LaborPains.org

Hard-charging investigative reporter Scott Reeder has done it again. Last seen documenting the hidden costs of teacher tenure, Reeder has just published the findings of another months-long investigation into how Illinois schools are rigged in favor of protecting bad teachers. As usual, teachers unions share the blame.

One example is that of teacher Derek Babcock, who was accused by a former student of serious sexual abuse. In exchange for his resignation, the school district agreed to tell his prospective employers the following:

Derek Babcock was employed by the Board of Education of Seneca Community School District #170, LaSalle County, Illinois, from August 1984 until November 1996 when he resigned for personal reasons. Mr. Babcock performed his teaching duties throughout this period which consisted of teaching third grade, elementary physical education and coaching various sports. His final annual salary was $43,416. The board does not release further information.

Why was Babcock given such a privileged resignation instead of getting investigated and fired? An earlier Reeder investigation reveals the answer:

[Babcock] had leverage to get a job referral because the school district hoped to avoid the costly litigation incurred in tenured teacher dismissal cases.Using open records laws, Small Newspaper Group obtained attorney billings from all Illinois school districts that retained outside counsel to fire a tenured teacher during a five year period. The average legal bill was $219,000.

It’s the teachers unions, of course, who “protect a procedure the law has put together called tenure.” (That’s a quote from Newark Teachers Union president Joseph Del Grosso, whose union has provided exactly the same kind of cover against allegations of sexual misdeeds — click here to read a sample settlement.)

Want to learn more? Visit Hidden Violations for more painstaking research into covering up problem teachers — and how teachers unions help.

Down in North Carolina, the United Food and Commercial Workers union officials have been up to some strange things. They say they want to unionize a bunch of employees who work for Smithfield Foods, but the union guys won’t let the workers vote on whether they want to join the union. This morning, the local Fayetteville Observer was kind enough to run our op-ed, titled “Union justice isn’t union’s cards”:

For decades U.S. courts have declared that real elections are far better for employees than the “card check” system the UFCW is pushing. 

Coercion in the card check process is an obvious problem. In 1967, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals concluded: “It would be difficult to imagine a more unreliable method of ascertaining the real wishes of employees than a ‘card check,’ unless it were an employer’s request for an open show of hands.”

Confusion and deception are other problems inherent to card check. Most succinctly, the United States Supreme Court explained that there is a history of abuses “primarily arising out of misrepresentations by union organizers” over whether signing a union card meant you were joining the union, or whether you were just asking for a fair vote.

In 1983, the Seventh Circuit added that some people sign cards “not because they intend to vote for the union in the election but to avoid offending the person who asks them to sign, often a fellow worker, or simply to get the person off their back.”Of all groups to agree, the AFL-CIO in its own guidebook for its organizers has said that cards signed by employees are “at best a signifying intention at a given moment” because “sometimes they are signed to ‘get the union off my back.’” It’s why under normal rules the union often gets a majority of people to sign cards calling for an election and then less than a majority when people vote in private. And that’s precisely what the UFCW is afraid will happen at the Smithfield plant. 

The Caucus, the political blog of The New York Times, notes that former Sen. John Edwards keeps making grand promises to union officials in hopes of landing their lucre:

And in a nod to unions, whom he has courted with varying success, he said he intends to ban the permanent replacement of striking workers and will pass the Employee Free Choice Act to let workers unionize when a majority of them sign their names on cards.

Of course, the bill isn’t about simplifying the unionizing process for employees — it’s about simplifying the process of getting more members into dues-paying rolls for labor leaders. The ban on permanent replacement of striking workers is a “nice” touch, too.

In Washington State, another reminder that the union-funded group known as ACORN keeps bumping up against legal trouble during elections. A man will get 30 days of detention for submitting false voter registrations, and:

Olson was one of seven workers for a 2006 voter-registration drive conducted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, who were indicted in July on charges that they made up names of voters, forged signatures and turned in bogus registrations to elections officials in Seattle …

Two other ACORN workers — Tina Johnson of Tacoma and Jayson Woods of Elkridge, Md. — have pleaded guilty and await sentencing. The cases against the other defendants are pending.

We were criticized recently for pointing out that a government official accused of stealing public employee money was also hired by AFSCME — a union for public employees. Even though they mention it, the AFL-CIO seems to have downplayed the importance of this part of the story:

And troubles may not be over for Torrecillas and the city’s 1,800 employees. The local branch of the union that represents Hialeah employees — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — also used Torrecillas as an accountant.

Apparently it’s not OK to mention corruption that hurts union members unless the union official is harming them in his official union capacity. So, for our friends over at the AFL-CIO, who have done a less-than-bang-up job getting rid of corruption from the labor movement, here’s some news from Jersey:

A former labor attorney pleaded guilty yesterday in a scam set up by a convicted union officer to split $1.8 million in health insurance commissions.

John Gregory Lynch, 63, of New York, faces disbarrment in the scheme that involved the Professional Employee’s Guild, a small, now-dissolved, unaffiliated union based in Hackensack that represents real estate brokers, retail workers and municipal employees.

Lynch, who was initially charged with embezzlement, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton to a reduced charge of employing a barred union officer as a consultant.

According to federal prosecutors, the union was created in 1999 by one-time labor official John Kraemer, now deceased, after he was convicted in 1987 and again in 2000 for embezzlement from another union — Local 29 of the Retail, Wholesale, Department Store Workers Union, an AFL-CIO local also based in Hackensack.

From Washington State comes a story that could be told from any community in America:

Several Democratic legislators may have violated state ethics laws when they signed a letter scolding a private nonprofit mental-health-care provider for using “hostile” and “anti-union” bargaining tactics in recent contract talks.

The letter, which was sent this month to the director of Olympia-based Behavioral Health Resources (BHR), was written on official Washington state Legislature letterhead.

The Legislative Ethics Board has ruled recently that it is illegal for lawmakers to use public resources to advocate for one side in a private dispute.

But this tidbit is of the most interest:

In the letters, which actually were drafted by the SEIU, the lawmakers touted the funding increase for mental-health providers. Instead of giving workers the pay raises lawmakers intended, the letters said, BHR was demanding cuts in benefits and job protections.

Dave Weigel at Reason has this great ad up on Hit & Run (and we thank him for a kind head-nod on our own ads):

Head over at National Right To Work’s blog … and then, you know, head back over here.