LaborPains.org

I hope you are not surprised. While you were sleeping (or relaxing) over the weekend, President Obama made 15 recess appointments, adding Craig Becker and Mark Pearce, to the National Labor Relations Board.

Thanks to CSPAN’s archive, I am going to let McCain et al. have their say. Watch the video here.

Now I will let the White House have the final word on this one. At the height of the controversy, Craig Becker’s bio read like this on the White House’s website:

“Craig Becker, of Illinois, to be a Member of the National Labor Relations Board for the term of five years expiring December 16, 2014, vice Dennis P. Walsh.”

In the announcement on Saturday, the White House re-released a statement which rehashed his bio from last spring when he was first nominated:

Craig Becker currently serves as Associate General Counsel to both the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations. He graduated summa cum laude from Yale College in 1978 and received his J.D. in 1981 from Yale Law School where he was an Editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school he clerked for the Honorable Donald P. Lay, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.  For the past 27 years, he has practiced and taught labor law. He was a Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law between 1989 and 1994 and has also taught at the University of Chicago and Georgetown Law Schools.  He has published numerous articles on labor and employment law in scholarly journals, including the Harvard Law Review and Chicago Law Review, and has argued labor and employment cases in virtually every federal court of appeals and before the United States Supreme Court.

You can put out that kind of bio when you know you’ve already won, and you have nothing to lose.

From the Wall Street Journal:

“According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), from 1998 to 2008 public employee compensation grew by 28.6%, compared with 19.3% for private workers. In the recession year of 2009, with almost no inflation and record budget deficits, more than half the states awarded pay raises to their employees. [...]

“By the way, nearly this entire benefits gap is accounted for by unionized public employees. Nonunion public employees are paid roughly what private workers receive. What if government workers earned the average of what private workers earn? States and localities would save $339 billion a year from their more than $2.1 trillion budgets. These savings are larger than the combined estimated deficits for 2010 and 2011 of every state in America.” [...]

These stark statistics bring to light contracts that are a testament to successful efforts by unions and a relic of a different economy where people did not noticed the discrepancy quite so much. That’s not the case anymore. The Economist shed light on this last month. New York finds itself on the brink.  California too. The Wall Street Journal continues:

“So if your state is broke, this is a major reason. Eventually, governors, state legislators and city council members are going to have to decide whether protecting America’s privileged class of government workers is a higher priority than funding such core functions of government as public safety. Something has to give. It’s time to close the biggest pay gap in America.”

Image courtesy of Maury McCown.

–Andy Stern reports that ACORN is closing up shop (the other Andy Stern).

–The SEIU District 1199 and UFCW Local 1059 have made it clear that they will no long support Ohio’s U.S. Rep. Zach Space, the state’s only Democratic representative who voted against the health care legislation. Business Week

–The Hill offers this helpful roundup of who needs to watch their backs come November after the health care vote, thanks to the AFL-CIO and the SEIU.

–Denial is not just a river in Egypt……Bruce Corsaw, SEIU Local 620 field services director, said to a local paper that “a coincidental thing that occurred” when 13 of 14 total SEIU employees in the city all were conspicuously absent and sick on the same day during a contentious contract negotiation.

–Anthony Rumore, former longtime president of the Scarsdale, N.Y.-based International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 812 and Teamster District Joint Council 16, has plead guilty to forcing, coercing, and threatening union members into performing “domestic” tasks for him…..like installing home furnishings, running errands for his daughters wedding, taking his wife to the doctor, and delivering their Christmas tree. The list continues ad nauseam. So does my nausea.

–The SEIU-UHW and NUHW trial started yesterday.

ACORN is folding.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that ACORN was on the verge of bankruptcy, and today, an official said an email statement that ACORN will be bringing its activities to a close.  I wonder what the SEIU will do now that an organization that houses some of their locals, trains staff, conducts voter registration, and many other activities, is closing its doors.  The SEIU, which has put millions into ACORN over the last few years will have extra revenue to put towards other things now.

Somehow I’m left thinking that the greatest trick the devil ever did was convincing the world he doesn’t exists.

Coming to your neighborhood soon: the Coalition of Neighborhood Groups for Change Immediately–CNGCI for short. I know, it doesn’t really roll off the tongue like ACORN, but you get the picture.

Among the many things that unions lost and won in the health care bill, section 164 remained intact, unchanged, in the final Reconciliation Act of 2010, H.R. 4872, that passed yesterday. I checked.

So while unions bemoan the loss of their exemption from the excise task–thanks to necessary cost finagling in the final days of the bills’ consideration, they should still be able to sleep at night, dreaming about the $10 billion dollars that bails out their failing health and welfare funds…excuse me… “reinsurance programs.”

From the Washington Examiner in August:

“Section 164 of the Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 provides that the government pay 80 cents on the dollar to corporate and union insurance plans for claims between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees age 55 to 64. Union health insurance funds only have about 30 cents available to cover each dollar of anticipated claims, according to the Lewin Group and other research outfits. If this provision were to be passed as part of the overhaul package favored by the Obama Administration, the $10 billion figure would probably expand overtime as union plans continue to come under financial pressure, Packer said.”

The unions are pleased that this section never got the media attention of, say…..labors’s revoked excise tax exemption; the Teamsters more than all the rest.

Good night, health care fight. Good morning, $10 billion dollars.

Daniel Howes asked an excellent question in the Detroit News yesterday:

What will it take for public-sector labor — with no ties to private, for-profit employers — to understand that the steady gravy train of the past 50 years has ground to a halt?

In autos and steel, the UAW and the Steelworkers finally learned brutal lessons for lagging the competition. In aerospace and airlines, the machinists paid a price. In transportation, the Teamsters got it. In construction, the building trades intuitively understood the price they would pay in membership and the work to sustain them if the bills for their services weren’t competitive. But in government, where a labor monopoly insulated from competition is funded by typically increasing revenue, they never really needed to learn any of those lessons.

“The public-sector unions don’t face the same thing,” Ficano says. Increasingly, they will — even after a national economic recovery starts taking hold, adding jobs and building confidence shaken by the Great Recession.

Two things:

There were certainly some brutal lessons learned. But this isn’t just about private-sector unions “learning their lesson”. It’s more about Big Labor seeing the writing on the wall and looking for a way to get in on the governments “gravy train”.  Think rent-seeking, bank regulation, health care legislation, Craig Becker, “High Road” rule changes. The list goes on and on.

Howes says that public unions will increasingly learn their lesson too.  I’d like to know when.  When competition suddenly appears in a government building? When tax payers have finally had enough? When public pension funds are bankrupt? I guess that’s not too far off after all.

Richard Trumka’s one block sprint to the White House yesterday afternoon paid off. This just in, from Politico:

“A union official says the nation’s largest labor federation is strongly endorsing the Obama administration’s health care overhaul bill and plans to push wavering lawmakers for support. A union official familiar with the proceedings says the AFL-CIO’s executive council has voted virtually unanimously to support the plan.“

According to the Huffington Post:

“The group’s Executive Council met on Thursday to discuss new legislative language that will index the excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” plans to the Consumer Price Index (the rate of inflation) rather than the Consumer Price Index plus one percent. The change, which is in the final bill, will affect more union insurance policies at a quicker rate over time. And in a last-minute meeting at the White House, the union’s president, Richard Trumka fought the new language.”

“He lost that battle. But in the process was able to secure provisions that were enough to temper the discouragement he and his union colleagues felt.”

Trumka had been the last major holdout as the SEIU’s Andy Stern and AFSCME stood staunchly behind the legislation and issued threats to any Democrats who voted against it. To say that securing Trumka’s thumbs up was important would be like saying its important for a fish to have water.  It’s about survival.

Image courtesy of Sante.

Lights. Camera. Infraction.

Teamsters Local 107 will not be able to continue to take advantage of its lucrative position placing Philly Teamsters on sets when movies–and movie stars–come to town. From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

It’s a chance to rub elbows with Hollywood stars. And make good money while doing it. For years, a select group of Teamsters Local 107 members have apparently been on a short list for high-paying jobs on movie shoots in the Philadelphia area. That may change. In response to an investigation alleging favoritism and nepotism in the local’s hiring process, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has appointed an outside trustee to oversee job assignments within the movie and trade-show industries. [...]

And, veteran union members say, there is always overtime. That’s one of the many perks. Gifts from movie stars are another. Jack Nicholson handed out expensive messenger bags after completing a recent project, according to one driver who said watches, shirts, jackets, and traveling cases have also been part of the booty that drivers have collected.

The working conditions aren’t bad, either. “Let’s put it this way,” said a veteran Local 107 member who asked not to be identified because of the ongoing controversy. “I made $150,000 last year, and I gained 50 pounds.” The driver, who estimated he worked about eight months on movies and trade shows, said union members were guaranteed meals while on a movie shoot. [...]

…Local 107 officers, shop stewards, and movie captains have routinely assigned that work to friends and relatives rather than to union members with the most experience and service time. [...]And once at a location to shoot a scene – which could last from a day to weeks – drivers get paid to sit and wait. “You take a book and a pillow,” said Frank Gizzi, a former Local 107 member who filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over the local’s hiring practices.

Image courtesy of Arbron.