Unionists Next Target for Destruction: Apple, Inc.

-By Warner Todd Huston

A four-year Apple store employee in San Francisco wants to unionize the low wage workers that help customers in Apple Stores across America. Should he succeed, this will, of course, take one of the few successful companies we have left in America, hobble it with jobs-killing union rules, and destroy its jobs like the rest of them.

Cory Moll, 30, has a plan to take a bite out of Apple, it seems. He is claiming that the minimum wage, retail jobs of the floor helpers at Apple stores are beset with “unfair practices.” So, he wants to organize the 30,000 retail employees in Apple’s 325 brick-and-mortar stores.

Using Twitter and Facebook, Moll is trying to get the rest of the country’s Apple store employees on his jobs killing bandwagon. Fortunately, he has yet to gain much support from them.
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Unionists Next Target for Destruction: Apple, Inc.”


Booster Uses Rape Case to Sell Unions

-By Warner Todd Huston

This one sure is disgusting. Remember that the chief of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested for sexually assaulting a maid in New York? Well the leftist website AlterNet is using the DSK rapist incident to push unions. Like most leftists no crisis is too bad to exploit for union gains, I guess.

In her article, Alternet’s Adele M. Stan spent a few paragraphs bemoaning the “abuse of power” perpetrated by DSK. But it wasn’t long until she focused on her theme. Without unions, you see, the rape victim could never have reported her attacker.

After extolling the bravery of the victim for having reported the attacik, Stan made an absurd claim.
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Booster Uses Rape Case to Sell Unions”


Big Unions Cooling on Obama?

-By Warner Todd Huston

Bloomberg has another unions-are-mad-at-Obama story this week and, while there is no doubt that unions are a bit miffed at the big “O,” we should all be cautioned about where Big Labor will put its support in 2012. Miffed or not, and quite contrary to what Bloomberg wants you to believe, Big Labor will support Obama to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

Still, it is interesting to see the unions whine about Obama. This president has been the biggest booster to Big Labor than any other president in history. The business punishing regulations alone that Obama has saddled upon this struggling economy makes his efforts more destructive and favorable to unions than any two past presidents combined.

Obama is using his regulatory powers to force contractors to pay unions off to get federal work even if those businesses aren’t members of any union, he’s sallied forth from his castle to inform businesses about where they will be allowed to build businesses, his crony capitalist efforts have put big businesses all across the country under his thumb, and he’s eased as many regulations that keep unions in line as he can… and he plans to do even more.
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Big Unions Cooling on Obama?”


Will a Lloyd Dobler Economy Save Us?

-By Beth Shaw

Will a Lloyd Dobler economy save us? That’s the question being asked around the internet today and we can surely expect more of that sort of question as we are seeing more and more headlines of looming economic disaster, both nationally and globally.

What is getting in the way of the United States creating, building, producing and hiring?
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Will a Lloyd Dobler Economy Save Us?”


Your Taxes Paying Government Union Members NOT to Work, Part Two

-By Warner Todd Huston

At a hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, it was revealed that federal employees spent nearly 3 million hours of official, taxpayer paid time on union activities in 2009. This cost the treasury $129 million, an increase of $8 million over the expenditures in 2008.

The report that fueled the hearing (see .pdf) was prepared by the Office of Personnel Management and prompted a stern comment from House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce Chairman Dennis Ross, (R, Fla).

At at time when our economy is in a recession and budget deficits are at staggering record levels, efficiency is imperative. Taxpayers should not have to continue footing the bill for union welfare, particularly when little evidence exists that official time is improving government productivity.

Of course, I spoke of this nonsensical situation, one where the American people are paying workers not to do any useful work, back in April.

Then I wrote…
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Your Taxes Paying Government Union Members NOT to Work, Part Two”


Union Contracts More Important Than Patients For Union Drivers

-By Warner Todd Huston

Priorities. Union guys have priorities, you know? For instance, in New Jersey earlier this year a bunch of union drivers for the Communications Workers of America (CWA) decided that it was more important to have a “sick-out” and strand sick elderly people, preventing them getting to their life-saving medical treatment than do their jobs.

State Sen. Joe Kyrillos, (R-13), of Middletown wasn’t too happy with these uncaring union louts, either.
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Union Contracts More Important Than Patients For Union Drivers”


N.J. Courts Not Interested in Democracy

-By Warner Todd Huston

Most Americans are under the mistaken assumption that we as voters can elect someone to make changes in our government. Whether the government of our city, county, state or that in Washington DC we voters have this romantic idea that we can affect change by electing people to office that will make those changes. The New Jersey Supreme Court, however, has disabused us all of those absurd notions.

Governor Chris Christie was elected to office for one reason, to solve New Jersey’s budget mess. He’s not Mr. Nice guy. He’s not the prettiest face in New Jersey politics. He wasn’t even the state’s most beloved public figure. He ran on fixing the budget and the people hired him to do just that.

But now, even though he was able to get certain budget changes through both houses of his state legislature, even though he has kept his shoulder to the grindstone doing the very job that the people hired him to do, even as he was on the verge of succeeding, the courts have stepped in and torpedoed the effort.
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N.J. Courts Not Interested in Democracy”


Union Thugs Protest The Wrong Place!

-By Warner Todd Huston

I guess that getting the correct information when arranging a smear campaign and protest is not necessary when you are the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Who needs to be in the right when you are an important, powerful, politically connected union, eh? The seriousness of the charge and the effort to “raise awareness” is far more important than targeting the right people to smear, right?

It seems that the SEIU decided to picket against Marcellus Shale drilling, sometimes called hydrofracking, and the severance tax associated with it. So the government employee union picked a site in Hastings, Pennsylvania to highlight this subject and to shame the company that owns the property into siding with them.

Only one tiny, little problem. There is no Marcellus Shale drilling going on at the site they descended upon with their protests. And there never has been. It turns out the SEIU got the wrong place.
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Union Thugs Protest The Wrong Place!”


Hypocrisy: Obama’s Stock And Trade

-By Warner Todd Huston

Obama’s National Labor Relations Board made itself infamous not long ago by attempting to tell Boeing in what state it was allowed to build a new manufacturing plant. Indulging his penchant toward anti-business, anti-capitalist sentiment Obama decided that he was the final arbiter on where companies were allowed to move and set up shop. Boeing was evil, you see because they wanted to get out from under the business-destroying grip of unions.

The monsters at Boeing were “retaliating” against the unions said Obama and his NLRB. Boeing was moving its plant from Washington State to North Carolina because in NC the unions have less power. So, it’s the unionista in chief to the rescue of the jobs-killing unions. Boeing needs to be slapped down for it’s evilness, don’t you know?

But, here is where Obama’s ever present hypocrisy rears its ugly head once again.
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Hypocrisy: Obama’s Stock And Trade”


Democrats FINALLY Talking of Cutting Back Govt Employee Pensions

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Washington Post had a recent piece saying that it looks like Washington is finally coming to the stark realization that the benefits and pensions of federal workers are wildly over promised and even Democrats are finally contemplating cuts in federal pensions.

The GOP has already targeted these pensions by proposing that federal workers contribute more toward their own pension benefits. As the Post slantedly puts it, this policy plan would “effectively impose an immediate 5 percent pay cut on more than 2 million federal employees”

Of course, it would not be cutting their pay at all, sadly. It would merely be deferring until retirement when they get the cash. Sure their pay should be cut — heck thousands need to be simply fired outright — but there is no pay cut being proposed.
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Democrats FINALLY Talking of Cutting Back Govt Employee Pensions”


NJ Unions Hiding Behind Courts to Continue Ripping Off Taxpayers

-By Warner Todd Huston

The next level of obduracy by New Jersey’s government employee unions has been taken. The Communication Workers of America, the state’s largest government workers union, has filed a suit against New Jersey Governor Chris Christie claiming he isn’t negotiating in good faith over the union’s healthcare contract.

You see Gov. Christie wants to change the contract so that the union members contribute up to 30% of their healthcare premium and introduce lower the cost benefit plans.

Unions are against the changes and are trying everything they can to stop the tax-saving schemes that Christie is trying to implement.
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NJ Unions Hiding Behind Courts to Continue Ripping Off Taxpayers”


Two More Stories on Stupid Liberal Schools

-By Warner Todd Huston

PCism is for idiots. It really is just that simple. It’s bad enough when you find it in the private sector with silliness such as sensitivity training. But at least there, adults can just ignore the stupidity and carry on. When it comes to PC indoctrination of our impressionable kids, well that is another matter and one not so easy to just laugh off.

Unfortunately, the disease of liberal PCism is so pervasive in our schools that we could do a story every single day on the newest outrageous display of liberal lunacy masquerading as education. Today, I’ll relate two of them.

Story One: Old Glory Not so Glorious
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Two More Stories on Stupid Liberal Schools”


VIDEO: Senator Enzi Says Boeing Complaint by NLRB ‘Not the Way to Encourage Jobs in U.S.’

-By Warner Todd Huston

During a hearing last week on middle class employment, Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said that the Obama Administration’s policies are costing America good, middle class jobs.

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VIDEO: Senator Enzi Says Boeing Complaint by NLRB ‘Not the Way to Encourage Jobs in U.S.’”


Employee Levels Fall But New York’s Fringe Benefits and Pensions Costs Soar

-By Warner Todd Huston

Pensions are the single biggest problem that every state, county and city in the Union face and New York City is no different. It is so bad that even as New York City has seen the numbers of its government employees fall, its costs in fringe benefits and pensions have still continued to soar. (Download the 2012 Budget Summary)

The latest budget info released by the Big Apple is a horror story of budget woes with pension costs leading the pack.

Marc Cenedella has done the heavy reading and his report is discouraging, to say the least.
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Employee Levels Fall But New York’s Fringe Benefits and Pensions Costs Soar”


Obama’s Plan to Force Fed. Contractors to Disclose Political Donations Meeting Bi-Partisan Opposition

-By Warner Todd Huston

Barack Obama’s Executive Order that requires federal contractors to disclose the political contributions they have made is garnering bi-partisan opposition on the Hill this month.

The order would force contractors to reveal any political donations as a condition for being allowed to bid on a contract to work for the federal government. And the order doesn’t only require the company to disclose donations but would also force the directors or company officers to reveal their personal donations as well. Naturally, this same requirement is not forced on unions. (You can see a draft of Obama’s order HERE)

This forced disclosure, however, is not sitting well with either Democrats or Republicans.
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Obama’s Plan to Force Fed. Contractors to Disclose Political Donations Meeting Bi-Partisan Opposition”


Do SEIU Members Know Their Union Consorts With America’s Enemies?

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is one thing that always flummoxes me. Over the last few decades American labor unions have increasingly become adjuncts, associates, pals, close friends — what ever you want to call them — with anti-American groups like the Communist Party USA and various socialist, anti-Israel groups, and pro-terror groups like the many pro-Palestinian groups. So, what the hell are the regular, presumably true American rank and file members doing about this fact? Are they aware of it? If they are aware of it why do they sit idly by while their union leaders consort with enemies of the United States of America?

The May Day rally in L.A. is just the latest example of major American unions joining hands with commies, socialists, terror-supporters and anti-Americans.
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Do SEIU Members Know Their Union Consorts With America’s Enemies?”


Dues Paid to Union Fat Cats Could Have Funded 265,447 Workers For A Year

-By Warner Todd Huston

Leftists and union supporters love to point to the salaries of corporate bosses and claim them an excess in order to goad regular people into fits of envy and hatred, stirring that class warfare that leftists love so much. But the folks at LaborUnionReport.com thought it might be interesting to turn the tables and calculate what could have been done with all that money were it not wasted on union dues.

LUR notes that with 14.7 million union members nation wide, that is a “substantial amount of dues money flowing to unions.” It is, indeed.

Before we get to LUR’s calculations, though, we should note that most dues money goes to fund the excessive lifestyles of union bosses who routinely make well over $200,000 a year, dues go to shore up the bloated staffs of union offices, and let us not forget that millions go into the pockets of compliant Democrat politicians to help them get elected over and over again. Many millions more go to create political issue advocacy efforts, like moves to raise our taxes so that union members can get even more of our tax money.
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Dues Paid to Union Fat Cats Could Have Funded 265,447 Workers For A Year”


Pension Reform in Illinois: A Hard Job That Springfield Wants to Ignore

-By Warner Todd Huston

Americans for Prosperity – Illinois has launched an effort to goad our lawmakers in Springfield to tackle the single most vexing problem the state faces: pension obligations.

AFP has launched a website called “Fix Illinois Pensions Now” to help inform and empower voters so that they might encourage their representatives to do the right thing and fix this mess now!

A second website to find important information can be seen at: www.illinoisisbroke.org.

AFP has partnered with The Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and they have jointly produced an informative video on the effort.
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Pension Reform in Illinois: A Hard Job That Springfield Wants to Ignore”


Union Member Fired By Union For… Organizing a Union?

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is always the most amusing sort of union story, but a union boss is mad at one of his members for organizing a union and allegedly fired him over it. Confused? I can understand why. After all, aren’t union members supposed to organize workers? So, how could a union member get fired for doing just that? Read on, McDuff.

As the story goes, one Mr. David Highnote seems to have gone out on a low note from the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU). Highnote recently filed an unfair labor practice charge against his union alleging that the ATU threatened him and then fired him for organizing other union members.

He wasn’t just organizing workers of businesses, however. Highnote was organizing the staff that works for the union itself.
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Union Member Fired By Union For… Organizing a Union?”


GM Exec: Reporting GM’s Failures Hurts… Republicans?

-By Warner Todd Huston

In an odd turn of events, former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz thinks that anyone that criticizes GM is not only “mis-informed” but insists that those “foaming ideologues” that criticize the car giant are “damaging the Republican Party.”

It is interesting that an executive in the company derided as “Government Motors” is trying to direct attention away from his minders in the Obama administration and toward the opposing party, and just before a general election at that.

It is also interesting to see Lutz defending GM as the “future” of the car business. Lately GM has not been turning out the sort of products that puts the company at the head of much of anything.
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GM Exec: Reporting GM’s Failures Hurts… Republicans?”


Is Obama Planning to Impose DISCLOSE Despite the FEC, Congress AND The Supreme Court?

-By Warner Todd Huston

You may remember last year, when union-backed Democrats nearly passed the so-called DISCLOSE Act, imposing financial disclosure for companies, while excluding unions.

Well, the DISCLOSE Act is back…Sort of.

Based on pretty solid reporting by Pajamas Media and confirmed by Huffington Post, it appears that the Obama Administration is preparing an Executive Order to force portions of the DISCLOSE Act on all federal contractors.
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Is Obama Planning to Impose DISCLOSE Despite the FEC, Congress AND The Supreme Court?”


Arrogance: Obama Decides HE Can Tell A Company Where They’re Allowed to Build

-By Warner Todd Huston

Barack Obama thinks he has the power to tell companies where they are “allowed” to build new facilities and, shock of shocks, Obama wants all those facilities to be in union controlled states.

Last week Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced its plans to force Boeing to keep building its aircraft in union plagued Washington State instead of building its planned new facility in South Carolina — a right to work, union free state.
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Arrogance: Obama Decides HE Can Tell A Company Where They’re Allowed to Build”


Calif Union Chief Says You Taxpayers are Selfish and Full of ‘Envy’

-By Warner Todd Huston

You taxpayers should be ashamed of yourselves, says Art Pulaski, executive secretary-treasurer of the California Labor Federation. You big, selfish jerks should be happy to pay the taxes that gives government employees all healthcare practically for free and allows them to retire at 50 with their comfortable 40-year-long retirement pensions that pay government union members twice what you’ll ever see in your golden years.

I mean, who do you taxpayers think you are, anyway?

Interestingly enough, even the soft-headed, left-leaning voters of California seem to be getting sick and tired of the freebies give government union members at this point.

A recent L.A.Times poll found that Californians are about done with the ritzy government employees sweet deals and are becoming tired of being the union’s sugar daddy. They are in increasing numbers desirous of caps on the spiraling unearned government union pensions.
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Calif Union Chief Says You Taxpayers are Selfish and Full of ‘Envy’”


The Democrat Caused Pension Bomb About to Destroy Our States

-By Warner Todd Huston

A few weeks ago I wrote that unions have driven every state budget into a hole from which it isn’t likely the states can easily dig themselves out. I did not at that time reference the Pew report on the pensions mess and I want to revisit it here.

On April 5, I said, “The worst mess that states are in is because government unions have been handed luxurious and unsustainable pensions and healthcare plans by those very Democrat politicians that unions have paid off to do so. Again all at the expense of the suffering taxpayers.” The Pew report shores this up thoroughly.

In fact, the Pew report from early April 2010 even understates the problem, not because of any bias but because the stats that they used were taken from stats assembled in 2008 because that was the last year where full records had been compiled. Further, we must remember that these stats also came before the market crash ushered in during the age of Obama.
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The Democrat Caused Pension Bomb About to Destroy Our States”


Union Operative That Wants ‘Financial Panic’ and Communism Still Working at SEIU

-By Warner Todd Huston

You may remember back in March that an audio tape was released upon which an SEIU operative expressed his desire to destroy the American economy by creating “financial panic” and overloading the system. This, it was proposed, could lay the groundwork to turn America into a perfect communist society.

The union operative in question was a guy named Steve Lerner and he works for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The fact that it is he “works” for the SEIU is certainly news. After all, when the tape was released we were all assured that Lerner was fired by the SEIU because of his communist-inspired rambling.

However, we have since found out that this anti-American nutcase has not been fired by the union. In fact, he was present at a recent executive board meeting.
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Union Operative That Wants ‘Financial Panic’ and Communism Still Working at SEIU”


Your Taxes Paying Government Union Members NOT to Work

-By Warner Todd Huston

Must be nice to be a government worker in a government union. Heck, some of these government union guys are even paid not to work and paid by the taxpayers to do so, yet!

Vincent Vernuccio, labor policy guy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, tells us that the Obama administration is even ignoring its responsibility to report on the matter. Obama is over a year late in releasing its Time Usage in the Federal Government Report, a report that tracks all the time that government union members spend working for the union bosses on the dime of the people.

The sad fact is that many government union contracts have a provision in them that stipulates that union members that have duties with the union itself (administrative, recruitment, what have you) can perform these duties while they are on the job and being paid by the taxpayers supposedly to do government business.
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Your Taxes Paying Government Union Members NOT to Work”


Absurdity: Detroit’s Mayor has 48 City Unions to Deal With

-By Warner Todd Huston

Want to know one of the reasons that Detroit (and every other major US city) is in such trouble? Democrat Mayor Dave Bing is struggling with a black hole of a budget deficit that he is stuck dealing with and one of his biggest stumbling blocks to fiscal sanity is the government unions. Oh, it isn’t just a few city government unions, either. He has 48 of them to deal with. 48 government unions all sucking up the tax payer’s dollars!

Granted Mayor Bing has decided not to take steps that might alleviate the budget long-term (like abolishing certain programs and city departments), but as the Detroit Free Press notes the unions are a major problem causing the city to spend $1.08 in employee benefits for every dollar the city spends on payroll.

As things stand the city has 8,000 active employees but is stuck with a legacy cost of 22,000 retired workers. Because of this, fully 30% of Detroit’s budget is going to retirees’ pension benefits.
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Absurdity: Detroit’s Mayor has 48 City Unions to Deal With”


Government Motor’s New Car: The GM WeeKann

-By Warner Todd Huston

Since Barack Obama has taken over General Motors, the newly installed Obama-owned executives have come up with a way to save the floundering auto giant. They’ve come up with a new car model that they are absolutely sure will save the company.

This new car has not been designed by professionals but has been created by focus group and with close consultation with Obama’s friends in the green sector, the labor sector, and his other constituents.

So, without further ado here are the features of the new GM WeeKann…
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Government Motor’s New Car: The GM WeeKann”


Auto Recall: When The Wheels Come Off Government Motors… Literally

-By Warner Todd Huston

GM, Obama’s favorite federally owned car company, was thrilled to report in March that sales figures for the Chevy Cruze helped put the company on the fast track to success but it wasn’t the best news when the wheels began to literally fall off the Cruze causing a recall of GM’s “success” story.

As we will remember, last November Obama proclaimed GM a great success story, one that justified his raging fever for bailouts. This March GM buttressed Obama’s glowing account by reporting rosy sales figures in which the Chevy Cruze made a big appearance. Then GM reported that the Cruze and the Malibu accounted for “98,950 sales – roughly one of every four Chevrolets sold in the first quarter.”

But let’s not break out the champagne too soon because only weeks after GM celebrated sales of the Cruze, at least one steering wheel popped off in transit. It’s a literal case of the wheels coming off GMs success story.
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Auto Recall: When The Wheels Come Off Government Motors… Literally”