LaborPains.org

Time for some more union mythbusting. Today’s lesson centers on an old union chestnut about right-to-work laws, which forbid unions from collecting dues without the employee’s individual consent. Such laws, which are on the books in 22 states, are despised by unions. No surprise there. So it is also no surprise that Indiana AFL-CIO President Nancy Guyott is fretting about a proposed right-to-work law in her state, painting an apocalyptic picture for us in the Indianapolis Star:

Wages for all workers are driven down. Both union and non-union workers in states with these laws make an average of $5,538 less a year than those who live in states without the law. …

Overall quality of life declines. In addition to the decreased buying power of those in right-to-work states, the infant mortality rate is 16 percent greater while the poverty rate for all people is 19 percent higher and is 26 percent higher for children. Seven of the 10 poorest states are right-to-work states.

The notion that right-to-work laws lead to lower wages and more poverty is cited constantly by labor leaders. The AFL-CIO calls right-to-work “right-to-work-for-less”.

These claims are transparently preposterous. Guyott does nothing to prove that right-to-work laws actually cause lower wages. All her statistics prove is that right-to-work laws tend to be more popular in the conservative South and West, which are generally poorer than, say, the Northeast.

Causation is always difficult to prove for an issue like this. But as long as we’re trying, a far better indicator than wages or the poverty rate is overall economic growth. And here the numbers are clearly in favor of right-to-work laws. Americans for Prosperity looked at the data and found that right-to-work states had 1.3 percent higher productivity growth, 8.7 percent higher job growth, and 8.1 percent higher economic growth between 1997 and 2007. AFP also found that unemployment tended to be lower in right-to-work states. (And unions are all about creating jobs, right?)

But organized labor knows this. The AFL-CIO studied the figures from 2000 and 2009, and found that income dropped an average of 3 percent in right-to-work states and 5 percent in union shop states. Funny how that never made it into a Richard Trumka stump speech. Not good news for anyone, but worse news for union shop states.

Politifact Wisconsin consulted several economists on this issue. They generally agreed that right-to-work states had higher income growth, though they disagreed over the extent of causation.

What we do know is that right-to-work laws protect worker freedom and make it harder for unions to siphon money from employees. “Right-to-work-for-less”? More like right-to-ignore-the-facts.

Image courtesy of Icky Pic.

This just might be our favorite story of the year so far:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is facing her first big lawsuit after saying the state would try to keep unions out of the Boeing Inc. plant in North Charleston.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Charleston by the International Association of Machinists and AFL-CIO asked for a court order telling Haley and her director of the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation to butt out and remain neutral in matters concerning union activities.

“There’s no secret I don’t like the unions,” Haley said when asked about the litigation. “We are a right-to-work state. I will do everything I can to defend the fact we are a right-to-work state. We are pro-business by nature. I want us to continue to be pro-business. If they don’t like what I said, I’m sorry, that’s how I feel.”

We can’t decide what’s best about this. Is it Haley fearlessly standing up to organized labor? Or is it the comical gumption of the unions who think they can sue someone for expressing an opinion? Actually we have decided: it’s the former. A spokesman for Haley went on to say that if “the machinists are offended that the Governor doesn’t think unions are a good thing in South Carolina, they’re just going to have to get used to it.”

South Carolina has found its very own, personal Chris Christie.

With the economy still struggling, we imagine you’ve never thought to yourself, “What does Richard Trumka think of all this?” Well, you don’t have to.

Trumka shared anyway in his speech at the National Press Club yesterday. There were plenty of highlights from his tirade, but one of our favorites was his conspiracy theory about The Campaign to Destroy Workers:

Trumka continued, “I am talking about the campaigns in state after state, funded by shadowy committees created in the wake of Citizens United, aimed at depriving all workers—public and private sector—of the basic human right to form strong unions and bargain collectively.”

“This attack is fueled by the enthusiasm – and the financial support — of people like Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, and Rupert Murdoch, the billionaire publisher behind Fox News,” Trumka said, “both participate in a committee formed to raise business funds to attack public employees, based on the proposition that firefighters and nurses and medical orderlies are overpaid.”

We also enjoyed Trumka’s seminar on economics:

Trumka blended a sense of patriotism and a desire to continue American economic superiority with warnings of a “kind of 21st century peonage to the lords of finance and energy and global supply chains.”

Yikes. Time magazine pointed out Trumka’s most obvious contradiction: calling for the political rhetoric to be toned down two weeks ago, and using phrases like “crushing” workers’ rights and “destroying” institutions in his speech. Trumka also declared, “We can’t count on the political process here in Washington to get the job done.” Despite his anger at Washington, we can say with confidence that we don’t think this means an end to the AFL-CIO’s big-spending on behalf of the Democratic Party? The Democrats are all they’ve got.

Should you feel compelled, you can watch the full speech here.

Image courtesy of Jobs with Justice.

Don Todd previously headed up the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) under President George W. Bush. Now he’s charging that, instead of keeping unions honest, the Department of Labor is working hand-in-hand with organized labor:

“In a worst-case scenario, your union organizer comes to you, offers you a deal to unionize, you say, ‘no,’ and, the next thing you know, OSHA’s [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] at your door,” Todd said in a phone interview. “Then, Wage and Hour show up, and they want to publicize it. They always find something wrong – it’s like with bed-checks in boot camp in the army.”

Todd said some companies will fight the DOL’s intimidation tactics, but many will give in to unionizing forces.

“It makes it the path of least resistance,” Todd said.

There’s much more where that came from. Click here to read the full story.

The core problem is that the ideologues at DOL see their role as solidarity with, not enforcement of, organized labor.

Image courtesy of gfpeck.

In October 2009, UNITE HERE hotel workers in San Francisco voted to go on strike against several hoteliers. The workers organized ostensibly because they don’t feel the hotels are doing enough for them to cover health care costs.

But the hotels aren’t the only ones supposedly depriving them of benefits. UNITE HERE was caught diverting money from a union benefit fund to spend on their strikes:

After the National Labor Relations Board brought a legal case against Unite Here Local 2, which represents 12,000 hotel employees in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, the union agreed to reverse its actions and restore the monies to the proper funds with interest, hotel spokesman Pete Hillan said in a written statement.

In May, the Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency complained about the practice to the NLRB, and the agency subsequently intervened, Hillan said. Before the union redirected the funds, the money had been going to fund child care and elder care.

“One million dollars is a lot of money to chase business away from San Francisco,” San Francisco Grand Hyatt General Manager David Nadelman said Tuesday at the first of two dueling news conferences at the Union Square Grand Hyatt.

The employees are striking primarily over a reduction in health benefits. Organized labor has reacted with outrage when states don’t fully fund their benefit funds. Alleged attempts to “raid the Social Security and Medicare funds” have also elicited dramatic responses from unions.

There can only be one solution. In order for UNITE HERE to be consistent, it has to go on strike against itself. Any business or government willing to raid its employees’ benefits for cynical purposes must be taught a lesson. That’s their talking point, right?

Image courtesy of Marshall Astor.

This isn’t us spouting off either. This is Bob King, president of the United Auto Workers. King is threatening to go after foreign-owned automakers in the American South with all the subtlety of a Mack truck. “I don’t want to use the word boycott,” he said last week. Our thought: Then don’t. Oh wait, he did.

In a strikingly candid interview today, King admitted that the UAW’s very survival depends on this campaign:

“Here’s the terrible position we’re in (with) autos,” King said. “Because we’ve fallen so far in the percent of workers represented by the UAW in autos,” the union can’t demand big increases because of non-union competitors.

“So if we go in, we dramatically raise fixed costs for Ford, General Motors or Chrysler, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot…. We don’t want to disadvantage the (Detroit 3) companies.”

Welcome to the real world, Mr. King. This is as clear an admission as you’ll ever get from a labor leader that unions drive costs up for businesses and make them less competitive. Foreign automakers have apparently acted as a check on the UAW, keeping its demands reasonable. Now the UAW wants to do away with that check.

Why? It seems the UAW is getting nostalgic:

“What we’re really committed to is creating the UAW of the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s. The UAW of those days was an activist union — members were mobilized all the time,” King said.

Just what the country needs right now: more business disruptions.

Image courtesy of TrevinC.

Where will the National Labor Relations Board extend its tendrils next? Here’s your answer:

The National Labor Relations Board has threatened to sue the states of Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota and Utah over recently passed state constitutional amendments that require secret-ballot elections before a company can be unionized.

The board says the states can’t override federal law that gives workers the option of the so-called card-check method of organizing, which unions favor but many employers oppose. …

The amendments to the four states’ constitutions were approved Nov. 2 by voters in those states. The amendments have already taken effect in South Dakota and Utah and are expected to become effective soon in Arizona and South Carolina.

These amendments were never expected to hold up since they run smack into federal law. But they serve as a good bellwether for how strongly the public opposes mandatory card check. South Carolina’s amendment passed with 86 percent of the vote. South Dakota’s garnered 79 percent support. Likewise, the NLRB’s threat should serve as an indication of just how obsequious the board has become.

Image courtesy of jezarnold.

Is there a coming class war between public-sector workers and private-sector workers? Here’s William McGurn in the Wall Street Journal:

The notion that Wall Street and Main Street are fundamentally at odds with one another remains a popular orthodoxy. So much so that we may be missing the first stirrings of a true American class war: between workers in government unions and their union counterparts in the private sector.

That led Mike Elk of the pro-labor In These Times to wonder if just such a class war is happening with unions in New York City. He elaborates:

However, Gary LaBarbera, the president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of New York recently signed on to the Committee to Save New York, a coalition of business and real estate executives that seek to raise $10 million to raise a campaign in support of incoming New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to take on government employees in New York State by cutting wages and pensions.

Several New York City labor activists who spoke off the record said that LaBarbera is willing to take on public employees over pay and wages in order to free up money from the state budgets to go toward construction projects.

These conflicts are less visible at the national level where private-sector and public-sector union leaders are almost always in agreement with each other. But at the state level, where unions compete over a more limited pot of government money, the divisions are becoming much more stark. Both private and public unions agree that more revenue is needed, preferably from tax increases on the rich. But public-sector unions want that money to go toward lavish pension plans for government employees, while private-sector unions want more infrastructure projects to get their members back to work.

This is what happens when you tie your union’s success to the government, rather than working with businesses to create new jobs and opportunities. Eventually the money runs out.

Image courtesy of Profound Whatever.