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Although former speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives Christopher Donovan came up short in his run for Congress, the Hartford Courant reports that he’s being encouraged to campaign to be the next head of the state’s AFL-CIO. Donovan has a great prerequisite: he’s already involved in a serious scandal.

A few months before the Democratic primary, seven people were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy in directing illegal campaign contributions to Donovan. Among those were Donovan’s campaign manager and long-time aide, his finance director, and a union leader. According to the Wall Street Journal:

Prosecutors also disclosed that Ray Soucy, a former union official and a key figure in the probe, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiracy charges in the scheme, which supplied straw donors with cash so they could write checks to Mr. Donovan’s campaign committee.

In exchange, according to court documents, Mr. Soucy assured the co-conspirators that Mr. Donovan would kill legislation to close a loophole allowing roll-your-own tobacco shops to avoid collecting cigarette taxes. The bill didn’t come up for a vote in the state Legislature.

Since his defeat, not much has been heard from Donovan. And although he has not been accused of wrongdoing, the swirling scandal around him is par for the course for union officials.

In Minnesota, a father-son duo has been accused by the International Teamsters of embezzlement, bank fraud, racketeering, and other financial crimes. Bradley Slawson Sr. and Bradley Slawson Jr. of Local 120 are currently on unpaid leave from the union. The pair is said to have received payments from a Teamsters-owned bar — payments adding up to $140,000 between the two of them. Another teamster, Todd Chester, helped to coordinate those payments from the bar and has also been charged. Chester, described in the Star Tribune as “a family friend of the Slawsons” and “the father of one of Slawson Sr.’s grandchildren,” also received a questionable finder’s fee of $90,000 for the construction of a new union hall. The Star Tribune reported in December that the Independent Review Board (IRB) report included an “unsettling allegation… that one of the bar managers wanted to hold a fundraiser for a ‘nonexistent fake sick baby’ and direct the funds instead to a bar the union owns in Fargo.” The bar, the Teamsters Club in Fargo, North Dakota, hosted a victory party for Democratic now-Senator Heidi Heitkamp.

The Slawsons claim that this is just a “witch hunt” because the family broke away from Jimmy Hoffa Jr. in 2010. But this isn’t the first time the Slawsons have been in the news for misconduct. In 2009, the Department of Labor conducted an audit of Local 120’s records under its Compliance Audit Program (CAP) of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) and found that Slawson Sr.’s chapter committed recordkeeping and reporting violations. In 2000, a press release from Overnite Transportation Co. reveals that Slawson Jr. pled guilty to disorderly conduct charges for his actions at a strike of the company. The release says:

Slawson was found in contempt of court on May 8 for his self-admitted threats and coercion in connection with unrefuted claims that he struck one Overnite driver with a picket sign and locked another Overnite driver in a trailer while the driver was attempting to make a delivery at a customer’s facility. Slawson was ordered to keep away from Over[ni]te property and that of the trucking company’s customers for the purpose of assisting the union in any labor action against Overnite. He was also ordered to pay $500 to compensate Overnite for attorneys’ fees and costs.

Not surprisingly, Junior was also a big fan of EFCA.

Labor should go no further than its own backyard if it is looking to blame anyone for its declining numbers. Rampant crime and corruption are just line-items on the long list of reasons why organized labor slides deeper into irrelevancy.

As members of Congress, state legislatures, and the President of the United States are sworn into office, we’re reminded of our American democratic ideals. Unfortunately, many union members don’t get the chance to celebrate democracy thanks to a unionization procedure known as “card check.”

Take Karen Cox and her coworkers at Americold Logistics, who are only the latest examples of how unions intend to end the secret ballot in labor organizing. In spring of 2012, she was given a card that she was told would be used for information purposes. She filled it out and returned it. But in June, she learned that she, along with at least 50 percent of her fellow coworkers, had signed and returned the cards that recognized a labor union.

Cox, who opposed the union, tried to collect petitions from co-workers to call for a secret ballot vote. But rather than let her have the same access rights as union organizers, Cox was stopped from doing so by Americold. She’s now being represented by National Right to Work Foundation in a complaint against the company filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“I think they did it that way as a way for the union to sneak in without opposition,” Cox told Sauk Valley Media. “Some people were mad about that, and all I want is a legit election.”

In 2011, Barbara Ivey shared her very similar story. A 21-year employee at Kaiser Permanente in Oregon, she was shocked that after only 13 days, a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) card check campaign successfully turned her workplace into a union shop. Ivey said that her coworkers felt pressure to sign the card.

Ivey began to collect signatures for a decertification election, which would allow the employees to vote on the unionization by secret ballot. Although these elections used to take place immediately after a card-check drive, a “safety valve” provision to ensure the card check collection was proper, the NLRB’s penchant for overturning precedent ended that protection. In Lamons Gasket, the NLRB did away with the immediate vote petition and instead required that more time elapse before the decertification vote could take place.

These women aren’t outliers. In fact, denying the secret ballot vote is policy for labor. That didn’t die with the EFCA. With UNITE HERE leading the way, several labor groups, notably the AFL-CIO, backed a boycott of Hyatt Hotels in July because the company refused to allow card check unionization at its hotels.

Just prior to the November election, Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO told the Atlantic that labor will never give up on card check. “That’s within the next term,” he claimed.

Card check is no way to determine if an individual really wants to join a union. The process is fraught with potential problems—deception and intimidation chief among them, as shown in the workplaces of Cox and Ivey. Card check makes the vote public and puts employees in the difficult position of openly stating their position to a union organizer. The Employee Rights Act requires secret ballot elections for union certification votes in order to ensure that each individual employee can decide whether she wants to join a union without someone looking over her shoulder.

WSJ Calls for Explanation on IUOE/Griffin Lawsuit

As we detailed yesterday, National Labor Relations Board member Richard Griffin, who never went through a Senate hearing prior to his “recess” appointment to the NLRB, is a defendant in a civil suit involving the union he used to legally represent. The story is gaining some serious steam: The Wall Street Journal editorial board is now calling for some pro-active action by Griffin:

As a lawyer, Mr. Griffin was an officer of the court with legal obligations beyond his union duties. At the very least, he should respond to the charges in the complaint and publicly explain everything he knew about the events that led to his role in terminating these employees.

Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO Teaming Up?

In what seems like an unholy alliance, Tom Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that his organization is teaming up with Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO to work on immigration reform. The Chamber outlined its 2013 agenda but has yet to name specific legislation that both groups would support—if such a thing exists.

Rumor Mill Churns on Solis Replacement at DOL

With Hilda Solis’s recent resignation as Secretary of Labor, commentators are starting to speculate about possible replacements. New Hampshire media outlets want Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, while David Macaray, writing at the Huffington Post, considers former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, and Donald Fehr of the NHL Players Association as potential Obama picks. We recommend someone who won’t unduly favor unions, unlike the outgoing Solis.

Union President Proposes Medieval Punishment for Political Foe

On Wednesday, we reported that Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union recalled the days where labor leaders shouted “off with their heads.” Labor leaders in Toledo favor similarly archaic forms of incapacitation. The Toledo Blade reports that Dennis Duffey, secretary-treasurer of the Ohio State Building Construction Trades Council, said that City Council President Joe McNamara should be ‘removed, tarred and feathered, or de-nutted.” How charming.

No one likes being late to the party. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s (ILWU) recent strike at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach may have ended earlier this month, but their East and Gulf Coast brethren from the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) apparently want their slice of the strike pie, too. The ILA’s 200-member wage committee recently voted to authorize a strike if their current bargaining negotiations fail to produce a union-friendly contract by December 29.

The strike could affect more than 14,500 ILA members. The geographical range of these workers includes American ports from Maine to Texas—a much larger range than ILWU’s California strike, which only affected two ports, albeit two of the largest in the country.

Economically, this strike could be devastating. One risk management firm is reporting that the strike would mean “inventory depletion, rerouting, hoarding, and price speculation ripple through supply chains of global companies.” Trade associations and business federations have also chimed in, noting that millions of American jobs will be adversely affected by a strike.

The contract negotiations have broken down over the question of a cap on “container royalties.” These fees were introduced in the 1960s to cushion union jobs threatened by automation and technological advances. Since then, the royalties have become a de facto form of compensation—regardless of whether a worker’s job is threatened by technology. Today, they average $15,500 per ILA worker per year and cost the East Coast and Gulf port industry over $211 million last year alone.

Port management wants to cap these fees, which have skyrocketed by as much as 500 percent at some locations in the last fourteen years. Considering that ILA members average a $120,000 annual salary, before overtime and benefits, it’s hard to believe that longshoremen desperately need the royalty rate to rise any further.

The ILA sees things differently. They want these fees to keep growing—and the faster the better. Self-interest may be at play here: the union gets ten percent of each royalty, which led to $21 million additional revenue in 2011.

It remains to be seen whether the 14,500 ILA members actually want this strike, or whether they’re being forced into it by the 200 members of their wage board—who comprise a mere 1.3 percent of total ILA membership. But one thing is certain: Without a secret ballot vote on strikes, these workers aren’t able to freely disagree with the union bosses who are pushing them off the docks and leaving them adrift at sea.

Eight days and nearly eight billion lost dollars later, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) clerks’ strike at the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach finally ended earlier this month. The strike made one thing painfully obvious: minority unions have the potential to be disastrous to American industry.

This particular strike had very modest beginnings. The initial strikers numbered only 600 members—port clerks who feared that their jobs would be outsourced or, more likely, replaced by new technology. After working for two-and-a-half years without a contract, the clerks walked off the job and onto the picket lines. Things got worse when the remaining 10,000 ILWU members launched a solidarity strike, shutting down 10 of the 14 terminals.

Consider what this small number of striking workers was able to accomplish. The Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach directly support a combined 48,000 port-affiliated jobs. The nature of the port industry, however, means that the number of jobs they indirectly support runs to over 1.2 million jobs in California and 5 million jobs nationwide. Additionally, the value of the cargo passing through both ports runs to an estimated $428 billion each year.

A mere 600 striking workers brought this titanic enterprise to a grinding halt. The sheer amount of damage done by such a small number of people boggles the mind.

It’s also a clear example of what awaits American business now that the NLRB has opened the door for minority unions.

The legal roots of the minority union—alternatively called “micro unions”—go back a 2011 NLRB case. In Specialty Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center of Mobile, the NLRB ruled that a small group of nurses could unionize even though they constituted a minority in workplace. The decision noted that, even though the larger workplace formed the “appropriate bargaining unit,” it did not mean that the smaller section constituted an “inappropriate” one.

Prior to this ruling, union organizers had to approach all of the workers that shared the same workplace interests and performed roughly similar work—the “appropriate bargaining unit.” But with minority unions, organizers only have to approach a cross-section of the full group. The result?  Unions can incrementally unionize businesses, even if a majority of workers want a union-free shop.

The following May, another NLRB case extended the logic of Specialty Healthcare even further. In the Bergdorf Goodman case, the NLRB ruled that 42 employees in a 372-person shoe store could unionize. The sole difference between the 42 employees and their 330 coworkers was that they only sold women’s shoes.

The threat to business is obvious. As minority unions begin to proliferate, businesses will have to contend with dozens or even hundreds of different unions—and union contracts—in their stores. A single unit of employees—those that work on a loading dock, for instance—can thus shut down an entire store.

With the addition of more HR and legal fees, business operating costs are sure to rise, including at companies already struggling with their bottom line. Meanwhile, at companies where the majority of workers don’t want to unionize, the tried-and-true practice of the democratic majority won’t be enough to keep union organizers at bay.

The port strike hints at the sort of havoc minority unions can wreak. Though not a minority union themselves, the ILWU clerks’ actions are a testament to what a slim minority of workers can achieve with a strike. Minority unions will only make this kind of seismic disruption more commonplace—and more costly.

In a fiery debate on CNBC Thursday, Center for Union Facts Managing Director J. Justin Wilson went up against Thea Lee of the AFL-CIO to discuss the toxicity of the union brand and the need for unions to appeal to members in right-to-work states, including newly-minted Michigan, and not simply take them for granted. Wilson noted that if not for politics, even Democrats would be opposed to membership-by-compulsion.

But instead of confronting these problems, Lee passed the buck and blamed everyone but unions. She blamed billionaires, employers and “attacks.” But even taking her word for it, it’s impossible to account for the complete collapse of labor unionism in the workforce without considering the failure by labor in holding membership.

Lee also noted that labor laws are “antiquated,” something that we’ve been saying for a while as well. The Employee Rights Act (ERA) would greatly improve labor law and help to bring it out of the 1950s. But, somehow, we don’t think that’s the type of law she is looking for.

Labor unions have a big problem: Americans don’t like them as much as they used to. Luckily for the union cause, labor has a plan to right the sinking ship—ditch, or at least replace, the “union” label.

The latest numbers paint a bleak picture. Public approval of labor unions has dropped nearly 15 percent in the past ten years. It’s currently hovering just a few points above its all-time low of 48 percent in 2009. That’s a far cry from the 75 percent approval rating unions enjoyed in the 1950s.

Then there’s the membership crisis. Union rolls have been steadily shrinking for decades. Private sector union membership is at a 70-year low, and union members as a percentage of the workforce has tumbled from 28 percent in 1954 to a mere 11.2 percent this year. Last year alone saw a substantial loss of roughly 379,000 union jobs.

It’s not hard to explain these numbers. Take the last month, for instance. November saw Hostess implode after a disastrous bakers union strike, taking the Twinkie with it in the process, a dead-on-arrival Walmart union walk-out on Black Friday that made headlines but hindered no one, and an annoying but ineffective SEIU strike at LAX. Early this month, a strike at West Coast ports threatened to put a damper on holiday retail sales.

When you consider these incidents, it’s no wonder that Americans are turning away from the union brand. Yet Labor, well aware that its popularity is on the wane, has found a way to reverse its fortunes: a rebrand.

Welcome to the “Worker Center.” These organizations are little more than labor unions by a different name. They organize unionization pushes and even bargain using union-style brinksmanship and corporate campaign tactics. Yet unlike an official labor union, worker centers don’t have to abide by federal labor law.

These organizations already exist. OUR Walmart, a worker center affiliated with the UFCW, organized those failed Black Friday protests. The Restaurant Opportunities Center—which was originally supposed to be called the Restaurant Organizing Center—is another. ROC, which has nine local affiliates in major American cities, is now actively trying to unionize the restaurant industry. A similar organization, Fast Food Forward, has initiated ongoing strikes at New York City’s fast food chains using professional union organizers to aid in its mission.

The AFL-CIO, not to be left behind, has also started a rebrand. Its non-union union organizing group, “Working America,” is technically classified as a “527.” That’s the same tax-exempt status used by political action committees and political parties. Based out of the AFL-CIO’s D.C. headquarters, Working America boasts some three million non-union members—people which the AFL-CIO still counts on its membership lists.

It’s a sorry state of affairs when labor has to abandon its longstanding brand. Yet for many Americans, “union” has become a dirty word, precisely because of debacles like Hostess and Walmart. Rebranding the movement might just be its only hope.

But rebranding isn’t a guarantee of success. Companies like Comcast (now Xfinity) may have been successful, but others like Blackwater (now Xe) didn’t exactly pan out. Many of the failed attempts ultimately flopped because their name change was not accompanied by any corresponding change in tactics or purpose. Some things just can’t be whitewashed with a few new words.

Unions should take heed. In the long run, self-examination might be more beneficial than a mere name change or a repackaging of the same-old message. Perhaps Americans are shying away from unions not because we’ve changed, but rather because Labor has turned away from what made it great. Unions should reclaim their heritage, not rebrand their their name.

For the fourth time, American Crystal Sugar union members rejected the contract proposed by the company. That means the 16-month lockout will continue. This was the closest vote yet, with 55 percent of members rejecting the vote, down from 63 percent in June and at least 90 percent in the two votes prior.

The sticking points have remained the same throughout the dispute. According to the Star Tribune:

While the contract would raise wages by a relatively healthy 13 percent over five years, it would entail significant increases in workers’ health care costs. Also, it would give management more rights in determining key workplace issues. For instance, seniority — a basic union tenet — would lose its importance in worker advancement.

So which union is at the center of this dispute? None other than the Hostess-killing Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM). But unlike Hostess, American Crystal Sugar has found a way to survive: replacement workers. The Associated Press reported in September that the company has been happy with the results, saying they are doing a “fabulous job.” On the other hand, early on in the dispute, BCTGM members were accused of hurling racial slurs at the replacement workers.

The union has claimed that American Crystal Sugar has incurred higher production costs due to the lockout. But undoubtedly, the individual union members are suffering. Besides what the union has presented in its own sympathy campaign, the numbers tell a story as well. Of the 1,300 workers locked out in August of last year, approximately 500 have left, and unemployment benefits have now run out.

The AFL-CIO has called for a boycott of the sugar, but it’s a tough one to enforce, as very little of American Crystal’s sugar is sold under its own brand—the company primarily supplies the commodity as an ingredient to candy and soft drink makers.

Once again, labor leaders at the BCTGM seem to have severely confused members. At Hostess, the union convinced members that another company would swoop in and buy up the entire corporation as-is, keeping the production plants up and running with union workers. But as reality sinks in, it looks like buyers are only interested in the brand names, not the union employees.

Here, labor is more concerned with telling American Crystal how poorly the union thinks the company is doing rather than encouraging members to accept the economic realities of this situation. Replacement workers have been on the job for months, and union employees have no earned income or unemployment benefits. The Star Tribune reports that some union members requested the latest vote. Earlier in the dispute, a former union member said that leaders were misleading members on what would happen at the bargaining table.

BCTGM appears to be doing a great disservice to its members in both of these high-profile disputes. One commentator has even questioned if the union could be violating federal law due to its actions at Hostess.

Meanwhile, BCTGM President Frank Hurt cannot seem to right his sinking ship. His insistence that the union will not “fold” against American Crystal does not work well when it comes to negotiating and getting members back to work. Coupled with his discouraging union members from signing the “piece of crap” contract with Hostess, it is clear that Hurt is more concerned with keeping his power and his job — with a hefty salary and benefits — than he is about members’ struggles.