According to the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of private-sector employees in unions has tumbled to a 70-year low. Only 6.6 percent of private-sector workers were union members in 2012.

Unions’ failure to represent their members’ interests and overzealous defense of unsustainable benefits has hamstrung the airline, manufacturing, and automotive industries, and their numbers are showing the effects of this poor leadership. The most recent prominent victims of union stubbornness were Hostess employees sent to the unemployment line by a Bakers’ Union (BCTGM) strike.

And many former union members are wiser than the declining unions. The Associated Press reports:

Don McGough lost his job as a union steelworker. He found a new position and a decade later, he voted no when the machinists’ union tried to organize workers at his company, JWF Industries, in Pennsylvania. “There are so many companies that just closed their doors because the union wouldn’t budge,” he says.

Unions hope that by expanding organizing efforts to new industries, they can reverse their decline.

While unions representing U.S. manufacturing might — auto and steel — have become smaller, the emphasis in recruiting new members has shifted to the service sector.

The Service Employees International Union, which represents nurses and lower-wage service employees including janitors, security, hospital, home health and child care workers, has doubled in size since 1996, to 2.1 million workers. It says it has added 50,000 workers annually in the last decade.

But unless unions change their ways, such moves might only lead the new industries to follow the traditional unionized industries into bankruptcy court. Instead of clinging to the same old adversarial model on new turf, they should endorse the accountability reform proposals endorsed by 80 percent of union households contained in the Employee Rights Act. Only by reforming themselves and acting in the interests of their members can unions reassert their relevancy.

Organized labor’s newest tactics — recently endorsed by the AFL-CIO — are so-called “New Models of Worker Representation” outside the framework of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). Both those laws place restrictions on labor unions to ensure that they actually have majority support of the workers they represent and to ensure they use their money for the workers’ desired purposes.

New organizing groups, like “Workers’ Centers,” have no such restrictions. But even union-like groups outside the rules of unions must follow all the other laws in society, as OUR Walmart, a group backed by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), may soon find out in a Florida state case. As Reuters reports:

Wal-Mart alleged that the defendants violated Florida law through coordinated, statewide acts of trespass in several Walmart stores over the last eight months. It has asked the court for a legal ruling that would prevent future trespassing.

In the lawsuit Wal-Mart cited an example where a group of protesters projected a video promoting OUR Walmart on the side of a store in Orlando and passing out literature inside that store in July, 2012.

So far, Wal-Mart employees haven’t shown that they want a union. So “new organizing groups” — actually union sock-puppets — are engaging in “strikes” that may violate state laws, even if they skirt federal union governance rules. Now the unions may find themselves in hot water. Looks like “New Labor” is a lot like the “Old Labor” with its disregard for the law and employee freedom.

After a union-pushed proposal to forbid such a measure failed in a referendum, Michigan recently passed a right-to-work law granting employees the right to opt out of paying union dues and mandatory “agency fees.” Michigan’s law takes effect next week, which will make the longtime union spiritual home the 24^th right-to-work state, and second in the Midwest (after no. 23, Indiana).

Unions remain livid at this effort to offer employees choice in where their money goes. Since Michigan employers in both the private and the public sectors will be unable to institute so-called “union security clauses” in contracts agreed after next week, Michigan unions will actually have to provide a useful service that satisfies employees’ needs to keep collecting dues. The Wall Street Journal now reports on a new tactic Big Labor is trying to keep rooting in the pockets of employees who might not be satisfied:

Wednesday, the board of governors for Detroit’s Wayne State University approved an unusually lengthy contract that keeps mandatory collection of union dues in place for eight years. At the University of Michigan’s three campuses, similar contracts affecting 11,000 workers and stretching as long as five years have been tentatively approved and await ratification by union members.

For comparison, conventional collective bargaining agreements last three years. The Legislature is not taking kindly to this behavior in the public sector and is considering a bill to restore employee rights. As for the unions, a local public radio report says they claim:

Wayne State University’s faculty union is hoping to protect its members from the impact of Michigan’s right-to-work law, which takes effect in the spring. The union wants the university to lock dues into its next contract for 10 years, to shield members from the law banning mandatory membership and fees as a condition of employment. (Emphases added.)

You read that right—the union apparently thinks that it “protects” and “shields” employees by locking them into forced dues arrangements for up to a decade. How are employees responding to this plainly Orwellian maneuver? The Journal notes that employees are taking action to halt this union power grab:

Meanwhile, a conservative-leaning public-interest law foundation has filed suit on behalf of three teachers in Taylor, Mich., alleging that a new clause in their teachers’ contract to continue mandatory union dues for the next 10 years was improper.

Unions are using these last days of Michigan forced unionism to keep their hands in employees’ pockets for years on end. This, like the secret-ballot-abolishing “Employee Free Choice Act” (EFCA) shows how little unions actually respect “free choice,” and why the Employee Rights Act is needed to protect employees against the abuses of big unionism.

• Fallout continues from the guilty plea of former Worcester County (Maryland) Teachers Association Treasurer Denise Owens. According to the local Salisbury Daily Times, the Maryland State Teachers Association knew about Owens’s embezzlement, but the state union did not report the malfeasance to the authorities “because of potential impact on membership and loss of members.” Prosecutors said they are “looking at anyone who had a role in the theft of the funds, or anyone involved in a cover-up” for possible additional action, although no others are currently facing charges.
• John McNamee, the former president of Local 829 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, was recently sentenced to one year in prison and a $25,000 fine for embezzlement. According to the New York Post, prosecutors said McNamee spent much of the stolen money at swanky NYC steakhouses.

Wall Street Journal: Business, Labor Groups Find Little Accord on Immigration
The agreement involves “guiding principles” that both sides have agreed to, but is not the comprehensive plan that was hoped for.

Anchorage Daily News:  Labor lawyers try to rip apart mayor’s proposal to rein in unions
Labor speaks out against the Anchorage proposal that would reform benefits and pensions.

Washington Times: Editorial: Disorganized Labor
The editors explain why it’s wrong to allow violent union activists to have exemptions from criminal laws.

Labor payback can come in many forms. First, President Obama tried to pass the inappropriately named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that would eliminate basic rights of union members at the behest of union officials. More recently, the D.C. Circuit made it clear that Obama’s recess appointments were unconstitutional. His appointees to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), even back in 2010, have been chosen to make sure that labor always wins. Not to mention that Obama just re-nominated the same people he unlawfully “recess” appointed.

The stage is now set for what might be President Obama’s biggest payback to labor yet.

The Wall Street Journal reports that labor unions, once very supportive of Obama’s healthcare reform plan, are now having second thoughts about the “reform.” ObamaCare requires more health insurance coverage than many employers currently provide. Under ObamaCare, families making up to 400 percent of the poverty level will receive some type of subsidy to get the necessary private insurance.

That’s where union officials come in, with their hands out. Multi-employer plans, run by labor unions, must also step up with greater health coverage, which is, of course, more expensive. And since union members are being offered a plan from their employer, via the union, those union members are not eligible for the federal subsidy. Instead, it falls on the union to improve the coverage that it offers.

Now, labor wants some cash thrown its way to make up the difference:

Top officers at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the AFL-CIO and other large labor groups plan to keep pressing the Obama administration to expand the federal subsidies to these jointly run plans, warning that unionized employers may otherwise drop coverage. A handful of unions say they already have examined whether it makes sense to shift workers off their current plans and onto private coverage subsidized by the government. But dropping insurance altogether would undermine a central point of joining a union, labor leaders say.

The Tampa Tribune has a simple message for the beggars in organized labor:

Welcome to the real world.

The insurance plans of nonunion employers face the same costs, but no one is contemplating providing them a break.

According to Fox News, Republicans in the Senate are prepared to stop any such attempt:

“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is not ambiguous, in fact it is explicit, on this point,” the lawmakers wrote. “Any consideration of expanding access to subsidies therefore is not subject to regulation, but a change in the law.”

They cited one Congressional Research Service report that said employer-sponsored coverage would “generally” make an employee “ineligible to receive a premium subsidy.”

In one of the rare instances where labor needs to recognize financial realities, union officials face a tough decision that will either lead to cutting the bottom line or, likely, cutting members. As labor union member numbers continue to fall, costs for maintaining these multiemployer plans will continue to rise. Sheet Metal Workers Local 85 in Atlanta, profiled in the WSJ piece, will now have to pay 50 cents to $1 more per hour in member compensation in order to meet the new ObamaCare requirements.

The law is no obstacle for the Obama administration, but it remains to be seen if labor’s pleading for more money will succeed.

Research from the Center for Union Facts Uncovers Union Agenda Behind President Obama’s Minimum Wage Hike Proposal

Today the Center for Union Facts released new research detailing how many collective bargaining agreements link union salaries and wage rates to the federal minimum wage. This research comes two days after President Obama proposed raising the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9—a move which labor unions broadly praised.

The research brief can be accessed here.

“This research shows that labor unions stand to gain from minimum wage increases, even though their members don’t make the minimum wage,” said Richard Berman, Executive Director of the Center for Union Facts. “Some union contracts set starting union wages as much as fifteen percent higher than the federal minimum wage.

“Union officials have been anything but altruistic in their support for minimum wage hikes over the years,” Berman concluded. “This also calls into question whether some politicians who support minimum wage hikes do so out of support for unions—the same unions that are some of the nation’s biggest campaign contributors.”