LaborPains.org

The New York Times reports this morning that the labor movement will heed a call from the Obama administration and begin talks to reunite. Steven Greenhouse reports:

The 12 union presidents issued a statement, saying: “The goal of the meeting is to create a unified labor movement that can speak and act nationally on the critical issues facing working Americans. While we represent the largest labor unions, we recognize that unity requires broad participation.”

I’m not the only one surprised by this. Here’s Greenhouse (who seems to have gotten the scoop on this) again:

The call for reunification was something of an about-face for the presidents of the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters and several other unions that quit the A.F.L.-C.I.O., asserting that the federation was stodgy and had not done enough to reverse organized labor?s long decline. The breakaway unions formed a federation called Change to Win.

I’m left guessing how Stern, Sweeney, and others will reconcile their differences. It wasn’t too long ago that Stern and Sweeney went toe-to-toe after the SEIU crashed the Labor Notes conference. Sweeney went so far as telling the NYT “There is no justification, none, for the violent attack orchestrated by S.E.I.U.”

Change to Win has always struck me as a place for Stern to hang his hat before papa Sweeney retired. Ostensibly, Change to Win left the AFL-CIO to refocus their efforts away from political activities and onto organizing new members. But as we’ve seen in the last two elections, Change to Win’s unions have been some of the most politically active.

The Middle Class Opportunity Act (S. 2), which is a “sense of congress” seems to hint at passage of EFCA. Here’s the relevant section:

(6) restoring fairness, prosperity, and economic security for working families by ensuring workers can exercise their rights to freely choose to form a union without employer interference; and

1. Don’t Eliminate Secret Ballots
Labor leaders are trying to pass a bill in Congress that would effectively eliminate employees’ right to vote in private when decided to join a union.

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2. Provide Fair Representation
Union members have filed thousands of complaints against their leaders for failing
to represent their interests. 

3. Allow Growth
Unionized employees are generally denied the flexibility to broaden their experience because of rigid job classifications.

4. End Union Gag Rules
Employees must abide by a set of rules called union ?by-laws? and the union ?constitution.? These rules restrict what employees can say and how they can act. Union ?discipline? is often maintained through fines and penalties for ?conduct unbecoming a union member.?

5. End High Dues
Employees must support the local and international union by paying union dues and fees. In most states, the union can require that you be fired if you refuse to pay them. Union dues and fees range from hundreds to thousands of dollars each year.

6. Provide a Voice
Union rules often deny employees the right to deal directly with an employer about promotions, pay increases, time off, and other incentives and benefits. As a unionized employee, you must go through union ?middlemen? who decide whether to take your request to management.

7. Encourage Merit Pay
Union rules generally oppose pay raises and promotions based on individual employee performance. Mandatory seniority rules typically control who gets increases in pay and who is promoted.

8. End Biased Politics
Federal records indicate that in 2007 and 2008 unions gave 90 percent of their political money to Democrat politicians,³ even though union membership is more politically balanced.

9. Stop Discrimination
Since 2000, labor officials have faced thousands of complaints alleging racial, sexual, and other forms of discrimination filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.²

10. Stop Embezzlement
The U.S. Department of Labor has documented nearly one hundred million dollars embezzled from union members?usually by union officials.¹

¹ Office of Labor-Management Standards, U.S. Department of Labor, ² Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ³ Federal Election Commission records, analyzed by the Center for Responsive Politics

House Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) was on FOX News Sunday yesterday and had this to say about the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act:

WALLACE: But you want to pass the bill, just to be clear here, that the — that unions, that labor, AFL-CIO, is talking about the Employee Free Choice Act, which would — which would create a one-step system, a public vote, on whether or not to unionize.

HOYER: Well, a public vote — you mean a signing of the — of the card which says, “I want the union to represent me.”

WALLACE: Yes, right.

HOYER: What I have said, and I said on your program and will reiterate, that bill that passed the House handily is certainly going to be the base bill. Will there be discussions? There may well be discussions.

And again, I want to stress nobody is precluding having a secret ballot. What we are saying is that an alternative route will be available. And if employees choose to sign — over 50 percent of the employees sign a card saying, “We want to be represented by the union,” that that will be effected.

HOYER: And give me a sense of the time frame? You said maybe not the first month. How soon?

HOYER: Well, I think it will be early. I think it will be early in the year, certainly in the early spring.

Right now, obviously, our major, major focus is getting people back to work, getting our economy moving, making sure that working people can get back to work and we start creating those 3 million jobs that President- elect Obama has talked about. So that’s a priority item for us.

Seth Michaels over at AFL-CIO Now is bragging that the unions have finally found a “businessman” in favor of the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). What a joke.

Michaels’ “businessman” is Joe Diecedue, who is the Arkansas state agent for the American Income Life Insurance Co. (AILI). What Michaels conveniently doesn’t mention is that AILI insures more than 9 million union members ($45 billion in assets) and is the labor movement’s insurer-of-choice. Passage of EFCA would likely add millions of newly-minted union members to AILI’s rolls.

Whether it’s Decedue, or his boss, Roger Smith, calling for passage of EFCA, their pedigree as “businessmen” is questionable at best.

It’s a pretty well known fact that the United Auto Workers operates an award winning golf course and resort in Northern Michigan. FOX News recently reported that “the Black Lake club and retreat, which are among the union’s biggest fixed assets, have lost $23 million in the past five years alone, a heavy albatross around the union’s neck as it tries to manage a multibillion-dollar pension plan crisis.”

But here is a new wrinkle. How much is the club really worth? That’s important because a local county commissioner claims the union owes tiny Waverly Township millions of dollars in property taxes.

According to the union’s LM-2 forms, the club and golf course are worth $33.6 million.

But in 2007 the union protested its tax assessment of $13.7 million, and asked the Michigan Tax Tribunal to lower its total cash value to just $10 million, according to documents I obtained from the Tribunal. Here are the settled amounts, which total $12.3 million.

The difference between the UAW’s LM-2 and the Tax Tribunal filings amount to more than $21 million dollars, which would translate to around $770,000 in property taxes the UAW isn’t paying to Waverly Township each year, if you accept their LM-2 appraisal (the township’s treasurer advised me that the rate is around 3.6%).

Here is how the Waverly Township Supervisor explained it to the Cheboygan County council:

Waverly Township Supervisor Tony Matelski advised that he received notification of a tax appeal by the UAW again this year. He said that two years ago the UAW appealed and was awarded a large reduction. Mr. Matelski said Waverly Township cannot afford to fight the appeal and said it is time the UAW starts paying their fair share here.

Personally, I don’t think anyone–including the UAW–should be paying a cent more in taxes than they legitimately owe. At the same time, something doesn’t add up.

Black Lake’s property assessment isn’t the only thing that doesn’t add up. The operations of Black Lake are conducted by two for-profit entities called UBG, Inc. (golf course) and UBE, Inc. (education center). In 2007, the auditors report for those organizations found that they lost more than $10 million combined (documentation found here and here).

So what was their single largest expenditure? You guessed it, their pension fund! Apparently any pension fund connected to the UAW ends up in disarray, whether it’s $5.9 million dollars at their luxury golf resort, or the multi-billion dollar catastrophe at GM, Chrysler, and Ford.