LaborPains.org

A news report tells the story of a union member who was roughed-up by Teamsters while protesting then-president Clinton. Adding further insult to injury, some Teamsters filed suit against the plaintiff and were apparently helped—and even encouraged—by Governor Rendell: 

A union staffer’s 2002 court declaration asserted that current governor and former Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell (D) encouraged Teamsters to pursue assault charges against a nonviolent protester, The Bulletin has learned.

Testimony Mr. Rendell offered earlier that year differed markedly from the account. The differing versions emerge from the saga of assault victim Don Adams’s arduous legal battles.

After the Teamsters agreed in March to settle his almost decade-long civil action, Mr. Adams found the justice he received welcome, if incomplete. 

The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council has come out with a warning for state governments: pass a state-level version of the mis-named Employee Free Choice Act and hurt your state’s economy. The SBE Council argues that state-level versions of EFCA will raise costs for small businesses, lessen competitiveness, and decrease productivity.  The Council is so opposed to the legislation that it has decided that the passage of a “card-check” bill would count against a state in the Council’s annual report on public policy climates for entrepreneurship and small business.

SBE Council President & CEO Karen Kerrigan explains: “…[EFCA is an] unfair, turn-key approach to forced unionization [and] will be especially burdensome and costly for small businesses.”

SBE Council chief economist Raymond J. Keating added: “The ‘card-check’ bill would boost the level of unionization, increase costs, and restrain productivity. That, of course, means that businesses become less competitive. Of course, in the long run, both business owners and employees would suffer.”

The “Small Business Survival Index” is perhaps the most comprehensive gauge available of how state and local policymakers treat entrepreneurs and small businesses. The measurements covered include taxes, various regulatory costs, government spending, property rights, health care and energy costs, and much more. The 2007 Index considered 31 major government-imposed or government-related costs affecting small businesses and entrepreneurs.

In a post on the site of the liberal Atlantic blogger, Matthew Yglesias, Alyssa wonders why no reporters are following a very important election-year issue. Namely, how union bosses are attempting to buy a submissive government to pass a laundry-list of anti-worker, anti-business, pro-union boss legislation:

$150 million is a lot of money… Which is why it’s strange that almost three weeks after the Service Employees International Union announced that they’d spend precisely that amount both to swing the elections they’re targeting and to support a massive mobilization to push for health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act in the first 100 days of the new administration, not a single major news organization has written about that decision. . . But it matters not least because SEIU is one of the first organizations to explicitly lay out a post-election plan.

In a recent interview, U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Merkley’s campaign manager admits that Oregon labor bosses were key to Merkley’s defeat of rival Steve Novick in the primary. Merkley’s pro-EFCA stance made his candidacy a natural fit for union bosses eager to increase their membership and dues collected.

Q: Was it hard to get organized labor on board?

Jon Isaacs: It wasn’t difficult. I mean, we had to work hard at it. We had to earn it, I guess is the right way to characterize it. The Novick campaign tried to characterize it as an inside job, but we had to do about 40 meetings to get that endorsement.

To build a field campaign in the primary, you really rely on your allies. More than you do in the general election, because you have the funds to build a huge statewide field campaign of your own. So I really think that one of the keys to winning this was the work that the Oregon AFL-CIO and the SEIU put into this.

The Washington Post reports on the growing rebellion against SEIU chief Andy Stern.

Unionization, by design, makes individual workers submit to the collective will. The fundamental problem here is a system that doesn’t respect the rights of an individual. And the SEIU under Stern is the logical end for such collectivist enterprises:

This week, a faction of Stern’s union plans its own uprising, not to secede, but to take a stand against Stern at the group’s 24th quadrennial convention, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Its charges: In Stern’s quest to build the ranks of a movement that has dwindled to less than 8 percent of U.S. private-sector workers, he has crossed the line from leader to autocrat and consolidated power in Washington away from the local chapters.

According to his critics, Stern has made deals behind closed doors with corporations, keeping members in the dark about the trade-offs he has agreed to.

He has quashed dissenting locals by merging them or effectively taking control of them by placing them into trusteeship, they say. He has also made it difficult for locals to file grievances, critics say, effectively stifling the most powerful tool union members have: their voices.

Denver Post columnist Al Lewis reports on something the union bosses really don’t like to talk about; the huge percentage of workers they “represent” who want nothing to do with a union.

Unfortunately, far too many workers are trapped in a union and forced to pay dues just because some workers, at some point, wanted to join. Workers may come and go, but unions can keep their stranglehold long after a majority of workers have decided it’s not worth the price.

And that’s why union boss Ernest Duran is terrified of a Colorado amendment on the ballot that would give workers some measure of freedom:

Half of Colorado’s United Food and Commercial Workers would stop paying union dues if they could, according to the group’s local president.

In a May 1 letter to members, Ernest Duran warns that the right-to-work initiative headed for Colorado’s November ballot would decimate his ranks of dues-paying members.

“If this amendment passes, we will enter all future negotiations divided,” Duran wrote. “In my opinion, we will enter with less than 50 percent of the workers as union members.”

If Amendment 47 passes, no one could be forced to pay union dues. Under current state law, those working at union-organized companies may have to pay union dues whether they like it or not.

Sounds like plenty of Rocky Mountain region grocery workers don’t like it. In the right-to-work state of Wyoming, for example, the UFCW counts less than 40 percent of workers at companies where it has organized, Duran laments.

“Before we start to negotiate, we are divided,” Duran wrote. “Unity is the workers’ greatest strength. Less than 40 percent simply cannot fight effectively for 100 percent of the workers.”

The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that labor unions are taking the lead in trying to smear Senator John McCain. As I noted, why, just the other day, around 38 percent of union members voted Republican in the last presidential election. But instead of addressing workplace issues that most of their membership might care about, the AFL-CIO is spending members’ money targeting McCain and “sponsoring” protestors:

The AFL-CIO, which will sponsor about 50 of today’s anti-McCain demonstrators, is pumping out $53 million worth of anti-McCain information to its union members. Dubbed “McCain Revealed,” the campaign focuses heavily on Rust Belt states where Obama has fared poorly with working-class voters.

Around 38 percent of union members voted Republican in the last presidential election and certainly many will do so again this year. But the Washington Times reports that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) just went into debt to support Hillary Clinton:

The independent political arm of the nation’s largest government workers union has taken out a $1 million loan to replenish its coffers after spending millions of dollars backing Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and criticizing her rival, Sen. Barack Obama, according to campaign records.

Filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show that the union’s political group, AFSCME People, took out a $1 million loan on Feb. 25 from Amalgamated Bank in New York while spending more than $2 million to sway the Democratic contest. The expenditures included more than $200,000 in negative mailers against Mr. Obama in New Hampshire, Iowa and Ohio.