Archive for August, 2012

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In Camden, Not Fighting Crime Pays

Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

Although Camden, New Jersey has fewer than 80,000 residents, it is known as one of the most dangerous cities in the nation. And this year, the homicide rate is on pace to beat the single-year record of 58.

So it came as a shock when Mayor Dana Redd announced that the city would abolish its police force and instead create a county-run police division. It’s less of a shock when you find out that the new division as part of the county force, will not have a collective bargaining agreement.

Redd has noted that while the current unionized force has a 30 percent absenteeism rate, their union representatives continue to claim that their members were overworked. Reed however has asked that all uniformed police officers report for duty—including union reps.

But does that mean the union presidents will walk the streets in order to help relieve the stress? Apparently not. Two police officers who are union leaders have been on paid leave and exempt from traditional police duties—for years—in order to do union work.

“One sergeant and one detective are not going to solve the crime problem,” [police union president Kevin] Wilkes said. “It’s obviously retaliation. It’s obviously trying to stifle us.”

Union bosses talk out of both sides of their mouths. On one hand, they constantly say how important it is that as many union members are on the job as possible, and that meeting job performance standards is impossible without the necessary numbers. That is especially true when the issue is either the student-to-teacher ratio in the classroom or the number of cops on the beat.

But when push comes to shove, union bosses have no interest in giving up union release time, even if it might help out their struggling membership.

The unions’ obsession with holding on to power is what might have brought this problem on in the first place. Acknowledging that the mayor may in fact be going after the union, the Philadelphia Inquirer editorialized:

Union leaders make a point, but they might get more sympathy by giving up expensive perks, such as taking paid leave to conduct union business on junkets to Atlantic City. Past inflexibility by the union on modifying work rules that hampered the deployment of officers in high-crime areas was a major factor in proposing an alternative police force.

Once again, a case of public sector unions biting the hand that feeds them.

This problem isn’t isolated to the police in Camden, however. The Courier Post reports that these officials are only two of many:

According to the [State Commission of Investigation Report], government-paid leave for public-union representatives cost more than $30 million in salaries and medical benefits during the review period.

The report said that police and fire union officials in Camden raked in $2.3 million in salary and benefits over five years. And as the two police officials squabble over their ability to force taxpayers to foot the bill for their salaries to perform only union activities, scores of cops will be out of work by year’s end.

For Camden police union bosses, the only people they cared to “protect and serve” were themselves.

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Posted in Center for Union Facts |

Public sector unions bite the hand that feeds them

Tuesday, August 28th, 2012

The growing debate over public sector unions is not going away anytime soon.

In this morning’s New York Daily News, Professor Michael Marlow of California Polytechnic State University explained how public sector unions (like toll collectors or government clerks) in particular impose massive costs on the electorate.

Marlow notes that although unionized employees now make up only seven percent of the private sector, the number hasincreased in the public sector, rising from 23 percent in 1973 to 37 percent in 2011. The reason for this?

The different directions of these trend lines have much to do with the nature of public sector employment. For instance, unlike the private sector, public sector wages that exceed an employee’s productivity don’t directly threaten employment — if you need proof of this point, head down to your local DMV office.

How much does it cost taxpayers to pay for costly unions?

My study tested this hypothesis, and over the period of 2003 to 2010 found that a 10% increase in public union membership expands government by as much as 4.25%.

As governments climb further into debt, public sector unions make things even worse for businesses (and in turn, for their private sector union brothers and sisters). Marlow found that the business climate in states with a higher union membership rate was rated much worse than those with the lowest rate of unionization.

So as public sector unions demand more and more from taxpayers, they are making the state’s economic system even worse. As Marlow puts it, they are “biting the hands that feed them.”

But the “labor movement” knows that public sector unions are the ones that must carry their mantle forward, if only because of their growing numbers compared to the private sector’s shrinking ranks. And although, as Marlow points out, such a model is not sustainable, unions continue to pour their resources in to supporting politicians who would continue these harmful policies, even if members don’t agree.

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Posted in Center for Union Facts, Political Money |

Who’s the Boss? New Book Warns About Public-Sector Unions

Friday, August 24th, 2012

Shadowbosses by Mallory Factor is one of the most-talked-about books about labor unions in quite some time. And for good cause — Factor’s book is a must-read.

The book is great for those who are new to the subject, as well as people in-the-know who will still learn a lot about union corruption and the influence that Big Labor has with the current administration.

Factor lays out the case that public sector labor unions, and more specifically, their leaders, are power brokers in Washington and in state capitals across America. With reports that the teachers unions in California see themselves as “the co-equal fourth branch of government” and that their top lobbyist gets a seat at the budget bargaining table, it’s easy to see what Factor is talking about.

The book details the close relationship that former SEIU president Andy Stern had with the president. It might not be news to regular readers here, but Factor goes into more detail on how valuable that connection really was. In the chapter “Union-Label President,” readers learn that union leaders have enjoyed invites to state dinners and frequent visits to the White House. The stimulus is properly labeled as the “union stimulus” and other government spending projects, such as the auto bailouts, are exposed as union-supporting endeavors.

But some of the biggest headlines from the book come from Factor’s revelation that the SEIU is ready to turn the Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”) into a boon for unions by adding 21 million new members to its rolls.

Some of the largest and most powerful public sector unions – teachers unions – are given plenty of attention as well. Teachers unions are some of the most powerful labor groups in each state, andtogether they take in over $2 billion in dues each year. They’ve done well in grabbing taxpayer money for schools, but student performance has stagnated or worsened over that time.

Public sector unions have a luxury (and a power) that private sector unions don’t—they elect their bosses. That’s why they spend billions on political activity at every level of government. This leads to the influence that union bosses have on politicians.

And it isn’t just the big ticket advantages that union bosses can bring in, such as more school spending and project labor agreements. It’s also the little things that add up: Factor notes that New Jersey law requires a police officer to be on a construction site at all times, which contributes to a six to elevenpercent price increase for all construction projects.

Factor concludes that union leadership understands that they must expand in order to survive. The way to do this will include forcing more employees who do work related to or for the government to unionize. Factor calls this “Government Employee Unions 2.0,” a strategy pioneered by the model “Union Boss 2.0,” Stern.

But Shadowbosses isn’t a downer: Factor also explains how some Americans, including a few popular governors, are fighting back against the once-unchallenged power of union bosses. But even more importantly, private sector union members are recognizing that their interests no longer align with their public sector counterparts. The consequence of a private sector union refusing to cooperate with an employer could spell doom for both parties, but would otherwise not affect fellow citizens. Public sector unions have driven government budgets up to (and sometimes over) fiscal cliffs, harming all citizens.

Factor’s Shadowbosses brings union leaders out of the darkness and into the much-needed critical spotlight.

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Posted in Center for Union Facts, Political Money, Teachers Unions |

The State of State Affairs

Thursday, August 23rd, 2012

With the spotlight on the presidential race and the union politics surrounding the Democratic National Convention, Big Labor’s influence at the state level has been overlooked as of late. But recent stories bring state politics back to the fore.

When the discussion is about spending $1 billion or $4 billion dollars on all political activity, the numbers are too mind-numbing to appreciate. But on a smaller scale, the effects of union political giving are clearer to see than when the figures are astronomical.

First, we learned about the money flowing from union coffers to the Democratic Governors Association. Now, we see even more direct influence peddling by unions.

In what might be chalked up to a case of bad timing, Illinois Democrats in the state house were under fire after the head of the chamber reported donations from the SEIU at the eleventh hour before a critical state pension vote. The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

One of Illinois’ most influential labor unions denied Monday that nearly $100,000 it contributed to a campaign fund controlled by House Speaker Michael Madigan was part of a “quid pro quo” designed to kill a pension-reform package in his legislative chamber last week.

State campaign records show the Democratic Majority fund reported receiving $97,000 last Friday from SEIU Healthcare Illinois and SEIU Illinois Council, the same day a special legislative session called by Gov. Pat Quinn to fix Illinois’ $83 billion pension crisis ended in failure.

Madigan (D-Chicago) wouldn’t allow a floor vote on Senate-passed legislation that would have reeled in pension benefits for state workers and General Assembly members and only allowed a procedural vote on a slimmed-down measure affecting just lawmakers’ pensions.

And 1,000 miles southwest of Springfield, New Mexico’s state government renewed a controversy over Big Labor’s influence over the state’s top law enforcement official. According to the New Mexican:

Attorney General Gary King, a Democrat who is running for governor in 2014, and the state Republican Party are still at each other’s throats over an investigation of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez’s administration.

[…]

State GOP executive director Mark Knoop in a Monday news release said, “Gary King received over $90,000 in campaign contributions from labor unions and now acts as their ‘puppet-prosecutor’ — launching baseless investigations anytime the union PAC asks him to do so. King has announced his campaign for governor, and these unions are his largest contributor. Yet, he sees no conflict-of-interest in doing the bidding of his top donor against his political opponent.”

Unlike the shockingly-high dollar amounts given at the national level, it is easy to see how giving to a single, powerful political figure can be all the difference in a state level debate.

Unions know this and spend plenty on what many would see as small battles. Although private sector unions are often more interested in federal elections because they are more directly affected by federal labor laws, public sector unions have a lot to gain from engaging in state government. That’s also why unions are dumping millions into state referendum efforts in California and Michigan.

In these legislative battles, unions are most concerned about pushing their agenda to the detriment of the state. In Illinois, Gov. Quinn’s attempt to fix the state’s pension shortfall failed with the help of at least one union-funded candidate. In Michigan, the governor and attorney general are fighting the inclusion of the union-backed ballot initiative, as they argue it would invalidate over 100 laws that have reformed labor laws in the state.

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Posted in Center for Union Facts, Political Money, SEIU |

Public Sector Unions Pile On Dollars For Dem Governors

Tuesday, August 21st, 2012

It would be an understatement to say that public sector unions and state governors, including Democrats, haven’t been getting along as of late. So why are those unions among the biggest donors to the Democratic Governors Association (DGA)?

For the current election cycle, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) tied for ninth place on the DGA’s donor list. If the last election cycle is any indicator, expect to see a few more familiar names by the time November rolls around. In 2010, public sector unions were the top three donors to the DGA, and took up four of the top five spots. With their private-sector counterparts, unions accounted for the top six spots and seven out of the top eight.

One has no problem recalling union battles with Republican governors. The battle in Wisconsin that raged for months pitted thenation’s oldest government employee unions against Governor Scott Walker, who was backed by voters for being willing to stand up for the people and curb out-of-control union demands. Ohio Governor John Kasich spent plenty of political capital to reform collective bargaining, only to have voters turn that on its head after an expensive campaign by unions to roll back this progress.  But in nearby Indiana, employee freedoms advanced by leaps and bounds when the state passed a right-to-work law. And Governor Mitch Daniels thinks that reforms have not gone far enough, causing unions to fear for their continued existence in the Hoosier State.

But Democratic governors aren’t exactly getting perfect scores from unions either:

  • New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2012 budget required serious reforms of government employee contracts and teachers unions, or both would face major cutbacks.

Public sector unions are supporting, to the tune of millions of dollars, politicians that don’t always seem to be on their side. And they’re using member’s mandatory dues dollars to do it. Employees might want to take a closer look at how the unions are spending their hard-earned dollars. Because when Democratic politicians can no longer be counted on for support, unionsbosses unfettered political giving looks every day like a worse investment.

Posted in Center for Union Facts, Political Money |

Have union bosses earned their raises?

Friday, August 17th, 2012

We recently asked if you deserved a raise.

What about union bosses?

The Washington Examiner took a close look and found out that they received pay increases that were generous, to say the least. The list of the top 25 highest-paid union leaders highlighted a staggering haul. Their average total compensation in 2011 topped $550,000. The Examiner’s Mark Tapscott writes:

Between 2000 and 2011, these four union leaders were seeing eye-popping hikes in their compensation, inflation totaled 30.6 percent, according to USInflationCalculator.com.

***

As a group, the top 25 union bosses saw their pay rise on average by 88.2 percent between 2000 and 2011.

The irony isn’t lost on those union members that watched their bosses attack the RAISE Act. Union leadership is so obsessed with keeping its consolidated power than the prospect of allowing employees to earn pay increases based on their own merits.

So have union bosses earned the pay raise? It couldn’t have been for increasing membership:

Also during that period, the percentage of unionized U.S. workers declined from 14.9 percent to 13 percent, according to figures compiled by UnionStats.com, based on data from the government’s Current Population Survey.

And they certainly haven’t earned it for giving their members greater rights in other areas. Union bosses have been dead-set against the Employee Rights Act ever since it was proposed.

Despite their supposed outrage at executives making high salaries, Big Labor leaders did even better than corporate CEOs. In that same time period, CEOs, on average, were hit with significant decreases in compensation according to the union-supported Economic Policy Institute.

So when AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka ($293,750 in total compensation) starts talking about which politicians “identify with us” he really ought to be a little more specific if he means union bosses or union members.

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Posted in Center for Union Facts, Employee Rights Act |

Labor convenes in the city of brotherly laments

Thursday, August 16th, 2012

A few thousand union members spent their weekend in Philadelphia at an event they called “Workers Stand for America,” better known as their shadow convention. The event was meant to be the answer to the Democratic National Convention, since it is being held in North Carolina, a right-to-work state with the lowest unionized workforce in the country.

But union leaders didn’t like the name “shadow convention,” so they backed off and called it a “rally.”

Which was it?

The most accurate name would be the “crybaby convention.” As Center for Union Facts Executive Director Rick Berman said in this morning’s Washington Times, the Philadelphia event was an “expensive temper tantrum.”

Were Democrats invited to the convention? Of course. The featured speakers included Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA), and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), Chair of the Democratic National Committee. And there were plenty of signs supporting President Obama to go around.

The event was just more of the same bellyaching that Big Labor’s  issues were being ignored. But as our executive director points out, this complaint is rather curious:

The AFL-CIO even was kind enough to draft for President Obama a list of things it wanted him to do, titled “Priorities for Day 1.” Topping that list was reducing financial transparency for what unions did with their dues money. The administration happily obliged.

Unions also received lots of goodies in the president’s stimulus package and the health care reform bill. The stimulus package included mandates that union wages be paid on all federal construction jobs. The bill also included a $53.6 billion fund to prevent layoffs of public employees, who are heavily unionized. Additionally, Section 164 of the Affordable Care Act contains a provision to bail out mismanaged union health insurance funds to the tune of $10 billion.

President Obama even signed an executive order that rolled back requirements for employers to post employee guidance about how they could opt out of union dues that were used for lobbying or advocacy they don’t support.

So what else could they possibly want?

They want a “Second Bill of Rights.” Meanwhile, union bosses reject the Employee Rights Act (ERA) at every chance they get.

Included in the “bill of rights” is “The Right to Full Participation in the Electoral Process,” which is, ironically, one of Big Labor’s biggest problems with the ERA. The ERA would guarantee secret ballot voting in certification and recertification votes, as well as in strike votes. Do union bosses think our memories are too short to recall their push to end the secret ballot? (And their failure to do so).

Union bosses can’t seem to get their priorities straight, and their members continue to suffer because of it.

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Posted in Center for Union Facts, Employee Rights Act, Political Money |

Threats and Violence: Look for the Union Label

Friday, August 10th, 2012

A recently released report on several state laws that protect violent labor union organizers from prosecution is incredibly telling. Egregious conduct, ranging from making a “credible threat to cause serious bodily injury” to engaging in stalking that causes a person to “fear for his or her safety or the safety of a third person; or suffer other emotional distress”, is OK if it’s done in the course of labor activity.

As the United States Chamber of Commerce report explains, there’s bad legal precedent for protecting employees and employers from violent union organizing activities:

State carve outs from the criminal code are likely an outgrowth of a United States Supreme Court decision from 1973 [United States v. Enmons, 410 U.S. 396], in which the court ruled that violence in pursuit of union demands cannot be prosecuted under federal law. In the Enmons case, workers on strike at Gulf States Utilities Company were charged with “firing high powered rifles at three Company transformers, draining the oil from a Company transformer, and blowing up a transformer substation owned by the Company.”

The case was decided based on statutory interpretation of the Hobbs Act. The Supreme Court’s syllabus statement for the case is telling:

The Hobbs Act, which makes it a federal crime to obstruct interstate commerce by robbery or extortion, does not reach the use of violence (which is readily punishable under state law) to achieve legitimate union objectives, such as higher wages in return for genuine services that the employer seeks. (emphasis added)

It turns out that these actions may not actually be criminally punishable.

Legal commentators on both sides of the aisle have complained that many criminal laws that exist at the federal level could be more effectively handled by the states. But here is one instance where the states have fallen short by making exceptions for conduct that is wrongful, but for the favored actor.

It’s because of these shortcomings in federal legislation that the Employee Rights Act (ERA) prohibits union violence in organizing activity. The ERA would preempt these outrageous state law exemptions and protect employees from violence and threats.

We’re supposed to have equality under the law in America, and giving union organizers a free pass on criminal activity flies in the face of this basic right.

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Posted in Center for Union Facts, Crime & Corruption, Employee Rights Act, Violence |

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