LaborPains.org

Donald Luskin receives an email:

Each of the Democratic candidates lust for the endorsements of the unions, mostly the new ones such as SEIU and AFSCME. No hardhats there; plenty of brooms and bureaucrats. Think of the bright, helpful folks at your DMV.

But isn’t organized labor failing to organize labor? No, problem! “Card Check” to the rescue. That’s the new proposal to do away with the requirements that unions win through a secret ballot — just sign a card when the union reps corner you. Or else.

John Edwards wants to prove himself to his new masters — so much so that he wants to turn prosperous North Carolina into dying Michigan. (Meanwhile, in Michigan, the locals now worry that their taxes support a world class university only to lose nearly all the graduates to other states.)

Note that Edward’s ploy is aimed at SEIU workers in Nevada. The plant and its employees in NC is just part of the backdrop.

EmployerReport’s blog has the story.

I think I’m allowed to say it: I don’t like Al Franken. My main problem with him is that, despite his long career in comedy endeavors such as SNL, Franken himself is not very funny. His most famous character is a creepy middle-aged guy who lives alone, wears dirty-old-men sweaters, and pumps himself up in the mirror with the mantra, “You’re good enough, you’re smart enough, and doggone it, people like you.” This is definitely a guy I want to listen to on policy issues!

All of this is by way of saying a local steelworkers union has endorsed Franken’s Senate bid largely on his support for the hilariously misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act.” The bill would effectively end secret ballot elections for employees deciding whether to join a union — instead allowing union organizers to harass and mislead people at their jobs and homes. Perhaps Mr. Franken can start rehearsing the line to working Americans: “You’re not good enough, you’re not smart enough, and doggone it, I don’t like you enough to let you vote in your own union.”

It’s staggering, the amount of bad numbers and flat-out wrong talking points being used by union officials and their allies to push for passage of a bill that would end secret ballot elections for employees deciding whether to join a union.

The latest: “Chicago Carless” harps on the notion that under the grossly misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” employees will still have the opportunity to vote in a real election. That’s ridiculous, as many have pointed out. Check out the argument for yourself.

It can be hard to take union bosses seriously sometimes. They frequently lack such basic self-awareness that they can’t comprehend why people either don’t want to join a union or want to drop the union altogether. Today’s email newsletter from the AFL-CIO office once again shows how out of touch they are.

Pointing to passage of an economically dubious minimum wage hike, the AFL-CIO says:

The 134-day minimum wage hostage crisis comes to an end. Senate Republicans bottled up the wage hike in January but relented yesterday with passage of a supplemental spending bill that included the $2.10-an-hour increase.

Likening passage of a policy to ending a hostage crisis is way over the line.

Depending on the level of your love for beer, you may know the name Yuengling. It’s something of a regional treat, and it’s been produced by a family-owned company for generations. Recently, employees there decided to kick out Teamsters bosses as their representative. The Teamsters, in turn, are alleging the company must have threatened workers — after all, they said, how else could you explain the employees kicking them out?

It’s an interesting insight: how could people not love us? We’re the Teamsters! The Associated Press has bellied up to the bar and found one beer-drinking patron who said he wouldn’t be following the union’s call for a boycott. As he said, “If the union gets decertified, it’s because they’re not adding value.”

It may be even worse than simply not adding value. While it doesn’t look like there’s been any impact yet from the boycott, a company spokesman said the union is actually hurting members elsewhere:

The Teamsters “are hurting their own membership with this nonsense,” he said. “Our brands are a significant source of income for wholesalers all over the state, many of whom are union houses, and I’ve not had one house throw our brand out.”  

Another sad case of officials abusing their power:

The former president of a postal workers union was indicted today by a federal grand jury in San Francisco on charges of embezzling more than $170,000 and falsifying records to cover his tracks.

Graham Paul Vane, 59, of Pacifica stole money from the National Association of Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO, Branch 1280 from January 2002 to March 2006 and spent it on dining, travel, massages, jewelry, wine, pet expenses, personal utility bills, groceries and gas, the indictment said.

Decades in the making, it has finally happened. After years of negotiating to put their out-of-work members in a “jobs bank” where they continued to earn substantial paychecks for doing nothing, United Auto Workers officials fearing total collapse of the U.S. auto industry have begrudgingly started undoing some of the jobs bank’s costly damage. Today’s Detroit News edition reports:

About 400 General Motors Corp. skilled trades workers in Flint and Lansing assigned to the automaker’s controversial jobs bank may be forced to learn a different job or go to work at a distant factory if they don’t take a new buyout offer extended by the company.

GM’s move to clear out the jobs bank — factory workers who collect most of their pay and benefits despite being laid off — was made possible by a first-of-its-kind agreement with the United Auto Workers.

More to the point, the News explains:

Though limited in scope, the agreement shows some movement by the UAW on the jobs bank, which has come to symbolize the inefficiency baked into labor contracts between the union and Detroit’s automakers.

Especially interesting is a quote from labor’s preferred professor, Harley Shaiken. He told the newspaper that “[t]his is an example of the fact that both sides would like to see GM succeed.” If the union wanted so badly for the carmaker to succeed — and be able to keep its members in good jobs — wouldn’t they have avoided the jobs bank in the first place? Somehow, I don’t think GM’s success was at the forefront of UAW bosses’ minds.