get those. It is who you know. What is becoming evident is many of the union employees are now getting looted by the union bosses. I know of one union where the members are actually suing the union for money that disappeared out of their pension funds.
There is a definite tie with organized crime and the music business. It ain't just the Italian mafia. apparently there is a Irish one, posssibly a Jewish one and th eBlacks have their own gangs. Why cannot anyone get into these crooks can only be explained that it is not a poltical issue or the wealth from the entertainment business is too easy to spread around - I don't know.
In any case I am sure most Americans would be astonished at how organized crime permeates our culture, our society, all the way up to the highest levels of government.
I know that I am surprised by how easy it is to bribe almost ANYONE. I f I don't see it with my own eyes I am not sure I would believe. Few fully grasp it even when I explain it.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/the_mob/2011/01/21/2011-01-
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Not the most highbrow of websites, but the argument seems sound enough:
http://townhall.com/columnists/LuritaDoan/2011/01/24/federal_government_unions_looting_american_taxpayers/page/full/
Lines are being drawn and the fight to reduce overly generous pay and benefits to government employees at the federal, state, and local level is underway. Not too surprisingly, public employee unions are gearing up, rallying government employees, and exerting pressure to maintain the generous pay and benefits that has loaded government with unsustainable debt. Public employee unions are, even now, pressing the Obama Administration for additional benefits and power.
President Obama, either unwilling, or perhaps unable, to bring long-overdue accountability to powerful public employee unions, has instead issued guidance requiring greater Union representation and input into federal agency decision making. Obama's decision will likely embolden union bosses to think they can escape accountability and an honest review of benefits, salary, and pensions of government employees.
Perhaps it is time to send a different message. President Obama, like many Americans, is probably unaware that the federal government actually subsidizes federal government employee union operations. In fact, the federal government provides unions with free office space, pays for union member time and picks up travel and per diem costs. These “perks” represent a tax that has never been approved by American taxpayers--perks which operate at a level below the radar of Congress and well below the radar of the IRS. These hidden “perks” provided to government employee unions cost American taxpayers millions of dollars annually.
According to official data, federal employees currently spend some 2.9 million official work hours, at government expense, engaging in collective bargaining and union activities, representing a taxpayer cost of approximately $120 million. But the taxpayer costs and subsidizes to public employee unions is much higher than the official report because government does not account for all the expenses related to union activity.
Federal government unions are, in essence, running a business within the federal government. As we begin the debate over the proper role (if any) unions should have in government, one step Americans should all be able to agree upon is that taxpayer money should not be used to subsidize union activities.
Many Americans may be unaware that unions exist in every federal agency. In fact, most agencies have several unions competing for employee participation and funding which means that federal agencies are subsidizing the costs for several unions at the same time!
These federal agency union representatives have a large presence in Washington, DC, the seat of the federal government. But, most federal locations throughout the United States also have a union representative. So, for example, in a city, such as Kansas City, where the federal complex houses multiple government agencies, there will be multiple federal union representatives, from each federal union, within each federal agency, all at the same building location.
Why is this important?
Federal government union representatives are actually federal employees. They hold GS ranks and civil service status, and actually have federal jobs that they were employed to perform. Their union duties are, supposedly, performed over and above the requirements of their regular day job. However, because of the pernicious and growing power of federal unions, oftentimes, union duties often are performed in lieu of their job. Paid time off from regular government duties is allowed, in most federal agencies, for the union representative to solicit federal employees (i.e. market services), to attend union meetings (i.e. work for an entity other than their government employer) or travel to have “face time” with their union bosses in DC. All at taxpayer expense.
In addition, union representatives often request and are provided with office space that is more expansive than is warranted by their GS rank or than their federal job duties require. The cost of this additional square footage is also paid for by the American taxpayer, and is paid for at each federal agency, for each federal union representative, for each federal union. Federal government union representatives total thousands of federal employees, all billing their time, travel and per diem, for non-government related work, to the American taxpayer.
Perhaps an even bigger problem is that the federal government union representatives sometimes seem to operate under the mistaken belief that they were hired by the government to work for the union—and that union work is more important than the federal job they were hired to perform.
Unions seem, at best, indifferent to the performance of government and are exclusively concerned with pay and benefits of union workers. Therein lies another irony for the American taxpayer. Unions are organized to negotiate against employers, but, since the federal government is the employer, and since the American people pay for the federal government, then, technically, federal government employee unions might be construed as organizing against the American people.
It is time to bring some accountability to public employee unions. A good first step would be for Congress to get a grip on the proliferation of benefits for unions in the federal government, whose activities are an additional burden on federal taxpayers. Congress should change federal policies on payment of travel, per diem and office space for federal government union employees.
Better yet, perhaps President Obama should take the lead.
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"Better yet, perhaps President Obama should take the lead."
Yeah right.
No Democrat will do this. Federal, State, county or municipal level.
We the tax payers are being held hostage to government employee unions.
"President Obama, either unwilling, or perhaps unable"
What in Obama's history has EVER given the impression he is/was ever willing to do anything about this? Why can we not call an ace of clubs and ace of clubs?
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It wouldn't surprise me that he includes some adorable soundbite in his con job speech tomorrow like "the era of big government is over". That said the writing is on the wall. But also thw swing voters will adore it tooth and nail:
Right off Drudge this morning.
What a corrupt administration!
***Three SEIU Locals--Including Chicago Chapter--Waived From Obamacare Requirement
Monday, January 24, 2011
By Fred Lucas
(CNSNews.com) – Three local chapters of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), whose political action committee spent $27 million supporting Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, have received temporary waivers from a provision in the Obamacare law.
The three SEIU chapters include the Local 25 in Obama’s hometown of Chicago.
The waivers allow health insurance plans to limit how much they will spend on a policy holder’s medical coverage for a given year. Under the new health care law, however, such annual limits are phased out by the year 2014. (Under HHS regulations, annual limits can be no less than $750,000 for 2011, no less than $1.25 million in 2012 and no less than $2 million in 2013.)
The SEIU, with more than 2 million members nationally, includes health care workers, janitors, security guards, and state and local government workers.
The three SEIU locals, covering a total of 36,064 enrollees, are covered by the federal waivers, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
HHS gave a waiver to Local 25 SEIU in Chicago with 31,000 enrollees on Oct. 1, 2010; to Local 1199 SEIU Greater New York Benefit Fund with 4,544 enrollees on Oct. 10, 2010; and to the SEIU Local 1 Cleveland Welfare Fund with 520 enrollees on Nov. 15, 2010.
So far, the Obama administration has issued waivers to 222 entities, including businesses, unions and charitable organizations. Of that total, 45 were labor organizations.
A total of 1,507,418 enrollees are now included in the waivers. More than one-third -- 512,315 – of the enrollees affected were insured by union health plans.
SEIU Local 1199’s health plan put a $50,000 cap on medical expenses for its New Jersey nursing home workers, according to 1199 SEIU spokeswoman Leah Gonzalez. That’s $700,000 under the 2011 limit stipulated by HHS regulations.
In September, HHS announced it would grant waivers to employers to prevent some workers from losing their benefits if the insurer could not meet new health care law’s requirements on annual limits. The waivers are granted by HHS if the department determines “compliance with the interim final regulations would result in a significant decrease in access to benefits or a significant increase in premiums,” according to a Sept. 3 memo by Steve L. Larson, director of the HHS Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.
Local 1199, SEIU's Greater New York Benefit Fund, requested the waiver specifically with respect to its separate plan for New Jersey members, according to Gonzalez. This waiver primarily affects low-wage New Jersey nursing home workers whose health care plan provides medical, hospital, prescription, dental and vision benefits.
The New Jersey members now have an annual maximum health care benefit of $50,000. Gonzalez said fewer than 1 percent of members have ever reached that cap, and that those members who did received additional help.
“The members’ health benefits are paid for by the employer and are negotiated through collective bargaining,” Gonzalez said in a written statement to CNSNews.com. “Several years ago, facing limited dollars from the employers for this small group, the members themselves chose how to shape their health plan to get the most out of their coverage.”
Gonzalez added that prescriptions are excluded from the cap. “For example, if a member maxes out from a hospital stay, she/he can continue to get their life-saving medications throughout the year while accessing alternative coverage at low-cost community clinics.”
Neither SEIU Local 25 nor Local 1, nor the national organization responded to CNSNews.com’s request for comment.
The SEIU's Committee on Political Education made $27,829,845.91 in independent expenditures on Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. SEIU-affiliated groups in Illinois have long supported Obama’s campaigns and endorsed him for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate in 2004. In 2008, the national union backed Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination.***
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The top priority for the United Auto Workers this year is to organize one of the foreign, or so-called "transplant," car makers. That makes perfect sense—for the UAW. Their rich labor contracts and stifling work rules helped bring low Detroit's Big Three, so the union needs new dues-paying members.
We've long believed companies get the unions they deserve, but in this case it's worth noting that the UAW isn't confident enough to play by normal labor-organizing rules. New UAW chief Bob King has set out 11 "principles" that he says car makers must embrace or the UAW will "expose" them as "human rights violators." Yes, like dictatorships.
This is no idle intimidation, especially with the union's political allies manning key labor jobs in Washington. The threat is also backed with at least $60 million from the union's $800 million strike fund. With fewer than 400,000 members, down from 1.5 million in 1979, the union can afford to raid that fund since it isn't likely to strike the weakened GM, Ford or Chrysler anytime soon.
Mr. King's principles start by repeating the well-established ban on employer intimidation for union activity, but then go much further. He also wants car makers to give up their right to discuss unionization on company grounds "unless the UAW is invited to participate." In effect, the UAW wants companies to give up their right to free speech even in their own workplaces. Meanwhile, unions are free to visit employee homes whenever they wish.
The union chief is also demanding that "an impartial, third party" resolve "any disagreements" over the conduct of the organizing campaign. The National Labor Relations Board currently plays this role, but the UAW seems to want companies to agree to a separate judicial body and waive their rights under the law.
Last but not least audaciously, Mr. King sneaks in unionization by "card check." Not even the last Congress's Democratic supermajority passed this Big Labor priority. But the UAW principles commit companies to unionize if a majority of workers sign union cards, forgoing a secret ballot election. All the UAW would have to do to allow card check is claim a "history of anti-union activities" at the target company. It would also oblige arbitration on a first labor contract, if six months after a union is formed the two sides can't agree. This was also part of the card check bill that died quietly last year.
The UAW is making these demands because it knows how hard it will be to organize the 88,000 or so workers at Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and other foreign-owned plants. The union has tried and failed before, most notably in its repeated attempts to organize Nissan's plant in Smyrna, Tennessee and Toyota's in Georgetown, Kentucky. These companies have for the most part built plants in business-friendly Southern states and showed employees that a nonunion job paid on par with UAW wages is better over the long term than a union presence that makes the company uncompetitive.
The UAW hasn't announced its first target, which might be the politically vulnerable Toyota or a new arrival like Kia or VW. The political campaign is already under way, and last week the UAW sent a thousand members to lobby Congress for support.
As much as GM and Chrysler, the UAW was also bailed out by the Bush and Obama Administrations in 2008-2009. And Mr. King's principles do acknowledge that the union should learn from that failure and build "relations with employers based upon a foundation of respect, shared goals and a common mission." But you wouldn't know that from the bullying way it has begun its latest organizing campaign.
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By FRED SIEGEL
The turbulent years of the 1960s and '70s are best known by the headline-grabbing civil rights and women's rights movements. But there was another "rights" movement, largely overlooked, that has also had a profound effect on American life. The looming public-pension crisis that threatens to bankrupt city, county and state governments had its origins in those same years when public employees, already protected by civil-service rules, gained the right to bargain collectively.
Liberals were once skeptical of public-sector unionism. In the 1930s, New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia warned against it as an infringement on democratic freedoms that threatened the ability of government to represent the broad needs of the citizenry. And in a 1937 letter to the head of an organization of federal workers, FDR noted that "a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable."
Private-sector union leaders were also divided. George Meany, the president of the AFL-CIO from 1955-1979 who came out of the building trades, argued that it was "impossible to bargain collectively with the government." Private unionists more generally worried that rather than winning a greater share of profits, public-sector labor would be extracting taxes from a public that included their own workers. But in the late 1950s, with the failure of the labor movement's organizing campaign in the South, Meany's own executive council insisted on the necessity of winning the right to organize public employees.
The first to seize on the political potential of government workers was New York City Mayor Robert F. Wagner. The mayor's father, a prominent New Deal senator, had authored the landmark 1935 Wagner Act, which imposed on private employers the legal duty to bargain collectively with the properly elected union representatives of their employees. Mayor Wagner, prodded by Jerry Wurf of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme), gave city workers the right to bargain collectively in 1958.
Running for re-election in 1961, Mayor Wagner was opposed by the old-line party bosses of all five boroughs. He turned to a new force, the public-sector unions, as his political machine. His re-election resonated at the Kennedy White House, which had won office by only the narrowest of margins in 1960.
Ten weeks after Wagner's victory, Kennedy looked to mobilize public-sector workers as a new source of Democratic Party political support. In mid-January 1962, he issued Executive Order 10988, which gave federal workers the right to organize in unions.
View Full Image
Getty Images
The scene in downtown Manhattan during a sanitation workers' strike, 1968.
.Two young and militant public-sector unionists, Al Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers and Wurf of Afscme, both strong supporters of the still nascent civil rights movement, seized the opportunity. Shanker saw both teachers and African-Americans as second-class citizens fighting the old-line political bosses. He'd also called a brief teachers strike in 1960. Shanker called another strike in 1962 that shifted the balance of power from principals to teachers, where it has remained down to the present.
In 1958, there had been but 15 public-employee strikes nationwide, involving a handful of workers. By 1968, after the old guard in Afscme had been deposed by the so-called young Turks led by Wurf, more than 200,000 union members, mostly in local and state government, were involved in 254 strikes.
In 1968, amid rioting, civil rights and antiwar protests, Martin Luther King Jr. backed an Afscme strike by poorly paid, mostly African-American sanitation men in Memphis, Tenn. After King's tragic assassination, the city quickly settled with the union.
In the 1970s, government-worker unions became a political venue for New Leftist, feminist and black activists hoping to carry on in the militant spirit of the 1960s. The divisions within organized labor over the Vietnam War allowed Wurf and his allies to take on the declining private unions of the AFL-CIO, whose leader Meany backed the war. Wurf made himself a key player in George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign, and public employees have had a lead role in Democratic Party politics ever since.
Public-employee unionism seemed to be moving from success to success—Afscme was gaining a thousand (mostly female) workers a week—until the summer of 1975. At that point there was a surge in strikes, and the government unions began to threaten Democratic officeholders.
On July 1, 1975, New York sanitation workers walked off the job, allowing garbage to pile up in the streets of a Gotham already in the throes of fiscal crisis. In short order, cops objecting to furloughs imposed by the city's liberal Democratic Mayor Abe Beame shut down the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge, with marchers carrying signs that read "Cops Out, Crime In" and "Burn City Burn."
On that same July 1, 76,000 Pennsylvania state workers went on strike against liberal Democratic Gov. Milton Shapp's austerity measures. Afscme's leader in Pennsylvania, Gerald MacIntee, told his members "Let's go out and close down this God-damned state." And in Seattle, the fireman's union initiated a recall ballot on July 1 directed against the one-time union favorite, Mayor Wes Uhlman, who held back pay hikes in the midst of rising deficits.
Mr. Uhlman narrowly survived and he, like Beame and Shapp, calmed the situation by largely caving in to the striker's demands. But a line had been crossed: With New York's near-bankruptcy a visible marker, the peril posed by public-sector unionism became a problem for Democrats as well as Republicans.
The fiscal burden of public-employee unions briefly became visible again in the early '80s, when many warned of a looming public-pension crisis. That crisis was averted by the stock market boom that began in 1982-83 and lasted until 2007-08. It is now back with a vengeance.
Restraining the immense clout that government-employee unions have accumulated over the past half-century will be difficult, but not impossible. Civil rights for African-Americans and women was a fulfillment of the universalist American promise as expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Collective bargaining by public employees was not rooted in deep-seated American tradition.
Instead, the decision to grant this privilege was a political decision designed to enhance the power of a pressure group whose interests, even many liberals assumed, would be at odds with those of the general public. Political decisions can be reversed.
Mr. Siegel is a scholar in residence at St. Francis College and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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I think this is a "union" thread post, not "education".
From Michele Malkin:
"The Badger State (like New Jersey before it, California and New York now close behind) is doing what needs to be done to challenge the unions’ grip without having to declare bankruptcy, as some GOP strategists, celebs, and 2012 aspirants including Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush have recommended."
Is that true? Newt and Jeb have recommended these states just declare bankuptcy? Wouldn't bankruptcy be worse for the government empolyees? Couldn't they in such a scenerio lose more?
Full article below:
*****Michelle Malkin Lead StoryWatch Wisconsin, Part III: A state government employee speaks; Madison schools, plus 7 other districts shut down a second day; Michael Moore says Wisconsin is the “new Cairo;” Dems boycott legis. debate
By Michelle Malkin • February 17, 2011 01:23 AM Scroll down for breaking updates…
Public employee unions who force state workers to join and force them to fork over dues have a lot of chutzpah posing as freedom-fighters, don’t they?
The letter of the day reprinted below comes from one of those dissenting state workers in Wisconsin, where the SEIU Purple Army and assorted Big Labor enforcers are trying to bring the state to its knees over the brave and necessary fiscal discipline that GOP Gov. Scott Walker has introduced.
The AFL-CIO is digging in its heels. The rent-a-mobs are fully activated and marching on Gov. Walker’s home. Mission: Persuasion of power.
As I said yesterday: As Wisconsin goes, so go the rest of the nation’s bankrupt and near-bankrupt states.
One compelling aspect that must be noted as we continue our Watch Wisconsin series (Part I here and Part II here):
The Badger State (like New Jersey before it, California and New York now close behind) is doing what needs to be done to challenge the unions’ grip without having to declare bankruptcy, as some GOP strategists, celebs, and 2012 aspirants including Newt Gingrich and Jeb Bush have recommended. As E.J. McMahon pointed out in the WSJ last month: Politicians already have the power to tame public unions without roiling municipal bond markets. They merely have to use it.
Indeed, they are walking the walk in Wisconsin. No top-down federal intervention from Newt or another Bush or anyone else in Washington.
Start spreading the news. Big Labor’s heaving today…
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From reader “Proud 5th Column Member in Wisconsin:”
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Michelle, there are a significant number of conservative full time state employees in Wisconsin that support Scott Walker, but our voices are not heard and certainly not covered in the press. Many of us are afraid to get too public for fear of personal attacks at work and at home. Besides, it would not be reported or covered by the insanely liberal press in Madison, WI anyway. The only voice we have in Madison is Vicki McKenna on the AM radio, a conservative talk show host of some fame in the Madison area. We are jokingly calling ourselves The 5th Column like the counter insurgents on the “V” TV show. The unions are scared to death they will lose their gravy train, you are forced to join the union upon state employment as a condition of employment, what is more tyrannical than that? So, now, the workers would be able to CHOOSE to join the union or not, and many will leave it. The rest will have to cut an actual check to the union each month, instead of having it garnished from their check, and the union knows people will get tired of that. THAT is what this is really about.
Our benefit package in WI is almost 2nd to none in the US for state workers, this is a minor sacrifice when all is said and done. Under our former Democratic Governor, we had to take a 3% paycut the last two years in the form of mandatory furloughs. Walker intends to stop that, so we could regain that money, couple that with union dues we get back for quitting the union and it’s nearly a wash on the slight increase in pension and health care costs. That proves this is not about those changes, but about a political agenda by the left and the unions being threatened.
God speed Michelle. Long live the 5th Column!!”
***
And now, illegally striking teachers have succeeded in shutting down schools in Madison and seven other districts for a second consecutive day.
Madison public schools are closed again Thursday because too many teachers are taking the day off to protest Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to limit union bargaining.
Several other school districts in the area have also canceled classes Thursday.
It’s the second consecutive day the Madison Metropolitan School District has canceled classes “due to substantial concerns about staff absences.”
The district said it has received reports Wednesday evening that there will again be significant staff absences in the district on Thursday in protest of the governor’s proposed changes in labor law.
…Superintendent Dan Nerad said teachers who are taking a sick day will be asked to show proof of a medical reason.
Many teachers in the Madison Metropolitan School District spent Wednesday at rallies at the Capitol in opposition to Walker’s collective bargaining proposal.
Other area school districts that have also canceled classes Thursday include the Oregon School District, the DeForest Area School District, Edgerton Schools, Monona Grove Schools, Middleton-Cross Plains Schools, Verona Schools and Waunakee Schools.
FOR THE CHILLLLLDRREN!!!****
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It used to be one thing seeing unions picket outside private companies. But to see the state unions picketing outside state capitols and refusing to go to work.
Even FDR knew that it was wrong to let government employees hold taxpayers/voters hostage.
None of these picketers get one ioda of sympathy from me.
Here I NJ we pay the highest property tax in the country - enough.
Those who disagree are welcome to take shots at me.
I say non government union people should start picketing across the street.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71gsnLfsbbM&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/02/17/have-teacher-unions-nuked-the-fridge/
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As a taxpayer I feel like my rights are being infringed.
No one ever asked me to the government-union-employee bargaining table to decide where my tax dollars go.
Their unions buy and pay for their Democratic candidates. Then they turn around and make deals behind the rest of our backs. Now the states are broke, they are annoyed?
I don't want to hurt these people but the money isn't there. And no, I am not for raising taxes on the "rich", the middle class, businesses or anyone else.
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Last night Madcow was actually in obvious *panic* mode over what is happening here. She was ranting raving (more than the following video) as fast and nervous as possible that what is going on in Wisconsin is an "existential" threat to the survival of the Democratic party!
I disagree with this premise to start with but the larger more important point to the overwhelming Americans who are NOT government employees is to have it laid bare for all of us to see how the unions have outright corrupted our political process. Raise (occasionally steal- no choice) money from your members, siphon plenty off for their own personal benefit and than send payoffs to Democrats running for office, then if they get elected they always return the favor by making back-room deals with the unions. Always at taxpayer expense.
Thank God we are having this fight. It is about time.
Madcow says this is politics! Yup it certianly is. This is not about educating children, this is not about law enforcement, firefighting. This is about corruption of one of the two large parties in the US while other voters taxpayers are oblivious to what is going on. Well no more. That said she is wrong or lying about that this is an existential threat to the Dem party. Perhaps she is just panicking. Perhaps she is just trying to get all Dems riled up and on board with backing the unions. I am not sure which.
http://shoqvalue.com/rachel-maddow-wisconsin-is-about-the-survival-of-the-democratic-party#
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Young Mr. Maddow is correct, this is an existential threat to the dems, as the average voter sees what the real face of the left is.
"All your money are belong to us"-Unions
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http://michellemalkin.com/2011/02/19/union-picketers/
Time to unionize the non-union picketers.
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Or perhaps,
taxpayers should form our own union!
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They did. It's called the Tea Party.
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The left badly overplayed it's hand in WI.
This will be where Obama lost re-election in 2012.
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I pray you are right.
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Kill the public employee unions, you kill a lot of forced dem fundraising. Also, lots of voters are getting really pissed off by these union antics. There doing a great job of turning WI. red.
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http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2011/02/meanwhile-back-at-school.html
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Meanwhile, Back at School
While hundreds of Wisconsin educators skip work to protest Governor Scott Walker's fiscal reform plan, we're getting a better look at the teachers' "accomplishments" in the classroom.
From the MacIver Institute, a conservative think tank based in the state:
When it comes to the U.S. Military, almost half of Wisconsin’s African American students aren’t even fit to serve.
That’s the story from the latest results of the United States Army’s Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) in Wisconsin. In 2009, 18.9 percent of all Wisconsin high school students failed to qualify for service. This included a 46.9 percent ineligibility rate amongst African American students and a 26.9 percent rate for Hispanic students. These figures come from a December study by The Education Trust in Washington, D.C
[snip]
Overall, the Badger state ASVAB test takers graded as above average, but posted one of the worst rates for African American students. While Wisconsin’s near 19 percent failure rate was good for 17th nationally, the ineligibility rate for black students over the past five years was the fourth worst in the country. Amongst eligible states*, only Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas fared worse.
Regionally, Wisconsin ranked fourth out of six upper Midwestern states, including a last place finish for black students. Not surprisingly, the state led the nation in the achievement gap between African American and White students. On a more positive note, Wisconsin was only fourth in the region when it came to the gap between Hispanic and White students.
We've written at length about declining ASVAB scores and their impact on military recruiting. With fewer young Americans achieving passing scores on the test, it will be more difficult for the services to meet their quotas. And, qualification scores aren't excessive by any measure; the minimum entrance score for an Army recruit is 31; it's 32 for future Marines, 35 for the Navy, 40 for the Air Force and 45 for the U.S. Coast Guard. So, it's possible for future service members to score below 50 on the ASVAB and still meet service requirements for the aptitude test.
Unfortunately, most African-American students in Wisconsin don't have that option, given their 50% failure rate on the ASVAB. Among Hispanics, more than one in four in Wisconsin schools can't achieve a passing score on the military entrance exam.
And where do you find most of the black and Hispanic students in the Badger State? The Milwaukee public school system, the same one that was shut down for several days last week, because many of its teachers were protesting in Madison.
You can see why they're fighting so hard to retain collective bargaining. With that sort of job performance, many of those Wisconsin teachers would be out of work without their union protection.
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Actually without addressing the protest issues, I feel obligated to comment since I was born and raised in Wisconsin.
If you look at tests, Wisconsin is always ranked near the top on SAT scores and other academic achievement tests.
Spending on education is high in WI, but it is no where near the highest among the 50 states.
Pay among teachers is also good, but again, no where near the highest.
Education has always been a priority in Wisconsin and in general, the teachers deliver a good product.
While I am not familiar with the ASVAB test, I would be willing to bet that most students in WI simply don't take the test.
I doubt if few or any educators look at the ASVAB.
To broadly say, based solely on the ASVAB test that WI "led the nation in the achievement gap between African American and White students." is
a misnomer and distortion.
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http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338
Kids at New York's Abraham Lincoln High School told me their teachers are so dull students fall asleep in class. One student said, "You see kids all the time walking in the school smoking weed, you know. It's a normal thing here."
We tried to bring "20/20" cameras into New York City schools to see for ourselves and show you what's going on in the schools, but officials wouldn't allow it.
Washington, D.C., officials steered us to the best classrooms in their district.
We wanted to tape typical classrooms but were turned down in state after state.
School work
(abc news)
Finally, school officials in Washington, D.C., allowed "20/20" to give cameras to a few students who were handpicked at two schools they'd handpicked. One was Woodrow Wilson High. Newsweek says it's one of the best schools in America. Yet what the students taped didn't inspire confidence.
One teacher didn't have control over the kids. Another "20/20" student cameraman videotaped a boy dancing wildly with his shirt off, in front of his teacher.
If you're like most American parents, you might think "These things don't happen at my kid's school." A Gallup Poll survey showed 76 percent of Americans were completely or somewhat satisfied with their kids' public school.
Education reformers like Kevin Chavous have a message for these parents: If you only knew.
Even though people in the suburbs might think their schools are great, Chavous says, "They're not. That's the thing and the test scores show that."
Chavous and many other education professionals say Americans don't know that their public schools, on the whole, just aren't that good. Because without competition, parents don't know what their kids might have had.
And while many people say, "We need to spend more money on our schools," there actually isn't a link between spending and student achievement.
Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths," points out that "If money were the solution, the problem would already be solved ... We've doubled per pupil spending, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years, and yet schools aren't better."
He's absolutely right. National graduation rates and achievement scores are flat, while spending on education has increased more than 100 percent since 1971. More money hasn't helped American kids.
Ben Chavis is a former public school principal who now runs an alternative charter school in Oakland, Calif., that spends thousands of dollars less per student than the surrounding public schools. He laughs at the public schools' complaints about money.
"That is the biggest lie in America. They waste money," he said.
To save money, Chavis asks the students to do things like keep the grounds picked up and set up for their own lunch. For gym class, his students often just run laps around the block. All of this means there's more money left over for teaching.
Even though he spends less money per student than the public schools do, Chavis pays his teachers more than what public school teachers earn. His school also thrives because the principal gets involved. Chavis shows up at every classroom and uses gimmicks like small cash payments for perfect attendance.
Since he took over four years ago, his school has gone from being among the worst in Oakland to being the best. His middle school has the highest test scores in the city.
"It's not about the money," he said.
He's confident that even kids who come from broken families and poor families will do well in his school. "Give me the poor kids, and I will outperform the wealthy kids who live in the hills. And we do it," he said.
Monopoly Kills Innovation and Cheats Kids
Chavis's charter school is an example of how a little innovation can create a school that can change kids' lives. You don't get innovation without competition.
To give you an idea of how competitive American schools are and how U.S. students performed compared with their European counterparts, we gave parts of an international test to some high school students in Belgium and in New Jersey.
Belgian kids cleaned the American kids' clocks, and called them "stupid."
We didn't pick smart kids to test in Europe and dumb kids in the United States. The American students attend an above-average school in New Jersey, and New Jersey's kids have test scores that are above average for America.
Lov Patel, the boy who got the highest score among the American students, told me, "I'm shocked, because it just shows how advanced they are compared to us."
The Belgian students didn't perform better because they're smarter than American students. They performed better because their schools are better. At age 10, American students take an international test and score well above the international average. But by age 15, when students from 40 countries are tested, the Americans place 25th.
American schools don't teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don't have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids -- it's a kind of voucher system. Government funds education -- at many different kinds of schools -- but if a school can't attract students, it goes out of business.
Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents.
She told us, "If we don't offer them what they want for their child, they won't come to our school." She constantly improves the teaching, saying, "You can't afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don't do their work, because the clients will know, and won't come to you again."
"That's normal in Western Europe," Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. "If schools don't perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S."
Last week Florida's Supreme Court shut down "opportunity scholarships," Florida's small attempt at competition. Public money can't be spent on private schools, said the court, because the state constitution commands the funding only of "uniform . . . high-quality" schools. Government schools are neither uniform nor high-quality, and without competition, no new teaching plan or No Child Left Behind law will get the monopoly to serve its customers well.
The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.
This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don't like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it's good or bad. That's why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.
In New York City, it's "just about impossible" to fire a bad teacher, says Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. The new union contract offers some relief, but it's still about 200 pages of bureaucracy. "We tolerate mediocrity," said Klein, because "people get paid the same, whether they're outstanding, average or way below average."
Here's just one example from New York City: It took years to fire a teacher who sent sexually oriented e-mails to "Cutie 101," a 16-year-old student. Klein said, "He hasn't taught, but we have had to pay him, because that's what's required under the contract."
Only after six years of litigation were they able to fire him. In the meantime, they paid the teacher more than $300,000. Klein said he employs dozens of teachers who he's afraid to let near the kids, so he has them sit in what are called rubber rooms. This year he will spend $20 million dollars to warehouse teachers in five rubber rooms. It's an alternative to firing them. In the last four years, only two teachers out of 80,000 were fired for incompetence. Klein's office says the new contract will make it easier to get rid of sex offenders, but it will still be difficult to fire incompetent teachers.
When I confronted Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, she said, "They [the NYC school board] just don't want to do the work that's entailed." But the "work that's entailed" is so onerous that most principals just have just given up, or gotten bad teachers to transfer to another school. They even have a name for it: "the dance of the lemons."
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Famous people caught reading the forum: Something I have been trying to say for a long ime picked up by Joe Klen, Time magazine!
"DougMacG Re: Unions June 11, 2010
There was a time I suppose when organizing workers made sense because the greedy capitalist had too much power as perhaps the only employer within commuting distance of a town and whatever paltry sum they paid is what you had to accept or not work. For one thing, that is NEVER the case with a public employees union. There is no greedy capitalist involved - just the will of the people / consent of the governed."
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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2011/02/20/in_wisconsin_protesting_the_greed_of_the_public_250813.html
February 20, 2011 Joe Klein TIME.com
In Wisconsin, Protesting the Greed... of the Public?
"...far too many state legislatures, of both parties, that have been cowed by the political power of the unions and enacted contracts that force state and city governments to be run for the benefit of their employees, rather than for their citizens. This situation is most egregious in far too many school districts across the nation. The events in Wisconsin are a rebalancing of power that, after decades of flush times and lax negotiating, had become imbalanced. That is also something that, from time to time, happens in a democracy."
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Wow, Fareed Zakaria let this through (editor of Time)!
It is really an outrage how the Dems are out in force demogagueing this. We should be grateful to them for weekends, the 8 hour day. :roll:
Collective bargaining is a *right* akin to voters rights, the right to liberty, the right to property etc etc. :roll:
This turns back 50, 60, 80 years of "progress". :roll:
The average Joe has the right to tell their prosepctive employer what their salary should be and not told what their pay should be. :roll:
All people who own property or pay state income/sales or other taxes should be the ones outraged. :x
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The Real Story in Wisconsin
Our nation is in the stranglehold of Progressive Democrat dominated unions that are producing a crisis dropout rate across the country. The Wisconsin government is saying that the Public Teachers Union is making more than double on average than the average voter that they are taking money from (1). The current bill allows them to keep their collective bargaining for salary but have to give it up for benefits, and yes contribute a small sum toward their healthcare and retirement like the rest of America. The Progressives are screaming, calling people Hitler, jumping up and down, for a very small reasonable cut to their bargaining power and salary. Tea Party people finally got upset about Obama taking over one seventh of the economy in Obamacare and spending $3 Trillion of their grandchildren's money, by giving it to unions and special interests.
The Even Bigger Story
The bigger story is the public connection from the Democrat dominated teachers unions to the democrat President of the United States. So the even bigger story is that Progressive Democrat Obama and Democrat Pelosi took the time to make a public press release showing their support for the Teachers Unions in Wisconsin. What is significant is that they took their valuable time to support a single State single Democrat dominated Teachers Union, with the Middle East on fire, Iranians sending ships through the Suez Canal for the first time since the Islamic revolution in 1979, China building a military that might challenge ours, the counter-demonstrations to the Sharia led government in Iran, or the 100s of thousands of people that have been murdered in the Sudan by Muslims. They have not made a press release in announcing that the progressive Obama government is embarking on the largest sale of arms to the Middle East of any of our past administrations (Fortune Magazine Cover Story 2/28/11). Yet the two most powerful Democrats have time to talk about a local State issue where Teachers get paid almost twice as much as the private sector and produce underperforming students.
The bottom line is that Progressive Democrats have dominated the Teacher's Unions across this country, and the Union donations to public officials for over 40 years. They give hundreds of millions to choose their boss (elected officials) and their boss pays them back with salary and pension increases. Cozy! The result is a curriculum that leans overwhelmingly progressive and amounts to indoctrination, and you wonder why your kids come out of public school with some of the attitudes they do. It is a broken system without competition that has degraded in quality to the point of a crisis. In Los Angeles county the dropout rate is over 34% and is about 1 in 3 or 4 nation wide (32% drop out rate)(2). About one-fifth of the nongraduates hail from 25 large school districts, including New York City; Los Angeles; and Clark County, Nev. (3)
So Wisconsin is really about the future education of your children and grand children in every state and who is going to be teaching them for a majority of their life. And it is about the future freedom of all of our lives by ending the unholy alliance of big unions and big government.
(1) The average salary for an MPS teacher is $56,500. When fringe benefits are factored in, the annual compensation will be $100,005 in 2011. http://maciverinstitute.com/2010/03/average-mps-teacher-compensation-tops-100kyear/
(2) http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/05/high-school-dropout-rate-climbs-to-349.html
(3) http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0610/Graduation-rate-for-US-high-schoolers-falls-for-second-straight-year
You have a few more days to purchase your Early Bird Tickets, don't delay. Also some of you asked how you can support this event. You can buy our Patriot Partner Ticket; these tickets are what help us break even. You can also bring a couple of friends and neighbors, better yet buy them a ticket, pick them up and get them to the event. You can forward this invitation to as many people as you know, with a personal recommendation. Buy your tickets here - www.CelebrateFreedomAmerica.com
For Freedom, Gary Aven
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I and many Americans watch the WI debate unfold. Again
I think I and most(?) Americans think changes need to be made;
accountability and excess benefits among others.
But I and maybe many Americans think a deal is a deal. The
teachers bargained in good faith; they have a contract and the
State signed and agreed.
Why legislate changes if you don't like the contract. Why not
at the next barginning session, at contract renewal demand
and negotiate changes? Wouldn't all of us on this forum demand
the same if we had a written contract?
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If there is no money, then there is no money.
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"The
teachers bargained in good faith; they have a contract and the
State signed and agreed."
Well, a little more accurately, the Democratic party machine signed and agreed.
Taxpayers had no clue.
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If there is no money, then there is no money.
It that was only true!
My point about contracts. Take LA; obviously we have fiscal problems. So does CA. No money....
So you are saying that the LAPD should be willing to re negotiate their absurdly rich retirement plan mid year?
I doubt if the local police officers would share your sense of fairness...
Contracts should be honored; and then at renewal re negotiated.
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Yes. Just as private sector employees have had to tighten their belts, so should public employees.
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The analogy I think is this: As in bankruptcy reorganization, when a company is going bankrupt, the federal bankruptcy judge can come in an re-jigger the contractual rights of bondholders and other creditors, employees, and stockholders so that the company can survive. if possible this is of greater value to all concerned than having to liquidate the company and sell its assets off, typically for pennies on the dollar.
By the way, Obama showed great disrespect for the sanctity of law by fg the secured creditors of GM and putting the unions ahead of them -- contrary to law. I haven't the time or the inclination to spell all this out, but I make the claim simply, clearly, and with confidence. Anyone interested should go look it up for themselves.
Also, worth keeping in mind is the American Contract Law includes some very flexible concepts that certainly surprised me when I started law school and I think might surprise some of us here. It places a very high value on economic efficiency and allows for people to break contracts far more than you might think.
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MSNBC announcers with great glee yesterday citing polls that people of Wisconsin are "breaking" with Governor Walker. I am a bit surprised (and disappointed) that most people appear to think collective bargaining for government employees is OK. I don't get it. They like paying for the largess. Without limiting this won't taxpayers always have to be at risk of being held up for more money?
****« REVOLT!: STATES LEAD THE WAYTHE DICK MORRIS POLL ON WISCONSIN
By Dick Morris02.24.2011
ANNOUNCING THE LAUNCH OF THE DICK MORRIS POLL and FIRST STATEWIDE POLL RESULTS OF WISCONSIN VOTERS
February 24, 2011
Dick Morris, a veteran pollster with thirty years of experience in national and international polling, is announcing the launch of The Dick Morris Poll, which will focus on timely political issues and candidates. Drawing on his polling expertise, Dick will provide the results and an analysis of each poll.
Dick Morris was President Clinton’s pollster for 20 years, and has done polling for 30 Senators and Governors and 14 presidents or prime ministers in foreign countries.
The Dick Morris Poll, to be published at least once a month, will use the traditional polling method of telephone calls to registered voters. On occasion, internet polls will be done of a carefully drawn random sample of likely voters – in order to avoid the bias of relying only on those participants with a political predisposition.
The initial poll is the first published poll of voters conducted within the state of Wisconsin and was completed on Monday, February 21, 2011 and Tuesday, February 22, 2011.
WISCONSIN POLL RESULTS
The Dick Morris Poll conducted a telephone survey among 409 likely Wisconsin voters. The survey has a margin of error of +- 4%.
Findings: Wisconsin voters break almost evenly on Governor Walker’s proposed reforms, supporting them by a margin of 51-47.
They support many aspects of the proposal by significant numbers:
VOTERS SUPPORT CHANGING THE BENEFITS TO STATE WORKERS, PAY, AND AUTOMATIC DEDUCTION OF UNION DUES
• By 74-18, they back making state employees pay more for their health insurance.
• By 79-16, they support asking state workers contribute more toward their pensions.
• By 54-34, Wisconsin voters support ending the automatic deduction of union dues from state paychecks and support making unions collect dues from each member.
• By 66-30, they back limiting state workers’ pay increases to the rate of inflation unless voters approve a higher raise by a public referendum.
VOTERS OPPOSE CHANGING COLLECTIVE BARGAINING AGREEMENTS
On the issue of limiting collective bargaining to wage and benefit issues, however, they break with the Governor, opposing the proposal by 41-54.
If the issues to be taken off the bargaining table are related to giving schools flexibility to modify tenure, pay teachers based on merit, discharge bad teachers and promote good ones, however, they support such limits on collective bargaining by 58-38.
ANALYSIS: Voters back the principal of collective bargaining. But they are also willing to limit these negotiations so that they would not impede education reforms.
For Governor Walker to prevail, he must focus on his goal of achieving reform in schools. He will not prevail as long as his proposal is essentially negative in nature (i.e. limiting collective bargaining). But if he emphasizes the positive intent that lies behind the proposal (i.e. giving schools the flexibility and freedom to implement education reforms), he will find a solid public majority behind him.
(c) COPYRIGHT 2011, DICK MORRIS AND EILEEN MCGANN. REPRINTS WITH WRITTEN PERMISSION ONLY.****
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ROBERT M. COSTRELL
The showdown in Wisconsin over fringe benefits for public employees boils down to one number: 74.2. That's how many cents the public pays Milwaukee public-school teachers and other employees for retirement and health benefits for every dollar they receive in salary. The corresponding rate for employees of private firms is 24.3 cents.
Gov. Scott Walker's proposal would bring public-employee benefits closer in line with those of workers in the private sector. And to prevent benefits from reaching sky-high levels in the future, he wants to restrict collective-bargaining rights.
The average Milwaukee public-school teacher salary is $56,500, but with benefits the total package is $100,005, according to the manager of financial planning for Milwaukee public schools. When I showed these figures to a friend, she asked me a simple question: "How can fringe benefits be nearly as much as salary?" The answers can be found by unpacking the numbers in the district's budget for this fiscal year:
•Social Security and Medicare. The employer cost is 7.65% of wages, the same as in the private sector.
View Full Image
Associated Press
Teachers protest in at the State Capitol in Madison.
.Slideshow: Teachers Revolt
Public employee protests spread across the Midwest.
.•State Pension. Teachers belong to the Wisconsin state pension plan. That plan requires a 6.8% employer contribution and 6.2% from the employee. However, according to the collective-bargaining agreement in place since 1996, the district pays the employees' share as well, for a total of 13%.
•Teachers' Supplemental Pension. In addition to the state pension, Milwaukee public-school teachers receive an additional pension under a 1982 collective-bargaining agreement. The district contributes an additional 4.2% of teacher salaries to cover this second pension. Teachers contribute nothing.
•Classified Pension. Most other school employees belong to the city's pension system instead of the state plan. The city plan is less expensive but here, too, according to the collective-bargaining agreement, the district pays the employees' 5.5% share.
Overall, for teachers and other employees, the district's contributions for pensions and Social Security total 22.6 cents for each dollar of salary. The corresponding figure for private industry is 13.4 cents. The divergence is greater yet for health insurance:
•Health care for current employees. Under the current collective- bargaining agreements, the school district pays the entire premium for medical and vision benefits, and over half the cost of dental coverage. These plans are extremely expensive.
This is partly because of Wisconsin's unique arrangement under which the teachers union is the sponsor of the group health-insurance plans. Not surprisingly, benefits are generous. The district's contributions for health insurance of active employees total 38.8% of wages. For private-sector workers nationwide, the average is 10.7%.
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Associated Press
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker
.•Health insurance for retirees. This benefit is rarely offered any more in private companies, and it can be quite costly. This is especially the case for teachers in many states, because the eligibility rules of their pension plans often induce them to retire in their 50s, and Medicare does not kick in until age 65. Milwaukee's plan covers the entire premium in effect at retirement, and retirees cover only the growth in premiums after they retire.
As is commonly the case, the school district's retiree health plan has not been prefunded. It has been pay-as-you-go. This has been a disaster waiting to happen, as retirees grow in number and live longer, and active employment shrinks in districts such as Milwaukee.
For fiscal year 2011, retiree enrollment in the district health plan is 36.4% of the total. In addition to the costs of these retirees' benefits, Milwaukee is, to its credit, belatedly starting to prefund the benefits of future school retirees. In all, retiree health-insurance contributions are estimated at 12.1% of salaries (of which 1.5% is prefunded).
Overall, the school district's contributions to health insurance for employees and retirees total about 50.9 cents on top of every dollar paid in wages. Together with pension and Social Security contributions, plus a few small items, one can see how the total cost of fringe benefits reaches 74.2%.
What these numbers ultimately prove is the excessive power of collective bargaining. The teachers' main pension plan is set by the state legislature, but under the pressure of local bargaining, the employees' contribution is often pushed onto the taxpayers. In addition, collective bargaining led the Milwaukee public school district to add a supplemental pension plan—again with no employee contribution. Finally, the employees' contribution (or lack thereof) to the cost of health insurance is also collectively bargained.
As the costs of pensions and insurance escalate, the governor's proposal to restrict collective bargaining to salaries—not benefits—seems entirely reasonable.
Mr. Costrell is professor of education reform and economics at the University of Arkansas.
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By ROBERT BARRO
How ironic that Wisconsin has become ground zero for the battle between taxpayers and public- employee labor unions. Wisconsin was the first state to allow collective bargaining for government workers (in 1959), following a tradition where it was the first to introduce a personal income tax (in 1911, before the introduction of the current form of individual income tax in 1913 by the federal government).
Labor unions like to portray collective bargaining as a basic civil liberty, akin to the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion. For a teachers union, collective bargaining means that suppliers of teacher services to all public school systems in a state—or even across states—can collude with regard to acceptable wages, benefits and working conditions. An analogy for business would be for all providers of airline transportation to assemble to fix ticket prices, capacity and so on. From this perspective, collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.
In fact, labor unions were subject to U.S. antitrust laws in the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which was first applied in 1894 to the American Railway Union. However, organized labor managed to obtain exemption from federal antitrust laws in subsequent legislation, notably the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
Remarkably, labor unions are not only immune from antitrust laws but can also negotiate a "union shop," which requires nonunion employees to join the union or pay nearly equivalent dues. Somehow, despite many attempts, organized labor has lacked the political power to repeal the key portion of the 1947 Taft Hartley Act that allowed states to pass right-to-work laws, which now prohibit the union shop in 22 states. From the standpoint of civil liberties, the individual right to work—without being forced to join a union or pay dues—has a much better claim than collective bargaining. (Not to mention that "right to work" has a much more pleasant, liberal sound than "collective bargaining.") The push for right-to-work laws, which haven't been enacted anywhere but Oklahoma over the last 20 years, seems about to take off.
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Associated Press
.The current pushback against labor-union power stems from the collision between overly generous benefits for public employees— notably for pensions and health care—and the fiscal crises of state and local governments. Teachers and other public-employee unions went too far in convincing weak or complicit state and local governments to agree to obligations, particularly defined-benefit pension plans, that created excessive burdens on taxpayers.
In recognition of this fiscal reality, even the unions and their Democratic allies in Wisconsin have agreed to Gov. Scott Walker's proposed cutbacks of benefits, as long as he drops the restrictions on collective bargaining. The problem is that this "compromise" leaves intact the structure of strong public-employee unions that helped to create the unsustainable fiscal situation; after all, the next governor may have less fiscal discipline. A long-run solution requires a change in structure, for example, by restricting collective bargaining for public employees and, to go further, by introducing a right-to-work law.
There is evidence that right-to-work laws—or, more broadly, the pro-business policies offered by right-to-work states—matter for economic growth. In research published in 2000, economist Thomas Holmes of the University of Minnesota compared counties close to the border between states with and without right-to-work laws (thereby holding constant an array of factors related to geography and climate). He found that the cumulative growth of employment in manufacturing (the traditional area of union strength prior to the rise of public-employee unions) in the right-to-work states was 26 percentage points greater than that in the non-right-to-work states.
Beyond Wisconsin, a key issue is which states are likely to be the next political battlegrounds on labor issues. In fact, one can interpret the extreme reactions by union demonstrators and absent Democratic legislators in Wisconsin not so much as attempts to influence that state—which may be a lost cause—but rather to deter politicians in other states from taking similar actions. This strategy may be working in Michigan, where Gov. Rick Snyder recently asserted that he would not "pick fights" with labor unions.
In general, the most likely arenas are states in which the governor and both houses of the state legislature are Republican (often because of the 2010 elections), and in which substantial rights for collective bargaining by public employees currently exist. This group includes Indiana, which has recently been as active as Wisconsin on labor issues; ironically, Indiana enacted a right-to-work law in 1957 but repealed it in 1965. Otherwise, my tentative list includes Michigan, Pennsylvania, Maine, Florida, Tennessee, Nebraska (with a nominally nonpartisan legislature), Kansas, Idaho, North Dakota and South Dakota.
The national fiscal crisis and recession that began in 2008 had many ill effects, including the ongoing crises of pension and health-care obligations in many states. But at least one positive consequence is that the required return to fiscal discipline has caused reexamination of the growth in economic and political power of public-employee unions. Hopefully, embattled politicians like Gov. Walker in Wisconsin will maintain their resolve and achieve a more sensible long-term structure for the taxpayers in their states.
Mr. Barro is a professor of economics at Harvard and a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
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On O'Reilly yesterday Stossel went out onto the streets of NYC and asked pedestians what they thought of what is going on in Wisconsin. He estimated roughly half the people had no clue about it. Yet when we hear polls telling us a majority are for the collective bargaining "rights" it is clear most people don't really understand all the implications. I doubt very much most people would support government union collective bargaining if they understood how it really affects them or this country as a whole and how corrupt it really is.
O'Reilly has really changed his strategy in his overall presentation. It is obvious he has plays his guests as straw men while he pretends to be the reasonable middle of the road one. By doing so he can attract Bamster and others to appear on his show and boost his own ratings.
I think many viewers have caught on to his ruse. But that is another story.
****John Stossel takes to the streets
Fox Business anchor John Stossel set out to determine how much ordinary citizens know about the political battle in Wisconsin. "I would say half the people were clueless," Stossel reported, "but it's not that complicated - all you have to do is watch a few news shows and read a bit." Given the public's lack of knowledge, Stossel took issue with how recent polls are worded. "The polls game the language, and even you use the term 'collective bargaining rights. Who's to say it's a right? Let's call it collective bargaining power." The Factor contended that most Americans inherently sympathize with unionized workers: "There is a lot of suspicion that government is corrupt, Wall Street fat cats are corrupt, but workers just want enough to feed their families and send their kids to college."****
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Rachel fled the board so I will post a Buchanan piece. I admit he probably is a bit of an anti-semite but his articles are far more in the real world than her philisophical postings which are nice for college students to fantasize about but have no place in the real world IMO:
****CommentsWhy Scott Walker Must Win
by Patrick J. Buchanan
03/01/2011
The anti-democratic methods President Obama's union allies are using in Wisconsin testify to the crucial character of the battle being fought.
Teachers have walked off in wildcat strikes, taking pupils with them. Doctors have issued lying affidavits saying the teachers were sick, a good example of ethical conduct for the school kids.
Thousands of demonstrators have daily invaded the Capitol, chanting, hooting, banging drums. Hundreds have camped out there and refused to leave so the Capitol building can be cleaned.
Is this democracy in action? Is this what 9-year-old Christina-Taylor Green went out to see that Saturday morning in Tucson?
Picketers have carried placards with the face of Gov. Scott Walker in the cross hairs of a gun sight. He has been compared to Hitler, Mussolini, Mubarak. Democrats have fled the state to deny the elected Wisconsin Senate a quorum to vote.
Such tactics cannot be allowed to triumph in a republic.
Why is the left behaving with desperation? Because it senses what this battle is all about. Not just about pay, but about power.
The Republicans are not only resolved to guarantee government workers pay a fair share of the cost of their pensions and health care. They are in a purposeful drive to disarm and demobilize the tax-subsidized armies of the Democratic Party and end sweetheart deals between unions and the poodle politicians they put into office.
"Walker wants to end collective bargaining," is the wail.
Actually, what the governor wants to end is the scandalous practice of powerful unions raising millions and running phone banks and get-out-the-vote operations for politicians who thank them with wages, benefits and job security no private employer can match.
Since the 1960s, government unions have been able to sit behind closed doors with the politicians they put in office and write contracts, the cost of which is borne by taxpayers who have no one at the table.
They call this collective bargaining. A more accurate term is collusive bargaining. And Walker means put an end to the racket.
When Ford sits down with the UAW, Ford negotiators represent the executives, directors and shareholders. Should they give away the store and Ford have to raise prices, and be undercut by Honda, all Ford workers, shareholders and executives suffer.
This is a healthy adversary procedure where Ford and the UAW each represents the interests of those who sent them, and both share a stake in keeping Ford prosperous.
When government unions sit down with the politicians they put into office, the relationship is not adversarial. It is not healthy. It is incestuous. And taxpayers must pay the cost of their cohabitation.
Gov. Walker also seeks to end the practice of having the state government collect union dues from state workers.
Indeed, why should a Republican administration collect dues for the benefit of union bosses who constantly labor to see to it those Republicans are not re-elected? Let the unions collect their own dues.
Walker would also require public service employee unions to hold annual elections by secret ballot to determine if state workers want the union to represent them, or if they would prefer to have their deducted union dues put back in their paychecks.
Legislators submit to voters every two years.
Why ought not unions to do the same?
In Wisconsin, the die is cast and Walker cannot yield.
For if he yields, the state and its 3,000 cities, counties, towns and school districts will be forever at the mercy of these unions.
If he yields, it will be a triumph for the tactics of intimidation, wildcat strikes and mass demonstrations to block legislative action.
The senators who fled will come home heroes, and Walker will have broken the hearts of the people who put their faith in him.
If Walker yields, governors and legislators across America will read the tea leaves and back away from taking on government unions. That means higher and higher taxes, as in Illinois, and eventual sinking of the states into unpayable debt and default.
The correlation of forces is in Walker's favor. Time is on his side. When you are holding a winning hand, you do not offer to split the pot.
After his opponents invaded the Capitol, called him Hitler, fled the state, and tried to shout down and shut down the legislature with raucous demonstrations, what other cards do they have left to play?
Walker has recalled Ronald Reagan's firing of the air traffic controllers as an example of how a strong leader must stand up even to a popular union when it is wrong.
There is an earlier example. When the Boston police went on strike and criminals ran amuck, and Sam Gompers came to the defense of the cops, Gov. Calvin Coolidge sent a telegram to that founding father of the American labor movement, "There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, any time."
Scott Walker cannot lose this fight, because his country cannot afford to have him lose it.****
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http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2011/03/longhorns-17-badgers-1.html
Longhorns 17, Badgers 1
Please pardon this brief departure from my normal folderol, but every so often a member of the chattering class issues a nugget of stupidity so egregious that no amount of mockery will suffice. Particularly when the issuer of said stupidity holds a Nobel Prize.
Case in point: Paul Krugman. The Times' staff economics blowhard recently typed, re the state of education in Texas:
And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.
Similarly, The Economist passes on what appears to be the cut-'n'-paste lefty factoid du jour:
Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:
South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th
If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.
The point being, I suppose, is that unionized teachers stand as a thin chalk-stained line keeping Wisconsin from descending into the dystopian non-union educational hellscape of Texas. Interesting, if it wasn't complete bullshit.
As a son of Iowa, I'm no stranger to bragging about my home state's ranking on various standardized test. Like Wisconsin we Iowans usually rank near the top of the heap on average ACT/SAT scores. We are usually joined there by Minnesota, Nebraska, and the various Dakotas; Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire...
... beginning to see a pattern? Perhaps because a state's "average ACT/SAT" is, for all intents and purposes, a proxy for the percent of white people who live there. In fact, the lion's share of state-to-state variance in test scores is accounted for by differences in ethnic composition. Minority students - regardless of state residence - tend to score lower than white students on standardized test, and the higher the proportion of minority students in a state the lower its overall test scores tend to be.
Please note: this has nothing to do with innate ability or aptitude. Quite to the contrary, I believe the test gap between minority students and white students can be attributed to differences in socioeconomic status. And poverty. And yes, racism. And yes, family structure. Whatever combination of reasons, the gap exists, and it's mathematical sophistry to compare the combined average test scores in a state like Wisconsin (4% black, 4% Hispanic) with a state like Texas (12% black, 30% Hispanic).
So how to compare educational achievement between two states with such dissimilar populations? In data analysis this is usually done by treating ethnicity as a "covariate." A very simple way to do this is by comparing educational achievement between states within the same ethnic group. In other words, do black students perform better in Wisconsin than Texas? Do Hispanic students perform better in Wisconsin or Texas? White students? If Wisconsin's kids consistently beat their Texas counterparts, after controlling for ethnicity, then there's a strong case that maybe Texas schools ought to become a union shop.
Luckily, there is data to answer this question via the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The NAEP is an annual standardized test given to 4th and 8th graders around the country to measure proficiency in math, science, and reading. Participation is fairly universal; if you've had a 4th or 8th grader in the last few years, you're probably familiar with it. Results are compiled on the NAEP website, broken down by grade, state, subject and ethnicity.
So how does brokeass, dumbass, redneck Texas stack up against progressive unionized Wisconsin?
2009 4th Grade Math
White students: Texas 254, Wisconsin 250 (national average 248)
Black students: Texas 231, Wisconsin 217 (national 222)
Hispanic students: Texas 233, Wisconsin 228 (national 227)
2009 8th Grade Math
White students: Texas 301, Wisconsin 294 (national 294)
Black students: Texas 272, Wisconsin 254 (national 260)
Hispanic students: Texas 277, Wisconsin 268 (national 260)
2009 4th Grade Reading
White students: Texas 232, Wisconsin 227 (national 229)
Black students: Texas 213, Wisconsin 192 (national 204)
Hispanic students: Texas 210, Wisconsin 202 (national 204)
2009 8th Grade Reading
White students: Texas 273, Wisconsin 271 (national 271)
Black students: Texas 249, Wisconsin 238 (national 245)
Hispanic students: Texas 251, Wisconsin 250 (national 248)
2009 4th Grade Science
White students: Texas 168, Wisconsin 164 (national 162)
Black students: Texas 139, Wisconsin 121 (national 127)
Hispanic students: Wisconsin 138, Texas 136 (national 130)
2009 8th Grade Science
White students: Texas 167, Wisconsin 165 (national 161)
Black students: Texas 133, Wisconsin 120 (national 125)
Hispanic students: Texas 141, Wisconsin 134 (national 131)
To recap: white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8.
Perhaps the most striking thing in these numbers is the within-state gap between white and minority students. Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools - especially minority students.
Conclusion: instead of chanting slogans in Madison, maybe it's time for Wisconsin teachers to take refresher lessons from their non-union counterparts in the Lone Star State.
****
Update: a few emails complaining that I focused on NAEP 4th and 8th graders, and didn't address Krugman's "point" about Texas dropout rates. I would note that "average state dropout rate" (non-controlled for ethnicity) is as uninformative as "average state ACT/SAT." Some research suggests Hispanic students, for example, tend to have higher dropout rates than black students despite performing marginally better on standardized tests. But still, the level of Texas dropout rate claimed by Krugman (38%+) is rather disturbing, and it does seem rather odd that somewhere between 8th and 12th grade Texas students are attacked by an epidemic of stupidity.
So I decided to investigate.
Mr. Krugman (please note - I don't call anyone "Doctor" unless they can write me a prescription for drugs) doesn't mention where he gets his dropout statistic from. I suspect a database somewhere in his lower intestine. So I endeavored to find most detailed / recent / comprehensive state-by-state dropout table, which appears to be this 2006-7 report from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Event Dropout Rates for 9th-12th graders during 2006-7 school year:
White students: Texas 1.9%, Wisconsin 1.2% (national average 3.0%)
Black students: Texas 5.8%, Wisconsin 7.8% (national 6.8%)
Hispanic students: Texas 5.6%, Wisconsin 5.2% (national 6.5%)
White and Hispanic Texas students indeed seem to dropout at a higher rate than their counterparts in Wisconsin, although in both cases (a) the difference is not statistically significant; and (b) in both cases, both states are significantly below the national average. Among black high school students, Texans have significantly lower dropout rates than their national cohort and Wisconsinites. Black high school students in Wisconsin have significantly higher dropout rates than national.
Your first question is probably, "why do the union teachers in Wisconsin hate black students?" Sorry, can't help you there, I'm stumped too.
Your second question is probably, "why are these number so discrepant with the 30% dropout numbers I've always read?" The reason is these are event rates, representing the probability a kid will drop out in a specific year. For cumulative dropout rate, you would have to compound; for example if the 1-year dropout rate is 10% the 4 year survival would roughly be 0.9^4 =~ 65%.
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GM's Iowahawk post is spot-on. My daughter's huge, lilly-white, suburban public high school has a graduation rate of 99% and an on-to-college rate of 93%. That tells you who lives in the district, not how good the teaching is. You correctly measure schools and teaching by distance traveled. How far did you take each kid in the last year, not how smart was that kid before he walked into the classroom.
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I too found it a useful analysis for cutting through progressive FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt).
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When you step back and try to get a sense of the larger picture in the battle between the states and their public employee unions, two elements emerge. One seems small but could prove decisive, and the other is big and, if I'm seeing it right, carries significant implications.
The seemingly small thing is that the battles in the states, while summoning emotions from all sides, are not at their heart emotional. Yes, a lot of people are waving placards, but it's also true that suddenly everyone's talking about numbers; the numbers are being reported in the press and dissected on talk radio. This state has a $5 billion deficit; that state has projected deficits in the tens of millions. One estimate of New Jersey's bill for health and pension benefits for state workers over the next 30 years is an astounding $100 billion—money the state literally does not have and cannot get. The very force of the math has the heartening effect of squeezing ideology right out of the story. It doesn't matter if you're a liberal or a conservative, it's all about the numbers, and numbers are sobering things.
The rise of arithmetic as a player in the drama is politically promising because when people argue over data and hard facts, and not over ideological loyalties and impulses, progress is more possible. Governors can take their stand, their opponents can take theirs, and if they happen to argue the budget problem doesn't really exist, they'll have to prove it. With numbers.
The big thing that is new has to do with the atmospherics of the drama.
Asst. Editorial Features Editor David Feith on teachers union priorities
.Let's look for a second at one of the most famous battles, in New Jersey. A year ago Chris Christie was sworn in as the new governor. He immediately faced a $10.7 billion deficit and catastrophic debt projections. State and local taxes were already high, so that if he raised them he'd send people racing out of the state. So Mr. Christie came up with a plan. He asked the state's powerful teachers union for two things: a one-year pay freeze—not a cut—and a modest 1.5% contribution to their benefit packages.
The teachers union went to war. They said, "Christie is trying to kill the unions," so they tried to kill him politically. They spent millions on ads trying to take him down.
And it backfired. They didn't kill him, they made him. Chris Christie is a national figure now because the teachers union decided, in an epic political drama in which arithmetic is the predominant fact, to ignore the math. They also decided to play the wrong role in the drama. They decided to play the role of Johnny Friendly, on whom more in a moment.
If the union leaders had been smart—if they'd had a heart!—they would have held a private meeting and said, "Look, the party's over. We've done great the past 20 years, but now taxpayers are starting to resent us, and they have reason. They're losing their benefits and footing the bill for our gold-plated plans, they don't have job security and we do, taxes are high. We have to back off."
They didn't do this. It was a big mistake. And the teachers union made it just as two terrible but unrelated things were happening to their reputation. In what might be called an expression of the new spirit of transparency that is sweeping the globe, two documentaries came out in 2010, "The Lottery" and "Waiting for Superman." Both were made by and featured people who are largely liberal in their sympathies, and both said the same brave thing: The single biggest impediment to better schools in our country is the teachers unions, which look to their own interests and not those of the kids.
In both films, as in real life, the problem is the unions themselves, not individual teachers. They present teachers who are heroic, who are creative and idealistic. But they too, in the films, are victims of union rules.
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Marlon Brando in a scene from 'On The Waterfront' with Lee J Cobb.
.That's the unions' problem in terms of atmospherics. They are starting to destroy their own reputation. They are robbing themselves of their mystique. They still exist, and they're big and rich—a force—but they are abandoning the very positive place they've held in the American imagination. Polls are all over the place on union support, but I'm speaking of the kind of thing that is hard to quantify and that has to do with words like "luster" and "tradition."
Unions have been respected in America forever, and public employee unions have reaped that respect. There are two great reasons for this. One is that unions always stood for the little guy. The other is that Americans like balance. We have management over here and the union over here, they'll talk and find balance, it'll turn out fine.
But with the public employee unions, the balance has been off for decades. And when they lost their balance they fell off their pedestal.
When union leaders negotiate with a politician, they're negotiating with someone they can hire and fire. Public unions have numbers and money, and politicians need both. And politicians fear strikes because the public hates them. When governors negotiate with unions, it's not collective bargaining, it's more like collusion. Someone said last week the taxpayers aren't at the table. The taxpayers aren't even in the room.
More Peggy Noonan
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.As for unions looking out for the little guy, that's not how it's looking right now. Right now the little guy is the public school pupil whose daily rounds take him from a neglectful family to an indifferent teacher who can't be removed. The little guy is the beleaguered administrator whose attempts at improvement are thwarted by unions. The little guy is the private-sector worker who doesn't have a good health-care plan, who barely has a pension, who lacks job security, and who is paying everyone else's bills.
This is a major perceptual change. In my lifetime, people have felt so supportive of unions. That great scene in the 1979 film "Norma Rae," in which the North Carolina cotton mill worker played by Sally Field holds up the sign that says UNION—people were moved by that scene because they believed in its underlying justice. When I was a child, kids bragged if their father had a union job because it meant he was part of something, someone was looking out for him, he was a citizen.
There were hiccups—the labor racketeering scandals of the 1950s, Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters. But they served as a corrective to romanticism. Men in groups will be men in groups, whether they run a government or a union. Budd Schulberg and Elia Kazan captured this in their 1954 masterpiece, "On the Waterfront," in which Terry Malloy, played by Marlon Brando, stands up to the selfish, bullying union chief Johnny Friendly. Brando's character testifies to the Waterfront Commission and then defiantly stands down Johnny and his goons. "I'm glad what I done today. . . . You hear me? Glad what I done."
We're at quite a moment when public employee unions remind you of Johnny Friendly. They're so powerful, such a base of the Democratic Party, and they must think nothing can hurt them. But they can hurt themselves. And they are. Are they noticing?
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"Are they noticing?"
No.
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"In both films, as in real life, the problem is the unions themselves, not individual teachers. They present teachers who are heroic, who are creative and idealistic. But they too, in the films, are victims of union rules."
Bullshit. The problem is as it always is - greed. Almost all teachers in NJ ***love*** the unions. It is not just the unions it is the idea that union members want to get as much out of the system for as long as they can. This is human nature.
In my opinion this new strategy of Republicans saying its the unions and not the union members - sorry - that is total crap. It is the culture of both at least here in NJ.
The vast majority of teachers in NJ are Democrats, feel the rich should pay up, and Christie is the devil incarnate. They feel entitled and have been getting pay raises, good insurance and pension benefits for decades. Compared to the 70's I believe they are better off.
I want them to do well. But the money is not there and I refuse to pay more. Enough is enough.
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The editorial board of the NY Times (Pravda on the Hudson) struggles mightily :lol:
===============
At a time when public school students are being forced into ever more crowded classrooms, and poor families will lose state medical benefits, New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees’ pensions than it did just a decade ago.
That huge increase is largely because of Albany’s outsized generosity to the state’s powerful employees’ unions in the early years of the last decade, made worse when the recession pushed down pension fund earnings, forcing the state to make up the difference.
Although taxpayers are on the hook for the recession’s costs, most state employees pay only 3 percent of their salaries to their pensions, half the level of most state employees elsewhere. Their health insurance payments are about half those in the private sector.
In all, the salaries and benefits of state employees add up to $18.5 billion, or a fifth of New York’s operating budget. Unless those costs are reined in, New York will find itself unable to provide even essential services.
To point out these alarming facts is not to be anti- union, or anti-worker. In recent weeks, Republican politicians in the Midwest have distorted what should be a serious discussion about state employees’ benefits, cynically using it as a pretext to crush unions.
New York does not need that sort of destructive game playing. What it needs is a sober examination of the high costs of wages and benefits, and some serious proposals to rein them in while remaining fair to hard-working government employees.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has pursued a reasonable course, making it clear that he expects public unions to make sacrifices, starting with a salary freeze. He wants to require greater employee contributions to pensions and health benefits, with a goal of saving $450 million.
Negotiations begin this month, but so far union leaders have publicly resisted Mr. Cuomo’s proposals. If they don’t budge, Mr. Cuomo says he will have to lay off up to 9,800 workers. That would damage the state’s struggling economy. Some compromise must be found.
Here are the three most expensive areas of spending that need to be addressed:
WAGES Last April, in the midst of one of the worst financial crises that New York and the nation have ever faced, the state’s unionized workers got a 4 percent pay raise that cost $400 million. It came on top of 3 percent raises in each of the previous three years. These raises were negotiated long before the recession began, by a Legislature that routinely gave in to unions that remain among the biggest political contributors in Albany.
During the same period, many private-sector workers had their pay or hours cut. Private-sector wages in New York dropped nearly 9 percent in 2008. In 2009, Gov. David Paterson pleaded with the unions to give up the raises to help the state out of its crisis. Union leaders attacked him in corrosive television ads, and Mr. Paterson eventually caved, settling for an agreement that reduced pension payments to new employees. The deal wasn’t enough to address New York’s serious fiscal problems.
The average salary for New York’s full-time state employees in 2009 (even before the last round of raises) was $63,382, well above the state’s average personal income that year of $46,957. Mr. Cuomo’s proposed salary freeze for many of the state’s 236,000 employees is an important step to rein in New York’s out-of-control payroll. It could save between $200 million and $400 million.
He may need to go further. Even after the current labor contract runs out on April 1, more than 50,000 workers are in line for step increases and longevity pay negotiated in that contract, which will cost about $140 million. A clause in the state labor law known as the Triborough Amendment allows contract provisions for all workers to proceed until a new contract is reached.
This clause, unique to New York, was a well-meaning attempt to give some balance to state unions, which by law are not allowed to strike and had no leverage to draw management to the table in flush years. The problem with the Triborough Amendment is that it gives the unions far less incentive to bargain, as we saw last year.
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(Page 2 of 2)
The amendment should be re-examined. Allowing the state to cut wages or benefits without a contract would be unfair, especially given the no-strike law. But the state should, at least, have the power to freeze wages and benefits once a contract runs out, which would give both sides an incentive to bargain.
PENSIONS In 2000, employee pensions cost New York State taxpayers $100 million. They now cost $1.5 billion, and will be more than $2 billion in 2014. Wall Street’s troubles are a big part of that. But so are state politics. The Legislature, ever eager to curry favor with powerful unions, added sweeteners to pensions and allowed employees to stop making contributions after 10 years.
In 2009, Albany began to recognize the deep hole it had dug. Under the state Constitution, a worker’s pension benefits cannot be cut back once granted. So under the agreement Mr. Paterson reached with the unions, a more rigorous tier was created for nonuniformed employees hired after 2009. It raised their retirement age from 55 to 62, required pension contributions every year instead of just the first 10, and capped the amount of overtime that is calculated in pension benefits.
The deal did not go far enough. New employees can still retire with full benefits at 62, while most American workers must wait until 65. They can still drive up pension payments by earning overtime in their final years, up to a $15,000 cap. And most important, they have to contribute only 3 percent of their pay to their pension; the national norm for public employees is double that.
In the next few weeks, Mr. Cuomo will propose a less-generous tier for new employees. Ideally, it will address all of these problems: pushing the full-retirement age to 65, raising employee contributions to 6 percent, and ending the use of overtime in calculating payments.
An investigation by The Times last year found that 3,700 retired public workers were getting six-figure pensions, largely because of overtime abuse, and that number is expected to grow. The system even allows workers on full pensions to double-dip and return to state employment, a practice the Legislature should end. Recently, Gannett Newspapers found more than 2,000 people collecting both state salaries and pensions.
It is also worth considering giving new employees the option to join what is known as a defined-contribution system, similar to the 401(k) plans widely in use in the private sector, and reducing the reliance on a guaranteed benefit system that has proved so ruinously expensive. The 401(k) system shifts the risk of a falling stock market to the employee instead of the state, but in the long run may be necessary to protect vital state services from economic downturns.
HEALTH INSURANCE As national health care costs have soared, the state’s payments for employees’ and retirees’ care has more than doubled in the last decade. This fiscal year, the state will pay $3 billion; that is projected to keep growing by $300 million to $400 million a year.
Health care contributions by state retirees are considerably lower than for workers in the private sector or the federal government, and will almost certainly have to be raised as baby boomers retire.
Current state employees pay 10 percent of their health insurance premiums for single policies, and 25 percent for family policies, which is roughly in line with national averages for the public sector. But it is considerably less than most private workers pay — 20 percent and 30 percent, respectively.
If the state is unable to achieve the necessary savings in wages and pensions, it may need to seek higher insurance contributions for all state workers. That benefit is not protected by the state Constitution.
•
Unlike Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Governor Cuomo is not trying to break the unions. He is pressing them to accept a salary freeze and a reduction in benefits for new workers. The unions need to negotiate seriously.
We are also urging the governor to rethink his pledge to cap property taxes and allow a tax surcharge on high incomes to expire at the end of this year. That would bring the state an additional $2 billion this fiscal year, and $4 billion the following year — not enough to solve the fiscal crisis, but a serious down payment.
The state’s middle-class workers will have to make real sacrifices. New York’s many wealthy residents, all of whom are benefiting substantially from a new federal tax break, should have to pay their fair share as well.
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If there is no money, then there is no money.
It that was only true!
My point about contracts. Take LA; obviously we have fiscal problems. So does CA. No money....
So you are saying that the LAPD should be willing to re negotiate their absurdly rich retirement plan mid year?
I doubt if the local police officers would share your sense of fairness...
Contracts should be honored; and then at renewal re negotiated.
Yes. Just as private sector employees have had to tighten their belts, so should public employees.
GM; can you explain WHY in Wisconsin Police and Firefighters are exempt??? Why not ALL public employees?
"Walker and GOP lawmakers are trying to close a $137 million budget shortfall with a plan that calls for curbs on public employee union bargaining rights and requires public workers, with the exception of police and firefighters, to cover more of their retirement plans and health care premiums.
Public employee unions agreed to financial concessions that they say will help meet the state's fiscal needs, but Walker has said the limits on public bargaining are a critical component of his plan. His bill, which already had passed the state Assembly, would bar public workers other than police and firefighters from bargaining for anything other than wages."
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I don't know.
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Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Wed, March 09, 2011 -- 8:00 PM ET
-----
Wisconsin Senate Advances Bill Opposed by Unions
Republicans in the Wisconsin Senate voted Wednesday night to
strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from public
workers after discovering a way to bypass the chamber's
missing Democrats.
All 14 Senate Democrats fled to Illinois nearly three weeks
ago, preventing the chamber from having enough members
present to consider Gov. Scott Walker's so-called "budget
repair bill" -- a proposal introduced to plug a $137 million
budget shortfall.
The Senate requires a quorum to take up any measures that
spend money. But Republicans on Wednesday split from the
legislation the proposal to curtail union rights, which
spends no money, and a special conference committee of state
lawmakers approved the bill a short time later.
Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2011/03/09/us/AP-US-Wisconsin-Budget-Unions.html?emc=na
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http://www.620wtmj.com/news/local/117732923.html
Capitol Chaos: Lawmakers Get Death Threats
By Jon Byman
Story Created: Mar 10, 2011
Story Updated: Mar 10, 2011
MADISON - The State Department of Justice confirms that it is investigating several death threats against a number of lawmakers in response to the legislature's move to strip employees of many collective bargaining rights.
Among the threats the Justice Department is investigationg is one that was emailed to Republican Senators Wednesday night. Newsradio 620 WTMJ has obtained that email.
The following is the unedited email:
Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes
will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain
to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it
will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit
that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for
more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.
WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in
the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me
have decided that we've had enough. We feel that you and the people that
support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing
with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand
for it any longer. So, this is how it's going to happen: I as well as many
others know where you and your family live, it's a matter of public records.
We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a
nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn't leave
it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the
message to you since you are so "high" on Koch and have decided that you are
now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a
demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed
in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.
This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won't
tell you all of them because that's just no fun. Since we know that you are
not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided
to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it's
necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making
them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families
and themselves then We Will "get rid of" (in which I mean kill) you. Please
understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked
everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel
that it's worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives
of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and
say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!
Reply Reply to all Forward
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Compare the restrained peaceful Tea Party events to the screaming, yelling, name calling, disruptive tresspassing MOB that is the union protesters.
OK Bamster where are you now??? when speaking of civility.
Next step is to fire all these people if they don't report to work.
This is EXACTLY what FDR even feared. The taxpayers are being held hostage by public employees.
Let them keep it up. They are not helping there cause any.
They are lucky to have jobs.
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http://legalinsurrection.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-do-these-people-many-of-whom-are.html
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Why do these people, many of whom are professionals, feel no fear in expressing such death wishes in the open?
You have seen the video of Twitter death wishes directed at Sarah Palin, by people who did not feel the need to hide their identities.
So like clockwork, death wishes (threats?) are being tweeted about Scott Walker, again often using real names.
And these were before last night's Senate vote (a Vimeo version is here in case YouTube takes it down):
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Andrew: If you are reading this thread too, then I would submit the proposition that these efforts at physical intimidation are another aspect of liberal (American use of the word here) fascism.
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(Intended in good political humor,) Gov. Scott Walker reportedly did not say this:
We don't mind Unions joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.
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http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/archives/30580
Obama silent as liberals make death threats
March 10, 2011 by Don Surber
This is not about the threats made against Republican Congressman Peter King for daring to hold a hearing on threats to America from radical Muslims.
I comment on radio talker Charles Sykes in Milwaukee posting an e-mail to: Sen. Kapanke; Sen. Darling; Sen. Cowles; Sen. Ellis; Sen. Fitzgerald; Sen. Galloway; Sen. Grothman; Sen. Harsdorf; Sen. Hopper; Sen. Kedzie; Sen. Lasee; Sen. Lazich; Sen. Leibham; Sen. Moulton; Sen. Olsen.
They are Republican state senators in Wisconsin.
Some union supporter threatened them:
Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes
will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain
to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it
will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit
that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for
more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.
WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in
the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me
have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that
support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing
with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand
for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many
others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.
We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a
nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave
it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the
message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are
now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a
demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed
in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.
This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t
tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are
not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided
to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s
necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making
them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families
and themselves then We Will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) you. Please
understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked
everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel
that it’s worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives
of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and
say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!
Where is the denunciation from Barack Obama?
The lefty media has praised him repeatedly for his calls for civil discourse.
The Associated Press from January 2010: “Tampa, Fla. — Trying to bury a year of polarization, President Obama has escalated his appeal for politicians and voters to settle differences without tearing each other apart. His plea: ‘Let’s start thinking of each other as Americans first’.”
PBS from January 2011: “Obama’s Call for Civil Discourse Resonates Around the Country.”
He keeps calling for it.
But as leader of the Democratic Party he does nothing about it. He has never in 6 years in the national eye ever denounced Democratic Party excesses.
He should leap on this one to quiet things in Madison and to bring civil discourse to that state’s capital city.
-
Ironically The One was busy hosting a summit on school bullying. What a joke. We have nothing but bullying going on in Wisconsin by the liberals (aka, *regressives*), and not a peep about that but he is telling us how kids made fun of his ears as a child.
The hypocracy of this man knows no bounds.
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Enemies of progress
The biggest barrier to public- sector reform are the unions
Mar 17th 2011 | from the print edition
IF JIMMY HOFFA were reincarnated as a modern trade unionist, he would probably represent civil servants. When Hoffa’s Teamsters were in their prime in 1960, only one in ten American government workers belonged to a union; now 36% do. In 2009 the number of unionists in America’s public sector passed that of their brethren in the private sector. In continental Europe most civil servants belong to unions, though these generally straddle the private sector as well. In Britain more than half of public-sector workers but only about 15% of private-sector ones are unionised.
There are three reasons for the public-sector unions’ clout. First, they can shut things down without suffering much in the way of consequences. Second, they are mostly bright and well-educated. There are some Luddites left, such as Bob Crow of London’s perennially striking Tube drivers. But it is much harder to argue with Randi Weingarten, the articulate head of the American Federation of Teachers. Most workers in the public sector are women, and many of them are professional types. A quarter of America’s public-sector workers have a university degree. Officers of the British Medical Association (which represents doctors) and America’s National Education Association (the biggest teachers’ union) often appear on the news as experts on health and education rather than as representatives of interest groups.
Third, they now dominate left-of-centre politics. Some of their ties go back a long way. Britain’s Labour Party, as its name implies, has long been associated with trade unionism. Its current leader, Ed Miliband, owes his position to votes from public-sector unions. Spain’s prime minister still likes to brandish his union card. In America the links have become more explicit. Between 1989 and 2004 the biggest spender in federal elections was the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and $39.4m of the $40m it shelled out over that period went to Democrats. One in ten of the delegates at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver was a teacher.
At the state level their influence can be even more fearsome. Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute of California points out that much of the state’s budget is patrolled by unions. The teachers’ unions keep an eye on schools, the CCPOA on prisons and a variety of labour groups on health care. It was the big public-sector unions which squashed the 2005 reforms proposed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, then California’s governor.
In many rich countries average wages in the state sector are higher than in the private one. But the real gains come in benefits and work practices. Politicians have repeatedly “backloaded” public-sector pay deals, keeping the pay increases modest but adding to holidays and especially pensions that are already generous.
Many Germans were horrified to discover that the EU rescue package for Greece last year helped to bail out public-sector workers who could retire in their mid-50s on almost full pay. One scam in American cities has been to link pensions to employees’ earnings in their final year, rather than average earnings over a longer period. Naturally the subway drivers or policemen concerned put in heroic overtime in that final year.
Reform has been vigorously opposed, perhaps most egregiously in education, where charter schools, vouchers, academies and merit pay all faced drawn-out battles. Even though there is plenty of evidence that the quality of the teachers is the most important variable, teachers’ unions have fought against getting rid of bad ones and promoting good ones.
As the cost to everyone else (in terms of higher taxes and sloppier services) has become clearer, politicians have begun to clamp down. In Wisconsin the unions have rallied thousands of supporters against Scott Walker, the hardline Republican governor. But many within the public sector suffer under the current system too.
John Donahue at Harvard’s Kennedy School points out that the egalitarian culture in Western civil services suits those who want to stay put but is bad for high achievers. Heads of departments often get only two or three times the average pay. As Mr Donahue observes, the only American public-sector workers who earn well above $250,000 a year are university sports coaches and the president of the United States. Hank Paulson took a 99.5% pay cut when he left Goldman Sachs to become America’s treasury secretary. Bankers’ fat pay packets have attracted much criticism, but a public-sector system that does not reward high achievers may be a much bigger problem for America.
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For weeks the national media focused on union protests in Wisconsin. Aging hippies trashed the state capital, union members were bused in from across the country in color-coded T-shirts, and Democratic state senators hid in an Illinois motel.
Each little drama was an organized response to Republican Governor Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill that negated labor’s influence with state employees. You could not turn to any cable or network newscast without seeing Walker, or see other states’ Republican governors and legislators copying him. Then, through a legislative maneuver, Walker outfoxed the Democrats and passed his budget bill.
The TV crews’ klieg lights went out. The political circus packed up. Our attention turned to Japan and Libya.
Perhaps we all looked away too quickly.
The story that no one talks about, that has the biggest impact on the 2012 election, is slowly brewing – with Republicans barely paying attention. The two sides in Wisconsin did not drop their weapons. They just settled into high-stakes trench warfare.
Wisconsin has what can only be described as a screwy recall law; get enough signatures on a petition, and you can trigger new elections. (Why is this screwy?--Marc) Democrats hope to use this law to undo the statehouse majority.
Recall elections possibly can begin as early as June for 16 Wisconsin senators who are being targeted – eight Republicans for their votes in favor of the law that ends most collective bargaining powers for public-employee unions, and eight Democrats for running and hiding in Illinois in what turned out to be a failed attempt to stop the GOP from voting on the measure.
When Republicans won big in 2010, Wisconsin was the best example of that midterm wave and the most significant warning to President Obama’s re-election campaign: Three-term U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc., went down, and the GOP took the governor’s mansion, two more congressional seats, and state legislative majorities. All in a state that Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama won as the Democrats’ presidential candidates.
While Wisconsin’s story fell off the front page, the left – fueled by unions, the Democratic Governors Association, and MoveOn.org – have begun a multimillion-dollar TV campaign to support the audacious recall effort.
The only Republican strategy- and money-machine that really seems to understand the potential effect is the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), headed by former national GOP chairman Ed Gillespie. The RSLC is so worried that it is making an unusual mid-cycle investment of money that it could have used in 2012.
Unions and the left are far outspending pro-business interests and the right on recall ads.
Democrats are wise to see more is at stake than a single state’s senate majority and a new political map that could unseat two freshmen Republican congressmen. They know this is the first battle of 2012 – their version of 2010’s surprise election of Scott Brown, R-Mass., who won a blue-state U.S. Senate seat formerly held by Democrat Ted Kennedy.
Republicans won in Massachusetts because conservatives around the country poured money into Brown's campaign; he raised a million bucks a day and couldn't spend it all. His opponent, Democrat Margaret Coakley, was strapped and forced to beg money from Washington lobbyists in the last 10 days of the race, which Brown quickly used in a commercial against her.
Massachusetts Democrats got ambushed. Will Republicans let that happen to them in Wisconsin?
Make no mistake, this will have a chilling effect on every other state dealing with public-employee collective bargaining or pensions in the next two years – which is just about all of them. If Walker and other governors cannot tame public pensions and union contracts, you will see tax hikes across the country enacted under freshmen GOP governors in the next few years. It is simple math.
If Republicans don't engage with real cash in Wisconsin, they could lose the state senate in advance of redistricting this summer, embolden unions, and scare hell out of Republicans in statehouses everywhere.
Walker may have won on policy – yet Republicans could face massive losses nationally if they don’t win those state recalls.
Just because the Democrats came back from Illinois doesn’t mean the left surrendered.
-
Death Threats by the Dozens in Wisconsin
The rhetoric of the pro-union Left gets disturbingly violent.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The language of quoted material, including profanity, has been preserved.
‘We will hunt you down. We will slit your throats. We will drink your blood. I will have your decapitated head on a pike in the Madison town square. This is your last warning.”
Is this a passage from Bram Stoker’s Dracula? A snippet from al-Qaeda’s latest missive? No, this e-mail reached Wisconsin state senator Dan Kapanke (R., La Crosse) on March 9, after he voted for GOP governor Scott Walker’s controversial budget and labor reforms.
Kapanke is not alone. While the mainstream media generally yawn, leftists threaten top Wisconsin Republicans with murder.
“Across the whole Republican caucus, I think we have received at least a dozen, credible, specific death threats,” one well-placed legislative staffer in Madison told me. “This was not just ‘Go to Hell,’ but threats that rose to a level that made people feel unsafe.”
The Left launched its civility campaign on January 8, after Jared Lee Loughner’s alleged, fatal shooting spree in Tucson. Barely two months later, the Left killed its own initiative in Madison, when politics interfered.
Civility anyone? A placard carried by an anti-Scott Walker protester
depicts the governor of Wisconsin with a rifle’s crosshairs on his face.
“The Wisconsin Department of Justice, Division of Criminal Investigation and the Wisconsin Capitol Police have investigated numerous threats against elected officials over the last four weeks,” Wisconsin’s DOJ stated March 11. DCI chief Ed Wall added: “The Division of Criminal Investigation takes these kinds of threats seriously and will follow through with the investigation and prosecution whenever possible.”
Wisconsin officials have identified the sender of two specific death threats e-mailed to 15 Republican state senators at 9:18 p.m. on March 10. They will not release the suspect’s name while their probe continues. However, these chilling (uncorrected) words now are on the record:
Subject line: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!
I want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and your republican dictators have to die. This is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records. We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, this isn’t enough. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message. So we have built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) the 8 of you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. The 8 includes the 7 senators and the dictator. We feel that it’s worth our lives becasue we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. Goodbye ASSHOLE!!!!
FUCK YOU ASSHOLE, I AM FORMALLY REQUESTING TO SEE THE 30,000 EMAILS YOU HAVE GOTTEN MAKING YOU COMPLY WITH THE OPEN RECORDS LAW. I ASSURE YOU THAT NONE OF THEM ARE IN SUPPORT OF YOU OR ANYTHING THAT YOU OR YOUR STAFF STAND FOR. YOUR STAFF MEMBERS HAVE NOW BEEN ADDED TO THE HIT LIST AS WELL AS THOSE OF THE OTHER SENATE MEMBERS WE HAVE THREATENED. PLEASE ADVISE THEM OF THE IMPENDING DANGER LEADING TO THIER DEATHS.
Consider some of the pro-union-Left’s other death threats:
● Police in Eau Claire arrested anti-Walker protester Patrick J. Knauf, 43, on March 2. He allegedly phoned in a bomb threat against Heartland Aviation, where Walker conducted press conferences on February 28 and March 2.
● On the morning of March 3, 41 rounds of .22-caliber ammunition appeared on the capitol grounds in Madison.
“I don’t like to see live ammunition outside when I have significant crowds,” University of Wisconsin Police chief Susan Riseling testified at a court hearing on protesters’ access to the structure. “You can’t do much with live ammunition without the gun, but the presence of it doesn’t thrill me.”
● “It’s not safe, I think, to be walking on the street and be a Republican in Madison right now. The hatred on the Left is just out of control,” GOP state senator Glenn Grothman told CNN on March 10. “I have never seen a lobbying group more angry,” Someone slipped a note under his office door. In red letters, it said: “THE ONLY GOOD Republican is a DEAD Republican.”
● Wisconsin Tea Party Patriots coordinator Mike Hintz recalls sitting in his suburban Milwaukee home on March 12 when his cell phone rang. “There was a male caller on the phone and he said ‘I hope you’re wearing a bullet-proof vest’ and hung up.” As Hintz told WISN-TV: “I took it to mean this person was threatening my life by shooting me.” Hintz believes he was targeted because of his prominent support of Governor Walker’s budget-repair bill. While police could not trace the call, they increased patrols of Hintz’s neighborhood.
● A Wisconsinite named Bill Spears sent one state-capitol staffer this uncorrected, homophobic e-mail on Wednesday:
I saw your remarks in todays paper about the people who appose the Walker Plan-you sorry piece of shit-you won’t have your cushy job very much longer-as soon as we get your boss the faggot Fitzgerald recalled – the sorry fucking parasite on the taxpayer of Wisconsin- every damn one of you should be exterminated-
It is your covey of little shitbirds that are worse than child molesters-You fuck faces you forget who pays your salary-I can’t wait until you are right in the unemployment line behind the rest of us-were you in the barrel list night-which orifice do you prefer?
The giant graffiti wall that is Twitter features numerous calls for Governor Walker’s murder, complete with egregious spelling and grammatical errors:
● Drew R. Hood (screen name DrewHood) wrote: “Walker must die. Write that 500 times fast.”
● Lamar Smith (Mough_Dough): “Dey need to gone head & kill Scott Walker. Im tired of hearing about this shit.”
● Lauren Kauffman (lauren_2121): “I hope scott walker dies. someone please shoot him?!”
● Josh Harmon (jritsynme): “Scott walker is destroying the state of Wisconsin!!! I wish a anvel would fall out of the sky and KILL the scumbag!!!”
● Jody on FishHawk (FishHawkRdJody): “GovWalker soon as we starve you, shove you in filthy shacks w/100 others & kill most of UR family THEN you can use holocaust. U vile cretin.”
● Jeconti (J-Shack): “Scott walker cut food stamps its over he getting assassinated..!”
Lee Stranahan, a self-described “pro-choice, pro–single payer, antiwar, pro–gay rights independent liberal,” is appalled at the mainstream media’s ho-hum attitude about this outrage.
“Proven death threats against politicians are being ignored by the supposedly honest media,” he wrote Tuesday in the left-of-center Huffington Post. “It’s bad, biased journalism that will lead to no possible good outcome, and progressives should be leading the charge against it.”
These death threats are doubly pernicious:
At worst, they are truly homicidal, if those sending them actually intend to murder those whom they threaten.
At best, even empty threats are anti-democratic, since they can intimidate elected officials, activists, and other citizens into milquetoast governance and advocacy.
Are the Right’s hands spotless in Wisconsin? If they are not pristine, they seem far less potentially bloody.
Democratic spokesman Graeme Zielinski told WISN-TV that volunteers aiming to recall GOP state senator Alberta Darling got roughed up on March 13.
“They were physically assaulted,” Zielinski said, “They had their clipboards thrown, petitions destroyed, buttons torn off of them.”
Shame! Whoever did this should be prosecuted, and their example never repeated — on the right, or elsewhere.
Now, where is the condemnation against the anti-Walker Left for its criminal behavior?
In the Battle of Madison, and perhaps beyond, death threats appear to be a virtually exclusive tool of the pro-union Left.
That suggests two possibilities:
Pro-taxpayer rightists would love to issue death threats, but resist temptation, knowing full well that the slumbering mainstream media would arise, showcase such a development, and discredit conservatives.
Or, maybe, free-marketeers have not issued death threats, because — compared to their left-wing counterparts — they simply are better people.
— Deroy Murdock is a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/262428/death-threats-dozens-wisconsin-deroy-murdock
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2nd post.
MARCH 30, 2011 12:00 P.M.
Bench Brawl in Wisconsin
The Left long ago stopped pretending that court proceedings were anything other than exercises in raw-power politics, and so they’ve taken their fight against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker to the state supreme court — not in the form of a lawsuit, but in the form of a multimillion-dollar intervention into an election to a ten-year term on the court.
Wisconsin supreme court justice David Prosser went to bed one night a respected former prosecutor, and woke up the next morning the target of a $3 million union-run smear campaign, falsely accused of being an enabler of pedophiles. That is what you get when you oppose the political machine that has been fleecing taxpayers in Wisconsin and elsewhere for a generation. Or, as in the case of Justice Prosser, when they suspect you might merely stand in their way and do your job.
Let’s take that specific outrageous claim first. When Prosser was a district attorney, a Catholic priest was accused of improperly touching two boys in their home — running his hand across their chests, but nothing more. Creepy, yes, but probably not prosecutable. With no more evidence than that to go on, with one witness refusing to testify, and with the family not keen on sending its young children to the witness stand in a case in which it would be practically impossible to prove a serious crime had been committed, Prosser, with the family’s agreement, declined to file charges. He reported the incident to the diocese and asked that the priest be removed. Long after Prosser was out of office — 14 years, in fact — further accusations against the priest came to light: accusations of which the prosecutor had known, and could have known, nothing. For this, the union-backed Greater Wisconsin Committee accuses him of conspiring to protect pedophiles from justice. That is a shameful libel — even Politifact, generally hostile to Republicans, gave the claim a low rating on its Truth-O-Meter.
Even the boys in the case denounced the ad as the exploitative fraud it is, and one averred that he’d vote for Prosser. But what is the suffering of exploited children when there are union dues on the line?
When you’ve lost the election, lost the vote in the legislature, and don’t have the law on your side, lies, invective, and blunt force — the Left’s main weapons in Wisconsin — are what you have left. Expect to see a lot more of them deployed.
The Greater Wisconsin Committee is preparing to throw $3 million into the judicial election to defeat Prosser — not because it is feared that he will fail to administer the law impartially, but because it is feared that he will. To that end, Wisconsin Democrats are working to install one of their own on the court and, if the GWC ad is any indicator, they are prepared to do just about anything to win. Because of legal restrictions, Prosser cannot solicit contributions to aid his campaign under this onslaught. But you can help his campaign by helping the Wisconsin Club for Growth (donate here) or donating to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (donate online here; fax donation form here).
It is important that conservatives nationwide make this campaign their own. What is at stake in Wisconsin is not just one piece of legislation or one bill restoring a measure of sanity to the state budgeting process. The question to be answered in Wisconsin is: Who works for whom? Do the public employees work for the citizens, or are the citizens mere cattle to be disposed of at the pleasure of the bureaucrats and their union bosses? Every arrow in the quiver — court cases, judicial elections, recall, lawsuits, lies, libels, and brute thuggery — will be thrown at this case, along with lots of money derived from the union dues that state and local governments helpfully deduct from their employees’ paychecks on the unions’ behalf. Wisconsin may seem an unlikely battleground, but a line must be drawn, and this is the place to draw it.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/263367/bench-brawl-wisconsin-editors
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We hope the tea partiers don't faint, but House Republicans this week voted 225-195 to restore $20 million in federal spending—for the District of Columbia's school voucher program. This is the program, terminated by Democrats in 2009, that gave some 1,700 D.C. students (virtually all of them black or Hispanic) up to $7,500 per year to attend a private school.
Most District residents ardently supported the voucher program, while the teachers unions—locally and nationally—reviled it. This proved to be an embarrassment to professional Democrats—from the Presidency down to local school boards—who still claim to be the party of the poor but who have no clue how to win elections without prostrating themselves for union support.
Thus in 2009 we had the spectacle of Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, then head of a subcommittee that oversaw the program's funding, stringing along its supporters with intimations of support if they jumped various hoops, such as getting the D.C. Council to support it. The Council did. Whereupon Senator Durbin ginned up a new hoop.
This week the Obama White House put out a statement that it "opposes targeting resources to help a small number of individuals attend private schools." It continues to say there is no evidence of academic improvement. As we noted in a 2009 editorial, "Democrats and Poor Kids," the Education Department was in possession then of a study showing gains in reading scores and no declines in math relative to public schools.
The President this week didn't promise a veto, so if perchance it passed the Democratic Senate, he just might sign it. That's the undying optimist in us. The cynical view would be that Mr. Obama will do what the unions say he must to win their re-election cash.
===================
Having lost their fight in the legislature, Wisconsin unions are now getting out the steel pipes for those who don't step lively to their cause. A letter we've seen that was sent to businesses in southeastern Wisconsin shows that Big Labor's latest strategy is to threaten small businesses with boycotts if they don't publicly declare their support for government union monopoly power.
Dated March 28, 2011, the letter is addressed to "DEAR UNION GROVE AREA BUSINESS OWNER/MANAGER," in Racine County. And it begins with this warm greeting: "It is unfortunate that you have chosen 'not' to support public workers rights in Wisconsin. In recent past weeks you have been offered a sign(s) by a public employee(s) who works in one of the state facilities in the Union Grove area. These signs simply said 'This Business Supports Workers Rights,' a simple, subtle and we feel non-controversial statement given the facts at this time."
We doubt "subtle" is the word a business owner would use to describe this offer he is being told he can't refuse.
The letter is signed by Jim Parrett, the "Field Rep." for Council 24 of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which is the most powerful union in the AFL-CIO. The letter presents a litany of objections to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's changes to benefits and public union collective bargaining power, describing them as "things that make life working in a 24-7 facility tolerable."
The missive concludes by noting that, "With that we'd ask that you reconsider taking a sign and stance to support public employees in this community. Failure to do so will leave us no choice but do [sic] a public boycott of your business. And sorry, neutral means 'no' to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members."
So even businesses that stay neutral in the political battle are considered the enemy and will be punished. Charming stuff, and especially coming from a union that claims (wrongly) to be losing its constitutional rights. Free speech for others apparently isn't all that important.
On Wednesday we called the telephone number listed under Mr. Parrett's name but his voicemail was full. We then spoke with union officials who said they'd ask Mr. Parrett to call us back, but he never called. He has since confirmed the accuracy of the letter to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which reports that the threat is an outgrowth of a boycott campaign by other unions that has targeted M&I Bank and Kwik Trip because those companies or their executives supported Mr. Walker's budget proposals.
This kind of union thuggery is all too common and is in keeping with the larger political goal of preventing union members from exercising their own rights of free association. The Walker reform that union leaders hate the most would require unions to be recertified annually by a majority of their members and let those members opt out of paying union dues.
Union chiefs like Mr. Parrett know what that means for their political clout. After taking office in 2005, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels used an executive order to end collective bargaining for public workers—a power granted by former Governor Evan Bayh.
The number of state public employees has since fallen to 28,700 from 35,000. But more important, the vast majority of those employees stopped paying union dues. Today, 1,490 state employees pay union dues in Indiana, down from 16,408 in 2005. Similar declines have played out in Washington State and Utah, when those states gave members the freedom to choose.
This is the prospect that has Wisconsin labor leaders so furious these days—furious enough that they'll even threaten the livelihoods of local business owners who won't join them at the barricades. This is the nasty modern reality of government union power.
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What's not mentioned in the top piece about school vouchers is that they cost $7500 and obtain good results, while DC spends at least $28,000 per pupil--many think this figure is understated--and obtain horrible results. Not sure how saving at least $21K per student per year can be cast as proliferate spending.
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There is no question something needs to be done about public unions, but I'm not sure the WI solution is particularly fair...
"Walker's measure, which was supported by every Republican senator, calls for state and local workers to pay more toward their retirement and health benefits, concessions that unions accepted.
But it would also bar most public-sector unions from negotiating future compensation, prevent them from automatically collecting their members' dues, and require them to receive annual votes from their membership to stay in business. Critics contend it is an attempt to neutralize one of the Democratic Party's strongest backers. The law would not apply to police, state troopers or firefighters, whose unions are more likely to back Republicans."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-wisconsin-recall-20110404,0,3716147.story
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Why not?
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I think the focus should be to obtain concessions towards workers paying more towards retirement and health benefits. And the unions agreed to do so.
Nor do I understand why it's "fair" that "the law would not apply to police, state troopers or firefighters, whose unions are more likely to back Republicans"
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On Fox it is pointed out that in Wisconsin one of six states to allow voter registration the same day as election day. You needn't show valid ID. A "neighbor" can simply act as a witness vouching for you. We will not hear a peep from Jimmy Carter who flies around the world pretending he is watching for voter fraud.
***Officials throughout Wisconsin were conducting their county canvasses on Thursday, the final review of voting records that will allow the state to certify this week's closely watched elections.
But the certification, which could come Thursday, is unlikely to bring closure in the passionately fought contest for a seat on the state Supreme Court, where union-backed challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg leads over incumbent David Prosser by just 204 votes and a recount is virtually inevitable.
It would be the first statewide recount in Wisconsin in more than 20 years and could begin next week if Prosser, a former Republican member of the assembly, requests it.
To help officials prepare for it, the state's Government Accountability Board sent out a memo on Wednesday to county clerks and members of Milwaukee's county election commission.
The memo stressed that local officials needed to "maintain all memory device and programing for the April 5, 2011 Spring Election in its original form. Please do not erase and transfer memory devices."
"We are in unprecedented times in many respects," the memo read, "but particularly with regard to a potential statewide recount, which has not occurred since 1989 ... A thorough completion of the County Board of Canvass at this time may reconcile inconsistencies and issues that will likely save you time and effort in the pending recount process."
With 100 percent of the state's precincts reporting, and all absentee, provisional and write-in votes tallied, Kloppenburg, an assistant state attorney specializing in environmental affairs, had edged out Prosser 740,090 votes to 739,886, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel newspaper and WTMJ-TV.
Kloppenburg insisted throughout the race that she would be an impartial and independent judge if elected to the high court.
But the contest was widely seen as a referendum on Republican Governor Scott Walker and controversial curbs on collective bargaining he and his GOP allies in the legislature recently passed.
Because Prosser is a Republican who had expressed support for Walker last fall, opponents of the anti-union measure characterized him as a proxy for the governor and his anti-union policies, which have triggered massive protests here and 16 recall campaigns targeting lawmakers who supported and opposed the measure.
Under Wisconsin law, for a recount to take place Prosser would have to request it, which he is expected to do.
The costs of a recount are covered by the state if the vote difference is less than one half of 1 percent. The results from the Kloppenburg-Prosser contest fall well within that range.
(Reporting by James B. Kelleher)
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687 CommentsShow: Newest FirstOldest FirstHighest RatedMost Replied Post a Comment Comments 1 - 10 of 687FirstPrevNextLast121 users liked this comment Please sign in to rate this comment up. Please sign in to rate this comment down. 11 users disliked this commentHenry D Wed Apr 06, 2011 07:05 am PDT Report Abuse The biggest problem with Yahoo sorting by popularity is that once you vote, and go to the next page, they are all resorted...and you miss reading some comments.
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17 users liked this comment Please sign in to rate this comment up. Please sign in to rate this comment down. 0 users disliked this commentsam i am 12 hours ago Report Abuse ...i voted, and all i got was this lousy posting...
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87 users liked this comment Please sign in to rate this comment up. Please sign in to rate this comment down. 12 users disliked this commentnetmgmtgoddess 23 hours ago Report Abuse If you dont vote you cannot complain.
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10 users liked this comment Please sign in to rate this comment up. Please sign in to rate this comment down. 0 users disliked this commentNeb 3 hours ago Report Abuse Elections Have Consequences.
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121 users liked this comment Please sign in to rate this comment up. Please sign in to rate this comment down. 21 users disliked this commentgoldn rule Wed Apr 06, 2011 05:43 am PDT Report Abuse Wisconsin wake up and do the right thing for once.
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23 users liked this comment Please sign in to rate this comment up. Please sign in to rate this comment down. 2 users disliked this commentStraight Shooter 19 hours ago Report Abuse News out of Wisconsin says a recount should be completed by May 15th. Just have to wait and see how that turns out.
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48 users liked this comment Please sign in to rate this comment up. Please sign in to rate this comment down. 7 users disliked this commentGo_Aet 19 hours ago Report Abuse The message is loud and clear: WE SEND YOU THERE TO CREATE JOBS!!!! DON"T DO ANYTHING FUNNY!
WHERE ARE THE JOBS???
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22 users liked this comment Please sign in to rate this comment up. Please sign in to rate this comment down. 2 users disliked this commentmissssoutherngirl 5 hours ago Report Abuse THIS GOERS FOR ANYTHING ,,lol GOOD FUNNY
If you start with a cage containing five monkeys and inside the cage, hang a banana on a string from the top and then you place a set of stairs under the banana, before long a monkey will go to the stairs and climb toward
the banana.
As soon as he touches the stairs, you spray all the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes an attempt with same result. All the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it. Now, put the cold water away.
Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and attempts to climb the stairs. To his shock, all of the other monkeys beat the crap out of him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys, replacing it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment, with enthusiasm.
Then, replace a third original monkey with a new one, followed by a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him up have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs. Neither do they know why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
Finally, having replaced all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys will have ever been sprayed with cold water.
Nevertheless, none of the monkeys will try to climb the stairway for the banana. Why, you ask? Because in their minds, that is the way it has always been!***
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Opting Out of Unionization
In Wisconsin, public employees have a new right.
Thanks to Gov. Scott Walker’s new labor law, Wisconsin may just be the next state where union rolls start shrinking. If history’s any indication, plenty of government workers will eventually take advantage of their new ability to opt out of unionization and stop paying expensive union dues.
Surprised? You might be, thanks to the broad-strokes style of most media coverage of the political battle over the legislation. The teachers and other government workers protesting at the capitol were taken to be representative of state union workers as a whole.
But Walker’s hoping that they’re not — and that many government workers will be glad to stop paying dues. On an appearance on Fox News Sunday in February, he said, “If we’re going to ask our state and local workers who are doing a great job to pay a little bit more, to sacrifice, to help to balance this budget, we should also give them the flexibility [to chose whether they pay dues].”
Walker saw that as a significant cost-savings benefit for Wisconsin’s government workers, arguing that “for those members . . . who don’t want to be a part of the union . . . [and] don’t want that deduction each month out of the paycheck, they should be able to get that $500, $600, or in some cases $1,000 [per year] back that they can apply for their health care and their pension contribution.” Politifact, which skews liberal, rated Walker’s calculations of how much workers could save “mostly true” after contacting unions and finding out how much they charged members annually.
Making union membership or portions of union dues voluntary has a track record of resulting in fewer employees’ paying. Consider Indiana, where Gov. Mitch Daniels signed an executive order limiting collective bargaining for state workers. In 2005, when Daniels signed the order, 16,408 state employees belonged to the union. Now 1,490 do.
Looking at states where “paycheck protection” has passed shows a similar pattern. Paycheck protection prohibits state and local governments from automatically deducting a portion of their employees’ wages to finance a union’s political contributions. While Supreme Court rulings, including the 1988 decision Communication Workers v. Beck, have established that union workers cannot be forced to pay the portion of their dues that would finance political activity and lobbying by the unions, it can be very difficult in practice to get that exemption unless the state has paycheck protection in place.
In 2006, a Heritage Foundation analysis found that after paycheck protection was passed, public-sector union donations to candidates declined by about 40 to 50 percent. Take Utah, which passed paycheck protection in 2001. In the following year, donations from the Utah Education Association declined by 75 percent, while the Utah Public Employees Association donated nothing that year, according to the Utah Taxpayers Association. In 2005, the UEA reported that only 6.8 percent of teachers were donating to the political arm of the union, down from 68 percent before the law.
Or look at Idaho, where paycheck protection went into effect in 2009. In 2008, public-sector unions spent around $184,000, according to the data provided by the National Institute on Money in State Politics. In 2010, they spent $157,000, a decrease of about 15 percent. Overall, public-sector unions accounted for just under 2 percent of the state’s campaign contributions that year, a drop from their 3.3 percent share in 2008.
Another sign that many union members likely aren’t happy with their forced unionization is the difference between union-membership rates in states with right-to-work laws, under which employees can refuse to join their companies’ unions or pay dues (though they’re still covered by the union contract), and in states without such laws. In right-to-work states, 6.5 percent of workers belong to a union, according to 2010 data from the Bureau of Labor. In the remaining states, the unionization rate is over twice that: 13.8 percent.
Polls also show that many union members disagree with Big Labor on politics. A March Rasmussen poll showed that 27 percent of public-sector union members consider themselves conservative and 17 percent Republican. The same month, a Gallup poll showed that between 24 and 27 percent of unionized government workers identified as Republican. Yet public-sector union PACS gave 92 percent of their federal donations last year to Democratic candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
And without any choice available to union members, it’s not even clear whether liberal members would spend their money the way the union does. They may prefer to donate to other causes or candidates, or to keep the money for themselves.
If Wisconsin public-sector employees want union representation, and if they agree with the unions’ political stances, they’ll continue to pay dues, and the unions will thrive. But if not, they will finally be able to opt out of subsidizing the electoral preferences of their union bosses.
— Katrina Trinko is an NRO staff reporter.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/264545/opting-out-unionization-katrina-trinko
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Easy to see now why certain partisans were up in arms about worker choice.
Right to assemble, speak freely, even negotiate as a group is fundamental, but so is the right of another person to work without joining and the employer's right to hire anyone qualified who wants the job with market wage and benefits.
I continue to assert that the evil capitalist in the case of a public union is the 'consent of the governed'. When someone explains to me how the right to be overpaid and under-worked rises above consent of the governed I will consider changing my view.
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We knew that Big Labor had political pull at the Obama-era National Labor Relations Board, but yesterday's complaint against Boeing is one for the (dark) ages. By challenging Boeing's right to build aircraft in South Carolina, labor's bureaucratic allies in Washington are threatening the ability of states to compete for new jobs and investment—and risking the economic recovery to boot.
In 2009 Boeing announced plans to build a new plant to meet demand for its new 787 Dreamliner. Though its union contract didn't require it, Boeing executives negotiated with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers to build the plane at its existing plant in Washington state. The talks broke down because the union wanted, among other things, a seat on Boeing's board and a promise that Boeing would build all future airplanes in Puget Sound.
So Boeing management did what it judged to be best for its shareholders and customers and looked elsewhere. In October 2009, the company settled on South Carolina, which, like the 21 other right-to-work states, has friendlier labor laws than Washington. As Boeing chief Jim McNerney noted on a conference call at the time, the company couldn't have "strikes happening every three to four years." The union has shut down Boeing's commercial aircraft production line four times since 1989, and a 58-day strike in 2008 cost the company $1.8 billion.
This reasonable business decision created more than 1,000 jobs and has brought around $2 billion of investment to South Carolina. The aerospace workers in Puget Sound remain among the best paid in America, but the union nonetheless asked the NLRB to stop Boeing's plans before the company starts to assemble planes in North Charleston this July.
View Full Image
Associated Press
A worker walks past one of Boeing's 787 Dreamliners at the production facility in Everett, Wash.
.The NLRB obliged with its complaint yesterday asking an administrative law judge to stop Boeing's South Carolina production because its executives had cited the risk of strikes as a reason for the move. Boeing acted out of "anti-union animus," says the complaint by acting general counsel Lafe Solomon, and its decision to move had the effect of "discouraging membership in a labor organization" and thus violates federal law.
It's hard to know which law he's referring to. There are plentiful legal precedents that give business the right to locate operations in right-to-work states. That right has created healthy competition among states and kept tens of millions of jobs in America rather than heading overseas.
Boeing has also expanded its operations in Puget Sound while building its South Carolina presence. Ultimately, the NLRB seems to be resting its complaint on the belief that Boeing spent nearly $2 billion out of spite, which sounds less like a matter of law than of campaign 2012 politics.
Boeing says it will challenge the complaint in an NLRB hearing in June, but Big Labor also has sway at the five-member board. Recall that President Obama gave a recess appointment last year to Craig Becker, a former lawyer for the Service Employees International Union who once wrote that the NLRB could impose "card check" rules for union organizing even without an act of Congress. Even a Democratic Senate refused to confirm him.
Beyond labor politics, the NLRB's ruling would set a terrible precedent for the flow of jobs and investment within the U.S. It would essentially give labor a veto over management decisions about where to build future plants. And it would undercut the right-to-work statutes in 22 American states—which is no doubt the main union goal here.
With a Republican House, Mr. Obama's union agenda is dead in Congress. But it looks like his appointees are determined to impose it by regulatory fiat—no matter the damage to investment and job creation.
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"Centralized economic planning will really work this time!"-Obama supporter
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School District Employee Disciplined for Political Phone Call
Updated: Apr 22, 2011 7:12 PM
By Molly Hendrickson
A Sheboygan gas station owner is baffled after a mystery caller tells a clerk it's a bad idea to do business with a Sheboygan-area state senator.
It started Tuesday when a woman called Dick Hiers's Northeast Standard gas station after she thought she saw Senator Joe Leibham there. Her call was caught on the answering machine.
"I think that this whole thing has to end. It has to stop," said Hiers. "This type of stuff is totally uncalled for."
Hiers never thought his little gas station in the heart of Sheboygan would be the stage of political controversy. Then again, his week has been full of surprises.
"I was working back here and the answering machine went off, and I was a little surprised by that, and when I heard the message here, I was even a little more surprised."
The answering machine here in the back of the store was left on from the night before and was recording the entire conversation.
Caller: "Can you verify that was Senator Leibham at the gas station this morning?"
Gas station clerk: "Senator Leibham?"
Caller: "Yes. Do you guys support him?"
Clerk: "I have nothing to say about that, I am not politically involved."
Caller: "Alright, well you can tell Dick he's not good for business, I'll tell you that."
Shocked over the 26-second conversation, Hiers quickly traced the call -- only to get surprise number two.
"And it turned out to be coming from the Sheboygan area district school office," he said.
"Obviously our school district equipment and the facilities are for the purposes of school," Superintendent Joseph Sheehan responded. "Any type of phone call leaving any types of threats or condoning any type of intimidation is strictly prohibited."
The superintendent, who was out of the area Friday, said the district's taken what it calls "appropriate disciplinary action."
The woman is a district employee but school officials say that 8:15 call was made before she was on the clock.
It turns out it wasn't the senator but his brother at the gas station.
As for Dick Hiers, he is still wants answers, saying this week full of surprises is a sign things have gone too far.
"Everybody's money is green, it's all the same, and I don't pick and choose who can come into my business," Hiers said.
Senator Leibham, who was not available for comment, has filed an open records request with the school district. The district says it's working on the request.
http://www.wbay.com/story/14499316/2011/04/22/school-district-employee-disciplined-for-political-phone-call
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I had a postal worker in the office some time ago. The person came in for the third time after hurting his back. I gave him a note to take a week off the first time and then another two weeks off during the second visit. He comes back again and now states his back is better. (Frankly I thought he was better the second time but I gave him the benefit of the doubt.) So, I ask, if your back is better than why are you here? You want even more time off? He replied yes, he was thinking another week or two. I asked, why if your back is better? He said well, I have lots of sick time and I am going to retire in a few months (patient is age 59). I stated I don't do this and will not write a false note. I said I don't get it. You know the Post Office is going borke and is billions in the red. He says no it isn't. It has plenty of money. Some postal workers were laid off at other locations not mine. In fact I just got a raise.
To make the rest of the story short, I refused the note.
The attitude, the sense of entitlement, the abuse of the system.... Taxpayers like me are finally waking up:
****California voters want public employees to help ease state's financial troubles
A cap on pensions and a later retirement age — even for current public employees — are supported by the poll's respondents.
By Shane Goldmacher, Los Angeles Times
April 24, 2011, 4:23 p.m.
Reporting from Sacramento— California voters want government employees to give up some retirement benefits to help ease the state's financial problems, favoring a cap on pensions and a later age for collecting them, according to a new poll.
Voter support for rolling back benefits available to few outside the public sector comes as Gov. Jerry Brown and Republicans in the Legislature haggle over changes to the pension system as part of state budget negotiations. Such benefits have been a flashpoint of national debate this year, and the poll shows that Californians are among those who perceive public retirement plans to be too costly.
Voters appear ready to embrace changes not just for future hires but also for current employees who have been promised the benefits under contract.
Seventy percent of respondents said they supported a cap on pensions for current and future public employees. Nearly as many, 68%, approved of raising the amount of money government workers should be required to contribute to their retirement. Increasing the age at which government employees may collect pensions was favored by 52%.
Although pension costs today account for just a fraction of the state budget, they are putting local governments under considerable financial strain, and analysts say effects on the state may not be far off.
"It's pretty clear that there's broad support for making changes in the area of pensions," said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg, who co-directed the bipartisan poll for The Times and the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
Many public safety officers can retire at 50 with a pension equal to 3% of their final salary for each year worked — for example, 60% of salary after 20 years on the job. Many other state employees can retire at 55, with 2.5% of salary for each year worked. And tens of thousands of public workers may also purchase "air time" — credit for years they do not actually work — to boost their retirement income.
Guaranteed pensions have faded from corporate America in recent decades, replaced largely by 401(k) accounts that workers pay into and that rise and fall based on the fluctuations of financial markets. Voters back an integration of such plans into the government retirement system, with 66% supporting a blend of the traditional pension and a 401(k).
"It's just gotten way out of hand," said Beverly Marcelja, a 67-year old Democrat and retiree living in Tracy, in the Central Valley.
David Martinez, 59, a nonpartisan voter who lives in Rowland Heights, said existing retirement plans reflect a time when private-sector workers were afforded the same pensions.
"It's come to the point where the government is paying much more than private industry is," he said. "It should be equal."
The public sentiment is a cause for concern for organized labor. Public employee unions that spent millions of dollars helping to elect Brown are working aggressively to keep their pensions intact. But the governor has made clear that he believes they must make concessions as the state struggles.
Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation, said the public is trapped in a "moment of envy" over benefits that he maintains are far from lavish.
His union's position is that every worker should be entitled to a pension, not an unsecured retirement reliant on Wall Street earnings. Policy makers should focus on winning back a stable retirement for private-sector workers rather than demonize public employees, he said.
Some state and local public employee unions have already agreed to some changes, such as a delay in the retirement age for new hires.
"It's one thing for Republican governors in Wisconsin and Indiana to support these types of changes, but seeing this type of support from California voters, even California Democrats, is really remarkable," said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a former GOP strategist.
Among Democratic respondents, 71% supported increasing retirement contributions for future hires and 66% backed a pension cap for both current and future workers. However, fewer than half of the Democrats surveyed favored cutting benefits and raising the retirement age for current employees.
Majorities of Republican and nonpartisan voters favored every potential money-saving pension change they were asked about.
Linda DiVall, a Republican pollster who co-directed the poll, said the results show that on the subject of retirement benefits, the public believes it is "unfair what the state employees have going for them."
Although Republicans have crusaded for years against what they view as bloated government pensions, California voters are not confident that they are best suited to tackle the issue. Only 29% said Republicans would best handle a revamping of the pension system, whereas 43% would prefer that an overhaul be left in the hands of Brown and his fellow Democrats.
And although voters strongly supported downsizing parts of the pension system, they were divided on whether most public employees were compensated appropriately. Forty-three percent said wages and benefits were too high; 33% said they were about right; 12% said they were too low.
The Times/USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences poll surveyed 1,503 registered voters from April 7 to 17. It was conducted by a bipartisan team of polling companies based in the Washington, D.C., area: Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a Democratic firm, and American Viewpoint, a Republican firm.
The margin of error is plus or minus 2.53 percentage points. Some pension questions were posed to half the respondents and have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.58 percentage points.
shane.goldmacher@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times****
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http://michellemalkin.com/
I think one could counter this by pointing out government unions wipe their behinds with taxpayer monies.
Could some highly visible person start a campaign that all taxpayers should avoid any business that is intimidated by unions or shows union solidarity in a public way?
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By ARTHUR B. LAFFER
AND STEPHEN MOORE
The Obama administration's National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint last month against Boeing to block production of the company's 787 Dreamliner at a new assembly plant in South Carolina—a "right to-work" state with a law against compulsory union membership. If the NLRB has its way, Dreamliner assembly will return to Washington, a union-shop state, along with more than 1,000 jobs.
The NLRB's action, which Boeing will challenge at a hearing next month, is a big deal. It's the first time a federal agency has intervened to tell an American company where it can and cannot operate a plant within the U.S. It lays the foundation of a regulatory wall with one express purpose: to prevent the direct competition of right-to-work states with union-shop states. Why, as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley recently asked on these pages, should Washington have any more right to these jobs than South Carolina?
A recent New York Times editorial justified the NLRB decision by arguing that unions are suffering from "the flight of companies to 'Right-to-Work' states where workers cannot be required to join a union." That's for sure, and quite an admission. We've been observing that migration pattern for years, but liberals have denied it's actually happening—until now.
View Full Image
David Klein
.Every year we rank the states on their economic competitiveness in a report called "Rich States, Poor States" for the American Legislative Exchange Council. This ranking uses 15 fiscal, tax and regulatory variables to determine which states have policies that are most conducive to prosperity. Two of these 15 policies have consistently stood out as the most important in predicting where jobs will be created and incomes will rise. First, states with no income tax generally outperform high income tax states. Second, states that have right-to-work laws grow faster than states with forced unionism.
As of today there are 22 right-to-work states and 28 union-shop states. Over the past decade (2000-09) the right-to-work states grew faster in nearly every respect than their union-shop counterparts: 54.6% versus 41.1% in gross state product, 53.3% versus 40.6% in personal income, 11.9% versus 6.1% in population, and 4.1% versus -0.6% in payrolls.
For years, unions argued that right-to-work laws were bad for workers and for the states that passed them. But with the NLRB complaint, they've essentially thrown in the towel. If forced unionism is better for the economy of a state, why would the NLRB need to intervene to keep Boeing from leaving Washington? Why aren't businesses and workers moving operations to heavily unionized places like Michigan, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania and fleeing states like Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Texas?
In reality, the stampede of businesses from forced-union states like Washington has accelerated in recent years. A 2010 study in the Cato Journal by economist Richard Vedder of Ohio University found that between 2000 and 2008 4.8 million Americans moved from forced-union states to right-to-work states. That's one person every minute of every day.
Right-to-work states are also getting richer over time. Prof. Vedder found a 23% higher per capita income growth rate in right-to-work states than in forced-union states, which over the period 1977-2007 amounted to a $2,760 larger increase in per-person income in those states. That's a giant differential.
So now the unions concede that this migration is indeed happening, but they say that it is unhealthy and undesirable because workers in right-to-work states are paid less and get worse benefits than the workers in union states. Actually, when adjusting for the cost of living in each state and the fact that right-to-work states were poorer to begin with, a 2003 study in the Journal of Labor Research by University of Oklahoma economist Robert Reed found that wages rose faster in states that don't require union membership.
Employers that move away from forced-union states mainly do so not to scale back wages and salaries—although sometimes that happens—but to avoid having to deal with intrusive union rules, the threat of costly work stoppages, lawsuits, worker paychecks going to union fat cats, and so on.
Boeing officials have admitted that their decision to build the new Dreamliner plant in South Carolina was due in part to the fact that the company could not "afford a work stoppage every three years" as had happened in Washington state over that past decade. (By the way, this is the comment the NLRB complaint cites as proof of "retaliation" against union workers.)
Boeing is merely making a business decision based on economic reality. In fact, the company chose South Carolina for the new plant even though Washington has no income tax and South Carolina does. The two of us are often accused of arguing that income tax rates are the only factors that influence where businesses and capital relocate. Taxes certainly matter. But Boeing's move shows that taxes are not always the definitive factor in plant location decisions. In the case of Washington the advantage of its no income tax status is outweighed by its forced-union status. Lucky are the six states—Texas, Tennessee, South Dakota, Nevada, Florida and Wyoming—that are both right-to-work states and have no income tax.
While there are only six right-to-work states that also have a zero earned income tax rate and three zero earned income tax rate states that have forced- union shops, their performance differences over the past decade (2000-09) are revealing. Of the nine zero income tax rate states, those six that are also right-to-work have grown a lot faster than the three with forced-union shops: 64.9% versus 53.8% in gross state product, 59.0% versus 46.8% in personal income, 15.5% versus 10.3% in population and 8.2% versus 6.9% in payrolls.
The Boeing incident makes it clear that right-to-work states have a competitive advantage over forced-union states. So the question arises: Why doesn't every state adopt right-to-work laws? Four or five are trying to do so this year, and have faced ferocious opposition from the union movement.
But that shouldn't stop state legislators in forced-union states from doing what's in their workers' best interests. They need to decide whether they want to continue to see jobs and tax receipts exit their states, or whether they want to adopt laws that afford their workers the right to join a union or not. The only alternative is to build a regulatory Berlin Wall around their borders to keep their businesses from leaving.
Mr. Laffer is the chairman of Laffer Associates. Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for the Journal's editorial page. They are co-authors of "Return to Prosperity: How America Can Regain Its Economic Superpower Status" (Threshold, 2010).
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A recent New York Times editorial justified the NLRB decision by arguing that unions are suffering from "the flight of companies to 'Right-to-Work' states where workers cannot be required to join a union."
Do they prefer that the jobs migrate to China?
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A recent New York Times editorial justified the NLRB decision by arguing that unions are suffering from "the flight of companies to 'Right-to-Work' states where workers cannot be required to join a union."
Do they prefer that the jobs migrate to China?
Exactly.
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By PATRICK J. REILLY
It's not just Boeing that the National Labor Relations Board is picking on: For the second time this year, the NLRB has ruled against a Catholic college.
The Chicago office of the NLRB said that St. Xavier University had failed to demonstrate the "substantial religious character" necessary to qualify for exemption from federal labor law. As a result, adjunct professors in its employ will be allowed to organize, even though the school has argued that a faculty union would interfere with the school's autonomy as a religious institution by ceding "jurisdiction over important matters to a third party."
In January, the NLRB's New York office made the same determination about Manhattan College, a Christian Brothers institution, which has since appealed.
Both cases hinge on the Supreme Court's ruling in NLRB v. The Catholic Bishop of Chicago, et al. (1979), which found that the NLRB had violated the First Amendment's free exercise clause by requiring Catholic schools to comply with federal labor laws, thereby possibly interfering with religious decision-making. But that ruling didn't stop the NLRB from claiming authority over most Catholic colleges and universities by arguing that Catholic Bishop protects only "church-controlled" institutions that are "substantially religious," a phrase taken from Chief Justice Warren Burger's majority opinion in the case. Many of the nation's 224 Catholic colleges and universities are legally independent of the Catholic bishops or the religious orders that founded them.
So the NLRB has put itself in the position of judging schools' religious character, and it has concluded over the years that many Catholic institutions are inconsistent in their application of Catholic principles to teaching, course requirements, campus life and faculty hiring. It's a serious overreach by the government, though many Catholics would agree that colleges and universities often demonstrate inconsistent religious observation.
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.The erosion of religious identity in Catholic higher education over the past 50 years has been marked by theological dissent, hostility toward the bishops, and increasingly liberal campus-life arrangements such as co-ed dorms and lax visitation rules. These issues fueled the 2009 confrontation at Notre Dame, for example, when pro-life Catholics objected to the school honoring President Barack Obama. This year the U.S. bishops are engaged in a review of Catholic educators' compliance with church rules for colleges and universities.
Colleges that have deliberately watered down their Catholic identity, in part to help themselves compete for government aid, now face church pressure to strengthen their religious identity. The choice for Catholic educators is increasingly clear: defend religious liberty and stand up for a strong Catholic identity—or give up the pretense.
Catholic educators are now awaiting the result of Manhattan College's appeal to the NLRB regulators in Washington. Their appeal relies heavily on an argument put forward in 1986 by future Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Writing for half the members of an evenly divided D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Breyer argued that the NLRB had contravened the Catholic Bishop ruling by establishing a "substantial religious character" test to determine whether a college meets sectarian standards.
The D.C. Circuit has formally embraced Justice Breyer's reasoning twice over the past decade, instructing the NLRB to stop interfering with any college or university that "holds itself out to students, faculty and community as providing a religious educational environment." In ruling against St. Xavier University and Manhattan College, NLRB regional staff seem to have ignored that instruction.
Mr. Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, is author of "The NLRB's Assault on Religious Liberty," published by the society's Center for the Advancement of Catholic Higher Education.
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California's Democratic Governor Jerry Brown has always been one to surprise. His latest is this week's veto of card-check legislation, which would have allowed agricultural workers to unionize if a simple majority sign an authorization card.
As we wrote last month ("Forgetting Cesar Chavez," May 14), the bill would have denied employers the ability to demand a secret ballot election if labor organizers wanted to unionize through card check. This would have made it easier for organizers to intimidate workers into joining a union since workers' selections would no longer be concealed.
The United Farm Workers union has been losing members for years as workers have chosen to decertify the union. For many workers the cost of their dues exceeds the benefits they gain through collective bargaining. Labor leaders hoped card check would shore up their dwindling rolls and give them more money to spend on elections. Mr. Brown's predecessor, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, vetoed earlier versions of the legislation, but union leaders figured they had an ally in the Democrat. It seems they misread history.
In 1975, during his first stint as Governor, Mr. Brown signed a law guaranteeing workers' right to a secret ballot. Labor leader Cesar Chavez fought hard for this right in the 1960s and '70s, and in his veto message Mr. Brown said card check would have altered "in a significant way the guiding assumptions" of state agricultural labor law.
It also could have killed thousands of jobs in the state's San Joaquin Valley, where unemployment exceeds 15%. Rigid union work rules and high labor costs have already driven many growers to Mexico.
Labor leaders and Democrats tried to pressure Mr. Brown into signing the bill by camping outside his office and chanting "Sí se puede." Their antics may have given the Governor some sympathy for the farm workers whose only protection against such hounding is the secret ballot.
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Imprimis is the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College and is dedicated to educating citizens and promoting civil and religious liberty by covering cultural, economic, political and educational issues of enduring significance. The content of Imprimis is drawn from speeches delivered to Hillsdale College-hosted events, both on-campus and off-campus. First published in 1972, Imprimis is one of the most widely circulated opinion publications in the nation with over 1.9 million subscribers.
May/June 2011
Mark Mix
President,
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
The Right to Work: A Fundamental Freedom
MARK MIX is president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, as well as of the National Right to Work Committee, a 2.2 million member public policy organization. He holds a B.A. in finance from James Madison University and an associate’s degree in marketing from the State University of New York. His writings have appeared in such newspapers and magazines as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, the Detroit Free Press, the San Antonio Express-News, the Orange County Register and National Review.
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered at Hillsdale College on January 31, 2011, during a conference co-sponsored by the Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.
BOEING IS A GREAT AMERICAN COMPANY. Recently it has built a second production line—its other is in Washington State—in South Carolina for its 787 Dreamliner airplane, creating 1,000 jobs there so far. Who knows what factors led to its decision to do this? As with all such business decisions, there were many. But the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—a five-member agency created in 1935 by the Wagner Act (about which I will speak momentarily)—has taken exception to this decision, ultimately based on the fact that South Carolina is a right-to-work state. That is, South Carolina, like 21 other states today, protects a worker’s right not only to join a union, but also to make the choice not to join or financially support a union. Washington State does not. The general counsel of the NLRB, on behalf of the International Association of Machinists union, has issued a complaint against Boeing, which, if successful, would require it to move its South Carolina operation back to Washington State. This would represent an unprecedented act of intervention by the federal government that appears, on its face, un-American. But it is an act long in the making, and boils down to a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom.
Where does this story begin?
The Wagner Act and Taft-Hartley
In 1935, Congress passed and President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), commonly referred to as the Wagner Act after its Senate sponsor, New York Democrat Robert Wagner. Section 7 of the Wagner Act states:
Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.
Union officials such as William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and John L. Lewis, principal founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), hailed this legislation at the time as the “Magna Carta of Labor.” But in fact it was far from a charter of liberty for working Americans.
Section 8(3) of the Wagner Act allowed for “agreements” between employers and officers of a union requiring union membership “as a condition of employment” if the union was certified or recognized as the employees’ “exclusive” bargaining agent on matters of pay, benefits, and work rules. On its face, this violates the clear principle that the freedom to associate necessarily includes the freedom not to associate. In other words, the Wagner Act didn’t protect the freedom of workers because it didn’t allow for them to decide against union membership. To be sure, the Wagner Act left states the prerogative to protect employees from compulsory union membership. But federal law was decidedly one-sided: Firing or refusing to hire a worker because he or she had joined a union was a federal crime, whereas firing or refusing to hire a worker for not joining a union with “exclusive” bargaining privileges was federally protected. The National Labor Relations Board was created by the Wagner Act to enforce these policies.
During World War II, FDR’s War Labor Board aggressively promoted compulsory union membership. By the end of the war, the vast majority of unionized workers in America were covered by contracts requiring them to belong to a union in order to keep their jobs. But Americans were coming to see compulsory union membership—euphemistically referred to as “union security”—as a violation of the freedom of association. Furthermore, the nonchalance with which union bosses like John L. Lewis paralyzed the economy by calling employees out on strike in 1946 hardened public support for the right to work as opposed to compulsory unionism. As Gilbert J. Gall, a staunch proponent of the latter, acknowledged in a monograph chronicling legislative battles over this issue from the 1940s on, “the huge post-war strike wave and other problems of reconversion gave an added impetus to right-to-work proposals.”
When dozens of senators and congressmen who backed compulsory unionism were ousted in the 1946 election, the new Republican leaders of Congress had a clear opportunity to curb the legal power of union bosses to force workers to join unions. Instead, they opted for a compromise that they thought would have enough congressional support to override a presidential veto by President Truman. Thus Section 7 of the revised National Labor Relations Act of 1947—commonly referred to as the Taft-Hartley Act—only appears at first to represent an improvement over Section 7 of the Wagner Act. It begins:
Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any and all such activities. . . .
Had this sentence ended there, forced union membership would have been prohibited, and at the same time voluntary union membership would have remained protected. Unfortunately, the sentence continued:
...except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 158(a)(3) of this title.
This qualification, placing federal policy firmly on the side of compulsory union membership, left workers little better off than they were under the Wagner Act. Elsewhere, Taft-Hartley did, for the most part, prohibit “closed shop” arrangements that forced workers to join a union before being hired. But they could still be forced to join, on threat of being fired, within a few weeks after starting on the job.
Boeing’s Interest, and Ours
It cannot be overemphasized that compulsory unionism violates the first principle of the original labor union movement in America. Samuel Gompers, founder and first president of the AFL, wrote that the labor movement was “based upon the recognition of the sovereignty of the worker.” Officers of the AFL, he explained in the American Federationist, can “suggest” or “recommend,” but they “cannot command one man in America to do anything.” He continued: “Under no circumstances can they say, ‘you must do so and so, or, ‘you must desist from doing so and so.’” In a series of Federationist editorials published during World War I, Gompers opposed various government mandate measures being considered in the capitals of industrial states like Massachusetts and New York that would have mandated certain provisions for manual laborers and other select groups of workers:
The workers of America adhere to voluntary institutions in preference to compulsory systems which are held to be not only impractical but a menace to their rights, welfare and their liberty.
This argument applies as much to compulsory unionism—or “union security”—as to the opposite idea that unions should be prohibited. And in a December 1918 address before the Council on Foreign Relations, Gompers made this point explicitly:
There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. This is his right no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right and no one can dare question his exercise of that legal right.
Compare Gompers’s traditional American view of freedom to the contemptuous view toward workers of labor leaders today. Here is United Food and Commercial Workers union strategist Joe Crump advising union organizers in a 1991 trade journal article: “Employees are complex and unpredictable. Employers are simple and predictable. Organize employers, not employees.” And in 2005, Mike Fishman, head of the Service Employees International Union, was even more blunt. When it comes to union organizing campaigns, he told the Wall Street Journal, “We don’t do elections.”
Under a decades-old political compromise, federal labor policies promoting compulsory unionism persist side by side with the ability of states to curb such compulsion with right-to-work laws. So far, as I said, 22 states have done so. And when we compare and contrast the economic performance in these 22 states against the others, we find interesting things. For example, from 1999 to 2009 (the last such year for which data are available), the aggregate real all-industry GDP of the 22 right-to-work states grew by 24.2 percent, nearly 40 percent more than the gain registered by the other 28 states as a group.
Even more dramatic is the contrast if we look at personal income growth. From 2000 to 2010, real personal incomes grew by an average of 24.3 percent in the 22 right-to-work states, more than double the rate for the other 28 as a group. But the strongest indicator is the migration of young adults. In 2009, there were 20 percent more 25- to 34-year-olds in right-to-work states than in 1999. In the compulsory union states, the increase was only 3.3 percent—barely one-sixth as much.
In this context, the decision by Boeing to open a plant in South Carolina may be not only in its own best interest, but in ours as well. So in whose interest is the National Labor Relations Board acting? And more importantly, with a view to what understanding of freedom?
Public Sector Unionism
As more and more workers and businesses have obtained refuge from compulsory unionism in right-to-work states in recent decades, the rationality of the free market has been showing itself. But the public sector is another and a grimmer story.
The National Labor Relations Act affects only private-sector workers. Since the 1960s, however, 21 states have enacted laws authorizing the collection of forced union dues from at least some state and local public employees. More than a dozen additional states have granted union officials the monopoly power to speak for all government workers whether they consent to this or not. Thus today, government workers are more than five times as likely to be unionized as private sector workers. This represents a great danger for taxpayers and consumers of government services. For as Victor Gotbaum, head of the Manhattan-based District 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, said 36 years ago: “We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss.”
How this works is simple, and explains the inordinate power of union officials in so many states that have not adopted right-to-work laws. Union officials funnel a huge portion of the compulsory dues and fees they collect into efforts to influence the outcomes of elections. In return, elected officials are afraid to anger them even in the face of financial crisis. This explains why states with the heaviest tax burdens and the greatest long-term fiscal imbalances (in many cases due to bloated public employee pension funds) are those with the most unionized government workforces. California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin represent the worst default risks among the 50 states. In 2010, an average of 59.2 percent of the public employees in these nine worst default-risk states were unionized, 19.2 percentage points higher than the national average of 40 percent. All of these states except Nevada authorize compulsory union dues and fees in the public sector.
* * *
Fortunately, there are signs that taxpayers are recognizing the negative consequences of compulsory unionism in the public sector. Just this March, legislatures in Wisconsin and Ohio revoked compulsory powers of government union bosses, and similar efforts are underway in several other states. Furthermore, the NLRB’s blatantly political and un-constitutional power play with regard to Boeing’s South Carolina production line is sure to strike fair-minded Americans as beyond the pale. Now more than ever, it is time to push home the point that all American workers in all 50 states should be granted the full freedom of association—which includes the freedom not to associate—in the area of union membership.
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CCP:
Good in depth read on the subject.
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http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2011/08/verizon_strike_picketing.html
Profiles in courage....and parenting.
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Wisconsin’s recall vote
End of a fantasy
A backlash against the state’s feisty conservatives fizzles out
Aug 13th 2011 | FOND DU LAC, WISCONSIN | from the print edition
IN A neighbourhood of double garages and tightly cropped lawns, a woman stops her car in the middle of the road and leaps out to tell Randy Hopper, her state senator, how strongly she supports the reforms he and other Republicans legislators have championed in Wisconsin. There were not enough such voters to save Mr Hopper, who was turfed out of office in the middle of his term in a recall election this week. But there were enough of them to deny Democrats the majority they were seeking in the state Senate, and to dampen hopes on the left that aggrieved public-sector workers could restore their electoral fortunes nationwide next year.
In February the Republicans who control the state legislature had tried to push through a “budget repair” bill which aimed to reduce spending in part by severely restricting collective bargaining for the public sector. Government employees were to be stripped of any say in their benefits, while their pay, in future, would rise no faster than the consumer price index. The Democratic minority in the Senate, lacking the votes to block the bill, instead fled the state, depriving the chamber of a quorum. It was only after the Republicans worked out a parliamentary manoeuvre to get around the quorum requirement and pass the collective-bargaining reforms, three weeks later, that they returned, vowing to use every means at their disposal to avenge the Republican assault on labour.
One of those tools is recall elections, which Wisconsin allows for any public official, provided that they are at least a year into their current term and enough voters sign a petition. The main object of the Democrats’ ire, Governor Scott Walker, had been elected barely three months prior to the beginning of the row, as had all of the state representatives and half of the state senators; they cannot yet be recalled. So the Democrats focused instead on recalling the eight Republican senators over a year into their terms who had voted for the reforms. The Republicans, not to be outdone, decided to try to recall eight Democratic senators who had absconded.
The Democrats only managed to drum up enough signatures to force six of the Republicans to face the voters again, on August 9th. Had they won three of those races, they would have gained control of the Senate, which would have allowed them to stymie any new Republican initiatives they disliked. In the end, however, they won only two. Moreover, two Democrats face recalls of their own next week, which could conceivably take the two parties back to square one.
The Democrats argue that it was a victory simply to get sufficient numbers of voters worked up enough to force the recall elections in the first place. The Republican senators whom they took on were last elected in 2008, a good year for Democrats, so were always going to be hard to dislodge. There clearly has been a small swing in the Democrats’ favour since 2008, and a bigger one relative to their dire showing in 2010. But their failure to win a more sweeping victory nevertheless puts paid to their claim that a clear majority of ordinary Wisconsinites find the governor’s agenda too extreme.
What all this means for the rest of the country is unclear, to say the least. The dispute has definitely riled many in Wisconsin: turnout was much higher than in most special elections. But it was still lower than in a typical presidential year. That makes it hard to infer anything much about next year’s elections, when voters are likely to be more numerous but perhaps less inflamed. One thing seems certain, however: the Democratic fantasy of an irresistible leftward swing among voters outraged by Republican extremism is just that.
from the print edition | United States
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Public unions holding taxpayers hostage again. Commuters travelling between NJ and NY should pay $15 now? to pay for their benefits and pensions. Folks this has to go. The country is broke and I resent it. Why doesn't Buffet set up a multibillion $ fund for these public union people. He is such a good Demorat (I mean "crat"):
****Toll Increase JERSEY CITY, NJ (CBSNewYork) - Commuters accustomed to forking it over at various Hudson River crossings are telling the Port Authority Of New York and New Jersey what they think of proposed toll and fare increases.
The Port Authority is holding nine public hearings Tuesday on the proposed increases, which will affect bridges, tunnels and PATH trains.
1010 WINS’ Steve Sandberg reports: Both Sides Sound Off In Jersey City
Union laborers donned in bright orange shirts came by the busloads to voice their support of the hikes in Jersey City while some commuters spoke out in opposition.
“We cannot afford not to make these investments because we need the jobs,” one worker said.
Those speaking out against the proposal say the unions are being used as pawns to exploit other working people who can’t afford the increase.
“This is outrageous and greedy,” one woman said.
One Jersey City man even called the public hearings a sham.
“They’re being held in a place that nobody can find, they’re being held at a time that nobody can come,” he said.
1010 WINS’ Terry Sheridan reports: Large Union Turnout On Staten Island
About 100 people packed the hearing at the Port Ivory facility on Staten Island — the majority of them from the union.
“Nobody wants to pay more for everyday activities but there’s also no such thing as a free lunch,” Michael Maguire, of the Mason Tenders District Council, said.
The agency says it needs the additional revenue the hikes will generate to pay for a new 10-year capital investment plan, maintain security, and complete the over-budget World Trade Center.
Union members pack a hearing on Port Authority toll hikes - Jersey City, NJ - Aug 16, 2011 (credit: Peter Haskell / WCBS 880)
Among the details of the proposed hike:
EZ-Pass peak tolls would increase from $8 to $12 this year, and to $14 in 2014
EZ-Pass off-peak tolls would increase from $6 to $10 this year, and to $12 in 2014.
Cash tolls would increase from $8 to $15 this year, and to $17 in 2014.
Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie are both opposed to the proposal. Cuomo called it “A non-starter for obvious reasons,” while Christie said simply “You’re kidding, right?”
WCBS 880′s Peter Haskell: Compelling Arguments On Both Sides
Some motorists are disgusted by the toll hike.
“Unemployment is up and they’re continuing to raise everything,” David Lechese said. “What do we do to survive everyday? Gasoline prices, tolls, public transportation, food costs, energy costs — everything is going up.”
The Verizon strike is one thing since it is a private company the public unions have got to go and stop holding taxpayers hostage.
This is crazy:
***Union members pack a hearing on Port Authority toll hikes - Jersey City, NJ - Aug 16, 2011 (credit: Peter Haskell / WCBS 880)
Angela McBryan said she is barely scraping by as it is and now the Port Authority wants to take any spare cash she might have.
“We can’t afford to go over the bridge so we just avoid it,”McBryan said.
CBS2 HD reported that the Port Authority is actually seeking a lower hike, and proposed such a steep raise to provide elected officials the political breathing room to approve any increase at all.
The plan goes up for vote on Friday. The governors can veto it within 10 days.****
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My friedn "F" sent me the following:
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Recall that Boeing decided to built a 787 production plant in South Carolina because of a history of union strikes in Seattle. No Seattle jobs would be lost, but new jobs would be created in South Carolina. Boeing built the plant for $750 million, then the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) sued Boeing saying it had engaged in unfair labor practices in building the plant, and ruled the plant could not open.
The NLRB Chairman is an Obama appointee, former union guy.
Now the legal paste is hitting the mixmaster with Freedom of Information requests to NLRB concerning its decision and communications leading up to the ruling. The NLRB is ignoring them, in violation of Federal Law.
Have a read through to see how it is unfolding. It is most amazing in this day and age. This is how Obama is creating jobs. F
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NLRB Sued For Documents Concerning Boeing Lawsuit
Judicial Watch Seeks Documents Pertaining To Decision To Sue Boeing, Shut Down Dreamliner Aircraft Production in SC
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit has been filed by Judicial Watch against the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The suit seeks records concerning the NLRB's decision to file a lawsuit against Seattle-based Boeing for opening a $750 million non-union assembly plant in North Charleston, South Carolina to manufacture its Dreamliner plane (JW v National Labor Relations Board (No. 01470)).
With its July 14, 2011, FOIA request and related lawsuit Judicial Watch seeks records of internal communications between officials, officers, and employees of the NLRB related to Boeing and the agency's decision to file a lawsuit. Judicial Watch also seeks records of communication between the NLRB and the Obama White House, the Internal Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and any other third party trade union, among others. Judicial Watch also seeks any NLRB records related to the impact of the new Boeing plant on employment in South Carolina. The timeframe for these requests is January 20, 2009, to July 14, 2011.
By letter of July 28, 2011, the NLRB acknowledged that the agency received Judicial Watch's complaint on July 14, 2011. However, the NLRB has failed to respond within the statutory allotted twenty business days. To date, the NLRB has failed to produce any documents or indicate when responsive documents will be released.
The NLRB filed a lawsuit in April 2011, against Boeing, claiming that the company's decision to open a Dreamliner production line in South Carolina was in retaliation against The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers for a series of union strikes that reportedly slowed production of the plane in 2008 in Washington State. According to Boeing's spokesman, the NLRB's "claim is legally frivolous and represents a radical departure from both NLRB and Supreme Court precedent. Boeing has every right under both federal law and its collective bargaining agreement to build additional U.S. Production capacity outside of the Puget Sound region."
In addition to refusing to respond to Judicial Watch's FOIA request, the NLRB has also reportedly failed to respond to a subpoena issued by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee seeking information related to the lawsuit. "This refusal by NLRB to abide by the law further heightens concerns that this is a rogue agency acting improperly," Committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa said. "The integrity of NLRB and its leadership is clearly in question."
Last year, President Obama bypassed the U.S. Senate and recess-appointed Craig Becker to head the NLRB's five-member board. The Becker appointment was made after the U.S. Senate refused to move forward on his confirmation. An ally of ACORN, Becker had previously worked for the SEIU and the AFL-CIO, major financial backers of Obama and the Democratic Party. Controversially, Becker has refused to recuse himself from certain NLRB decisions affecting his former union clients.
"The American people have a right to know the facts surrounding the extraordinary decision by the NLRB to sue Boeing in order to effectively shut down an entire factory in South Carolina. There are serious questions about the NLRB's apparent abuse of power. There is simply no good reason for the NLRB to keep these records secret – unless it has something to hide. Yet again we see that President Obama, through his appointees, is contemptuous of an open and accountable federal government," stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
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Everyone on this forum seems to enjoy union bashing, but one of the strongest unions I see are the police unions. Even in WI, public employee unions had to take
a cut, but the police an firemen's union (since it supported the governor's election) was exempt from these cuts. :?
In Fullerton, a community near LA, police actions would have gotten any private employee fired a long time ago.
Yet,
"Since the Thomas incident, six officers allegedly involved have been placed on involuntary paid administrative leave. City officials have not released their names.
Police Chief Michael Sellers has taken a paid medical leave."
You gotta love it; six officers take paid leave and suddenly the Police Chief takes a paid medical leave; leave with full pay to stay home and hide from the problem.... :-o
Gee, if you really mess up on your job this bad, cost your employer $100,000's of dollars, where else do they put you on PAID leave, i.e. you get full pay and benefits to stay home and watch cartoons or play golf all day, while they check into it. Just fire the guys or at minimum, give them leave WITHOUT pay while the matter is investigated. No work, no pay. That's what any private employer would do. And probably most unions too. Why are police or firemen exempt?
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/09/16/california.fullerton.police.brutality/index.html?hpt=ju_c2
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Yeah, who needs due process, JDN has ruled on the officers and found them guilty.
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Nope, I didn't say they were or weren't guilty of any criminal activity.
But since when does "due process" apply to employment? Most states, including
CA are "at will"; I can fire you at will..... If I even think you messed up.
And this is a lot worse than that...
Why are Police and Firemen exempt?
Further, why PAID leave? You mess on on your job so bad I don't want you to be here,
but I"m going to give you full pay to stay home and do nothing except watch TV? :?
Or you are the Police Chief, making the big bucks, but you can't take or face responsibility, so you decide to stay
home with full pay and watch cartoons with your officers who messed up? :-o
What do you think a private employer would have done? Probably, they would all be gone;
fired. But the Police Union protects these incompetents and we the taxpayers pay... and pay and pay...... :-(
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"You gotta love it; six officers take paid leave and suddenly the Police Chief takes a paid medical leave; leave with full pay to stay home and hide from the problem....
Gee, if you really mess up on your job this bad, cost your employer $100,000's of dollars, where else do they put you on PAID leave, i.e. you get full pay and benefits to stay home and watch cartoons or play golf all day, while they check into it. Just fire the guys or at minimum, give them leave WITHOUT pay while the matter is investigated. No work, no pay. That's what any private employer would do. And probably most unions too. Why are police or firemen exempt?"
Did you or did you not say they "messed up" on their jobs? Do you happen to know the actual health status of the Chief?
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"Did you or did you not say they "messed up" on their jobs? Do you happen to know the actual health status of the Chief?"
Ahhh DUH.... Otherwise the the ACTING Police Chief would not be doing an investigation, the FBI wouldn't be involved. I doubt if they
were put on PAID administrative leave for no reason. Surely if they did nothing wrong they wouldn't be sent home to watch cartoons on full pay?
As for the Chief, who suddenly became ill when this problem blew up, I heard he has an acute case of not having any balls, a bad case of
diarrhea caused by doing the wrong thing, and probably an acute allergy to lawyers, City Council Members, FBI, and Journalists. :evil:
Anything else and the Police Chief himself would be happy to make it known. :-)
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Ok stupid,
Law enforcement officers get paid to run towards things cowards like you run from. Sometimes, they have to use force in doing that job. They are empowered to use force, including deadly force in accordance with the constitutional and statutory limitations. If there is serious bodily injury, or a death, or even any claim of excessive force, there most assurredly will be an investigation on various levels. All it takes for the FBI to initiate an investigation is a claim of civil rights violations under the color of law. Those investigations can stretch on for months, even years potentially. Even the most perfect use of force caught on a dozen different cameras and with a million witnesses claiming it was legit requires investigation. You want to totally disincentive anyone from doing law enforcement? We know you won't be filling the gap.
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"Ok stupid'
Sticks and bones... :-o
When you run out of logic, you resort to name calling.
Save the BS....
"run towards things"?
Just like the Chief who ran towards home to watch cartoons and avoid responsibility? :?
This isn't just a profunctory "investigation". The City is going to pay big money because of their mistakes.
Are you saying these Officers should stay home and watch cartoons "for months, even years potentially" while this runs it's course :-o
At full pay? On the taxpayer's dollar. :?
I'm not saying they are guilty or not of any criminal wrongdoing. I am speculating/predicting the the City will end up paying out the big bucks because
of their incompetence. And I am also saying IF these policemen didn't have a very strong union (a subject in general you seem to bash) they would all be fired or at least
put on leave without pay pending the investigation. Instead of FULL PAY to stay home and watch cartoons.
What would a private employer do?
I put this under UNIONS for a reason.
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"Ok stupid" I'd say you were a pseudo intellectual, but you'd get confused and think I was saying you were smart and half Japanese as well.
Just like the Chief who ran towards home to watch cartoons and avoid responsibility? Again, you have no idea what the actual health condition the chief might or might not have.
This isn't just a profunctory "investigation". Ok, what is a "profunctory investigation"? Please define that for me.
The City is going to pay big money because of their mistakes. Again, you asserting without evidence that mistakes were made. Were you there? Do you have any firsthand knowledge that mistakes were made?
I am speculating/predicting the the City will end up paying out the big bucks because
of their incompetence. Agencies settle because it's less expensive than litigation, not because the case has merit. Their legal/risk management teams do a cost/benefit analysis which dictates if they litigate or settle.
And I am also saying IF these policemen didn't have a very strong union (a subject in general you seem to bash) they would all be fired or at least
put on leave without pay pending the investigation. Instead of FULL PAY to stay home and watch cartoons. Even in states like mine where very few agencies have unions with any legal standing to represent officers, there is due process related to claims of misconduct, even where it concerns sheriff's deputies who serve "at the pleasure" of the elected Sheriff. Your sneers about watching cartoons is duly noted.
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Sometimes in the medical field I feel like I am "damned if I do and damned if I don't".
It does seem like police officers are often in the same boat.
Remembering Rodney King the MSM vilified the police officers to no end. Watching the video it does appear they may have used excessive force to keep King from persistantly getting up.
Yet after listening to one of the defense arguments one does have to question why the hell was Rodney King NOT listening to the officers call to stay down and not move?
If an officer orders someone to give in you don't keep fighting the officer. Or I guess in this day and age it is ok? If a minority?
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Ed Nowicki, who is one of the leading experts in police use of force was called in to be part of the federal prosecution team after the LAPD officers were cleared on state charges (No double jeopardy protections for cops). When he had a chance to see ALL of the Rodney King video, not just the specially edited clips shown endlessly in the media, he changed his mind about the guilt of the accused officers. He now calls the Rodney King case "Media Brutality".
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Interesting,
"He now calls the Rodney King case "Media Brutality"."
Why isn't that little Vanderbilt descendent Anderson Cooper with his "keeping *them* (never him) honest doing an exposee of this?
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Interesting,
"He now calls the Rodney King case "Media Brutality"."
Why isn't that little Vanderbilt descendent Anderson Cooper with his "keeping *them* (never him) honest doing an exposee of this?
Heh. You're kidding, right?
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If I remember Officers Koon and Powell were found GUILTY in their Federal trial and sentenced to incarceration for two years. They were lucky to get off with only that.
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Yes, after endless media distortion of the case and fears of another riot, the jury chose to sacrifice them rather than do justice.
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According to the District Attorney's Office ONLY the sentence was a miscarriage of Justice; according to the DA, they should have been sentenced even longer than their 30 months for their criminal actions!!!
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http://www.ileeta.org/0605_Journal_sample.pdf
This morning as I readied for my daily grind, I had the television in my bedroom tuned to the NBC’s “Today Show.” (Not my choice, I was overridden.) There on the screen was the ineffable Matt Lauer grilling Sheriff Lee Baca from Los Angeles about his deputies shooting at a suspect’s vehicle several times. Mr. Lauer, no doubt a use of force expert in his own right due to the fact that, um …… well I don’t quite know why his is an expert but he seems to think he is. Whether he is or not is debatable but he does have the power to make your use of force decisions into racially motivated criminal acts simply by his voice inflections, mannerisms and ambush style interviewing and as you know from my previous columns what I call “Media Brutality!”
Anyone in an officer’s shoes might ask, "Has Mr. Lauer ever walked down a dark alley in search of someone he knew would harm him if confronted? Has he ever run a foot chase, or chased a car at high speeds? Have his children or wife ever been scorned, ridiculed or even threatened? Have his wife and children ever looked at him with those eyes?" You know the kind of eyes I am talking about, the kind that say please come home safe? Well then I think that a use of force expert he is not.
The halo effect of 9/11 is gone; it lasted six months, maybe a year. It is okay to beat up on the cops again; in fact it is in vogue again. In every newsroom across the country, in the boardrooms of the Hollywood studios (and on every T.V. channel with some obvious exceptions) the rule of thumb seem to be, depict the cops any way you can that will turn a buck, win the sweeps, garner an Emmy, or Oscar, or win the Pulitzer.
Recently a new phenomenon has crept into the American lexicon called the “CSI Effect.” I have not quite figured out just why evidence technicians are now lead detectives, chase suspects, interrogate suspects and have become individuals who possess in their own minds the combined knowledge of every science known to mortal man, but then again you probably are puzzled too. Just think of the kind of money they can make in the private sector as defense witnesses when they retire.
As funny as the CSI Effect might be to professional law enforcement people, it should also be viewed as deadly serious. Why? Simply because your future might someday hinge on what a jury believes. No matter how many CSI Miami’s, Las Vegas’s, New York’s, Chicago’s, Dallas’s or Podunk’s there are or will be, and no matter where you are or where you go in law enforcement, we will always have “Dragnet” and “Just the Facts Ma’am!” that is the creed we all swear by.
Swearing or affirming “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you _ _ _ ( Just trying to maintain the political correctness of my column, you fill in the blanks) is a chore in itself because the dominant media has never let the truth, sworn to or otherwise, get in the way of a good story. That is why it is critical that you understand what AfterForce is, how it affects the facts, how it affects you, your family, your department and even your communities.
Headlines that read like “LOS ANGELES (AP) - California officials promise a thorough investigation of yesterday's chase that ended in a barrage of police fire in Compton.” are what AfterForce is all about. Most law enforcement use of force instructors and training programs teach the how to, the when to, and the why to applications of the use of force. For years an axiom in the use of force was, “Ask yourself are my actions court defensible?” When it comes to AfterForce maybe a better question to ask is; “will my actions be media defensible?”
Many law enforcement officers and administrators may disagree with that statement, but there is not enough emphasis placed on the psychological effects of media brutality on officers, their families, their departments and their communities. The law enforcement officer must have his or her own CSI Effect, what I call the Critical Statement Index. Post shooting, post use of force applications statements from law enforcement executives, prosecutors, mayors and the officers themselves, weigh heavily upon how that use of force application will be viewed by the general public. What you say, how you photograph, and your mannerisms will all affect how you are heard.
Rick Rosenthal, noted media expert and law enforcement trainer, in his media training for law enforcement makes the statement, “You must feed the animals”, meaning you must give the media information. Although the problem is, do you give them a snack, a big lunch, or a seven course gourmet meal? This is where I think law enforcement loses sight of reality, especially in high media profile cases.
The focus is always on legalities, criminal and civil, and we always seem to lose sight of the health, safety, and well being of the officers involved, they become the bad guys and the focus in never on the suspect, and his decisions to violate the law. Ask yourselves when is the last time that you heard a press conference where a law enforcement spokesperson shifted the focus back to the causative factors of the application of the use of force?
When is an individual responsible for his or her own choices and decisions? Apparently never, except if you are a law enforcement officer! It is this writer’s humble opinion that this tactic is rarely if ever used, because we have always lived by another axiom, which is “Never argue with a man that buys his ink by the barrel!” Meaning of course a newspaper, although that meaning has now extended to all electronic media that reach the masses on a daily basis.
They saw it on TV, or read about it in the newspaper or read it on-line so it must be true. This is the CSI Effect and it is affecting the outcome of trials and the careers of all law enforcement officers, because the jury pool is polluted with prejudicial statements and the political views of celebrities, who can get their face and their views on almost any media outlet, for any cause they might come up with. Remember the Amadou Diallo shooting in New York City? Even the Pro-Cop daily newspaper the New York Post could not resist the banner headline “IN COLD BLOOD” as the photo above illustrates. Then after all was said and done and all four officers were exonerated the dominant media continued to fan the flames.
The much acclaimed PBS Network News Hour with Jim Lehrer ran a story about a year after the acquittal on what has happened in New York City since the acquittal of four police officers in the shooting death of immigrant Amadou Diallo. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june00/diallo_3-3.html). In their coverage they tout a New York Times /CBS News poll which has 30% of the people polled agreeing with the Diallo verdict, 50% disagreeing and 20% undecided. Your CSI Effect should be focused on those 20% undecideds. The article attempts to be balanced but in the end is an indictment of law enforcement in general, even with the efforts of Patrick Lynch, the NYPD PBA President who is interviewed for the piece.
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According to the District Attorney's Office ONLY the sentence was a miscarriage of Justice; according to the DA, they should have been sentenced even longer than their 30 months for their criminal actions!!!
The DA's office that lost the case?
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GM:
"OK Stupid"
Bad dog. Please knock it off.
Thank you.
GM has already made his case, so i need not restate it. OTOH it is not unknown for police to lie and cover up for their own. Truly it is a difficult area, one whose unique variables IMHO vitiate JDN's efforts at purporting cognitive dissonance within the general anti-union animus and pro-LEO animus of most of us.
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The DA's office that lost the case?
Ahhh no, the one where the Justice Department won. :-D
In August 1993, Judge Davies sentenced Koon and Powell to thirty months. The prosecution appealed, arguing that the sentences were too light and violated federal sentencing guidelines. In 1995, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the government's position and sent the case back to Judge Davies for the imposition of a tougher sentence. Koon and Powell appealed to the United States Supreme Court. On June 13, 1996, the High Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and upheld the sentence of Judge Davies on all but two minor points. The original thirty-month sentence stood.
Anotherwards, for their terrible crimes, Koon and Powell got off light according to the Prosecutors. And my tax dollars paid and paid and paid for Koon and Powell.
In the meantime, in Rodney King's civil suit against the City of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Police Department, Stacey Koon, Laurence Powell and others, given the evidence was overwhelming, the City of Los Angeles conceded liability, and went to trial solely on damages. The jury awarded Rodney King $3.8 million in actual damages to compensate King for loss of work, medical costs, and pain and suffering. The judge awarded King's lawyers $1.6 million in fees.
So because of Koon and Powell's incompetence, the City had to pay 5 million dollars. My tax dollars. The City probably paid millions for their criminal defense. My tax dollars. But interesting enough, in the Civil trial, "The court found that the criminal verdicts were sufficient to show that Koon and Powell were acting with “actual malice” and not entitled to reimbursement.
And probably, the City paid Koon's and Powell's full salary while they stayed home watching cartoons until they were criminally convicted. Years of full salary to a criminal....
What private employer is going to do that?
That's Unions for you. You seem to hate them, except when you need them. Police love their Union. Whether it's fake uniform payments, early retirement, absurd sick leave plans, overly generous
disability benefits, etc. the average private employer would never offer. But the Police Union takes care of the Police.
But somehow you hate Unions :?
A little hypocrisy in the air :-o
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JDN,
You stated:
According to the District Attorney's Office ONLY the sentence was a miscarriage of Justice; according to the DA, they should have been sentenced even longer than their 30 months for their criminal actions!!!
The US Dept. of Justice isn't called a "District Attorney's Office". As usual, you know nothing about which you speak.
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OTOH it is not unknown for
police humans to lie and cover up for their own. Fixed it for you.
Doctors don't cover for each other when they bury their mistakes? Lawyers? Name any other group and tell me that some might not cover for each other....
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That's Unions for you. You seem to hate them, except when you need them. Police love their Union. Whether it's fake uniform payments, early retirement, absurd sick leave plans, overly generous
disability benefits, etc. the average private employer would never offer. But the Police Union takes care of the Police.
But somehow you hate Unions
A little hypocrisy in the air.
Only your inability to read and process information is in the air. Law enforcement officers have due process rights as a member of a union or not.
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Amazing how someone who is so dependent on law enforcement for protection is so willing to trash those very same officers. And then you vote for politicians that undercut the rule of law and cultivate and reward criminal behavior, then you don't understand why there is such a crime problem. Kind of like how you support economy-killing policies and politicians and then you can't understand why California has the 2nd. highest unemployment rate.
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-Robert Heinlein:
Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as “bad luck.”
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"The US Dept. of Justice isn't called a "District Attorney's Office". As usual, you know nothing about which you speak."
"United States Attorneys (also known as federal prosecutors and, historically, as United States District Attorneys)[1][2][3] represent the United States federal government in United States district court and United States court of appeals."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assistant_United_States_Attorney
So the department's name is the best response you can do? :-o
Let's forget the name, it doesn't change the facts. If you prefer, let's just say Justice Department's Prosecutors said Officer's Koon and Powell should have served a lot longer than 30 months. They were criminals. And they got off easy. And the public paid and paid, and paid for their mistakes. Millions upon millions of public tax dollars paid because of their criminal behavior....
Due Process? Well the average employee sure doesn't get it, but OK, I"m all for giving them a quick informal pre suspension hearing then putting them on leave without pay.
"Absent extraordinary circumstances, a pre-suspension hearing must be provided when they intend to suspend without pay. Taking instruction from the Court discussing Loudermill, the hearing need not be ‘elaborate’. Furthermore, where post deprivation grievance procedures are available, the employee is only entitled to notice of the charges against him, an explanation of the employer’s evidence, and, the opportunity for the employee to present his or her side of the story. Loudermill made clear that a pre-termination hearing is required – which the Third Circuit has now applied to suspensions without pay."
In contrast, the POLICE UNION contract (this is a Union Thread) kept them fully paid for years while they stayed home watching cartoons (our tax dollars at work) until their criminal conviction was final.
I bet THEY love their UNION. As does nearly every other police officer love their UNION......
And CA does have a high unemployment rate, but do you know how hard it is to fire a Police Officer? Versus private employment?
Incompetent UNION police officers just stay home with full pay watching cartoons, or go out on Long Term Sick Leave with full pay.
In contrast, private employees just get laid off with no pay.......
Darwin at work, except for Police Unions?
So why don't you love Unions?
You are quick to criticize Unions, but silent on all the many benefits enjoyed by Police Unions.....
A bit of Hypocrisy? :-o
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"historically, as United States District Attorneys"
How far back in history? Anyone in law enforcement knows it's the US Attorney for the District of -------- and the working federal prosecutors are Assistant US Attorneys.
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Again, due process rights related to employment may or may NOT be related to union membership.
Got it?
A law enforcement officer has due process rights, no matter if they are a union member or not.
Got it?
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Again, due process rights related to employment may or may NOT be related to union membership.
Got it?
A law enforcement officer has due process rights, no matter if they are a union member or not.
Got it?
:?
Got it! What I don't get (I'm sorry to have to keep repeating myself for you) is why after a quick informal pre suspension hearing (due process) they get to stay
home watching cartoons and receive full pay? For days, weeks, months, even years as you point out. That's ALL because of their UNION.
In contrast, a private employee would be tossed on his butt with no pay. You seem to think that's ok, but .... Don't you see the hypocrisy?
:-D
YOU gotta love Police Unions!
So why not share the good deal with others who want to be in a Union too?
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"That's ALL because of their UNION."
No. It's not because of any UNION, it's from due process rights related to civil service.
Say it with me. Due process. Not union. Due process.
DuuuuuUUUUUUuuuuuuue Processsssssssssss.
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You'll notice the lack of the word "union".
Government Employees' Rights
By Tom Lutzenberger, eHow Contributor
The rights of government workers are primarily focused on their employment protection and hiring status. These rights start the day the employee is hired and expand further as the employee transitions from a probationary to a permanent employee. These rights cover examination and competition candidacy, evaluation, discipline and due process, and retirement. Most of these categories are incorporated within the concept of civil service.
Civil Service Defined
The concept of civil service, whether at the federal or local level, is generally the same: government operations need to function at medium and lower levels in an apolitical manner. While top leadership is accepted to be political appointments, the daily program levels and staff should be free of political conflicts. The way to ensure this is to use an employment system that requires more than just an at-will employment environment. Civil service thus incorporates a set of employment rules that require employees be protected from undue political pressure. The rules govern recruitment, selection, hiring, progressive discipline and ultimately the termination process.
Civil Service Involvement
Civil service rights for an employee begin at recruitment rather than hiring. The major right of civil service is permanency of employment for an employee. Once an employee passes the initial probationary period of performance (usually six months to a year in the job), they then earn permanent employment status. At such time, unlike at-will employment, the permanent employee cannot be terminated without sufficient and documented cause in most circumstances (legislative removal of program funding can be an exception, for example). In practice, discipline proceedings to termination usually take 6 months to a year to put into effect (except for extreme cases such as gross theft, felony arrest or violence in the workplace).
Discipline and Due Process
The second major employee right is guaranteed due process.Discipline procedures for government employees are extensive. For example, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) rules permit employees to have a full hearing to assert violations of their civil rights protected under federal or state rules (i.e., no discrimination based on race, religion, physical limitations, etc.). Private sector employees do not necessarily have this forum and have to rely on private legal representation.
Employees' due process rights are frequently codified sets of rules with regards to how discipline has to be communicated and what the appeal processes are. An individual government manager cannot act arbitrarily with regards to discipline under the civil service system. Instead, multiple levels of review are required and the employee has a right to argue his case, including discussing evidentiary material and calling forth witnesses.
Retirement
Many government levels have existing retirement programs that authorize a vested right of benefit in government employees after a certain number of years of employment. Government agencies are only recently beginning to look at self-directed retirement programs such as 401Ks. Most are still under old, traditionally defined benefit models, better known as "pension" programs. Once vested, an employee continues to increase the amount of pension paid in retirement with years of active service and level of salary paid while employed. Earned time in and value cannot be eliminated under most systems and become the property of the employee (even so much as to be included in assets distributed during an employee's personal divorce proceeding).
Conclusion
Government employees do enjoy specific rights in their employment not otherwise available in private jobs, and this is mainly due to protecting the daily functions of government from too much political influence. They are also in place to make sure employees are treated fairly in all employment matters and that documentation always exists for punitive action taken.
.
Read more: Government Employees' Rights | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_5462704_government-employees-rights.html
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"That's ALL because of their UNION."
No. It's not because of any UNION, it's from due process rights related to civil service.
Say it with me. Due process. Not union. Due process.
DuuuuuUUUUUUuuuuuuue Processsssssssssss.
It really hard to say because it's not true. :-D
As I said, AFTER they get their due process, their quick "informal pre suspension hearing", it's legal to send them home WITHOUT PAY.
It's the UNIONS that protect them and enable them to stay home with full pay watching cartoons for months on end in spite of damning evidence against them.
And it's their Unions who will pay for legal representation at the hearing.
Isn't the 3rd Circuit in your area? Did you read Schmidt v. Creedon?
Absent extraordinary circumstances, a pre-suspension hearing must be provided when they intend to suspend without pay. Taking instruction from the Court discussing Loudermill, the hearing need not be ‘elaborate’. Furthermore, the employee is only entitled to notice of the charges against him, an explanation of the employer’s evidence, and, the opportunity for the employee to present his or her side of the story.
So give them a pre suspension hearing, then if appropriate suspend them without pay....
Federal and N.Y. appellate courts both reject a police officer's claim that he was suspended without adequate Due Process. Accused of having sex with a civilian while on duty, he received notice of the charges with dates and locations, references to applicable regulations, was able to respond to the allegations and had his lawyer present during the I-A interview. 2004.
Finally, as a side note, private employees have no such protection. They mess up, they get fired without any hearing, no pay..... Nothing...
I bet if private employees asked for Police "due process" protection, most here on this site would be criticizing that as being way too liberal...
Moreover, Police Unions are one of the most powerful Unions around; benefit abuse is rampant. Yet somehow GM, while you and your family probably receive rich Police benefits, you still criticize Unions.
Yet you never criticize Police Unions?
Back to my question?
Hypocrisy? :?
I mean if, as you say, Unions are bad, aren't all Unions, including Police Unions, bad?
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Again, you'll note the lack of the word "union" below.
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/cjs07.htm
SIR ROBERT PEEL'S INNOVATION
The history of modern law enforcement began 166 years ago with the formation of the London Metropolitan Police District in 1829. By creating a new police force, the British Parliament hoped to address the soaring crime rate in and around the nation's capital, attributed at the time to rapid urban growth, unchecked immigration, poverty, alcoholism, radical political groups, poor infrastructure, unsupervised juveniles, and lenient judges. The principles adopted by Sir Robert Peel, the first chief of the London Metropolitan Police, for his new "bobbies" have served as the traditional model for all British and American police forces ever since. These principles include the use of crime rates to determine the effectiveness of the police; the importance of a centrally located, publicly accessible police headquarters; and the value of proper recruitment, selection, and training.
However, perhaps the most enduring and influential innovation introduced was the establishment of regular patrol areas, known as "beats." Before 1829, the police--whether military or civilian--only responded after a crime had been reported. Patrols occurred on a sporadic basis, and any crime deterrence or apprehension of criminals in the act of committing crimes happened almost by accident.
Peel assigned his bobbies to specific geographic zones and held them responsible for preventing and suppressing crime within the boundaries of their zones. He based this strategy on his belief that the constables would:
* Become known to the public, and citizens with information about criminal activity would be more likely to tell a familiar figure than a stranger * Become familiar with people and places and thus better able to recognize suspicious persons or criminal activity, and * Be highly visible on their posts, tending to deter criminals from committing crimes in the immediate vicinity.
To implement fully the beat concept, Peel instituted his second most enduring innovation: The paramilitary command structure. While Peel believed overall civilian control to be essential, he also believed that only military discipline would ensure that constables actually walked their beats and enforced the law on London's mean streets, something their nonmilitary predecessors, the watchmen, had failed to do.
EARLY AMERICAN POLICING
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, American policing developed along lines roughly similar to those of the London police. Most major U.S. cities had established municipal police departments by the Civil War. Like the London police force, these departments adopted a paramilitary structure; officers wore distinctive blue uniforms and walked assigned beats. However, unlike the bobbies, American officers carried guns and were under the command of politically appointed local precinct captains. Lax discipline led to abundant graft.
While the British quickly embraced the bobbies as one of their most beloved national symbols, Americans held their police in much lower esteem. "Of all the institutions of city government in late-nineteenth- century America, none was as unanimously denounced as the urban police," wrote sociologist Egon Bittner. "According to every available account, they were, in every aspect of their existence, an unmixed, unmitigated, and unpardonable scandal."1
REFORM AND PROFESSIONALISM
By the turn of the century, the progressive movement began to promote professionalism in law enforcement as one of the basic components of rehabilitating municipal politics. Concern about corruption and brutality in local police forces resulted in State takeovers of some city departments and led to the creation of new State police organizations removed from the corrupting influences of local ward politics.
Reformers sought to insulate the police from political interference while retaining local government control. The International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), founded in 1893, immediately called for the adoption of a civil service personnel system and the centralization of authority in strong executive positions, which could control the politically aligned precinct captains
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http://policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=1381&issue_id=12008
Procedural Due Process and the Determination of Just Cause
By Roger D. Overholt, Chief of Police, Morristown, Tennessee; Melvin L. Tucker, Chief of Police (Retired), Tallahassee, Florida; and Lieutenant Chris Wisecarver, Training Officer, Morristown, Tennessee, Police Department
he Department of Commerce’s Statistical Abstract of the United States (1991) reports that 18 million persons are employed in 82,000 governmental organizations at the local, state, and federal levels.1 Meaningful, effective, procedural due-process protections for these employees create a feeling of fairness in the workplace; promote confidence and positive morale; breed an environment of collegiality, efficiency, and esprit de corps; and prevent demoralization of valuable employees as well as abusive management conduct. The result is that the public employer and the general public are also better served when procedural due-process protections are provided.2
The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution both address the right of all citizens to due process. The Fifth Amendment has an explicit requirement that the federal government not deprive any individual of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly prohibits states from violating an individual’s rights of due process and equal protection.
Due-process protection requires that employees have a fair procedural process before they are terminated if the termination is related to a liberty or property interest. Thus, the threshold question that must be answered before procedural due-process rights are triggered is whether a liberty or property interest is at risk.
Property Interest
A property interest in a job is created when an employee has a reasonable expectation of continued employment. Property interests are not created by the Constitution but rather by existing rules or understandings that stem from an independent source such as state law.3 The following can create this expectation:
• A collective-bargaining agreement that requires the employer to have just cause or an articulable reason to discipline an employee
• A government ordinance or charter that requires just cause for discipline
• An employer operations manual that requires just cause for discipline
• A civil-service rule that requires just cause for discipline
• A state or federal statute that requires just cause for discipline
• Any oral promises that could create a reasonable expectation of continued employment4
• The employer’s past practice and custom of requiring just cause even though not required by law, ordinance, operation manual, or oral statement5
Just Cause
The court in Baldwin v. Sisters of Providence defined just cause as “honest cause or reason, regulated by good faith on the part of the party exercising the power.”6 A discharge for just cause is one that is not for any arbitrary, capricious, or illegal reason and that is based on facts both supported by substantial evidence and reasonably believed by the employer to be true.
Just cause, justifiable cause, proper cause, obvious cause, and cause are often-used terms that all mean the same thing: they exclude discharge for mere whim or caprice.7
Liberty Interest
A liberty interest is created when the disciplinary action taken has the effect of making it likely that the employee will be unable to continue in the profession in the future.8 For example, a police officer terminated for an offense that would result in the revocation of the officer’s state certification would find it impossible to obtain another police officer position in a different department in that state because certification was revoked.
At-Will Employees
The employment-at-will doctrine, simply stated, says that either party may terminate at any time any employment relationship that is not in writing and is for an indefinite period of time, for any reason or no reason at all.9 Generally, police chiefs, fire chiefs, appointed sheriffs, part-time employees, probationary employees, and reserve officers are not afforded due process, as they are considered at-will employees. However, federal statutes (see the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1988 as examples) and many states provide protections to employees from discriminatory practices. Of course, any termination of an at-will employee contrary to a state or federal statute is illegal. In addition, several states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin, and possibly others) have statutes to protect employees from retaliation for reporting management wrongdoing, that is, whistleblowing.
Historical Determination of Just Cause
Courts have generally agreed that the issue of whether or not the reasons asserted for an adverse employment action constitute just cause is a question of fact that should be left for the jury to decide.10 Although a matter for the jury, employment lawyers, scholars, and arbitrators have been attempting to identify the standards for the determination of just cause over the past 30 years. In the appendix to a 1966 arbitration decision, arbitrator Carroll R. Daugherty first articulated the factors that have in employment literature since then been called the seven tests of just cause.11 Daugherty asked the following seven questions:
• Did the employer provide the employee forewarning or foreknowledge of the possible or probable consequences of the employee’s conduct?
• Was the employer’s rule or managerial order reasonably related to ◦the orderly, efficient, and safe operation of the employer’s business and
◦the performance that the company might properly expect of the employee?
• Did the employer, before administering discipline to the employee, make an effort to discover whether the employee did in fact violate a rule or order of the employer’s management?
• Was the employer’s investigation conducted fairly and objectively?
• At the investigation, did the judge obtain substantial evidence or proof that the employee was guilty as charged?
• Did the employer apply its rules, orders, and penalties evenhandedly and without discrimination to all employees?
• Was the degree of discipline administered by the employer in a particular case reasonably related to
◦the seriousness of the employee’s proven offense and
◦the record of the employee in service with the employer?
Daugherty’s decision explained that an answer of no to any one or more of the seven questions normally signifies that just and proper cause did not exist.
The U.S. Supreme Court, in the 1987 case of United Paperworkers Union, AFL-CIO, et al. v. Misco, Inc., provided eight tests for the determination of just cause as follows:
• Was the employee’s position reasonable?
• Was notice given to the employee?
• What was the timing of the investigation?
• Was the fairness of the investigation considered?
• What was the evidence against the employee?
• Was there a possibility of discrimination?
• Was the nature of the offense considered?
• Was the employee’s past record considered?12
Contemporary Determination of Just Cause
In determining today whether an employee was properly discharged and whether the discharge was supported by the required just cause, the following criteria for just cause are likely to be considered:13
Have the charges against the officer been factually proven? Courts and arbitrators across the United States have utilized a variety of standards of proof in analyzing disciplinary decisions, varying from preponderance of the evidence in actions less than discharge to the higher standard of clear and convincing evidence in discharge cases, to proof beyond a reasonable doubt in cases that involve criminal allegations. However, the proof generally required, in cases involving the revocation of a professional license, is the standard of clear and convincing evidence.14 In cases involving the termination of a career service employee, the standard of preponderance of evidence is normally applied.15 In the termination of an employee not involving the loss of license or the protection of career service, the standard of proof required must be supported by competent, substantial evidence.16
Was the punishment imposed by the employer disproportionately severe under all circumstances? Although there is no universally accepted protocol for the determination of the appropriateness of punishment, the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), in the case of Douglas v. Veterans Administration,17 provided the following factors for consideration in determining the appropriateness of punishment:
• The nature and seriousness of the offense and its relation to the employee’s duties, position, and responsibilities, including whether the offense was intentional, technical, or inadvertent; was committed maliciously or for gain; or was frequently repeated
• The employee’s job level and type of employment, including supervisory role, contacts with the public, and prominence of the position
• The employee’s past disciplinary record
• The employee’s past work record, including length of service, performance on the job, ability to get along with fellow workers, and dependability
• The effect of the offense upon the employee’s ability to perform at a satisfactory level and its effect on the supervisor’s confidence in the employee’s ability to perform
• The consistency of the penalty with those imposed on other employees for the same or similar offenses
• The impact of the penalty on the agency’s reputation
• The notoriety of the offense or its impact on the agency’s reputation
• The clarity with which the employee was aware of any rules that were violated in committing the offense or had been warned about the conduct in question
• The potential for the employee’s rehabilitation
• The presence of mitigating circumstances surrounding the offense, such as unusual job tension, personality problems, mental impairment, harassment or bad faith, or malice or provocation on the part of others involved in the matter
• The adequacy and effectiveness of alternative sanctions to deter such conduct in the future
Did the employer conduct a thorough investigation into the incident? The investigation should, at the minimum, include examining all investigatory leads and interviewing all witnesses.18
Were other employees who engaged in conduct similar or identical to that of the officer treated as harshly by the employer? Commonly referred to as the disparate treatment defense, this question focuses on the employer’s preexisting pattern of discipline imposed in identical or similar cases.
Was the officer’s misconduct the product of action or inaction by the employer? Any claims that the employee was inadequately trained and therefore could not perform the assigned ask satisfactorily, or a supervisor ordered the employee to perform the act or contributed to the employee’s misconduct by not previously enforcing the rules, can affect a ruling of just cause.
Did the employer take into consideration the officer’s good or exemplary work history? Generally speaking, the longer the work history and the higher the work performance evaluations, the less the punishment.
Did the employer take into consideration mitigating circumstances? For example, was the employee suffering from a physical ailment at the time of the misconduct, or was the employee provoked into committing the misconduct?
Was the officer subjected to progressive or corrective discipline? The theory of progressive discipline is that punishment should occur in ever-increasing severity to modify behavior. Corrective discipline is based on the theory that an employee may not know how to perform the job tasks properly (perhaps due to inadequate training) and that punishment will not result in the ability to perform the tasks.
Was the employer motivated by antiunion bias?This defense is raised most frequently when the disciplined employee is an active member in a labor organization or is attempting to garner support for a labor organization or when there has been a poor working relationship between a labor organization and the employer.
Are the employer’s rules clear and understandable? A rule should not be open to more than one reasonable interpretation.In addition, all rules should be widely disseminated to ensure that all employees are aware of the behavior expected of them in the workplace. Rules that seem broad, such as those that forbid the use of excessive force or obscene language are enforceable if the employer can show that the rule is readily comprehensible to the average employee in the organization.19
Is the officer likely to engage in similar misconduct in the future? In cases of termination, arbitrators and judges will often consider whether the employee would be likely to repeat the offense or whether the conduct was an aberration from the employee’s normal conduct.20
Was the officer accorded procedural due process in the disciplinary investigation? Essentially, procedural due process requires that a meaningful opportunity to be heard must be afforded to public employees who have a property or liberty interest in their employment. What is the process that is due an employee? The courts generally apply a three-part balancing test.21 The factors balanced include the employee’s interest in retaining the job, the employer’s interest in the expeditious removal of an unsatisfactory employee and the avoidance of administrative burdens, and the risk of an erroneous decision.22
Conclusion
The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution provide for due-process protection for employees accused of employment rule violations. Due-process procedures benefit not only employees but also employers and the public.
The requirement for due process is triggered through an expectation of continued employment (property interest) or when employees are unlikely to be able to continue in their profession because of the disciplinary action (liberty interest).
The determination of whether individuals are entitled to due process through a property interest in their jobs is generally made through the concept of just cause. Just cause means essentially that employees cannot be discharged from their jobs for mere whim or caprice. What constitutes just cause has been developed over the past 30 years from numerous arbitration and court decisions. Today, a set of established questions must be answered in the affirmative before a discharge can be classified as appropriate.¦
Notes:
1U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1991, 111th ed. (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991), http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1991-01.pdf (accessed November 30, 2007).
2J. Michael McGuinness, Procedural Due Process Rights of Public Employees: Basic Rules and a Proposal for Return to Structured Due Process, Seminar Handbook in the 12th Annual Section 1983 Civil Rights Litigation, Practicing Law Institute (November 1996), 3–4.
3Board of Regents v. Roth, 408 U.S. 564, 576–78 (1972).
4Will Aitchison, The Rights of Law Enforcement Officers, 2nd ed. (Portland, Ore.: Labor Relations Information System, 1992), 96.
5Perry v. Sinderman, 408 U.S. 593 (1972).
6Baldwin v. Sisters of Providence, 769 P.2d 298 (Wash. 1989).
7Frank Elkouri and Edna Asper Elkouri, How Arbitration Works, 5th ed. (Washington, D.C.: BNA, 1997), 887.
8Aitchison, The Rights of Law Enforcement Officers, 99.Wilder v. Cody County Chamber of Commerce, 868 P.2d 211, 217 (Wyo. 1994).
10Boothby v. Texon, 608 N.E. 2d 1028 (Mass. 1993); Lee-Wright v. Hall, 840 S.W. 2d 572 (Tex. App. 1992); Renny v. Port Huron, 398 N.W. 2d 327 (Mich. 1986).
11Enterprise Wire Co. v. Enterprise Independent Union, 46 Lab. Arb. Rep. (BNA) 359 (Carroll R. Daugherty, Arb. 1966).
12United Paperworkers International Union, AFL-CIO, et al. v. Misco, Inc., 484 U.S. 29 (1987).
13Will Aitchison, “Just Cause for Discipline,” in The Rights of Law Enforcement Officers, 3rd ed. (Portland, Ore.: Labor Relations Information System, 1996).
14Ferris v. Turlington, 510 So. 2d 292; 12 Fla. Law W. 393 (1987).
15Florida Dept. of Health and Rehabilitative Services v. Career Service Commission, 289 So. 2d 412, 414–415 (Fla. 4th DCA 1974).
16State Dept. of General Services v. English, 534 So. 2d 726, 729 (Fla. 1st DCA 1988).
17Douglas v. Veterans Administration, 5 M.S.P.B. 313, 329–32 (1981).
18Oklahoma City, Oklahoma v. Lodge 123 Fraternal Order of Police, 100 Lab. Arb. Rep. (BNA) 1183 (Woolf, 1993).
19Alston v. New York City Transit Authority, 588 N.Y.S. 2d 418 (A.D. 1992).
20County of Erie, LAIG 2630 (1988).
21See Mathews v. Eldridge, 424 U.S. 319 (1976).
22See Garraghty v. Virginia Dept. of Corrections, 52 F.3d 1274, 1282 (4th Cir. 1995).
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Moreover, Police Unions are one of the most powerful Unions around; benefit abuse is rampant. Yet somehow GM, while you and your family probably receive rich Police benefits, you still criticize Unions.
Yet you never criticize Police Unions?
Back to my question?
Hypocrisy?
I mean if, as you say, Unions are bad, aren't all Unions, including Police Unions, bad?
I can say from personal experience that the only thing I could count on Teamsters Law Enforcement League membership was the regular deduction of dues from my bank account. I was slugging it out with a corrupt police administration at the time, and they did nothing for me.
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You know the only problem with this website is that we've got grins, smileys, huhs, rolleyes, and undecided,
but we don't have a "hat's off".
Good job GM!
:-)
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By JAMES TARANTO
In his Labor Day speech in Detroit, Barack Obama issued a ringing endorsement of government employee unions:
Having a voice on the job and a chance to organize and a chance to negotiate for a fair day's pay after a hard day's work, that is the right of every man and woman in America--not just the CEO in the corner office, but also the janitor who cleans that office after the CEO goes home. Everybody has got the same right.
And that's true for public employees as well. Look, the recession had a terrible effect on state and local budgets--we all understand that. Unions have recognized that; they've already made tough concessions.
From the president's hometown comes an example of what he is actually supporting. The Chicago Tribune reports that an investigation it conducted with WGN-TV found "23 retired union officials from Chicago stand to collect about $56 million from two ailing city pension funds."
That's an average of $2.4 million each, and some will rake in even more. Dennis Gannon, a former president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, stands to collect some $5 million. In line for $4 million apiece are Liberato "Al" Naimoli, president of the Cement Workers Union Local 76, and James McNally, vice president of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150.
"Since the 1950s," the Trib explains, "city workers who take leaves of absence to work full time for unions have been able to remain in city pension funds if they choose. The time they spend at their union jobs counts toward their city pensions."
Ill. Attorney General Office
Dennis Gannon, pensioner
.Union jobs, however, are far more lucrative than city jobs. Gannon's city salary was $56,000 a year; his union salary, $200,000. But he retired from his city job in 2004--at age 50, and 13 years after beginning a leave of absence. Between then and 2010, when he retired from the union, he collected both the $200,000 union salary and a $150,000 city pension.
How did the city end up paying him a pension nearly three times his salary? That's where things get interesting. Few labor leaders took city pensions, the Tribune reports, "until the law was changed in 1991 to base those workers' city pensions on their union salaries instead of their old city paychecks, dramatically boosting the amount they could receive"--a provision that "became law with no public debate among state legislators and, more importantly, no cost analysis."
And no accountability: "No one from either the state Legislature or city government will take credit for the law, which passed in 1991, and the process of drafting pension legislation in Springfield is so shrouded in secrecy that there's no way of knowing exactly whom to hold responsible."
And no possibility of reversal: "The state constitution says pension benefits cannot be diminished once they are earned."
"Gannon told the Tribune that he was only following the law in filing for a city pension," the paper reports. The scandal isn't that what they're doing is illegal but that it is legal.
Related Video
Bill McGurn on retired Chicago union leaders' lavish pensions.
..This particular provision is unique to Obama's home state, the Tribune reports: "Pension experts from around the country say they've never heard of such a perk for union leaders." But unions have any number of perfectly legal ways to rip off the taxpayers. As we noted in July, the Wisconsin teachers union runs its own insurance company, the WEA Trust. Until Gov. Scott Walker's reforms took effect earlier this year, the union negotiated "collective bargaining" agreements obliging local school districts to pay above-market premiums for its health benefits.
And as The Daily's Jillian Melchior reported last month, state pension funds frequently make risky investments, knowing that if they don't pan out, taxpayers will have to make up the losses. What's more, the boards that manage these funds are stacked with union representatives and political appointees: "Because public unions are an influential constituency, they're inclined toward union priorities."
That is the system President Obama defended on Labor Day. And his support for it is not merely rhetorical. Both the 2009 stimulus and the recently proposed Stimulus Jr. include vast payments to states and localities--in effect, a federal taxpayer bailout for governments that have been so profligate with their own taxpayers' dollars. Some of that money, of course, gets kicked back as campaign contributions and independent expenditures to support the campaigns of Obama and other Democrats. It's all legal, but that doesn't mean it isn't a scam.
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Not to mention abuse of overtime, false claims of disability, paid sick time for things like diarrhia, fatigue, anxiety, and more. I've seen it all.
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By PHILIP K. HOWARD
The indictment of seven Long Island Rail Road workers for disability fraud last week cast a spotlight on a troubled government agency. Until recently, over 90% of LIRR workers retired with a disability—even those who worked desk jobs—adding about $36,000 to their annual pensions. The cost to New York taxpayers over the past decade was $300 million.
As one investigator put it, fraud of this kind "became a culture of sorts among the LIRR workers, who took to gathering in doctor's waiting rooms bragging to each [other] about their disabilities while simultaneously talking about their golf game." How could almost every employee think fraud was the right thing to do?
The LIRR disability epidemic is hardly unique—82% of senior California state troopers are "disabled" in their last year before retirement. Pension abuses are so common—for example, "spiking" pensions with excess overtime in the last year of employment—that they're taken for granted.
Governors in Wisconsin and Ohio this year have led well-publicized showdowns with public unions. Union leaders argue they are "decimat[ing] the collective bargaining rights of public employees." What are these so-called "rights"? The dispute has focused on rich benefit packages that are drowning public budgets. Far more important is the lack of productivity.
Enlarge Image
CloseImages.com/Corbis
."I've never seen anyone terminated for incompetence," observed a long-time human relations official in New York City. In Cincinnati, police personnel records must be expunged every few years—making periodic misconduct essentially unaccountable. Over the past decade, Los Angeles succeeded in firing five teachers (out of 33,000), at a cost of $3.5 million.
Collective-bargaining rights have made government virtually unmanageable. Promotions, reassignments and layoffs are dictated by rigid rules, without any opportunity for managerial judgment. In 2010, shortly after receiving an award as best first-year teacher in Wisconsin, Megan Sampson had to be let go under "last in, first out" provisions of the union contract.
Even what task someone should do on a given day is subject to detailed rules. Last year, when a virus disabled two computers in a shared federal office in Washington, D.C., the IT technician fixed one but said he was unable to fix the other because it wasn't listed on his form.
Making things work better is an affront to union prerogatives. The refuse-collection union in Toledo sued when the city proposed consolidating garbage collection with the surrounding county. (Toledo ended up making a cash settlement.) In Wisconsin, when budget cuts eliminated funding to mow the grass along the roads, the union sued to stop the county executive from giving the job to inmates.
No decision is too small for union micromanagement. Under the New York City union contract, when new equipment is installed the city must reopen collective bargaining "for the sole purpose of negotiating with the union on the practical impact, if any, such equipment has on the affected employees." Trying to get ideas from public employees can be illegal. A deputy mayor of New York City was "warned not to talk with employees in order to get suggestions" because it might violate the "direct dealing law."
How inefficient is this system? Ten percent? Thirty percent? Pause on the math here. Over 20 million people work for federal, state and local government, or one in seven workers in America. Their salaries and benefits total roughly $1.5 trillion of taxpayer funds each year (about 10% of GDP). They spend another $2 trillion. If government could be run more efficiently by 30%, that would result in annual savings worth $1 trillion.
What's amazing is that anything gets done in government. This is a tribute to countless public employees who render public service, against all odds, by their personal pride and willpower, despite having to wrestle daily choices through a slimy bureaucracy.
One huge hurdle stands in the way of making government manageable: public unions. The head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees recently bragged that the union had contributed $90 million in the 2010 off-year election alone. Where did the unions get all that money? The power is imbedded in an artificial legal construct—a "collective-bargaining right" that deducts union dues from all public employees, whether or not they want to belong to the union.
Some states, such as Indiana, have succeeded in eliminating this requirement. I would go further: America should ban political contributions by public unions, by constitutional amendment if necessary. Government is supposed to serve the public, not public employees.
America must bulldoze the current system and start over. Only then can we balance budgets and restore competence, dignity and purpose to public service.
Mr. Howard, a lawyer and author, is chair of Common Good (www.commongood.org).
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What a sham, or scam, or choose a synonym. On Wednesday, the International Association of Machinists approved a new contract with Boeing in which the company agreed to make its 737 Max jet with union labor in Washington state. Yesterday, after getting the machinist all-clear, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dropped its lawsuit against Boeing's investment in South Carolina.
Has there ever been a more blatant case of a supposedly independent agency siding with a union over management in collective bargaining?
Boeing says the new contract wasn't tied directly to a settlement of the NLRB complaint, and that it always made sense to build the 737 Max in Renton, Washington because its work force has experience on the current 737 and offers natural efficiencies.
But it's hard to resist the conclusion that Boeing felt obliged to make the agreement to save its more than $1 billion investment in South Carolina, where it is building 787s. Boeing might have won a legal battle in the end, but first it would have to run through an administrative law judge, then the politicized and Obama-stacked NLRB, and only then would it get to an appellate court. Meanwhile, its investment was in jeopardy and its legal bill was rising.
As for the NLRB, its decision to drop the case so quickly after the machinists cut their deal exposes how politically motivated the Boeing suit was. The NLRB is supposed to be a fair-minded referee in labor disputes, making sure neither side breaks the law. But the board put its fist squarely on the union side to make Boeing pay a price for moving one of its 787 assembly lines to a right-to-work state, to make sure Boeing never did that again, and to demonstrate to any other unionized company that its investment is at risk if it makes the same decision.
By dropping the case, the Obama team at the NLRB can claim it delivered those lessons without ever having to contest them in court. Oh, and Democrats running for Senate in right-to-work states, like Tim Kaine in Virginia, are spared from having to endorse a union position that is unpopular because it costs their states jobs.
The damage here goes well beyond Boeing, which presumably understands the tradeoffs. The NLRB is exposed as one more federal agency that can't be trusted to make honest decisions. The ability of the 21 right-to-work states, which passed such laws under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, to attract businesses from pro-union states will also be eroded. The AFL-CIO may cheer that message, but in practice the result is likely to be that more companies simply send jobs overseas where there's no NLRB. Congratulations.
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What could go wrong here? :roll:
http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pgfBLyHQyilaBWtNL6rtHQIzUCDFLj5fMCe/nHRDwfkts/qmxUeKh40ZAxgtBnv66GnKKfPTz0nj/tNdr96IUj5876a2llyXYgQR1KAVdMwQ4agIQourNwnyFBDxgAx196O6g3qv+CIBU92AcTkVItlQ==&campaign_id=129&instance_id=13235&segment_id=30200&user_id=52f016547a40edbdd6de69b8a7728bbf
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Mention the word Ponzi scheme and your are vilified as a cook, a jerk, an idiot by the liberal MSM.
The endless shell games by those in power.
Private concerns would be subject to laws, law suits.
The government can do whatever it wants.
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POTH acknoledges reality , , , when a Dem is governor:
Cuomo's pension proposal
Across New York State, years of generous and sometimes overly generous benefits have made government pensions unaffordable. Thanks to contract sweeteners and giveaways by Albany politicians, New York City’s pension costs have risen more than fivefold, to $8 billion this year from $1.3 billion in 2002. Other communities are in similarly tough straits.
To Pay New York Pension Fund, Cities Borrow From It First (February 28, 2012) Gov. Andrew Cuomo has outlined a major pension reform for new city and state workers that could offer desperately needed relief. It would change pension offers for future state and local workers, including teachers and fire and police personnel, bringing their contributions and benefits closer to those of employees in other states.
The governor estimates that over the next 30 years, the pension fix, which has the support of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and many other mayors, could save $30 billion for New York City and $83 billion for other state and local workers. Despite predictably strong opposition from unions and some of Mr. Cuomo’s fellow Democrats, it is a generally sound approach.
Under the proposal, new hires would contribute 4 percent, 5 percent or 6 percent of their salaries for their pensions depending on their pay levels, compared with 3 percent for workers hired recently.
Many government employees in the state can currently retire at age 62 and receive a full pension. Mr. Cuomo would increase the retirement age for most employees — except for police and fire personnel — to 65. In New Jersey and Maryland, retirement age for most workers is 65, and in Rhode Island it will be 67 starting in July.
And instead of retiring on 60 percent of salary after 30 years of service, the payout would be about 50 percent — closer to New Jersey, Illinois and Vermont. The new law would also stop employees from loading up on overtime and other payments in their final working years to increase their retirement allowance. Those changes make sense.
Mr. Cuomo said on Monday that he could be flexible about parts of his proposal, like his desire to create a 401(k)-type plan for new employees. That’s fine, but he must hold the line on the fundamentals: bringing the retirement age and employee contributions into line with other states. There is no other way to tackle the crushing pension burden.
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Tweeted by Rush:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=z5CkDnU-fXo
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This is a fund raiser letter. I've no knowledge of the group and so caveat donor. I post the letter for the info it offers:
==================
Following on the heels of two National Right to Work Foundation-won victories against Obama Administration lawyers, a federal court has overturned yet another Obama Labor Board power grab.
Yesterday, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia struck down the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) ambush elections rule change that generated record opposition last summer from concerned citizens like you.
You see, the former union lawyers on the NLRB were so desperate to enact the rule change in December before radical Member Craig Becker's term expired, they rammed it through without securing the quorum necessary to vote on the rule.
Yesterday's decision prevents implementation of a rule that deprives employees of hearing both sides of the story about unionization.
Ambush elections are designed to make union organizing campaigns as one-sided as possible and to stifle the rights of employees who may oppose bringing a union into their workplace.
Just weeks earlier in a case brought by Foundation attorneys, a federal appeals court enjoined the NLRB from enforcing another new policy that would force most private sector employers nationwide to post biased notices that effectively serve as a roadmap to forced unionization.
And recently the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected arguments by union and Obama Administration lawyers to roll back one worker's groundbreaking victory against a corrupt card check scheme.
While these victories for workers against the ideologically-charged Obama Labor Board are crucial, I'm afraid things could continue to get worse.
As you may recall, President Obama double-downed on his bureaucratic assault on workers and job providers by installing "recess" appointees to the NLRB -- while Congress was still in session.
This cynical move represents an unprecedented defiance of Congress and the Constitution.
Obama's spin doctors claim that the Senate had long stalled on the President's nominations. But that's simply not true.
The White House never even submitted the proper paperwork to the Senate Labor Committee to let the Committee members conduct background checks and interview two of the nominees -- including a lawyer for the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE).
With such a flagrant abuse of power by the Obama Administration, I'm grateful for the continued generosity of Right to Work supporters like you who enable us to fight back in the courts and in the media.
These recent victories in court are encouraging and remind us why our legal program is so critical. Thanks for helping us stand up for worker freedom.
Sincerely,
Mark Mix
P.S. The Foundation relies completely on voluntary contributions from its supporters to provide free legal aid.
If you can, please chip in with a tax-deductible contribution of $10 or more today to support the Foundation's programs.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/28/nyregion/fragile-calculus-in-plans-to-fix-pension-systems.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120528
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http://www.righttoworkcommittee.org/facebook/mulhallb.htm
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Dear Marc F.,
Now that the United States Supreme Court has narrowly upheld Obamacare, it's worth looking back at some of the provisions hidden deep within the 2,500 pages of the bill to remember that the public outcry wasn't just about the individual mandate.
You may remember that Nancy Pelosi sneered, "We have to pass the bill so you can find out what's in it."
Well, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys studied the law and found obscure and overt provisions designed to hand union officials billions of new forced-dues dollars.
Here's just one example of the dangers uncovered by Foundation attorneys:
Under Title VIII -- the "Community Living Assistance Services and Supports" (CLASS) program -- ALL 50 states are ordered to create legal entities to serve as "employers" of home health care providers.
This may sound familiar to you.
Foundation attorneys know from direct experience that schemes like this are just a trick to force independent home health care providers into forced unionism.
You see, these schemes corrupt the political process by enabling Big Labor's political puppets to handpick unions as the sole representatives for thousands of care providers -- including independent contractors and parents or grandparents who take care of sick or disabled children.
In fact, Foundation attorneys currently have a case pending at the Supreme Court that could blow apart one such forced-dues bonanza in Illinois implemented by Governor Pat Quinn and his disgraced predecessor, Rod Blagojevich.
After the Obamacare decision, the federal government remains empowered to mandate states implement similar programs.
But more than 15 states have already cooked up such schemes -- with millions of dollars in forced union dues from home health care providers up for grabs.
That's why with free legal aid from Foundation staff attorneys, Pam Harris and seven other Illinois in-home care providers have asked the Court to invalidate the scheme.
This scheme marks a new low and is a gross violation of workers' rights under the Constitution.
While we await the Court's order in that case, much attention will understandably be paid to the Obamacare decision.
Hopefully that discussion will include a renewed discussion about what's in the bill. For more on how Big Labor stands to benefit from the government health care takeover, read my Wall Street Journal column from 2009.
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Over the decades there have been calls for physicians to unionize but I am not aware if it has happened anywhere.
Naturally it was only physicians who would have been for such a thing. We are not monolithic. We are really a hodgepoge of different groups with different situations.
Older vs younger, academic vs nonacademic, group vs individual, specialties vs primary, surgeons vs nonsurgeons, employed vs in private practice etc. So the concept of doctors unifying was really a mirage anyway.
But now reading the above post and seeing on drudge that one congresswoman hinted that doctors might unionize - all now that this might strengthen the union/democrat party cabal - well - what can I say?
Again Obama calls for us to move "forward". The use of that word is again a reminder of what this has all been about.
As long as the "New" Democrat party can continue to rob some taxpayer groups and pay other who pay little taxes I don't know if this can be stopped.
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Chicago's Teaching Moment
Can Mayor Rahm hold out against the union? Calling Mr. Obama..
Has Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel met Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker? If he hasn't, we'd be glad to mediate a call. Chicago teachers went on strike Monday for the first time in 25 years, and Mr. Emanuel can help the cause of education reform nationwide if he shows some Walker-like gumption.
On Sunday night, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis promised that her 25,000 members would walk the picket line until they have a "fair contract," and she called the battle an "education justice fight." Nice to know they're thinking of the kids at the start of the school year. Middle-class parents and two-earner households scrambling for child care may not sympathize. According to the union's own figures, the average Chicago public school teacher makes $71,000 a year in salary, and that's before pensions and benefits generally worth $15,000 or more a year. Senior teachers make much more. That's not a bad deal compared to the median household income of $47,000 for a Chicago worker in the private economy.
Ditto working conditions. Union leaders have bellyached mightily about Mr. Emanuel's decision last year to extend the Chicago school day to seven hours from five hours and 45 minutes (the shortest among the country's 10 biggest cities). The longer hours are one reason the union says teachers need a 29% pay raise over two years. The average Chicago teacher works 1,039 instructional hours per year—roughly half the time logged by the average 40-hour-a-week working Joe.
When Mr. Emanuel came to office last year, the Chicago Public Schools were already facing a $700 million deficit. Over the next three fiscal years amid mounting salaries and pensions, the Chicago system will be $3 billion in the red. Mr. Emanuel's negotiators still offered a 16% pay raise over four years, but the union walked away.
There's a case for no raise considering that Chicago's schools are among the worst in the country, with a graduation rate around 55%. A 2006 study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research found that for every 100 Chicago public high school freshmen, only six get four-year college degrees. Among African-American and Hispanic boys, the number is three of 100.
Another issue is accountability, with Mr. Emanuel seeking a new teacher evaluation program that includes student test scores as a significant factor. The union wants student scores to play a minor role. The union also wants laid-off teachers to be hired back first if school principals have new job openings. Chicago may close up to 100 failing schools in coming years, and if principals have to dip into that layoff pool to hire even lousy teachers, students will suffer.
Under state law, teachers can strike over wages but not over policies set by the Chicago Board of Education. So the strike is also illegal.
The Chicago brawl is notable because it shows the rift between teachers unions and some Democrats. Unions have long had Democrats in their hip pocket, but more office holders are figuring out that this threatens taxpayers and is immoral to boot.
Perhaps Mr. Emanuel should ask his former boss, President Obama, for a good public word. Recall how eager Mr. Obama was to speak against Mr. Walker's collective-bargaining reforms, at least until the Republican looked like he'd win his recall election.
The Chicago stakes are nearly as high. The chance for major school reform comes rarely, and if Mr. Emanuel gets rolled in his first big union showdown, he'll hurt 350,000 Chicago students and the reputation he's hoping to build as a reformer.
A version of this article appeared September 11, 2012, on page A12 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Chicago's Teaching Moment.
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second post
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/09/10/Flashback-thirty-nine-percent-Chicago-teachers-private-school
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haha that's because they can afford it! Teachers in Chicago get paid a LOT of money!
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The Foundation
"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." --Samuel Adams
Editorial Exegesis
Chicago's children aren't learning
"Labor Day may have passed, but in Chicago school is still out for the summer. That's because, for the first time in more than 25 years, the brothers and sisters of the Chicago Teachers Union are striking. Though they are already among the best-paid educators in the country, making an average of $76,000 per year in salary -- plus benefits -- the union is unsatisfied with an offer from the city's board of education that provides them a 16 percent raise over four years, worth a total of $400 million. (The CTU's original offer was for a 30 percent raise over two years.) Accounts from both sides indicate that the sticking points are the maintenance of the union's lavish benefits structure and a teacher-evaluation system that labor officials worry could -- horror -- result in the firing of large numbers of its most ineffective members. On the merits, the case isn't close. Chicago teachers currently pay just 3 percent of their own health-care costs, and nearly three-quarters of new education spending over the last five years has been gobbled up by their retirement costs. ... The proximate consequence of the union's intransigence is that a mass of youths won't be in classrooms, but on Chicago's increasingly murderous streets. The contrast with the city's 45,000 charter-school students, along with its parochial- and private-school enrollees -- all of whom remain in their classrooms -- is stark. The benefits of school choice are manifold, but not least among them is that your child's education needn't be held hostage by the whims of public employees who finance and staff the campaigns of their putative bargaining 'adversaries.' That sort of thing doesn't happen in competitive markets. ... Political reality alone ought to force the Democrats to push labor for a quick agreement that maintains most of the cost-saving concessions, at least cosmetically preserves the teacher-evaluation model, and, most important, gets Chicago kids back to school. Whether this happens will say much about who wears the pants in the liberal coalition." --National Review
Upright
"Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis walks, talks and barks like a rootsy Occupy Wall Street activist. ... When she's not urging other teachers to ditch the classroom or organizing traffic blockades to impede everyone else in Chicago from getting to and from their jobs, Lewis spends her time trashing public charter schools and business leaders trying to reform our Soviet-style monopoly in education. The results speak for themselves: While CTU members earn an average of $74,000 a year and are now spurning 16 percent pay hikes, 71 percent of the third-largest school district's 8th-grade students can't attain the most basic level of science proficiency, and nearly 80 percent are not grade-level proficient in reading. ... It bears repeating often: The goals of the teachers union radicals are not academic excellence, professional development and fairness. The goals are student indoctrination, social upheaval and perpetual grievance-mongering in pursuit of bigger government and spending without restraint: 2, 4, 6, 8! One agenda: Agitate!" --columnist Michelle Malkin
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By MALLORY FACTOR
Imagine thousands of government employees reporting to work each morning at their government offices and then doing no government work. They use government workspace, government telephones and government computers, all while working on projects unknown and unidentified to their government employers. They receive hefty taxpayer-funded salaries, promotions, bonuses and benefits, plus generous government pensions when they retire—all without doing any work on behalf of the taxpayer. Instead, they work as paid political operatives for powerful government unions.
Welcome to the common practice of "official time." Sometimes called "release time," it's a mechanism by which the government pays union officials to work on union matters during their government workdays. This mechanism—enshrined in law and contracts—is an enormous subsidy to public-employee unions, who defend it fiercely.
The Office of Personnel Management reports that federal employees spent over three million hours on official time in 2010, costing the taxpayers about $137 million in salary and benefits costs.
At the federal level, about 77% of official time (as reported to the OPM) is spent on "general labor-management," a broad catchall for union activity other than contract negotiations or dispute resolution, which are the activities most directly related to employee representation. But when more than three-quarters of all official time is used for unspecified activities, red flags should be raised.
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.Some union officials split their time between union work and government work. Others, amazingly enough, work exclusively on union business while getting paid for their government "jobs," and may not even show up at their government jobs for months at a time. The Department of Homeland Security alone had 62 employees on full-time official time as of July 2011, according to the department's disclosure. It's not clear how many other federal employees are on official time all the time, since the OPM doesn't require federal departments and agencies to report that figure. The less that is reported, the harder it is to discover abuse.
The only thorough report on official time at the federal level was released in 1998, when the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee required the OPM to do so. At that time, 946 federal employees were on full-time official time, with another 912 spending at least 75% of their days on official time. Today the overall number is a mystery, because no law requires the federal government to disclose it.
States and municipalities don't generally track official time for their employees, much less disclose it, so data on the subject are hard to come by. But based on the total number of unionized workers at all levels of government and the reported levels of official time in the federal government from 2010, we can estimate that American taxpayers are paying for some 23 million total hours of official time every year, at a cost of more than $1 billion. And that doesn't include free government office space, equipment and services used by union officials.
All this persists even though 47 states have "gift clauses" in their constitutions that prohibit government subsidies to private entities. In June, Arizona's Goldwater Institute successfully challenged official time for Phoenix police union officials. Arizona's Superior Court enjoined the practice, concluding that official time violated Arizona's gift clause because the union, not the city, "determines how the money is spent, by whom, and when."
Such challenges to official time are in their infancy—another is pending in Albuquerque, N.M.—but with time they should become more widespread. (In a sign of enduring union power, though, Phoenix signed a new contract with the police union in July that included official time; the Goldwater Institute has filed for a second injunction.)
Why should official time exist at all? Government-employee unions argue that because they represent many workers who don't become members, they should be subsidized by our government. But if workers don't value union representation enough to join the union, why should taxpayers pay for it?
Official time is a ruse for getting taxpayers to support union activities in the government workplace, including the lobbying of legislators for ever-more benefits. This effectively subsidizes unions so they can spend more dues income on political organizing. And it's all done without taxpayers' knowledge. It's a shadowy practice that must be stopped.
Mr. Factor, a professor of international politics and American government at The Citadel, is author of "Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind," recently published by Center Street.
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Police Union Intimidates California City Council
from Reason Magazine by Steven Greenhut
Many people were outraged this summer after a private investigator, with ties to a law firm that represents 120 police unions in California, made an apparently false report to the cops claiming that a councilman in the Orange County, California, city of Costa Mesa stumbled out of a bar drunk and was weaving all over the road as he drove home.
The clear goal was to embarrass a councilman who had been leading the charge in his city for pension reform, outsourcing, and other reforms. Evidence showed that the councilman, Jim Righeimer, had nothing to drink and did not stumble. Subsequently, other officials revealed similarly disturbing tactics from police in their cities.
Despite the revelations, police unions continue to behave as if nothing has changed, as they intimidate council members who refuse to go along with their demands for ever-higher pay and benefits, and protections from oversight and accountability.
Two councilmen in Fullerton, Bruce Whitaker and Travis Kiger, are experiencing disturbing attacks similar to the ones that Righeimer experienced. The Fullerton police union is angry at the role those men played in demanding reform in the wake of the horrific 2011 beating death by officers of a homeless man named Kelly Thomas.
The unions also dislike Whitaker’s and Kiger’s call for pension reform, their consideration of a plan—common in Orange County and elsewhere—to shift police services to the more cost-efficient and professional sheriff’s department.
The private eye mentioned above had ties to the Upland law firm of Lackie, Dammeier & McGill. The Orange County Register had reported on the political “playbook” which the lawyers had published on their web site until the ensuing bad publicity. The playbook detailed how police unions should bully elected officials into giving in to their demands. Although the Fullerton union uses a different firm, it is following a similar blueprint.
As the firm explained, the union “should be like a quiet giant in the position of, ‘do as I ask and don’t piss me off.’” It detailed the “various tools available to an association to put political pressure on the decision makers.” The firm advises police to “storm city council” and have union members and supporters chastise targeted council members “for their lack of concern for public safety,” even though the issue is about pay rather than safety.
The playbook even calls for the police to engage in dubious behavior—calling in sick (Blue Flu) even if officers are not sick and using the color of authority to scare residents (i.e., calling for unnecessary back-up units) into thinking there is a crime problem in their neighborhood. The scared residents will then, presumably, give the police more money.
In Fullerton, union members have repeatedly stormed the city council. The union has handed out free T-shirts and free hamburgers for those residents who went into the council chambers to support them.
Supporters have yelled at council members and leveled unsubstantiated charges designed to scare Fullerton residents into electing pro-union wastrels.
They have sent out one hit mailer after another. For instance, the union claims that the council’s failed vote to get a bid from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department for the provision of police services amounts to “putting our families at risk,” something that would be news to the sheriff and her deputies.
Reminiscent of those “reefer madness” efforts from the 1950s, the union has transformed the council members’ irrelevant support for a statewide marijuana initiative into something ominously portrayed in mailers that proclaim, “Our neighborhoods could be full of marijuana dispensaries.” Even if the initiative passes, Fullerton’s law bans such dispensaries. And there is no evidence dispensaries “jeopardize our families’ safety,” although I understand why police are addicted to the federal cash that funds the drug war.
Kiger and Whitaker are freedom-oriented conservatives who oppose Fullerton’s DUI checkpoints on constitutional grounds, which has led the union to claim yet another assault of Fullerton’s tranquility. I’ve been driving through Fullerton during those infuriating checkpoints, forced to wait in lines on public streets as cops randomly poke around everyone’s cars, so I am glad some council members question this intrusion.
These are standard campaign efforts, perhaps, but these tactics don’t stop there. Kiger talks about a police officer who makes a “repeated false assertion to the public that I smoke marijuana.” Kiger also relayed an incident in which an officer followed him in a patrol car around town in what he viewed as a clear act of intimidation.
The officers claim the council race is all about “public safety,” but the union is backing a liberal candidate with no obvious commitment to actual safety issues, but who seems willing to support the pay and pension packages the union demands, and who was mostly silent during the Thomas incident.
“If I wasn’t able to contribute money, these councilmen wouldn’t be able to defend themselves against these union attacks,” said Tony Bushala, a local businessman and blogger who was the main supporter for a recall effort over the summer against three union-allied council members. “The unions put out a hit mailer every day, which explains the importance of Proposition 32.” That is the statewide paycheck-protection initiative that would stop unions from using automatic payroll deductions to fund political campaigns.
Last week, I wrote about a new study revealing that between 2005-2010 pension costs to the state government have soared by 94 percent for “public safety” officials. People often ask me why the state is in such a fiscal mess, why council members don’t implement reasonable reforms, and why so many localities are considering bankruptcy.
The answer can be found in Costa Mesa, Fullerton, and elsewhere. Most council members don’t have the courage or resources to stand up to the union fusillade. Until the public rejects these despicable union efforts, neither public services nor public finances will improve.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/26/police-union-intimidates-california-city
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They should dissolve this dept. and use the Sheriff's Dept.
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(http://iowntheworld.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/hostessshrugged.jpg)
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2012/11/25/
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20121125,0,966735.column
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By JAMES TARANTO
As the Michigan House debated a right-to-work measure today, a member of that august body warned of--or perhaps threatened--violence. "We're going to pass something that will undo 100 years of labor relations and there will be blood, there will be repercussions," WWJ-AM quotes Rep. Doug Geiss, a Detroit-area Democrat, as saying. "We will re-live the battle of the overpass."
The station offers a refresher in labor history: "The battle of the overpass was a bloody fracas in 1937 between union organizers and Ford Motor Co. security guards. [United Auto Workers organizer] Walter Reuther was famously thrown down a flight of stairs and another union organizer was left with a broken back."
So far this time there are no reports of violence or threats by management (unless you count Geiss, who is after all supposed to represent taxpayers, as part of "management" vis-à-vis government employees). But union leaders have echoed the violent rhetoric. WWJ quotes Terry O'Sullivan of the Labor International Union of North America, as saying at a rally, in reference to elected officials who support the right to work: "We are going to take you on and take you out."
MLive.com, a Michigan news site, reports that union thugs "tore down a large tent maintained by American's [sic] For Prosperity Michigan, which reserved the space to support the right-to-work legislation":
"We had been contacted by that group that they had three or four people that were actually trapped underneath the tent," said Lt. Mike Shaw. "Two of them were in wheelchairs and there was also a propane tank in there. So we had to send troopers out, and naturally, the crowd was not too receptive."
Several protesters booed and heckled mounted troopers who responded to the incident, calling them scabs and refusing to allow them through the crowd.
Scott Hagerstrom, executive director of AFP-Michigan, said his group had already ceded its reserved spot on the Capitol steps when protesters began ripping out support wires holding up the tent.
"The [sic] couldn't engage in a civil debate, and it's very unfortunate," Hagestrom said as he stood atop the fallen remnants.
Lori Dougovito of Flint's WJRT-TV reports on the station's Facebook page that a thug "told me it wouldn't have fell [sic] if it was union made"--a quote that nicely encapsulates the protection-racket nature of contemporary organized labor.
Steven Crowder, a Fox News contributor, tweets that he "was punched in the face four times" during the attack and adds that he didn't fight back because "the mob would have literally killed me." Glenn Reynolds posts video of the incident and writes: "The video shows numerous union representatives engaging in violent, illegal conduct. Their faces are clearly identifiable. I hope they will be prosecuted, and sued." Indeed.
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Unionized nurses protest in Lansing.
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BuzzFeed.com reports that "President Barack Obama launched an assault Monday on Michigan's proposed 'right to work' legislation." Unlike his supporters in Michigan, however, the president did not launch a literal assault. Speaking at a Daimler plant in Redford, just north of Geiss's hometown of Taylor, Obama said: "These so-called 'right to work' laws, they don't have to do with economics; they have everything to do with politics." There is some truth to that: Coercively collected union dues are an important source of funding for Democratic candidates and causes.
Obama went on to laud Big Labor: "You only have to look to Michigan--where workers were instrumental in reviving the auto industry--to see how unions have helped build not just a stronger middle class but a stronger America." By all means, let's look. Here's a report from TheTruthAboutCars.com:
Two years ago, a group of Chrysler workers were caught . . . drinking and doobing [i.e., smoking marijuana] on their lunch break. Not just that, they were caught on camera by a local TV station. The video went viral, and Chrysler was forthwith associated with quality enhanced by booze and marijuana. 13 workers were fired. Yesterday, they got their jobs back, courtesy of Chrysler's contract with the UAW.
The workers followed a grievance procedure process outlined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement between Chrysler and the United Auto Workers. The matter went to arbitration. Two years later, an arbitrator decided in the workers' favor, citing "insufficient conclusive evidence to uphold the dismissals." Apparently, a video wasn't good enough.
Chrysler was owned by Daimler until 2007.
The unions arguably brought right-to-work on themselves. Michigan's Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican who was elected in the wave of 2010, long resisted the measure, reports Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Press:
Too divisive, he'd say. Why go to war with unions when there was a tax code to fix and a budget to balance to begin his reinvention of Michigan?
And what did Snyder's stance get him? Headaches, mostly. . . .
Public employee unions opposed Snyder's moves to put more teeth into emergency manager laws that would enable swifter action to rescue cities and school districts that bungled themselves into insolvency.
In Detroit, Mayor Dave Bing and a spineless City Council were stonewalled by employee unions at every turn, slow-walking needed reforms and cost-cutting while the city burned through cash at a frightening rate.
As a result, Snyder's patient attempt to help fix Detroit via consent agreement instead of imposing an emergency manager has failed.
To top it off, Snyder found himself having to fight off Proposal 2, the ill-advised November ballot attempt to stuff a bag of goodies for organized labor into the Michigan Constitution.
This is the third major state-level victory against Big Labor in the past two years, after Wisconsin's triumph over greedy government unions and Indiana's lower-profile right-to-work effort. "People always say this is a really tough battle, you can't win," Mark Mix of National Right to Work tells the Washington Examiner's Byron York. "Then one morning we woke up and guess what? We found out it wasn't nearly as strong as we thought." The violent rhetoric looks like a sign of weakness, not strength.
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After Bankrupting Hostess, Union Workers Rake In The Federal Dough
Posted 02/22/2013 06:34 PM ET
Labor: Who says intransigence doesn't pay? After driving Hostess out of business by
refusing to negotiate, union bakers have been rewarded by the White House with Trade
Adjustment Assistance. It's all the foreigners' fault.
Politics: Who says intransigence doesn't pay? After driving Hostess out of business
by refusing to negotiate, the White House has decided to reward the union bakers
with Trade Adjustment Assistence, blaming foreigners. What a sweet deal.
a
Last November, Hostess Brands went into liquidation, throwing 18,500 employees out
of their jobs. The baking giant had been through two restructurings, but the company
remained unprofitable.
All the same, most workers at the bread and pastry maker, famous for its Twinkies
and Ho Hos snack cakes, were willing to tighten their belts until good times
returned.
They included hard-line unions, such as the Teamsters, not known for making
concessions.
But there was one exception: the AFL-CIO-affiliated Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco
Workers & Grain Millers International (BCTGM).
It refused to deal, taking the entire company, including fellow workers, down with it.
Turns out the union knew exactly what it was doing.
This week, the Labor Department decided to shower Hostess workers with Trade
Adjustment Assistance, a multibillion-dollar pork barrel program that was beefed up
as a bone to Democrats, who were blocking passage of three free-trade treaties in
Congress in 2012.
TAA is a lavish program doled out by the Labor Department for laid-off workers
who've lost their jobs due to "global trade."
It provides worker retraining due to the supposed evils of free trade — plus moving
expenses, baby-sitting expenses and as much as two years of unemployment pay. If a
worker ends up making less than his union salary afterward, Uncle Sam spots the
worker for 50% of the supposed lost wages in a "free" subsidy.
What's more, "virtually anybody can qualify," said TAA certifying officer Elliott
Kushner in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
Kushner was the one who signed off on shoveling the pork to Hostess.
Two problems come with this scenario.
One, there is no evidence foreign baked goods — cited in his report — are flooding
into the U.S., putting bakery workers out of business.
Imports of baked goods have been basically flat since 2010, according to the Bureau
of Labor Statistics.
The Labor Department, meanwhile, notes that baking as a profession should see 2%
growth until 2020 — not big growth, but not negative, either.
As for the industry itself, the American Bakers Association reports that its key
concerns aren't imported goods, but soaring energy costs, high grain costs due to a
drought (and, no doubt, the Obama administration's inflexible ethanol mandate that
has made food grain scarcer) and the threat of environmental regulations that force
bakeries, regardless of size, to buy $500,000 catalytic oxidizers.
In Hostess' case, labor costs were almost certainly a factor. The Labor Department
says the average wage for bakers nationally is $11 an hour.
The unionized Hostess bakers were pulling in as much as twice that amount, which,
together with pensions, was what made the company uncompetitive.
Imports weren't the problem.
But it's so much easier to blame foreigners, even if no significant foreign goods
can be found.
This shows how something like the TAA can turn into a perverse incentive,
encouraging all workers to make no concessions in tough times, even if it means
saving their company.
The BCTGM union's intransigence was directly responsible for the liquidation of
Hostess Brands.
Yet the same union is being rewarded with premium unemployment packages that
encourage its members to go on the dole — and to blame foreigners for it.
Undoubtedly, more examples of this perverse incentive will take down more companies,
an unintended consequence of a boondoggle that sounds good on paper.
It's not good. It's a reward for those who refuse to negotiate, and a sop to the
manipulative unions that are most adept at gaming the system.
This doesn't create value. It's corruption.
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http://capoliticalnews.com/2013/11/18/bankrupt-detroit-could-cut-current-retirement-payments-by-84-lesson-for-california-unions/
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http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/02/19/seiu-hire-our-workers-no-need-to-pay-minimum-wage-in-milwaukee/
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http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/03/18/michigan-seiu-fined-for-misleading-state-they-tried-to-force-caregivers-into-being-union-members/
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http://capoliticalnews.com/2014/05/01/seiu-membership-revenues-plummet-after-state-ends-underhanded-scheme/
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http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/seiu-caught-using-personnel-information-from-san-bernardino-harassing-county-employees/
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A Union Ruse to Organize Mom-and-Pop Stores
The SEIU's campaign to raise the minimum wage redefines local sandwich shops as big businesses.
By Steve Caldeira
June 24, 2014 6:53 p.m. ET
City councils across America are considering raising the minimum wage. But the fine print in many of their proposals, including one recently signed into law in Seattle, has a provision that increases the wage floor faster for certain small businesses simply because they're affiliated with national chains.
The provision is a cynical ploy by its author, the Service Employees International Union, to organize workers more easily. In the guise of trying to help the working poor, the SEIU is trying to help itself.
Most people may not realize it, but the neighborhood Subway sandwich shop or Sir Speedy print center is owned and operated by a local family that pays an initial franchise fee and ongoing royalty payments to use the trademark. These franchisees aren't big companies with hundreds or thousands of employees. They're mom-and-pop shops.
This is a problem for a union such as the SEIU. Trying to organize thousands of individual, small businesses that have mere handfuls of employees is difficult. A union would prefer to deal with large entities that have lots of workers. It would only need to unionize a few of them to fill its coffers.
The SEIU has launched a multicity campaign to increase the minimum wage and redefine franchisees as big businesses, not small ones. If the courts and federal agencies go along with the change, unions can start organizing entire national chains. Seattle's city council and mayor recently adopted this radical notion. Other cities, such as Chicago and New York, are on the verge of doing the same.
Seattle's ordinance requires large businesses, defined as those with more than 500 employees, to raise the minimum wage they pay their employees to $15 an hour over three years starting next April. Smaller businesses get seven years to phase in the wage increase.
But at the request of the SEIU, the city council and mayor classified franchisees not as the small, locally owned businesses they are, but as giant corporations. The result: The law treats a single hotel or restaurant as if it employs more than 500 people, even if it employs only five people.
Put another way, a non-franchise company with 450 workers is considered a small employer and gets extra time to implement the wage increase. But a franchisee with 45 employees is a large employer, and gets less time to raise its wage floor, if its franchise network employs more than 500 workers nationwide.
That's unfair and unconstitutional. The ordinance violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by arbitrarily discriminating against small businesses simply because they are franchises. It also runs afoul of the Constitution's Commerce Clause because it imposes regulations based partly on business occurring in other states. A Seattle-based business that happens to be associated with a national franchise is forced to pay a higher minimum wage than a non-franchise business of similar size.
Seattle's economy is sure to suffer as a result. The law is a blow, possibly fatal, for the city's 600 franchisees who own 1,700 franchise locations and employ 19,000 workers. The steep and rapid increase in labor costs overall from the new minimum wage will likely slow the economy of the Pacific Northwest as well.
The International Franchise Association and a handful of Seattle franchises have filed a federal lawsuit to block the Seattle law. A growing number of business groups are banding together to stop similar legislation in other cities, as well as a potential ruling by National Labor Relations Board's regional office in New York (designating franchisors as "joint employers" with their franchisees) that would have the same effect.
The SEIU is attempting to enrich itself by destroying the long-accepted and proven business model for franchises. That's unfair, discriminatory and hurts hardworking small business owners who happen to be franchisees.
Mr. Caldeira is president and CEO of the International Franchise Association
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SEIU is going to be the driving force for the automation of food service nationwide.
I would like to welcome our robot burger flippers.
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http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/san-francisco-transit-workers-average-123k-per-year-reject-11-raise/
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Akin to Scott Walker and to a much smaller degree Christi is the Illinois governor:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will022615.php3
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Public sector unions at work : (for the children)
http://wjla.com/news/local/teachers-parents-want-education-secretary-betsy-devos-to-hear-their-message
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https://townhall.com/notebook/bethbaumann/2017/03/08/seiu-and-government-unions-are-now-having-their-tactics-used-against-them-n2296096
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http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/08/expecting-defeat-in-supreme-court-public-sector-unions-try-to-slow-exodus-of-members.php
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No surprise this coming from a NJ Senator in a state that gets strangled by unions making the cost of everything go up:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/supreme-court-honor-dr-king-130118253.html
If unions were so great for their workers the all the workers would volunteer to pay dues and not have to FORCED to do it.
Freedom is again suppressed for union democrat party mafia like power.
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Southwest Flight Attendant Fired Over Pro-Life Views to Have Her Day in Federal Court, Judge Rules
By Matthew Vadum May 15, 2022 Updated: May 16, 2022biggersmaller Print
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A federal judge has ordered that fired Southwest Airlines flight attendant Charlene Carter’s religious discrimination lawsuit against the company and its union would proceed to trial, after the judge denied a request to dismiss the lawsuit.
The case, known as Carter v. Transport Workers Union of America Local 556, civil action 3:17-cv-2278, is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. On May 5, Judge Brantley Starr, a Trump appointee, denied (pdf) a motion for summary judgment brought by the union and the airline.
Starr ruled that the suit should go to trial because “genuine disputes of material fact preclude summary judgment” on all claims.
National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix, whose organization is representing Carter in court, hailed the court ruling.
“This decision is an important step towards long overdue justice for Charlene,” Mix said in a statement. “The ruling rejects several attempts by Southwest and union officials to deny Ms. Carter’s right to bring this case in federal court and enforce her RLA-protected speech and association rights.
“Further, the decision acknowledges that, at its core, this case is about an individual worker’s right to object to how forced union dues and fees are spent by union officials to take positions that are completely contrary to the beliefs of many workers forced under the union’s so-called ‘representation,’”
Carter’s story goes back to 1996 when, as a Southwest employee, she joined the Transportation Workers Union of America (TWU) Local 556. A pro-life Christian, she quit the labor union in 2013 upon learning her union dues were being spent to promote social causes that violate her conscience and religious beliefs.
Despite resigning from the union, Carter was still required to pay fees in lieu of union dues as a condition of her employment. State-level right-to-work laws don’t exempt her from forced fees because airline and railway employees fall under the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA), which permits union officials to have a worker fired for refusing to pay union dues or fees. Despite this, the RLA protects the rights of employees to remain nonmembers of the union, to criticize the union and its leadership, and to advocate for changing the union’s current leadership.
When Carter discovered in 2017 that TWU local President Audrey Stone and other union officials used union dues to attend a pro-abortion event in the nation’s capital and that the company had accommodated local members wishing to attend by rearranging their work schedules, she took to social media to challenge Stone’s leadership. The airline demanded a meeting with Carter, informing her that Stone felt harassed by Carter’s activism.
A week later, the airline fired Carter. Not long after, Carter sued.
“Forced unionism, in all of its manifestations, including this one, is wrong and a violation of individual freedom and liberty,” Mix told The Epoch Times in an interview.
“In this case, we have an employee who is forced under the representation of a union that she does not support, and yet they claim to speak for her in all aspects of her working-conditions life, and when she found out that they were basically promoting causes and ideals that she opposed, she spoke up against it and then she lost her job,” he said.
“This is the coercion that workers across America, whether it be in the government sector, in the private sector, or in the rail, light railway, or railroad or airline industries, face when union officials get monopoly control over working conditions.
“And what we have here is Southwest Airlines, which is really a bad actor in this particular case, and the Transport Workers Union basically teaming up to thwart the political and ideological views of one of their employees.
“Notwithstanding Southwest’s branding that they love their employees, they don’t love Charlene Carter, because she has different political views than the union officials that claim to represent her.”
Southwest Airlines declined to comment for this article.
“We don’t have anything additional to offer your reporting today,” the company told The Epoch Times by email.
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https://dailycaller.com/2022/11/02/opinion-one-illinois-ballot-amendment-could-put-america-on-dangerous-path-smith/?utm_medium=email&pnespid=5qM6CS1dNacGw.2QpzqvH4rTvEi0CsUuKvXlm7V1.htmizgqeacfBGQ1YUiSOCQ8HVbWRcQf
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/are_you_happy_to_bail_out_the_big_unions.html
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Glenn Youngkin’s Quest to Keep Virginia From Becoming Illinois
Before he can think about running for president, the Republican governor has to rein in public unions.
By John Tillman
Sept. 1, 2023 5:30 pm ET
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin in Richmond, Va., Aug. 23. PHOTO: DANIEL SANGJIB MIN/RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Conventional wisdom says that Virginia’s legislative elections in November could make or break Glenn Youngkin’s presidential ambitions. Yet the stakes are much higher for Virginia residents. This election, in which all 140 seats in the bicameral General Assembly will be contested, may decide whether Virginia remains a haven for families and taxpayers or goes the route of failing states like Illinois.
Virginia is on the verge of the death spiral that comes when government unions conquer a state. In 2020 then-Gov. Ralph Northam signed a law allowing localities to authorize collective bargaining for public employees, fulfilling a long-running demand from one of the Democratic Party’s biggest electoral backers. Organizing began in 2021, and two years later government unions are beginning to flex their muscles with the goal of electing friendly politicians who will protect union power and support higher taxes to pay for their demands.
The Illinois analogy may seem overblown, yet that assumption is precisely what government unions are counting on. Virginia’s public unions and their allies touted the 2020 law as a way to support teachers, firefighters and police officers. They said nothing about the associated costs to taxpayers, much less the expansive union vision of controlling state coffers. Lo and behold, Virginians are starting to fork over more money—not only to public employees, but also to negotiators, lawyers, and the endlessly bureaucratic union machine.
Take Loudoun County, where the school board has approved collective bargaining, allocating an extra $3.3 million to hire 13 new administrators specifically for union-related work in 2024. That’s before the additional cost of a coming teachers union contract. In nearby Alexandria, setting up union negotiations is expected to cost taxpayers up to $1 million, while the General Assembly’s Commission on Local Government predicts the city’s eventual union contracts will cost $25 million annually.
Fairfax County is forecasting at least $1.6 million in administrative costs, with forthcoming union contracts likely costing tens of millions more per year. Prince George County, south of Richmond, foresees the annual cost of contracts at $10 million, with one local official saying the higher costs will run “forever.” In Richmond itself, public-school employees and principals have already unionized, with teachers ratifying a pricey contract in December. The costs will grow as unions make more demands, and inevitably unions will demand higher state taxes as well as local levies to fund the largesse.
Money isn’t the only thing taxpayers are losing. They’re also losing control over their local governments and schools. When agencies and educators unionize, the average person can’t simply petition elected officials to intervene if there’s a problem, because a collective-bargaining agreement binds officials’ hands. If a teacher is failing his students, the union protects him. If a police officer is targeting or neglecting a specific part of town, the union covers for him. This is the proven path to government that’s less responsive and more costly.
Naturally, Virginia’s public-employee unions have no intention of letting go of their growing power. They have opened the floodgates of political spending. The Virginia Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, increased its political contributions 11-fold between 2020 and 2022. Every cent in 2022 went to Democrats. Unions hope to elect Democrats who will reward them with even better contracts. As unions gain more members, they’ll get more dues money to spend electing friendly politicians. It’s a cycle that benefits everyone but Virginians.
Gov. Youngkin knows the immense danger facing his state. He’s made repealing the 2020 collective-bargaining law a priority, yet with slim Republican control in the House of Delegates and a Democratic majority in the Senate, he couldn’t make headway over the past two years. That would change if Republicans took full control of the General Assembly. Both the GOP and unions have launched massive get-out-the-vote efforts, with a particular focus on early and absentee voting. Victory will likely come down to which side turns out the most voters before Election Day.
If Republicans fall short, it will get harder to repeal public-sector collective bargaining, since unions will become more powerful with every passing year. It may be now or never to stop Virginia from becoming a wholly owned union subsidiary like Illinois. If Mr. Youngkin succeeds in winning back the General Assembly this November, it won’t merely add to the buzz around him as a possible presidential candidate. It may very well save Virginia.
Mr. Tillman is CEO of the American Culture Project.