Yesterday, the “public option” of health care reform let out its last breadth (at least for now).  It died in the Senate Finance Committee, publicly scorned, and privately–who knows.  Perhaps a few tears were shed.

Among those who watched its rapid decline, labor unions find little reason to mourn, posits an opinion piece today in the Wall Street Journal. They didn’t really want reform after all, says writer Holman Jenkins, Jr.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Union members not only like the tax-free, open-ended health -care benefits they’re used to getting. More important and often overlooked, organized labor itself is increasingly made up of health-care workers who benefit from an incentive system that artificially force-feeds great gobs of GDP into the industry’s maw.

Their long retreat elsewhere in the economy may continue unabated, but unions are steadily growing their clout in government and health care, two sectors that increasingly overlap and would become even more overlapped under the bills in Congress.

Is this why some unions publicly stated that they wanted health care reform–all or nothing, despite public outcry and a desire for compromise?

Thanks to a floundering economy, the trucking industry has been hemorrhaging workers, and YRC Worldwide has had a terrible year.  Labor contract negotiations were painful throughout the summer, and YRC received generous concessions from its employees at New Penn just to stay afloat.  The result was lost jobs and an uncertain future for the trucking giant.  From Logistics Management:

A Reuters report cited sources within YRCW as saying the job reductions were substantial and being made across many departments.  [...] This original agreement went through in early August—and approved by Teamsters at YRCW—is comprised of a 5 percent incremental cut and an 18 month freeze on union pension fund contributions. YRCW officials said these measures are expected to save the company roughly $45 million per month through the rest of 2009 and increase to roughly $50 million per month in 2010.  […]

“YRCW is looking at all avenues to keep the company alive,” said Satish Jindel, president of Pittsburgh-based SJ Consulting, in a recent interview. “It does not mean YRCW is going to be shutting down tomorrow, but it does not mean they are out of the woods and on a path to recovery. This gives them a few more days and weeks of extra life and how they perform in that time will determine whether things continue or come to an end.”

The pension fund freeze that YRC negotiated this summer feeds into the much larger disaster-waiting-to-happen.  YRC Worldwide is part of an aggregate pension fund with Teamster’s Central State Pension Fund that is billions of dollars in the hole.  Some time soon, those retirees will coming calling, only to find that there is no money in the funds.  If YRC goes under, they default on what some estimate to be a $4 billion obligation.

Read more in Reuters.

Despite Teamster’s stranglehold on UPS, FedEx has yet evaded their grasp.

Monday was the day of the highly anticipated vote by Fed-Ex shareholders.  Should they keep the job of chairman and CEO the same, or separate them, as the Teamsters have so desperately wanted FedEx to do?

The answer: A sizable  majority of shareholders said no, and FeEx Founder Fred Smith lives to fight another day.

But no floods or famines here.  FedEx has seen 66.95% percent returns in the last ten years–enough to keep shareholders very happy. By contrast, Teamster’s ally UPS has suffered minus 5.5% percent returns since it went public in 1998.

Click HERE to read more.

The SEIU Local 1000 wants every state worker in California to know that they can take Columbus Day off, regardless of what the Department of Personnel Administration says.  Part of the approved budget from February, the holiday was to be eliminated along with Lincoln’s birthday, but the SEIU says this contract cannot be enforced. 

Everyone better be in their desks come next Monday. From KCRA News:

“While it is true that the Legislature changed the law, this was done as part of contract negotiations where we exchanged Columbus Day and Lincoln’s Birthday for two personal days,” wrote SEIU Local 1000 President Yvonne Walker in an e-mail sent to members on Friday.”When the Governor broke his word and failed to get our contract ratified by the Legislature, he also lost the ability to implement the new terms of our new contract. Therefore, our current contract, which grants Columbus Day as a holiday, is still in force.

“In response, the Department of Personnel Administration posted a notice on its Web site warning workers that they must use personal leave time to take off Columbus Day, and that if they do not get prior approval they will not be paid and will be considered absent without leave.”The two state holidays were eliminated,” governor’s spokesman Aaron McLear told KCRA 3 Friday evening. “It was passed in a budget. It was nothing to do with any contract.”

Image courtesy of Jippolito.

I think it is only fitting to announce the results of the self imposed union led “semantics game” that took place in Palo Alto, CA, yesterday.

About 300 city employees, or 60% of the Local, did not show up for work and marched around in front of City Hall all day screaming “We are Palo Alto, support your city workers.” The Mercury News reports:

The SEIU employees who skipped work marched and chanted at City Hall and the Utility Department’s Municipal Service Center. They billed the occasion as a “volunteer day” and spent a few hours sweeping and picking up trash at city parks and streets. Early in the morning, KCBS radio reported that a crowd of picketers in front of the Municipal Service Center backed up traffic on Highway 101. “(The strike) is unfortunate and not helpful,” said Rob de Geus, a division manager for recreation and golf services who is on the city’s negotiating team. “We have not reached an impasse at this point, and we would like to sit down and continue our negotiations.”

When the strike (by any other name) was announced on Tuesday and it was announced that they would be taking this leave of absence on behalf of the good people of Palo Alto, the Mercury News reported:

Brian Ward, who is on the union’s contract-negotiation team, said workers will spend Thursday afternoon […] reading to children at the Main Library.

Reading to children? Turns out, when librarians don’t show up for work, it’s hard to open libraries. During the strike:

City libraries were particularly affected. All but Mitchell Park were closed, and its hours were reduced. The Utilities Customer Service Center at city hall also was closed. Though other city facilities remained open, they were short-staffed and some services were limited. At the libraries, a steady stream of patrons walked up to find a “closed” sign on the door. Many said they had heard about the strike but didn’t realize it would impact the libraries. [...]

Lisa Norman said she comes to the Main Library once a week to pick up new books for her 6-year-old son Dylan’s home schooling. “It’s an effort to get here, and then when you get here you’ve got to reschedule your whole program,” she said, as Dylan slid books into the return slot. Back at city hall, picketer and Mitchell Park library specialist Andrew Joice said he would tell inconvenienced residents: “I’m sorry, but please support us. We need your support.”

I guess the children will have to wait for another day.

Image courtesy of ciro@tokyo.

It is a strange day when the Teamsters and The New York Times vehemently agree on something. . . and President Obama disagrees.

Obama nominee Anne Ferro has been the president and CEO of the Maryland Motor Truck Association since 1997 and serves as Maryland’s Motor Vehicle Administrator from 1997 to 2003.  Her friends say she has a passion for highway safety; her enemies make sure no one  forgets she is technically an industry lobbyist. Notwithstanding that Craig Becker, nominated to the National Labor Relations Board, was counsel to the SEIU, and and UNITE HERE lobbyist Patricia Campos now works in the Executive Office of the President, among others.

The problems began when President Obama named her to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, an agency that has been roundly criticized since its creation in 2000.

The most contentious issue on the table for the agency since its founding has been hours of service.  In 2003, the agency introduced new regulations that reduced driving time by one hour (from 15 hours to 14 hours), but extended consecutive hours from 10 hours to 11 hours.   Ferro supports new hours-of-service rules, as does much of the trucking industry who are angered what they see as unreasonable constraints.

However, the Teamsters do not support her, and as it turns out, neither does The New York Times, who not only called her a “peculiar choice” with a “disqualifying” record, but cited her support of a policy Bush supported last year. Even the Senators piled on yesterday.

Image courtesy of Stian Olsen.

UPS has been gunning to unionize FedEx employees for a while now. But UPS will have its own problems to deal with soon enough–a possible distraction from their shameless rent-seeking scheme against FedEx.

Teamster’s UPS airline mechanics, spread out at 80 airports across the country, recently voted by a 90% margin to authorize a strike thanks to stalled contract negotiation that have been ongoing for 3 years. While this does not mean they will necessarily go on strike during the Christmas season, UPS’s busiest time of time of year, it makes the threat all the more real and all the more frightening for UPS.  Perhaps UPS’s infatuation with their union will wear off?

The irony could be thick this holiday season. Because of a struggling economy, President Obama is in a unique position.  He may choose to delay or mitigate the strike by labeling UPS an “essential transportation service,” and put UPS squarely in the same boat that keeps FedEx from being unionized under current law.

The classification (that UPS and Teamsters hate) this holiday season might be the very thing that keeps 1,200 airline mechanics from locking down a company with more than 250,000 employees and huge shipping partners like J.C. Penney– a company already planning Christmas contingencies just in case.  In 1997, the strike cost UPS a whopping $850 million in revenue and lasted 15 days.

I just can’t see why FedEx wouldn’t want to put themselves in UPS’s shoes. Merry Christmas in September.

Image courtesy of Ian Fuller.

Palo Alto city workers are taking a “self-imposed furlough day” on Thursday.  The city says that it’s just an insulting way of saying a strike. The Mercury News reports:

It may sound like a semantics game, but the difference illustrates how far apart from an agreement the city is with the Service Employees International Union Local 521, which announced Tuesday that its roughly 600 Palo Alto workers would take a “self-imposed furlough day” Thursday to save the city $281,000. The SEIU, which represents non-management workers at City Hall and in the utilities department, remains locked in negotiations with the city almost three months after its last contract expired. Union leaders are billing the “volunteer day” as an innovative way to help the city close its budget deficit while demonstrating their members’ dedication to the city.

City officials don’t see it that way. “SEIU employees cannot choose en masse to take an unauthorized day off from their work responsibilities,” City Manager James Keene said in a statement. “The city depends on its employees to show up to work and do their job every day. The safety, health and welfare of our residents depends on it.”

Call it what you will; union members won’t be at their jobs on Thursday, leaving non-union employees with twice the work.  Instead, say labor leaders, they will be volunteering around town, reading books to children in libraries, and cleaning up creeks.  Of the 617 workers the SEIU claims will be absent, here’s to hoping they will not all cram into the Palo Alto Downtown Library.

Three months have passed since the workers contracts expired and the SEIU Local 521 and the city could not be less in agreement over contracts if they tried.  Unless this is them trying. Read more from Palo Alto Online.

Image courtesy of Philo Norlund.