Breaking the Law: Pay Higher for Government Contractors Than Other Workers

-By Warner Todd Huston

Employees, whether unionized or not, who work for companies that have government contracts make far more per hour than employees who do similar jobs in the same area, a new study finds. This fact shows that government is essentially breaking its compensation own law.

The Service Contract Act of 1965 maintains that employees working for companies with government contracts must make the prevailing wage for their job in the area in which they work.

That means that if a carpet-layer in Peoria, Illinois makes $10.27 per hour, then any company that lays carpet for the government must pay their carpet-layers $10.27 per hour. Seems fair enough, right?

But the study shows that this isn’t happening. These government contractors aren’t making the prevailing wage. In fact, they are making far more than the prevailing wage! And all at the expense to the taxpayers, naturally.
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Breaking the Law: Pay Higher for Government Contractors Than Other Workers”


Associated Builders and Contractors Criticizes New DOL Regulations for Federal Contractors

Washington, D.C. – Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) today criticized two final rules from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) that drastically alter federal contractors’ existing affirmative action and nondiscrimination obligations for veterans and individuals with disabilities.

“Despite OFCCP’s inability to demonstrate federal construction contractors’ failure to meet requirements under existing federal law, the new rules contain numerous burdensome data collection and reporting provisions and set infeasible compliance requirements,” said ABC Vice President of Government Affairs Geoff Burr. “Although industry studies show that the individuals covered by these rules are already appropriately represented in the federal contracting sector, now contractors will be saddled with incredibly expensive record keeping obligations that will do nothing to increase employment of these individuals.”

Under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act and Section 4212 of the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act, federal contractors and subcontractors are already required to maintain affirmative action and nondiscrimination programs. However, OFCCP’s new rules revise existing procedures by drastically increasing the paperwork burdens on federal contractors in all industries.
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Associated Builders and Contractors Criticizes New DOL Regulations for Federal Contractors”


Obama’s Labor Sec: Jobs Are ‘Saved’ By Unemployment Payments

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama’s Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, recently gave a quixotic assessment of how many jobs were “saved” by Obama’s work in the White House. In fact, she felt it was the constant extension of unemployment benefits that somehow “saved” millions of jobs.

On a January 4 segment on CNBC, Solis maintained that the benefits “generate” spending in “the community.”

“…what I think about is, those 2 million people that would have lost their unemployment insurance. Because think about it, all that money that goes out in terms of what’s being spent by that unemployment check helps to generate two additional dollars back in the community. Everyone continues to keep their jobs. I can’t give you an exact figure, but I’ll tell you just by the movement that the President made, we’ve saved millions and millions of jobs,” Solis claimed.

This is, of course, a perfect example of the classic “broken windows fallacy.”
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Obama’s Labor Sec: Jobs Are ‘Saved’ By Unemployment Payments”


Dueling Union Bills in DC

-By Warner Todd Huston

First Congressional Democrats offered a national forced unionzation bill, and now Republicans have countered by putting forth a national worker’s freedom bill. With the luck breaking against unions in Wisconsin and the issue in an uproar in Ohio and Indiana it is now surprise that Congress has come to loggerheads with the same issue.

On Tuesday eight Republicans introduced the National Right to Work Act. Senator Jim DeMint says that he hopes it will, “reduce workplace discrimination by protecting the free choice of individuals to form, join, or assist labor organizations, or to refrain from such activities.”

Unions are less than 8 percent of the work force at this point yet those states that have more union members than others are doing less well. DeMint says that having unions is part of the problem.
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Dueling Union Bills in DC”


Obama to Sue States to End Worker’s Right to Secret Ballot

-By Warner Todd Huston

Barack Obama has given more payoffs, sweetheart deals, and new favorable regulations to Big Labor than any president in history. They should love him for his incredible largess. Next, in his never ending quest to harm the business community, defy the will of the voters, and give his pals in Big Labor paybacks, Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — a federal labor regulatory agency — is about to sue any state that dares attempt to protect the right of workers to have secret ballots in their workplace elections. The states have made the mistake of sponsoring worker’s ballot protection laws.

Recently the NLRB announced its intentions to sue Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah because those states had the gal to implement constitutional amendments to their state constitutions guaranteeing that workers have a right to a secret ballot in union elections.

With this the Obama administration is moving to deny workers their right to a secret ballot, a right that has been sacrosanct in democracies for hundreds if not thousands of years. Why does Barack Obama want to take away the right to a secret ballot? Because his union pals don’t want workers to feel safe voting against a union.
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Obama to Sue States to End Worker’s Right to Secret Ballot”


Obama’s Labor Dept. To Create Gov’t Sponsored ‘Labor News’ Agency?

-By Warner Todd Huston

What is it called when a government creates a state-sponsored “news” agency, again? Ah yes, it’s called government propaganda. And that is what the Obama administration seems interested in creating if the words of Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis’s senior advisor Carl Fillichio can be believed.

On Nov. 19 Fillichio attended the annual meeting of the International Labor Communications Association and in his address to the room he laid out a few “revolutionary” plans and policy ideas one of which was to create a new media agency that would act as a sort of ministry of Big Labor information all run out of the Secretary of Labor’s office in Washington D.C.

The advisor to the Secretary of Labor told the audience that one of the things that vexed his department is that it was so hard to get their “news” reported by the media. “We battle every single day when we try to put something out,” Fillichio told the audience.
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Obama’s Labor Dept. To Create Gov’t Sponsored ‘Labor News’ Agency?”


Tell Obama and Congress to Halt The Assault on Small Business

From the folks at the Free Enterprise Alliance, a group of free market advocates backed by the construction industry.

Appearing on televisions in places near and far, ABC’s Free Enterprise Alliance this week will launch a new ad asking travelers to look around, find a representative, and tell them to Halt The Assault on free enterprise, small business, and jobs.

The FEA says they’ve booked time at on CNN’s Airport network, so this ad will appear right where our Congressmen are going to be as they make their way home for the holiday!

From the group’s About Us page:

At the heart of the Free Enterprise Alliance’s mission is the belief that while we need government for common sense regulations, the scales have tipped too far in favor of government intrusion and its advocates. The Free Enterprise Alliance believes small business and entrepreneurs grow jobs and our economy, not union bosses and federal bureaucrats.


For the Third Time Obama Gives Unions A Break From Transparency Rules

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Obama administration and the Democrat Party has yet again instituted new rules to allow unions to get out of having to report their financial doings to the federal government by again rolling back reporting requirements.

Obviously as far as Obama is concerned “transparency” is one of those things that only enemies should be forced to observe. If you are an Obama friend, no transparency is required.

It is interesting to note the language that Democrats used to excuse their newest roll back of transparency requirements, too (my bold).
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For the Third Time Obama Gives Unions A Break From Transparency Rules”


Unions Violating Disclosure Rules

-By Warner Todd Huston

When Barack Obama took office, one of the early things he did was install Hilda Solis, a long-time union operative, as head of the Department of Labor. And one of the first things she did was to ease the reporting requirements on unions, softening the violation of disclosure rules.

In August of 2009 Labor Sec. Solis immediately let it be known that her department would no longer initiate “enforcement actions against union officers and union employees based solely on the failure to file” the LM2 disclosure forms. Since that time two major unions have been caught filing inaccurate lobbying reports and disclosure statements.

Politico reports that the Center for Public Integrity has found that the “National Association of Letter Carriers have failed to detail the group’s specific lobbying activities, as required by law.” In May the group also found that the Maritime Officers union had also violated disclosure rules and had been doing so for a decade.
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Unions Violating Disclosure Rules”


Obama’s Dept. of Labor Offers to Help Illegals Get Paid ‘Fairly’

-By Warner Todd Huston

Here we are in a nation being inundated by illegal aliens, so much so that states are having to take what should be federal responsibility into their own hands to try and end this flood of illicit immigrants, and Barak Obama’s Sec. of Labor is announcing to illegals that she intends to help them get paid “fairly.”

Hilda Solis has a new video out promising to get illegals “every cent they earn.” You see, “every worker has a right to be paid fairly whether documented or not,” Solis helpfully tells us.

So, while the country is facing a flood of illegal immigrants that come here to overburden our system and commit crimes, we have a federal government promising to help make their illegal stay more comfortable.

Hey, Hilda…. what part of ILLEGAL don’t you understand?

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Obama’s Dept. of Labor Offers to Help Illegals Get Paid ‘Fairly’”