Unions

-By Warner Todd Huston

A fellow named Will Franklin over at Willisms.com has done some number crunching and he has discovered that states that support a right to work policy grow at a much higher rate than states that are awash in forced unionization.

From 2004-2007, no Right To Work state grew less than 5.1%, while fifteen Forced Unionization state grew below that level.

Meanwhile, while America’s GDP growth from 2004-2007 by 8.4%, Right To Work states grew by 10% on average, while Forced Unionization states grew by only 6.2% on average. The median Right To Work growth rate was 9.2%, compared to the median Forced Unionization rate of 4.9% (the national median for all states was 7.3%).

As expected, it appears that unionism is an albatross, a mill stone around the necks of the workers limiting the success and growth of a state.

Of course, this will not sit well with the “two Americas” types on the left in this country. As Will points out, the side that they are on is the side of failure and a stifled economy. So, good luck with that concept, there.

Continue reading “Right to Work States See Higher Growth Than Forced Unionization States”

-By Warner Todd Huston

The last order of business for the Service Employee International Union ended with the election of the next slate of SEIU leaders. Andy Stern did not expect any “democracy” to take place in this election, though. You see, no ballots were prepared for the membership to vote upon.

It seems that the ballots prepared ahead of time only had Andy Stern’s nominees on them. Yet, when the floor was opened for nominations from the actual membership, 13 other members were nominated to run for one position or another. 13 members that Andy Stern did not have in his back pocket.

And, then everything bogged down to a crawl as Stern’s minions ran about trying to figure out how to print ballots with the nominees that Stern didn’t approve of printed thereupon. It is even reported by Maya Morris that Stern’s toadies were heard to say that they “weren’t prepared to print ballots” showing that Andy Stern didn’t expect to have any other members running for office. Obviously Stern imagined that he had his iron fist successfully beating down any other opinions. To heck with democracy.

As Maya said:

But when confronted with real democratic processes, Stern’s team was woefully unprepared. SEIU scheduled elections for its International Executive Board and its International Vice Presidents as the last agenda item on the last day of the convention. After five days of misinformation and disinformation, Stern’s management team apparently felt so confident that the Stern-approved slate of candidates would run unopposed that they did not even bother to plan a process to prepare ballots.

Nothing highlights the arrogance we’ve witnessed here at the convention more than this moment. Our message is that the union is about members; their message is that leadership rules. This election process proves our point.

Like I’ve said before, if Andy Stern is determined to eliminate democracy even among his own membership, what the heck do you think he’s going to try with the rest of us and with his influence in our government? This is a man that despises the American way of democratic participation. He believes solidly in autocratic, tyrannical rule of the elite over the rabble… and, in case you missed it, Stern thinks you and I represent the rabble.

Stern wants to do to us what he has done to his own people. Beat them down, ruin their relations with others, and destroy their reputations so that he can get his despotic will enforced.

This is the lesson of the SEIU convention. My fellow Americans, I urge you to understand that now that Andy Stern has eliminated his internal dissension inside his union, you and I are his next targets.

-By Warner Todd Huston

More happenings at the SEIU convention today…

It looks like Andy Stern is steamrolling the internal SEIU dissenters in San Juan this week as his rubber stamp convention has thus far easily passed his extreme agenda.

For instance, his plan to bleed the Strike and Defense fund to pay for his inaptly named “Justice for all” program was easily approved. This takes money from being used to help the members with strikes, etc., and diverts it to Stern’s pet project.

An amendment was also offered to firmly assert that the SEIU is against the Federal government instituting any guest worker programs now or in the future, changing language that allowed for guest worker programs in the past. As Michael Rivera reports in his convention notes today, “SEIU also rejects initiatives that expand or create guest-worker programs.” This amendment also adds to the meddling that the SEIU intends to continue on the National immigration issues.

Once again, we see Andy Stern’s capacity for taking his business far beyond where he belongs. Why one would expect a labor union to be making pronouncements on Federal immigration policy, or to decide to meddle in that field is definitely a question. Stern and his cohorts seem to imagine THEY have been elected not just to offices inside the labor union, but to Congress as well.

At about 10:30 or so, Barack Obama spoke to the convention via video conferencing, too. The SEIU has announced that they are lining up behind the most leftist Senator in the country, to be sure.

And to recap what happened to the folks in the UHW branch of the union… well, they’ve been sliced, diced, and cooked by Stern’s culinary arts. The insurgent UHWers are very unhappy that their democratic rights have been summarily eliminated.

UHW member Anita Wiltz has expressed her bitter disappointment over the whole thing.

Delegates to the convention voted to split me and 65,000 other California nursing home workers and homecare workers away from our local union. This will divide us from our brothers and sisters that work in hospitals and clinics, and put us into a different local union in California. That’s going to make us weaker, not stronger.

Sadly, the UHW members had no say in the matter.

Splitting us up will make us weaker, and that will make it harder to win the justice we’re all fighting for. That doesn’t seem to me like “justice for all.”

Standing in the way of the Stern juggernaut certainly explains why your union has been sliced and diced, Mrs. Wiltz. Keep that in mind next time you go thinking that there is such a thing as democracy in the SEIU!

Continue reading “Stern’s Rubber Stamp Continues”

-By Warner Todd Huston

Puerto Rico’s teachers union seems to have been aced out of their position as the union organizing the teachers of that Island nation by a hostile takeover. It seems that the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) cozied up to the embattled Puerto Rican Governor and was able to convince him to simply hand over all the teachers on the Island to the SEIU — quite regardless of the fact that they already belonged to the existing teachers union, the Federacion de Maestros de Puerto Rico (FMPR).

This reminds me of 1920’s Chicago as various Mob bosses battled for control of the Windy City. Seriously, who isn’t shocked by the fact that one union (the SEIU) can just roll in the back door of government and steal the members of another union (the FMPR) by arm-twisting a pliant politician? The only thing we lack here is the tommy guns in the streets!

For their part the FMPR is trying to fight this hostile take over of their union by organizing a coalition to oppose this presumptuous attack by the SEIU on their position as the union of Puerto Rico’s teachers.

The FMPR has been trying to work out a new contract for three years with the government of Puerto Rico and it appears that the government is using the SEIU to break the FMPR. And, here we have the SEIU stepping in to assist the government to break the union.

According to the New York Daily News, the Governor told Rivera (Dennis Rivera of the SEIU) that the teachers’ union is “yours to take.” Previously El Diaro-La Prensa reported that Rivera had discussed the teachers union with Acevedo in addition to possible SEIU monetary support for the Governor, who has recently been indicted on corruption charges.

The Puerto Rican government declared the teachers’ strike illegal, based on the vote alone — the actual strike was not called until late February 2008 — and moved to decertify FMPR. Almost simultaneously, SEIU announced that the Island’s union of school principals and supervisors was affiliating with SEIU — and would attempt to take over the teachers’ union.

This shows the rather unethical lengths that the SEIU will go to gather power unto itself. The SEIU is willing to trample on fellow unionists, make sweetheart deals with governments in closed door, back rooms, and steal members from other unions.

With this hostile take over of the Pureto Rican teachers union, it seems as if Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, has seen “The Untouchables” far too many times.

Continue reading “Union Perpetrates Hostile Take Over of Another Union”

-By Warner Todd Huston

National Right to Work fills us in on the good news that the 9th Circuit Court handed unions a blow this month making it harder on the unions for hiding expenses that end up charged to forced-dues-payers.

Upholding the National Labor Relations Board’s January 2006 decision against Studio Transportation Drivers Local 399 of the Teamsters, the appeals court found that the union, which used the arbitration awards for nonrepresentational purposes such as political and charitable contributions, should exclude the money from its calculation of agency fees rather than use it to reduce its reported nonrepresentational expenses.

By spending the arbitration award money on nonrepresentational rather than representational expenditures, the union in effect increased the agency fees owed by the objecting nonmember for representational expenses, Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the appeals court.

NRTW informs us that this is an important ruling because is stops unions from shifting expenses that end up overcharging nonmembers who are forced to pay dues as a condition of employment.

It is now even more clearly illegal for union officials to funnel revenue from sources other than union dues to pay for “non-chargeable” items – like politics, lobbying and members-only activities. Using this scheme, union officials try to get away with charging a higher percentage of the remaining activities to forced-dues-payers.

So, mark this one as a win for the good guys.

Continue reading “Court Denies Union Ability to Jack Up Forced Dues Payments”