LaborPains.org

Wherever there are wage freezes, there’s hysterical reaction by union leaders. And wherever there’s hysterical reaction by union leaders, there’s Richard Trumka. President Obama recently proposed a two-year pay freeze for employees of the federal government. Naturally, Trumka and his fellow labor leaders aren’t very happy.

“Today’s announcement of a two-year pay freeze for federal workers is bad for the middle class, bad for the economy and bad for business,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “No one is served by our government participating in a ‘race to the bottom’ in wages. We need to invest in creating jobs, not undermining the ones we have. The president talked about the need for shared sacrifice, but there’s nothing shared about Wall Street and CEOs making record profits and bonuses while working people bear the brunt. It is time to get our nation back on track, but we should not do so by placing an even greater burden on the middle class.”

“This proposal to freeze federal pay is a superficial, panicked reaction to the deficit commission report,” stated AFGE National President John Gage. “This pay freeze amounts to nothing more than political public relations. This is no time for scapegoating. The American people didn’t vote to stick it to a VA nursing assistant making $28,000 a year or a border patrol agent earning $34,000 per year.

We saw similar sturm und drang among New Jersey teachers unions when Governor Chris Christie proposed a pay freeze for teachers. But if union leaders are outraged over Obama’s plan, they should take a look at what’s happened in the private sector. In the first quarter of 2010, less than 42 percent of America’s personal income came from private sector wages and salaries, down from almost 45 percent when the recession began. About 8.5 million jobs have been shredded in the economic whirlwind of the past two years. And yet, according to a USA Today analysis, the number of federal employees making $100,000 or more has jumped 5 percent since the beginning of the recession. The average salary for federal workers is currently $71,206. The average salary for their private-sector counterparts? About $40,331. And that money comes from the very private-sector taxpayers who are struggling to make ends meet.

But public sector unions need more government workers and higher salaries to boost their membership and most importantly, membership dues. Unions see their future in public sector jobs. To put it mildly, it’s a cash cow. Here’s an idea for labor leaders. Instead of crusading against a measly pay freeze, how about returning the $171.5 million that they spent on mostly failed attempts to reelect Democrats in 2010 to their members?

Image courtesy of Ferdi’s – World.

In the past decade has heralded a new role for organized labor. Suddenly, the weapon of choice for unions is no longer the clipboard, but the lobbyist. Smaller groups have consolidated into mega-unions like the SEIU that boast deep pockets and an even deeper desire for political power. While it’s no surprise, it bears repeating: that power is getting exercised exclusively on behalf of one political party.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka hasn’t even been trying to hide this since the election. Instead he and his flacks have been barnstorming from microphone to microphone, boasting about how many members voted the “right” way.

West Virginia

“Union members provided the margin of victory for this race,” said AFL-CIO spokesman Eddie Vale, who said that 65% of union households had supported [Democrat] Mr. [Joe] Manchin, compared with just 47% of non-union households who had supported the two-term governor.

Delaware

The AFL-CIO also said it was influential in Delaware, where it calculates union members represent about 15% of the vote. The federation said union members helped Delaware Democrat Chris Coons beat Republican Christine O’Donnell, whose Senate run had the backing of tea party groups and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among others. About 63% of union members supported Mr. Coons in his race, the AFL-CIO said.

Connecticut

In Connecticut, where union members number more than 300,000, 60% of those voting union members supported longtime [Democrat] Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the winner of a highly competitive Senate race against the multimillionaire Republican former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, the AFL-CIO said.

Nevada

“We did our job,” Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, told the Huffington Post. “No matter what demographic, you look at our membership, we had large margins for progressive candidates approaching 30, with [Democrat] Harry Reid it was higher. We voted 69 to 29 for him which is a 40 percent margin.”

Does this sound like a workers’ interest group or an arm of the Democratic Party? Can you even begin to imagine the outrage if Walmart CEO Michael Duke spent his time after the election bragging about how many employees voted Republican?

The AFL-CIO spent millions in worker dues donating to Democratic candidates, airing commercials attacking Republicans, and sending mailers demanding that members vote left. And yet in most states, 30% to 40% of union members didn’t vote Democrat.

It’d sure be nice if the AFL-CIO decided to represent those workers too.

Democrats took a severe beating last night, losing over 60 seats in the House of Representatives, and at least six Senate seats. Republicans also had momentous pick-ups among governors and state legislatures. Exit pollsters found that voters thought the government was too big and that they disliked Barack Obama’s agenda.

The results are very bad news for the country’s labor unions. Organized labor broke the bank this election season trying to stem the Republican tide. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the largest public-sector union in the country, spent an astonishing $87.5 million to get Democrats elected, the biggest contribution in the race. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) donated another $44 million.

It made very little difference. Now comes the day after. Just how will America’s most lovable labor leaders try to rationalize their way out of this one? Some did better than others.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

“We did our job. No matter what demographic, you look at our membership, we had large margins for progressive candidates approaching 30, with Harry Reid it was higher. … I think [Democrats] are cognizant of what we did and if they aren’t they should pay heed to it.”

In other words, don’t blame us…or else.

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry:

“[W]e are looking to the new leaders elected tonight to show up in January ready to work for the American people — not for the agenda of the nameless, faceless corporations who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into our political process.”

I.e. please ignore the millions we pumped into campaigns.

United Food and Commercial Workers President Joe Hansen:

“In stark contrast to 2008, the election of 2010 will be remembered because the results were fueled not by hope, but by anger, frustration, and fear. … Empty and inflammatory rhetoric that derides health reform as ‘Obamacare’ and demonizes leaders as socialists will not right the imbalance in our economy or help working people make ends meet.”

In other words, we’re angry that you’re angry.

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel:

“NEA stands ready to work with the new Congress to put students first and ensure that education is the engine that moves America forward. We will work with all policymakers to maximize the achievement, skills, opportunities and potential of all students, to make sure they are prepared to become creative and productive citizens in our democratic society and diverse world.”

Because the NEA is all about students, not teachers.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee:

“The loss of the U.S. House of Representatives is a real setback for working families. Washington Republicans have done nothing since the last election to curtail the Bush recession and bring down unemployment.”

It’s also a real setback for our wallets, which are feeling pretty empty this morning.

Whatever stages of grieving union leaders are at, soon the reality will set in.  With a Republican-controlled House, labor legislation will get very little traction over the next two years.

Labor unions are allowed to “pressure” businesses with which they have a direct dispute. But what about companies that are completely neutral? Keith Eastland, a labor lawyer in Grand Rapids, wrote an op-ed explaining an unfortunate decision by the National Labor Relations Board.

Employers can expect the new board to grant much broader protections to union-related activity. An Aug. 27 board decision on “bannering” highlights this point. Bannering refers to the display of large signs, often containing misleading claims, at job sites belonging to neutral parties. It is a union tactic often designed to threaten and coerce neutral businesses to avoid dealing with non-union contractors or suppliers.

Although the law expressly prohibits unions from engaging in coercive or threatening actions toward neutral businesses, the new board has ruled that bannering is protected. Under this new rule, unions can now target your business or job sites with large banners — or use giant inflatable rats signifying the presence of “scabs” — even when you have no labor dispute with that union.

The case before the NLRB began in Arizona where representatives of the Carpenters Local 1506 (consisting of non-union temp workers  being paid to play the part of “picketer”) held 16-foot-long signs outside two medical centers and a restaurant. The signs read “Shame on…(the name of the establishment)” with the words “Labor Dispute” nearby. The catch? The establishments had no conflict with the union. The dispute was with construction companies doing work for the establishments’ owners.

This should have been a no-brainer for the NLRB. The National Labor Relations Act forbids conduct found to “threaten, coerce, or restrain” secondary businesses not involved in the primary dispute. But chalk one up to the labor-stacked NLRB, i.e. Craig Becker and Co.: They found a way to rule in the union’s favor.

To what extreme’s will unions take this new rule?

Recently the [United Brotherhood of Carpenters in Salt Lake City] has taken its bannering a step further by targeting companies that don’t do business with the Contractors. The banners are the same. But the handbills reveal that the company named is a potential tenant in a building where one of the Contractors is slated to perform work. According to the Union, the company being bannered is guilty of “thinking about profiting from unfair labor practices.” By this measure, most of the population might be subject to bannering.

A “potential tenant” where a company “is slated to perform work”? How far will bannering go? Could a union pressure the company that employs the aunt of the owner of a plumbing company that services an office building that houses a paper company that sells supplies to another company with which the union has a dispute? Or perhaps just thinking about selling supplies is enough to put a company in the unions crosshairs. Thanks to Craig Becker’s NLRB, it’s certainly possible.

This video drives home the point. Despite being about NFCW, not the Carpenters, it’s the same practice of creating a deceptive union picket line.

Talk about inappropriate comparisons! As reported by the National Journal, Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO and one of the heavy-hitters in the labor movement, came out swinging today and racked up yet another uncomfortable gaffe.

Trumka, the nation’s top union official, said that the anti-Obama views aired by conservative commentators like Glenn Beck constitutes “hate” in his mind and that he fears it could incite violence in these frustrating economic times.

“Our country’s been there a couple of times before, and with one exception, we’ve always taken the high road,” Trumka told National Journal. “You remember when John Kennedy got off the plane in Dallas, Texas, there were people on the airwaves talking about doing violence to the president. And what happened? That kind of stuff didn’t help our country, and we want to make sure that the anger gets turned into action, and it becomes unifying and not dividing and that we get hope and not hate.”

Go ahead and add that to Trumka’s Greatest Hits, which also includes a metaphorical threat to “burn” coal companies that replaced striking union workers, and accusing recalcitrant businesses of “economic treason.”

Of course, the real reason for Trumka’s desperation is that Congress failed to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, item number one on the unions’ wish list. And with Congress looking like it will be less sympathetic to Big Labor after the election, EFCA is as good as gone.

Craig Becker has so far refused to recuse himself. Well, perhaps that not the best way to put it. He’s more thrown up his hands and explained that what we thought he would recuse himself from (i.e. things related to the SEIU) and what he meant when he promised to recuse himself are two very different things entirely. Turns out, our fear that his appointment would signal the implementation of card check by means other that legislation were not unfounded. According to the Wall Street Journal:

And as many Senators feared when he was nominated, Mr. Becker is using his position on the National Labor Relations Board to bypass the will of Congress.[...] As a top lawyer for the Service Employees International Union, Mr. Becker had suggested that the NLRB has the legal authority to impose card check—which eliminates secret ballots in union elections—without the approval of Congress. And lo, at the end of August the NLRB dropped the bombshell, when, in a 3-2 decision, it decided to revisit its important 2007 Dana Corp. ruling. [...]

This Dana reversal also raises more questions about Mr. Becker’s ethical standards. The labor lawyer has already refused to recuse himself from cases involving the SEIU, his former employer. Now it turns out he had filed a brief for the AFL-CIO in the original Dana case, arguing that there is no essential difference between card check and secret ballots and calling Dana-style protections “bad labor-relations policy.” Mr. Becker is clearly biased against Dana and by any reasonable standard should not be able to rule on it.

There have been several times when I’ve discussed the alternate means of implementing some of the key tenets of the Employee Free Choice Act, like HERE and HERE. It’s just nice to have the President blatantly confirm this agenda in his speech to the AFL-CIO.  Basic story? EFCA will be a challenge in the lame duck session, but no worries, we’ve got other ways of making it happen. From the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama reiterated that the administration will put its weight behind it. “We are going to keep on fighting to pass the Employee Free Choice Act,” he told the 54 executive council members and others in the room. “We also know what and who is standing in the way of progress,” he said, adding that it will be “tough” to get the bill through the Senate and will take time to reverse the impact of “at least eight years in which there was a profound animosity toward the notion of unions.”

Mr. Obama also reminded the labor officials of the ways in which the administration has already supported unions, in part by wielding executive powers for actions that don’t require legislation.

“There’s a reason why we nominated people to the National Mediation Board that would ensure that folks in the rail and air” industries can organize, said Mr. Obama, referring to the board’s overhaul in May of a decades-old rule that had made it harder for airline and railway workers to unionize. He also cited the Democrats he nominated to the National Labor Relations Board to “restore some balance” to the group, which supervises union elections and referees disputes between private-sector employers and employees.

That’s not a typo. Not only did she call it the “Employer Freed Choice Act,” which is embarrassing enough, but she told the Communications Workers of America that EFCA ought soon be the “law of the land.”  They applauded.

From the CWA: