LaborPains.org

TSA agent daydreaming about his future union representation. (Photo credit: TheeErin)

UPDATE (04/21/2011): The New York Times reported Wednesday that a runoff election will be held over the next two months since neither the AFGE nor NTEU received a majority of the TSA screeners’ votes. Read more.

The Federal Times reports that Wednesday TSA screeners’ online votes will be tallied to determine the winner of what’s being billed “the largest union election in the history of the federal workforce.” At stake is up to $16 million in annual union dues from 43,000 TSA employees.

Will it be the American Federation of Government Employees or the National Treasury Employees Union that takes home the grand prize? The $16 million question will be answered when the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) tallies and releases the votes sometime today.

And built-in to the election process is a chance for the losing union to appeal the election results to the FLRA, the Federal Times notes. Before the votes have been tallied, there is already some grumbling about a hundred or so ballots that might have been cast by TSA screeners who left the agency or have been promoted out of the bargaining unit.

Labor unions will need to devise a new mechanism for collecting dues from unwilling government employees in the Sunshine State. Members of both houses in Florida’s legislature voted this week to ban state and local governments from deducting union dues from an employee’s paychecks.

“This is what I campaigned on last year, and that’s limited government,” said Republican Sen. Scott Thrasher who sponsored the bill. “Government should not be the tax collector for unions.”

The paycheck protection bill now goes to Gov. Rick Scott who is expected to sign it into law without hesitation, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Education reformers breathlessly announced a new deal in Illinois that received sign off from both politicians and the state’s biggest teachers unions. What does this bill do?

• It changes how teachers receive tenure. Instead of simply receiving tenure after several years of service, teachers can now get tenure by receiving “excellent” ratings for three years in a row, or by receiving satisfactory evaluations for four years.
• Requires a strike in Chicago to be approved by 75% of members instead of a simple majority.
• Requiring that layoffs be decided by teacher quality instead of length of service. Length of service will still serve as a tiebreaker.

And…that’s it.

Now, let’s be clear: This is better than the situation Illinois schools were faced with before. The elimination of “last in, first out” layoff procedures in particular is a great thing. There also appears to be a provision that might allow state superintendents to revoke the teachers license of any teacher who receives two unsatisfactory evaluations in a seven year period (we’ll see if that makes it into the final language of the bill).

But Chicago teachers will still be allowed to go on strike if, say, the city pushes for longer days. And teachers will still be able to get tenure in an amount of time that is only modestly longer than they could previously. Tenure will remain a problem, one that wraps school systems up in endless streams of red tape if they want to get rid of an incompetent educator.

Is this really good enough?

Photo via Flickr user mammal.

Look for the union label! (Photo credit: eggrole / Mark)

Organized labor in Northern California says it’s high time that they unite with the state’s growing medical marijuana industry. On Monday, cannabis operators in San Jose and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union hashed-out the details for their new partnership.

Angel Raich, founder and CEO of ARCH collective in Oakland, described her industry’s budding relationship with UFCW as “a meeting of the minds in a lot of ways.” Dispensary operators say that aligning themselves with one of the nation’s most powerful labor unions  brings “clout” to their industry.

UFCW Local 5 President Ron Lind told KGO-TV that the Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition for Sensibility and Dignity was launched to help cannabis shops “build their power and legitimacy” through unionization. The Daily Caller reported in June 2010 that marijuana legalization in California would especially be a boon to UCFW membership:

By getting in on the ground floor, the UFCW has a chance to dominate in an industry where employees and employers alike are –as of this moment anyway– far less skeptical of organized labor than the long-unionized supermarket industry.

With medical marijuana sales expected to generate revenue of nearly $9 billion over the next 5 years, could it be that UCFW leaders are hoping for spillover benefits to their core industry?  UFCW employees will certainly be in a unique position to deal with any and every case of the munchies that comes their way.

The chart below is another shining example of how public-sector union benefits are bankrupting states across the nation. James M. Hohman, a fiscal policy analyst with the Mackinac Center’s fiscal policy initiative, visually demonstrates a decade (2000-2010) of Michigan lawmakers caving to unions’ incessant demands for more benefits. These costs ultimately toppled the state’s economy and stuck taxpayers with the bill (Click image below to see full size):

“Without a conscious policy direction, the value of state and local government employment benefits grew substantially in the past decade without the means to pay for it,” Hohman wrote on the organization’s blog. “It’s a problem that deserves review, regardless of public employee protests.”

Read more.

Photo credit: David Greg Katechis

Since the governors of Wisconsin and Ohio put an end to doing business-as-usual with public-sector unions, nearly 750 bills have been introduced by fiscally responsible legislators (or at least those trying to be) in almost every state. Most reports suggest the obvious: that this is a bad thing for unions and their lockstep members, of course.

The Los Angeles Times is by no means a cheerleader for these predominantly Republican state legislators, but the Times did manage to mention a few noteworthy facts on their behalf (via information it gathered, in part, from the National Conference of State Legislatures):

• Nearly half of states are considering legislation to limit public employees’ collective bargaining rights.
• A number of states are considering bills that would limit unions’ ability to collect dues from public employees.
• Other bills would eliminate a requirement that workers covered by union contracts pay union dues or fees.
• [P]roposals to roll back pensions are gaining steam.

We wouldn’t say that the days of public officials and workers being bullied into submission by union leaders are coming to an end, but the tide may just turning in favor of the taxpayers who’ve been footing the bill.

Photo credit: Bill McBain

Don’t expect the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to turn a profit any time soon. Thanks to a multi-billion dollar contract that the financially challenged (to put it mildly) agency negotiated with its biggest labor union, the USPS is poised to keep on delivering losses as routinely as it delivers mail.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) thinks the agency’s contract with the American Postal Workers Union, originally intended to save USPS $3.8 billion over 4 ½ years,  will do exactly the opposite. From Bloomberg:

“This contract falls short,” Issa said at a hearing about the Postal Service’s labor costs. “We have deep concerns that some of the provisions of the contract may in fact be the wrong direction, to less flexibility, less ability to trim the workforce and less ability to in the future make the kinds of investments we need to make.”

In other words, the agency won’t be in the black for the foreseeable future.

Adding to USPS’ financial woes, Bloomberg reports that the agency indicates it will “run out of cash unless Congress permits it to delay a $5.5 billion payment, due Sept. 30, for health benefits for future retirees.” And here’s the kicker: “The labor costs include payments for those benefits.”

Despite this grim financial forecast for USPS, Postmaster General Patrick Donohue told the oversight committee that his budget-busting negotiations with the postal workers union represent, in his mind at least, “a responsible agreement.”

Read more

Small business owners in southeast Wisconsin have been given an ultimatum by a local public sector labor union: Proudly display our pro-union sign in your storefront windows or we’ll boycott.

“Failure to do so will leave us no choice but (to) do a public boycott of your business,” states a letter to businesses from the Wisconsin State Employees Union, AFSCME Council 24. “And sorry, neutral means ‘no’ to those who work for the largest employer in the area and are union members.”

Reluctant business owners say they prefer to remain neutral in a battle that should be settled in the Capitol and not on Main Street. Rev. Jesse Jackson defended the union’s boycott effort to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel stating that it’s merely a “nonviolent tactic used to get attention to the steamroller tactics” of Wisconsin Republicans and Gov. Walker.

Call these anti-small business threats “non-violent” all you want. That doesn’t mean they won’t do a lot of damage to innocent bystanders if and when the union follows through.