LaborPains.org

The unions should really get their talking points on the Employee Free Choice Act straightened out.

While AFSCME President Gerald McEntee is explicitly saying EFCA is “payback,” American Rights at Work is saying the exact opposite. The National Journal reports:

[American Rights at work spokesman Josh] Goldstein dismissed the notion that quick passage of the bill would be a payback. “I would characterize it as a long-overdue need for the middle class,” he said.

Well which is it?

Prof. Richard Epstein

University of Chicago Law School Professor Richard Epstein has a great OpEd in today’s Wall Street Journal suggesting that the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act is unconstitutional. Epstein writes:

Consider card check and the First Amendment. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) today, an employer can insist upon a secret ballot after 30% of workers indicate by card checks their interest in a union. The campaign that follows lets the employer air his views about the downsides of unionization before the vote takes place.

To be sure, the employer’s free-speech rights are limited under the NLRA. He cannot threaten to move or shut down if workers vote for the union. Nor can he promise higher wages if they don’t. But he can make predictions of what will happen if his firm is unionized, and he can point to the reversal of worker fortunes in other unionized firms.

The Supreme Court (unfortunately, in my view) has held that the peculiar labor-law environment justified these abridgements of ordinary speech rights. But it hardly follows that if the government can curtail speech rights, the EFCA can eliminate them. There is simply no legitimate government interest in promoting unionization that justifies a clandestine organizing campaign which denies all speech rights to the unions’ adversaries.

As of yesterday, Sen. Norm Coleman led Democratic challenger Al Franken by 2 votes. The Minnesota Canvassing Board has awarded 253 challenged ballots to Coleman and 439 ballots to Franken.

Depending on who you talk to the Senate is somewhere between 57 and 59 pro-EFCA votes. Sixty votes are necessary to break a Republican filibuster and pass the bill. With Franken in the Senate, all eyes would turn to Sens. Spector and Lincoln, who has both expressed reservations about the bill.

UPDATE: Other news sources are reporting Coleman’s up by 5 votes. I’m going from the vote totals at Minnesota Public Radio, which has been pretty accurate thus far.

UPDATE 2: The Star Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio are both reporting that Franken’s lead is passed 250 votes.

Folks, you can’t make this stuff up. Gerald McEntee told The Washington Times that EFCA was “payback” for labor’s contributions to Obama:

Mr. McEntee said labor must guard against overreaching and should avoid warring with other Democratic-leaning groups – “to turn the other cheek on this and be more interested in the bigger picture,” he said – but he also said unions paid their dues by supporting Democrats and President-elect Barack Obama in this year’s election.

He said they expect that effort to be rewarded with action.

“The payback would be Employee Free Choice Act – that would be a vehicle to strengthen and build the American labor movement and the middle class,” he said.

Can you imagine if a corporate “special interest” came out and said they expected “payback” for their campaign contributions?! There’d be investigations. There’d be calls for resignations. Heck, there’d probably be indictments. But when the unions do it, no one seems to bat an eye.

That’s about all Andy Stern will say regarding the SEIU’s involvement in Blagojevich’s pay-for-play scheme. In fact, you can hear him repeat it over and over again during yesterday’s Talk of the Nation.

Responding to our ad in The New York Times yesterday, the SEIU was equally non-responsive to Lou Dobbs:

The SEIU calls the ad a quote, “distraction”. And without responding directly to the charges made in the ad, the union released the following statement. Quote, “the SEIU will continue working with President-elect Obama, the new Congress, and activists all around this country to help bring change that works to America.” Part of that change would be the Employee Free Choice Act, which would eliminate secret ballots and union organizing efforts.

I bet it was a distraction!

Ever wondered what a UAW contract looks like? Here is all 22 pounds of it (in this case, Ford’s 2,215 page 2007 master contract; Coke can is for scale and because I was thirsty).

I’ll tell you this much, those 2,215 pages don’t include much regarding efficiency and competitiveness. What you’ll find are hundreds of rules, regulations, and letters of understanding that have hamstrung the auto companies for years.

If you’d like to read the contracts for yourself, here they are:

Ford’s 2007 Contract:

• Volume 1: Agreements
• Volume 2: Retirement Plan and Insurance Program
• Volume 3: Supplemental Unemployment Benefit Agreement and Plan, Profit Sharing Agreement and Plan (ha!), Tax-Efficient Savings Agreement and Plan, and UAW-Ford Legal Services Plan
• Volume 4: Letters of Understanding
• Volume 5: Skilled Trades Book

GM’s 2003 and 2007 contracts:

• GM’s 2003 contract (71 megs)
• Changes to GM’s 2007 contract (HT: Factory Rats; full contract not available)

Chrysler’s 2003 and 2007 contracts:

• Chrysler’s 2003 contract (21 megs)
• Changes to Chrysler’s 2007 contract (HT: Factory Rats; full contract not available) 

Today, the Service Employees International Unions (SEIU) finds itself at the center of two evolving pay-for-play political scandals. In Illinois, a high ranking SEIU union official appears to have agreed to run the traps for Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s attempt to sell off President-elect Obama’s Senate seat.

At the same time, an equally appalling scandal is happening in plain sight in Washington. A diverse array of players, including SEIU, President-elect Barack Obama, indicted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and scandal-plagued activist group ACORN, are wielding their political power to push for passage of the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), which would effectively eliminate secret ballot union elections. The bill would expose employees to intimidation and coercion, and should really be called the Employee Forced Choice Act.

Led by SEIU President Andy Stern, the labor union movement has effectively bought and paid for EFCA. Across the country, union political operatives demanded that Democratic politicians agree to support EFCA before receiving unions’ support during the 2008 election. SEIU’s Stern openly admits that he expects payback: “U.S. labor unions, having helped Barack Obama win the presidency, entertain high hopes he will enact their agenda to bolster their negotiating power with employers and increase their numbers after decades of decline.”

The tie that binds these two scandals is SEIU’s central role as political power broker.

Putting Together the Pieces:

• SEIU has set aside $10 million to “unelect” any politician that breaks his or her promise to support EFCA.
   
• SEIU spent $85 million in quid pro quo election support in the 2008 election cycle for politicians who support EFCA. That led the Investors Business Daily Editorial Board to write that Stern considers the $85 million an “investment.” Beyond the SEIU, the labor union movement spent $450 million to elect Obama, Democratic senators, and other politicians that promised to support EFCA. Supporting EFCA was a “litmus test” for receiving union campaign cash.
   
• SEIU’s Illinois Political Action Committee gave Gov. Blagojevich $908,000, making it the single largest campaign contributor for his re-election campaign. In fact, labor unions comprised 9 of his top 15 donors. In turn, Blagojevich signed a state law handing over 49,000 state child care workers to SEIU local 880, which is run by the notorious community organizing group ACORN (no joke). The deal nearly tripled SEIU 880′s income from $7 million in 2005 to $21 in 2007.
   
• There are long-standing ties between the Chicago branch of ACORN (The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now) and SEIU Local 880. Former ACORN treasurer Dale Rathke embezzled more than $900,000 from that organization, while also serving as treasurer of SEIU Local 880. ACORN employees have been convicted of election-related fraud in at least 14 states. According to financial disclosure forms, SEIU 880 has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into ACORN-run organizations, including a lobbying firm headed by Dale Rathke’s brother Wade, who concealed his brother’s embezzlement from board members.
   
• According to the FBI indictment, Blagojevich sought a “three way deal” between the SEIU, the Obama administration, and himself. In the proposed deal, he would give the SEIU and Obama their pick for the vacated Senate seat and in return would receive either a high-paying job in the Change to Win Coalition, or leadership of a new 501(c)4 issue advocacy group with $10 to $20 million to spend.
   
• The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times both report that the unnamed SEIU official was SEIU Local 1 President Tom Balanoff. Blanoff told The New York Times’ Steven Greenhouse: “I can’t comment on anything right now.”
   
• A SEIU official admitted to The New York Times that they helped “ferry some messages for [Blagojevich].” An anonymous senior SEIU official told the Times that “his union was one of many that backed Mr. Blagojevich and has received favors from him. But he said that it was understandable that Mr. Blagojevich would ask the service employees for favor because it was so powerful and was seen as one of the unions closest to Mr. Obama.”
   
• According to the indictment, the SEIU official listened to Blagojevich’s proposal and agreed to “put that flag up and see where it goes.” National Review journalist Jim Geraghty wrote: “It is not clear that the SEIU official did anything illegal in this matter, but his openness to Blagojevich’s request for a bribe certainly does not speak well of him. At the very least, this person is amenable to facilitating high-level bribery.”
   
• In his autobiography, Barack Obama wrote of the SEIU: “I owe those unions.” Obama was referencing the SEIU and other unions’ support for his campaign for the Illinois state legislature. He continued: “When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away.”

Big labor unions have destroyed countless American industries, including the Detroit automakers who are now begging Congress for a bailout. But these unions don’t just control factories and assembly lines. Our public education system is a slow-motion car crash, driven the same union special interests that brought the auto companies to the brink of bankruptcy.

This new video from TeachersUnionExposed.com shows how teachers unions protect bad and incompetent teachers, and block school reform efforts.

Compared to other developed countries, the United States has the worst educational quality per dollar spent on schools, ranking 18th in reading and 28th in math. Millions of American children are being shortchanged by dysfunctional schools, but efforts for education reform are invariably stopped by powerful union interests.

These unions fight tooth and nail against any meaningful change to their comfortable status quo – while students and taxpayers pay the price.

After decades of denial, there is a growing realization around the country that teachers unions’ defense of the status quo cannot continue. A new generation of reformers, including Michelle Rhee, the chief of public schools in Washington DC, are fighting those unions and pushing for renewed accountability and an end to the broken tenure system.