LaborPains.org

Not a good day for SEIU officials. The latest:

Employees for a Chicago-based company that provides transportation services for the Kansas City, Mo., School District, rejected a bid for union representation late Thursday.

Of the 348 votes, 183 Durham School Services employees voted to reject the Service Employees International Union Local 2000 in an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board; 165 voted for the union.

The Naples (Florida) Daily News reports that the Collier County Education Association is having its teacher members “work to rule” in protest of the school district’s latest compensation offer. Under “work to rule,” as the Daily News writes, teachers “will come in at the contract-approved time and leave at the contract-approved time. Teachers won’t be doing anything above and beyond the 7.5-hour day. That means no extra help after school and no sponsoring of clubs.”

The Daily News profiled one family that has been especially hard-hit by “work to rule”:

Sheri Mausen began to see the impact work to rule was having on her two teenage daughters last week. With a freshman and a senior at Gulf Coast High School, Mausen said she and her fiance, Bob Dorta, were surprised when her youngest daughter came home with a stack of ungraded English homework.

The daughter said the teacher “handed back the papers, and said she didn’t have time to grade them,” Mausen said.

That wasn’t the only problem the family has encountered since work to rule went into effect.

In a letter to the Collier County School Board, Mausen explained that one teacher is reducing the number of written assignments and has canceled tutoring.

“My younger daughter’s Spanish teacher has told her class that she doesn’t care to generate too much written work that requires grading, because she ‘has a life,’ and isn’t going to grade papers in the evening,” Mausen wrote. “(The same teacher) used to tutor her students during lunch — from which my daughter benefited — and today she announced there will be no more tutoring.”

Dorta said he’s outraged with the way the teachers are acting.

“It’s really discouraging to hear them crying,” he said. “My little one is having trouble in Spanish class, and (I learn) she’s watching Twister in Spanish. It just blows my mind.”

Teachers union executive director Jonathan Tuttle justified the action thusly: “The teachers are doing their job and that is all they are doing. For years and years, teachers have gone above and beyond what they are required to do.”

But teachers “working to rule” aren’t doing their jobs. If teachers are professionals (as teachers unions never tire of repeating), then going “above and beyond what they are required to do” is expected. Part of what it means to be a professional is that your work consists of more than mere requirements. Meet only the requirements, and you’re not doing your job.

And as the Daily News reveals, some teachers aren’t even meeting their requirements — yearbook advisers who get extra money for working after school are leaving when the bell rings.

You have to give SEIU officials credit: they are at least trying to strip their current members of the same democratic rights that they’re attacking for all working Americans. While SEIU officials spearhead the campaign to end secret ballot elections for employees deciding whether to join a union, they’re also trying to circumvent elections for their own leaders in California. But there’s another angle to SEIU’s California dreaming: what about the workers they already represent?

There’s trouble in that area, too, according to Black Voice News, which reports:

But the majority of the employees that attended the event disagreed. Employees pointed the finger at the Union’s non responsiveness to union members’ complaints about the management at Caltrans abuse of the hiring and promotion process.

Also, employees were not happy that although state employees recently received a three percent pay raise, the Union countered with a 1.5 union fee increase taking away almost fifty percent of the wage increase. Many employees made reference to the union that represents the engineers which received a 7 percent increase pay half the union dues of SEIU. Still others wanted to understand why there is not enough union staff to address issues based the recent union fee increases and in an example were told union staff had been directed to Los Angeles to support illegal immigration marches and could not attend an employee’s hearing.

Many Black employees, and female employees at the event complained about the hiring and promotion practices being implemented by management and discussed the negative history of Caltrans management in the San Bernardino office toward Black employees. Some employees argued that many minorities and women have to leave this District and transfer to other Districts within Caltrans to receive promotion.

Anti-democratic for members and non-members alike. Undertones of racism. Hiking dues. All in a day for SEIU bosses.

The most important item we’ve seen so far this morning comes from the Los Angeles Times, which is reporting that an internal SEIU struggle is blocking California health care change. Key bits:

Many of the issues involved in the action have more to do with internal union politics about labor’s direction than with the healthcare battle, but the leadership change could have substantial consequences. The potential new leaders are more eager than Rosselli and longtime Executive Director Dean Tipps to cut a deal with Schwarzenegger — in part to help advance their campaign to overhaul healthcare nationally.

That has been the view of Andy Stern, the president of the international union, who has personally expressed to the governor’s office his frustration with the stance of California SEIU leaders, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The whole piece is definitely worth your time. This won’t be the last you hear on this subject.

UPDATE (mere moments later): This from that bastion of corporate bias, Harper‘s:

 Yet Stern is currently presiding over what some within the union describe as a power grab, and one that could squelch opposition to some controversial deals he and his allies have supported (like a provision, ultimately shot down by internal opposition, that would have imposed a seven-year ban on strikes by Tenet Healthcare union employees). On Friday morning Stern is seeking to push through a deal that would severely weaken his chief critic inside the SEIU, in the name of “restructuring.”

“Stern is essentially seeking to take a public entity private,” one person familiar with the situation told me.

Michelle Malkin has been doing some digging … hat tip to a devoted fan (yes, Virginia, there is a

• Taking unions out of the workplace
• What the UFCW – And Congress – Don’t Know
• California Safeway workers threaten strike vote if talks fail
• Maryland spat between Democrats and unions continues
• Sen. John E. Sununu is complimented as an “independent leader who has stood up to the special interests” for opposing the Employee Free Choice Act in a mail piece by the pro-business Coalition for a Democratic Workplace.

United Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten had a headache-inducing piece in yesterday’s New York Sun, in which the teachers union leader complains that the New York City school district administration is unfairly going after teachers. Weingarten writes that “the city recently announced a new way to ‘get rid’ of teachers — an ominously named ‘teacher performance unit’ headed by a prosecutor, rather than by educators.”

Thing is, this hardly a “new way” around the onerous due process demanded by the union every time a teacher is considered for termination — all the district is doing is hiring lawyers to assist with carrying out all the due process. Joe Williams at Democrats for Education Reform had it right (with humor!) — this is simply application of due process, which the UFT only wants, apparently, when due process obstructs the firings of bad teachers:

Many union leaders tell you that they don’t want bad teachers either, but that due process must be followed. Now it turns out that is a load of bull too. The plan announced this week by the Department of Education brings in a team of lawyers to engage in due process up the wazoo. They will eat due process for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. They will wake up in cold sweats at night from dreaming about due process. They will scream “due process!!!” in the throes of passion. Because that is what the union has demanded through collective bargaining.

The union also held a candlelight vigil to protest the new hirings. Shouldn’t we save that tactic for something a little more extreme than the fulfillment of due process?

The unions would like everyone to believe that Wal-Mart is like Hell on Earth. Hell, it makes sense: they need to beat the company down so they can swoop in to “save” it by unionizing everyone up. Fine. But Peter from EmployerReport sends this around today:

Hey WalMartWatch, watchout!  In Cleveland, the giant retailer was recently bombarded by 6,000 applicants applying for just 300 jobs!  (It must be because the giant retailer is such a bad company to work for right, Joe Hansen?)

For the uninitiated, Wal-Mart Watch is a front group for SEIU officials and Wake Up Wal-Mart is the UFCW. Both unions have been sued in racketeering cases in recent weeks for the methods they employ in their anti-corporate campaigns.