LaborPains.org

Across the country, pension funds are in the red, especially union managed, owned, and operated pension funds. And in California, pensions for state and local workers are an enormous portion of local budgets and tax payer dollars.

The union-beleaguered mayor of San Francisco and Supervisor Sean Elsbernd are backing a proposal for San Francisco’s voters to decide whether they want to get the skyrocketing costs of pensions and health care under control.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Francisco voters may soon have the opportunity to decide major changes to the city’s pension and retiree health care systems – both of which have seen their costs skyrocket as the city grapples with consecutive years of major budget deficits.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, with support from Mayor Gavin Newsom, will introduce a charter amendment at today’s Board of Supervisors meeting that would drastically reshape the city’s pension system. Ten years ago, the city paid $383.7 million to health insurance for active and retired workers, retirement contributions and Social Security. This year’s tab is $890 million, a 132 percent increase. In fiscal year 2013-14, the projected amount is $1.4 billion. Driving the rise is the overall increase in health care costs and the poor performance in investments during the economic downturn.

The key components of the measure would create a budget/fund set aside specifically for health benefits and pension, require new public service hires to contribute more to their own pension funds (a jump of 1.5 percentage points), remove pensions contributions percentages from contract negotiations, and recalculate how pensions are dolled out, namely averaging the three final years of pay, instead of relying on the final year of pay (which would cut back on spiking, a practice whereby employees receive one year pay jumps in their final year to set their pension much higher)

Further endearing Mayor Newsom to them, the SEIU caroled around town calling Newsom a Grinch. See the off-key video here, thanks to NBC.

What is the rallying cry, you ask?

Question: “Mayor Newsom is WHO?”

Answer: “The Grinch”

Not so much for San Francisco’s tax payers, who might have a chance this year to reign in how much of their salaries is going to pensions for others, and how much is going into the abyss of the city budget.

My heart just grew three sizes.

Jimmy Hoffa hates the health care bill in the Senate.  He laid out exactly why in a press release yesterday.  You can’t fight a hate like this.

From the Teamsters Press release yesterday:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Teamsters on Thursday announced their support for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) amendment to eliminate the proposed excise tax on insurance plans from the Senate health care reform proposal. The 40 percent tax would be levied on family plans worth more than $23,000 and individual plans worth more than $8,500, starting in 2013. As those thresholds rise with inflation, more and more plans would be subject to the tax.

“Millions of working Americans will pay thousands of dollars more in taxes under the Senate’s proposal to finance health reform,” said Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa. “Millions more will have their health benefits cut, even if they don’t belong to a union.” Nearly two-thirds of employers would cut health benefits rather than pay the excise tax, according to a recent study by Mercer Consulting. Another 23 percent would pass the cost of the tax on to employees. Seven percent would simply terminate their plans.

“The idea that this tax will curtail rising premiums is just dead wrong,” Hoffa said. “We much prefer the House plan, which would require the wealthiest Americans to pay back part of the tax cuts they have been given over the past decade.” Many plans are expensive because they cover workers in dangerous occupations, because they are in regions where insurers have near-monopoly power, or because they cover a group that’s older than the general population.”

And it wouldn’t be a compelling union press release if there wasn’t a story to drive home the point. Just saying:

“Gary Willett, a member of Teamsters Local 730, spoke against the tax at a news conference with Sen. Sanders. “The last thing middle-class working families need is to pay more taxes,” said Willett, who works in a Giant Food warehouse in Jessup, Md. “I’m working 50-60 hours a week of hard, physical labor, loading trucks in a warehouse. I’m paying income tax on 50-60 hour weeks. “When we negotiated our contract with Giant Food, we gave up part of a wage increase to maintain our health benefits at the same level.”

“My plan isn’t a Cadillac plan. I pay 20 percent of major medical charges and I have an annual deductible of $200. If this tax goes into effect, the cost of my plan will exceed the threshold in 2017. I expect my employer will pass that tax on to me or my benefits will be cut. That means I will either be paying $230 more in that first year than I’m already paying or my benefits will be reduced. I urge the Senate to tax those who can afford a Cadillac, not hard-working middle-class families.” [...]

We have written about Jimmy Hoffa and health care before, (like HERE) but this press release, to me, seems like his strongest statement yet. With a 40% excise tax on health care plans exceed a certain limit, who can blame him.

Exhibit #28 this year for an American city with a cash-strapped budget, Chicago, is home to the latest “take no prisoners” efforts of the SEIU. Last month, the Chicago Park District unveiled an unpopular compromise proposal that would preserve jobs and save money that the District doesn’t have. According to the Chicago Sun Times:

In that proposal, the Park District proposed laying off 11 workers, zapping 42 vacant positions and proposing 12 unpaid furlough days for those in unionized jobs. But several unions, including the Service Employees International Union, are balking at those furlough days, according to the Park District. An SEIU representative did not return a call for comment. Without the concessions, 100 jobs could go away, including 60 positions that would remain vacant and 40 layoffs, said Park District spokeswoman Jessica Maxey-Faulkner. The jobs that could be slashed range from plumbers and carpenters to fitness instructors.

She said the job cuts certainly could mean programs and possibly park hours will be scaled back. “When you get into 100 people, when you get into those kinds of numbers, you could get into the people who open and close the parks,” she said.

Not that I want to be put on unpaid furlough for two weeks (Although frankly I would be whitewater kayaking the entire time), but 11 layoffs versus 40 layoffs seems huge. Maybe the SEIU should consider compromising to keep the parks open.

Image courtesy of -nathan.

It was named in Minneapolis in August, but yesterday it was finally born.

National Nurses United, as it is called, in the middle of their founding convention in Scottsdale, AZ, (Dec. 7-8). And who exactly is National Nurses United? It’s funny, but the San Francisco Chronicle piece from today doesn’t even need editorializing:

“Nurses from three unions, including the powerful California Nurses Association, have founded a new national union to influence national health care policies and try to extend California’s patient ratio law into other states. Organizers said the 150,000-member National Nurses United, the largest professional union for registered nurses in the country, will also flex its power to push for a stronger voice in the health care overhaul process going on in Congress and the expansion of representation for nonunion nurses.”

“The merger, approved Monday at a convention in Phoenix, combines the California union, which has 83,000 members in several states, with the Massachusetts Nurses Union, with 23,000 members, and the 45,000 members from the United American Nurses, who work primarily in the Midwest. The unions will continue to operate separately, but will be aligned under the larger umbrella of National Nurses United.”

I felt compelled to put together this To-Do List for the modern labor movement:

Step 1: Ignore local union members needs. Check.

Step 2: Centralize power by joining together with other unions around the country. Check.

Step 3: If local union members protest, decertify (or abandon) them. Check.

Step 4: Notice that a “Local” isn’t very local anymore. Check. (Just kidding. No one notices this one.)

Step 4: Have a convention congratulating each other for collusive political strength. Check.

Step 5: Select a kitschy, annoying, hyperbolic name. Check.

Step 6: Make sure that the new name makes anyone unfamiliar with the union immediately think of the Bolsheviks…and sickles. Check.

Image courtesy of east_lothian_museum.

From the National Legal and Policy Center:

After five years, a Chicago voting scandal, union-style, has reached its final conclusion. During the course of hearing on August 27 through September 29, six former officials of International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 743 in Chicago were sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois in connection with their roles in rigging local elections of 2004. Sentenced were longtime President Robert Walston, Recording Secretary (and briefly, President) Richard Lopez, and four other union officers, Thaddeus Bania, Cassandra Mosley, David Rodriguez and Mark Jones, respectively, the union’s comptroller, business agent, organizer and head organizer during the Walston era.

As reported several times in Union Corruption Update, the Local 743 Unity slate, led by Walston, concocted a scheme to rig the mailing of ballots to rank and file for the October 2004 elections. Balloting was close, indeed too close for members of the opposition New Leadership slate, who believed the fix was in. They demanded a recount. Walston’s people, fearing potential court action, obliged the request. A December recount also resulted in a Unity victory. This time, the New Leadership people, led by Richard Berg, took their case to the U.S. Department of Labor, who filed suit in federal court challenging the results. A judge in July 2007 ordered another election to take place that fall, which the New Leadership slate won. The following March, Walston would be named as co-conspirator in a 14-count superseding indictment. Worse yet, he was indicted with another person in a separate case for alleged involvement in a Texas cocaine deal that never came off.

Read the rest of the story HERE. And read the ruling from the Department of Labor HERE.

Image courtesy of stallio.

SEIU’s president Andy Stern spent Friday gazing into the dying embers of his vision of how “pay to play” is supposed to work.  See, when the SEIU contributed at the very least $60 million to Obama’s campaign, not only did Stern feel like that should be enough of a deposit to get the Employee Free Forced Choice Act passed in a timely manner, he felt like it would be plenty to get health care passed as well. No hiccups, no pausing, full speed ahead.The union-political complex should function like a well oiled machine.

But EFCA was mired in controversy from the get-go, from card check to binding arbitration. (For some reason, Americans cherish freedom and democracy.  Go figure.)

Then health care legislation comes along, with all sorts of goodies written in for unions, like bailouts to the tune of millions for their failing pension funds, and the fact that literally millions of Americans might soon find themselves suddenly eligible to be unionized if it passes.  But the end of the year is approaching and Andy Stern is getting anxious again.

On ABC Friday, Stern shared the following:

Regarding the union agenda: “We’re missing kinds of other deadlines.”

Regarding the health care legislation: “The Senate better act or it will be Obama’s Waterloo.”

Obama’s Waterloo? Stern is not the only one saying that.  But with a less-than-opaque union agenda surrounding the health care legislation and more people picking up on exactly the role Andy Stern would like unions to play in the future of employment, policy, and health care in the United States, Andy Stern may be the one who seals the deal on it’s fate.

The SEIU’s strangle hold on health workers in Southern California took a major blow this week, thanks a ruling by the NLRB, and much to the joy of the NUHW.

The LA Times reports:

A federal labor board decision this week has given a major victory to a breakaway union vying with the giant Service Employees International Union to represent tens of thousands of California healthcare workers. On Tuesday, the National Labor Relations Board called for elections to determine who has the right to represent some 2,300 Kaiser healthcare workers employed at various sites in Southern California. [...]

The fight pits perhaps the nation’s most influential labor leader, Andy Stern, president of the SEIU, against a former subordinate, Sal Rosselli [...]

Although Tuesday’s decision directly affects only about 2,300 healthcare professionals, the NUHW has dozens of similar challenges pending in its effort to woo tens of thousands of workers from the SEIU affiliate, United Healthcare Workers — West. This ruling, Rosselli said, could be the first of many allowing elections at SEIU healthcare shops, giving workers a chance to drop the SEIU for the NUHW at Kaiser and other employers statewide.

For a scathing indictment of the SEIU’s unfair labor practices in LA, read this account by former labor leader Paul Krehbial in the SEIU, now firm supporter of the NUHW. If only these practices were limited to the SEIU.

Image courtesy of VictoriaPeckham.

Some things show up in my newsfeed and they just can’t be ignored. Like the AP article below.  Just one more example of a union not putting the health and well-being of our nation’s citizens first. From this morning:

PHILADELPHIA — Teamsters who work at American Red Cross blood services facilities in Philadelphia are on strike.

Kind of like that time when the SEIU effectively held a hospital hostage to further their own agenda. Teamsters: FYI, if there exists in the universe just one union NOT to take your cues from, it would be the SEIU.

UPDATE (12-04-09):

The American Red Cross won a court injunction against the Teamsters to get them back to work, convincing the judge that patients lives were at risk. From the press release yesterday:

The American Red Cross won a court injunction today against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 929 after its members illegally blocked vehicles from leaving the facility, interfering with blood shipments to local hospitals. The Teamsters initiated a work stoppage against the American Red Cross Blood Services Penn-Jersey Region earlier today. The union represents approximately 110 Red Cross employees who pack, ship and deliver blood to area hospitals, assist at blood drives and help maintain our facility. The Red Cross says union leaders are trying to disrupt the Red Cross Blood Services operations by going on strike.

The Red Cross says these tactics put patients at risk and required them to take legal action to stop this conduct. Doctors at area hospitals are now waiting for the safe delivery of Red Cross blood and blood products. Earlier today, the Red Cross says it had to inform union members that a two-year-old child’s life depended on our blood delivery before they would allow a Red Cross vehicle to exit the yard to get the necessary blood products to the hospital. At that point, the Red Cross felt it had no choice but to take the unusual step of going to court in order to seek relief from the union’s disruptions.