LaborPains.org

While unions can sometimes be cutthroat in competition with rival unions, it’s even more ironic when a union is picketed by its own staff. At the National Education Association (NEA) headquarters, the union representing NEA staff is picketing over the ongoing struggle to hammer out a new contract, according to The National Review.

The issue at heart: seniority. Yes, the irony just keeps building.

The parties appear to be at odds over whether time spent working as a temporary hire, before being hired on permanently, should be included in determining an employee’s length of service. The NEA’s policy has been, according to the March 8, 2012, issue of “NEASO Matters” (the most recent public update on the negotiations), “to ‘terminate’ the service of a temporary employee and ‘rehire’ the same employee in a permanent position — thus recognizing the ‘new’ hire date as the ‘last date of hire.’”

Why would “experience” as a temporary employee be disregarded in the process for permanent hiring?

It’s always amusing to see a union picket itself, especially on an issue that the union has spent so much time and energy fighting for.

On Tuesday, the AFL-CIO announced that former NLRB member Craig Becker is set to become co-general counsel of the labor federation. He will join AFL-CIO General Counsel  in leading the labor group’s legal team.

“The strengths of these two extraordinary lawyers, Becker and Rhinehart, are a perfect complement, and together they will lead a powerhouse legal program,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka.

The notification hardly came as a surprise to business groups, who opposed Becker’s recess appointment to the NLRB. They accused him of “being a union radical who wouldn’t fairly serve the interests of employers.”

Senators from both sides of the isle opposed his nomination “because they feared he would swing the board too much in favor of unions.”

Brett McMahon, President of Miller and Long DC, recently wrote that the move was a “reminder that Senator Orrin Hatch was right to grill Becker when President Obama nominated him to serve on the NLRB and that Hatch’s Senate colleagues were right to reject his nomination.”

Prior to his tenure on the NLRB, Becker worked for both the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union. His return to the AFL-CIO strengthened the concerns among many that the Board has become overly politicized and used as a tool for labor.

Credit: Rian Castillo

Just how pushy can unions get when trying to organize new members? For the United Auto Workers, the answer is as simple as it is audacious: they orchestrated a mock card check election, make employees believe unionization was inevitable, and did it all with the complicity of public officials.

Luckily for employees, they were going up against Donald Trump. Their scheme targeted 11 casinos in Atlantic City—including gambling-floor employees of Trump Entertainment Resorts, Inc. After the UAW pulled off an unsurprising election win, Trump filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

Unsurprisingly, the NLRB required Trump to sit down with the union. Instead, he appealed—and, now, the United States Court of Appeals in Washington has ruled in his favor, reversing the NLRB and admonishing the UAW.

Blaming the NLRB for ignoring “substantial circumstantial evidence,” the Court’s three empaneled judges have told the NLRB to review Trump’s claim that the UAW misled voting workers with the mock card check charade.

This stinging rebuke of the NLRB and the UAW is more than a victory for one of America’s most highly visible celebrities. It’s a win for the casino workers who were misled.

Though the size and influence of the United Auto Workers (UAW) has waned  over the past couple of decades, the union cashed a substantial amount of political capital to help secure the 2007 bailout of the auto industry. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the union has made sure to protect its members–even at the expense of employees in other unions.

General Motors’ (GM) Moraine (OH) plant was one of the most productive and cooperative factories, yet it was closed following the automaker’s 2007 labor pact with the UAW.  Two years later in the midst of a recovery, Moraine’s 2,500 laid-off workers are barred from transferring to other plants under a deal brokered by the UAW during GM’s bankruptcy–locking them out of the industry’s rebound.

The problem: Moraine’s workers weren’t in the UAW.

Originally an appliance factory, the plant moved to automobile manufacturing under GM.  The workers there elected to stick with the International Union of Electrical Workers (IUE), rather than join the UAW. However, they generally accepted contracts negotiated by the UAW.

When GM began having financial difficulty in 2007, IUE leaders decided to break ranks with the UAW and offer concessions to keep GM and Moraine afloat. However, as the company’s financial situation worsened, and GM and the UAW began negotiating, IUE had no seat at the table. Unfortunately, by the time GM had satisfied the UAW, there was nothing left for IUE workers in Moraine.

In the end, “we had to take care of our own members,” says Cal Rapson, the former UAW vice president leading negotiations with GM. “It was unfortunate what happened to the others. But there wasn’t enough to go around.”