LaborPains.org

From the Miami Herald:

Ninety-seven percent of the 16,000 nurses and other healthcare workers of SEIU Healthcare Florida have voted to merge with the 350,000 members of Local 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the union announced. Local 1199 represents healthcare workers throughout New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

“The voices of Florida’s healthcare workers to advocate for their patients and professions just grew 30 times more powerful,” said Monica Russo, president of the Florida union.  The merger goes into effect July 1. It does not effect the SEIU local for Jackson Health System employees.

To Ms. Russo’s point, she may feel 30 times more powerful, but I am pretty sure that their voices are now 30 times more diluted. They are a drop in the very large bucket known as the SEIU.

Image courtesy of J. Weissmahr.

It’s summer time, and that means it’s time for America’s children to get to their summer reading!

That is, unless you live in Santa Cruz, California, where the SEIU’s negotiations with the city may shut down local libraries for three months:

“All but one county library could close for three months, smaller branches could be shuttered permanently or hours at all branches slashed further if managers and union workers do not reach an agreement to save money on this year’s budget. [...] Basically we’re coming up with plan B or C or D,” said Library Director Teresa Landers. “We have our fingers crossed that the city and SEIU will be able to come to an agreement.”

“Library leaders find themselves in a unique position because while the Joint Powers Board governs 10 branches from Santa Cruz to La Selva Beach, library workers belong to the city of Santa Cruz chapter of SEIU. Therefore employees negotiate their contracts with city leaders, not library leaders. As a result, Landers said, issues that hold up talks at the city level affect the libraries, too. Santa Cruz is in talks with SEIU to help save $3.7 million from next year’s city budget.

“Landers said she and board members are hoping that SEIU agrees to continue concessions made to save money last year, which include postponing 5 percent raises and taking an unpaid day off each week. The library’s budget next year is just under $11 million, a drop from $11.3 million.”

Given what happened in Palo Alto in the fall when another library closed due to a strike, I recommend that California’s children save themselves and horde books. Perhaps they could pick up my Grandfather’s book, “Unions–Who Needs Them?”

In a few hundred words, Charles Lane lays waste to the argument that $23 billion is needed to close the gap in school finances and save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers. You really should read the whole thing — go on, it’ll only take a couple of minutes — but here’s a taste:

Start with that scary number of 300,000 teacher layoffs, which has been bandied about in numerous newspaper articles. The sources for it are interested parties: teachers unions and school administrators, whose national organizations counted layoff warning notices that have already been sent out this spring and extrapolated from there. Notably, however, even these sources usually describe the threatened positions as “education jobs” – not teachers. That’s because the figures actually include not only kindergarten through 12th grade classroom instructors, but also support staff (bus drivers, custodians, et al.) and even community college faculty. And 300,000 is the upper end of a range that could be as low as 100,000. Nationwide, there are about 3.2 million K-12 public school teachers. …

Given these facts, it’s unclear how the bill’s supporters came up with its $23 billion price tag. It works out to about $77,000 per job saved in the 300,000-layoff scenario, but $230,000 per job if only 100,000 jobs are at risk. Maybe that’s why the bill’s fine print allows states to spend any excess funds left over from education hiring on other state employees. By the way, the bill distributes funds to states according to how many residents they have, not how many threatened layoffs.

Emphasis mine, because it’s an interesting little tidbit. Why do you think the national unions are pushing for this bill? Sure, in part it’s because teachers unions are pretty powerful. But who do you think is going to benefit from those “excess funds”? In all likelihood it’ll be more public sector union employees…you know, like the ones in California that are likely to bankrupt the state.

Like I said, you should read the whole thing.

Photo courtesy of UCI Works

When I see quotes like this from politicians and labor leaders, I think that this is less like the resurrection of EFCA (Frankenstein style) and more like a haunting that just won’t go away. Which do you think is more apropos?

Pretending like EFCA isn’t dead will not make it less dead.

From Richard Trumka over the weekend at the UAW conference, as reported by the Detroit Free Press:

Trumka also called on UAW members to intensify phone calls, letter writing and other lobbying of their congressional representatives and senators to pass the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill, which the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and most companies vigorously oppose, would simplify the process for workers to call for union representation and limit certain tactics employers now use to discourage workers from voting in a union.

“We won’t quit until the EFCA becomes the law of the land and everyone who wants a union can have a union,” Trumka said.

Rep. John Lewis seconded that:

During a speech to UAW delegates at Cobo Center this afternoon, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., urged the union to continue to fight for labor law reforms, such as the Employee Free Choice Act.

“I do not understand it. … We control the White House. We control the Senate. We control the House of Representatives,” Lewis said. “Let’s pass it and pass it now.” Lewis, also a civil rights leader, applauded the UAW for its past history of supporting civil rights struggles.

Image courtesy of Stephen G.

Yesterday, it was revealed that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transportation Authority was forced to rehire a couple of bus drivers who they had fired. One was involved in an accident in which he killed the driver of another car, the other assaulted an off-duty police officer dressed as McGruff the Crime Dog. It’s a sign of the silliness of the arbitration process that a driver can be involved in a fatal accident and not only be rehired but given back pay. It’s a sign of sickness within the world of labor unions that questioning this sequence of events can be compared to endorsing slavery:

On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Jackie Jeter
JackieJeter@atulocal689.org wrote:
> Apparently you believe in slavery. Individuals that belong to this union
> have the right to fight for fair and equal treatment. Currently you and
> others only know one side of the story, that’s the side that WMATA chooses
> to tell you and apparently you choose to believe. Too bad! An arbitrator
> made a ruling based on the information presented by both sides, not just
the
> union and not just WMATA.
>
> In this country workers still have rights. Join a union so you can
broaden
> your knowledge on what your rights as a worker is suppose to be.
>
> Jackie Lynn Jeter, President
> Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 689
> 2701 Whitney Place
> Forestville, MD 20747
> 301-568-6899
> jackiejeter@atulocal689.org

That’s the response that DC metro blogger “Unsuck DC Metro” received when they emailed the president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689. That’s right: Suggesting that a driver who was involved in a fatal accident — a driver who carries our children and our loved ones to and from school and work every single day — be fired is tantamount to slavery. Words fail.

Ever since Blanche Lincoln forced Bill Halter’s rout on Tuesday, I’ve wanted to hear what newly-elected, baby-out-with-the-bathwater, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry had to say. I was not disappointed. From Politico:

“SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, who last month replaced Obama ally Andy Stern, shrugged off the suggestion that the movement lost prestige by throwing so much money at a losing candidate in such a high-profile race.

“We’d do it again in a heartbeat,” she told POLITICO. “This isn’t about the White House, and it isn’t about us. This race was about working people all around this country who’ve lost jobs or watched their paychecks shrink.” On Thursday, in another assertion of independence from the Obama-led Democratic establishment, the SEIU plans to deliver 30,000 signatures on behalf of an independent challenger to Kissell, a freshman who voted against health care reform.

Shrinking paychecks? As a reminder, not all paychecks are created equal. Perhaps that is why the SEIU has their purple eyes set on the public sector?

According to new numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “[t]otal employer compensation costs for private industry workers averaged $27.73 per hour worked in March 2010.  Total employer compensation costs for State and local government workers averaged $39.81 per hour worked in March 2010.”

And we wonder why state budget’s are in the red.

Credit where credit is due: This is a pretty smart, if entirely devious, tactical move by the Chicago Teachers Union.

In what may go down in history as a brilliant move destined to be used by bargaining units across America, the Chicago Teachers Union has played the safety card. Citing health and safety concerns, the nation’s third largest teachers union has filed suit to prevent the Chicago Public Schools from increasing the number of students it can put inside a classroom based upon city building codes.
If the suit is successful, CTU estimates the it could save as many as 3,000 teaching positions and keep class sizes manageable.

Some background is in order. Chicago’s Teachers Union has been locked in a struggle with the city over funding issues. Faced with budget overruns, the teachers were given a choice: Give up a series of scheduled pay raises or suffer from thousands of layoffs and increased class sizes. New York City’s Michael Bloomberg, faced with a similar problem, chose to forego the raises, keeping teachers on the job while saving the city hundreds of millions of dollars.

Chicago’s teachers, meanwhile, want to have their cake and eat it, too. Undaunted by the $600 million shortfall in the city’s budget, they are refusing to accept a delay in their pay raises and have now begun abusing the court system to get their way. Even the Huffington Post is dismayed by their actions:

Chicago Public School teachers are already among the best compensated in the country. Right now, starting Chicago elementary teachers earn $45,450 for teaching a 5 hour and 45 minute instructional day, 174 days per year — the minimum allowed under Illinois law. First-year New York elementary teachers, by comparison, earn $45,530 for teaching a 6 hour and 30 minute instructional day, 180 days per year.

Chicago’s 4 percent pay hikes — which are locked into contracts negotiated before the onset of the Great Recession — would bring total starting pay for a CPS teacher to $47,266. Using some back of the envelope math,* the adjusted, hourly wage of a CPS teacher is 69 percent higher than that of a New York teacher who resides in Queens. Without the hike, CPS teachers would be only a paltry 62 percent richer than their Queens, New York counterparts.

Though no Bloomberg-style commonsense has yet penetrated Chicago, the fiscal realities are the same as New York’s. This means that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and CPS chief executive Ron Huberman have three options to deal with rising personnel costs: invoke the union contract’s emergency clause to force a renegotiation, implement a doomsday budget that devastates the public schools, or tap previously undiscovered oil reserves underneath the city.

In a time of double digit unemployment, when private sector employees are happy to trade job security for pay raises, it takes some chutzpah for the CTU to try and maintain a stranglehold over the city’s schools with incredibly devious maneuvers like this.

Photo courtesy of Enemy Walrus

Obama Official: “Organized labor just flushed $10 million down the toilet.“