Pennsylvania is such a union stronghold, it naturally caught my eye when Chester County guards voted down the union by a wide margin. The “Chester County Corrections Officers Independent Union” would have been associated with the Teamsters Local 312, who was “ecstatic” and “anxious” at the prospect of the guards forming a union.  From The Mercury:

“Efforts to organize Chester County Prison corrections officers into a union bargaining unit have failed, a union representative confirmed. In a vote last week, officers at the prison voted overwhelmingly against forming the Chester County Corrections Officers Independent Union, which would be allied with the Teamsters.  The tally against organizing was 155-35…“

Far from some conspiratorial explanation being thrown around as an explanation (think California’s NUHW VS. SEIU fight), turns out it’s was old fashioned boots on the ground by one employee who opposed the union. From The Mercury:

Unlike during past campaigns to form bargaining units among county employees, this effort apparently did not prompt extensive lobbying efforts against unionization by county administrators. [...] The prison source who identified the vote tally said the commissioners had not sent any mailings urging a “no” vote, although one officer who opposed the move took it upon himself to contact workers. The county’s administration “pretty much stayed out of it,” the source said.

Image courtesy of Ritscent.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski of Oregon has nominated Multnomah County Chairman Ted Wheeler to the position of State Treasurer, following the death of Ben Westlund on Sunday.

Want to know why Wheeler, and not another state representative Greg Macpherson, got the nod? According to The Oregonian:

“Kulongoski acknowledged that “part of it” was the opposition that Macpherson would face among the state’s public employee unions. Macpherson worked with Kulongoski on a 2003 bill aimed at reducing the costs of the Public Employees Retirement System that angered many public employees.

When Macpherson ran for attorney general in 2008, Service Employees International Union, the largest of the state employee unions, gave more than $300,000 to his Democratic primary opponent, John Kroger. The unprecedented union contribution to an attorney general’s race helped power Kroger to victory over Macpherson.

But see, it wouldn’t be classy to say that unions didn’t like MacPherson (who is actually a friend of the governor) because he wanted to reform the pension system. The reason that SEIU local gives for the reason that Kroger (see image) was so flagrantly funded and MacPherson so not? The Oregonian explains in another article:

Arthur Towers, political director for the SEIU local in Salem, wasn’t making any big pronouncements about his union spending heavily against Macpherson if he got in the treasurer’s race.  He  insisted that a big reason the union gave so much in the attorney general’s  race is that the “members fell in love with Kroger,” and that candidates don’t come along like that often.

That’s right. Far from some political agenda, it was love.

But hey, Oregon is a unique place. In January, at the behest of their public sector unions, Oregon voted to increase their taxes for the first time since 1931. During the lead up to the tax bill’s passage, it is interesting to note that the leading anti-tax politician was indicted by none other than John Kroger.

From ABCNews:

The Oregon Department of Justice said Monday that Sizemore and his wife, Cindy Sizemore, are each charged with three counts of evading Oregon personal income taxes. Each count carries a maximum punishment of five years and a $125,000 fine. [...] Bill Sizemore called the charges a “political attack” by public employee unions and state Attorney General John Kroger, a Democrat who had union support.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

The New York Times spared few punches in their piece “Still with Obama, But Worried”:

“Because unions have been so crucial to the Democrats election after election, political experts say labor’s ambivalence, or worse, toward the Democrats could greatly deepen that party’s woes this fall.

“Labor is very disappointed, whether it’s about card check or the effort to tax Cadillac health plans,” said Charles E. Cook Jr., publisher of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, referring to a bill that would have made it easier to unionize and to tax high-cost health plans that many union members have. “They’re really disillusioned. I think one by one unions will start getting engaged and helping out the Democrats, but it could be half-hearted.” [...]

“We’ve seen a decline in support among union members for both Obama and the Democrats,” Terry Madonna, director of the college’s Center for Politics and Public Affairs, said. “Part of it is that unemployment brings low job performance ratings, no matter what the party. And less enthusiasm means that union members are less likely to vote.”"

And my favorite line comes from AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka:

“It’s totally unfair to say that the president hasn’t done this or done that,” Mr. Trumka added. “He’s tried on the stimulus bill. He faces tremendous Republican opposition. On health care, I give him the highest marks for tenacity.”

Saying that someone gets “high marks for tenacity” is like telling your friend that their significant other  “has a great personality”.

What’s that old Chinese proverb?

“There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.”

No matter whether the Administration does it through a jobs bill, by reanimating a very dead EFCA, by NLRB rule changes, or executive orders, they have to find a way to give something to their loyal big labor constituants.  The Administration is currently considering something known at the “High Road Procurement Policy.” And for your information, it doesn’t take the proverbial “high road” on it’s way to handouts for big labor–and it gets labor unions exactly what they want.

From the New York Times:

The Obama administration is planning to use the government’s enormous buying power to prod private companies to improve wages and benefits for millions of workers, according to White House officials and several interest groups briefed on the plan. [...]

Although the details are still being worked out, the outline of the plan is drawing fierce opposition from business groups and Republican lawmakers. They see it as a gift to organized labor and say it would drive up costs for the government in the face of a $1.3 trillion budget deficit. [...]

The Daily Caller, a conservative Web site, reported Feb. 4 that the plan would “heavily favor government contractors that implement policies designed by organized labor.”

From the AP:

Documents obtained by The Associated Press show the plan under consideration would examine the wages and benefits — such as health insurance, retirement benefits and paid leave — a company pays its employees as a factor in the contract award process.

Image courtesy of Jakob Montrasio.

Sometime there’s just a great sentence that comes along and captures the essence of what you are trying to say. From Daniel Griswold at CATO in the Washington Times:

“Unions are rapidly becoming an economic anachronism. In recent decades, barriers to international trade and investment have fallen, and domestic markets, including transportation, energy and telecommunications, have been largely deregulated. U.S. industries, on the whole, have accepted and even embraced the more competitive environment. Sectors such as steel, textiles and sugar continue to demand protection from foreign competitors, but they are now the exceptions and not the rule. But leaders of organized labor, on the whole, do not accept the new, more competitive environment.

A return to the era of more closed and regulated markets should be strongly resisted. Although it may be seen by labor leaders as a golden era, it extracted a heavy price on Americans in the form of lost consumer welfare, product innovation and freedom. The preferable policy alternative is to allow competition to work in labor markets just as it has been allowed to work more fully in product markets.”

Out of place, out of good ideas, and out of time, unions are indeed as anachronistic as they come.  At times it seems that unions are the Luddites at the tech convention, imploring everyone to replace their iPhones with a union made CB radios and their iPads with clipboards.

Image courtesy of Kenn Wilson.

Today the Center for Union Facts expressed puzzlement and disbelief following the Washington Post report that Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andy Stern may be nominated to President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

“Putting Andy Stern on a debt reduction commission is the equivalent of putting a tax cheat in charge of the Internal Revenue Service, but crazier things have happened in Washington” said J. Justin Wilson, Managing Director of the Center for Union Facts. “Stern and his unions know a thing or two about government debt, as they do their fair share to contribute to it. The SEIU has single-handedly driven more than a few states to the edge of fiscal insolvency. We can’t let him do the same to the rest of the country.”

The rumor that Stern will sit on the budget panel should not come as a surprise, given his long history of thwarting states’ attempts to balance their budgets. Stern’s SEIU, and other unions that represent state employees, have blocked many attempts to renegotiate state employees salaries and benefits.

For instance, as California struggles to avoid bankruptcy and close a $20 billion dollar budget deficit, unions including the SEIU have fought tooth and nail against any effort by legislators to save money. California also faces $100 billion in unfunded pension liabilities in the next five years, but unions have vowed to reject any attempt to fix the pension crisis—and therefore any effort to address the state’s financial meltdown.

Equally entangled in their own budget crisis of unions’ making, New York State is working to close a $7.4 billion dollar deficit.  Last month, Governor Paterson stated that the public sector unions were “thumb[ing] their nose at the public’s face.”

“Stern’s self-serving brand of ‘deficit reduction’ would likely increase taxes on everyone to pay for the pensions and wages of a few—without regard for our nation’s fiscal future,” Wilson continued.

Guess how long it takes for a public school teacher in California to be granted tenure?  Prepare to be shocked:

It takes two years, without so much as a substantive review.

Facing enormously powerful teacher’s unions, Governor Schwarzenegger’s efforts to change the tenure rules (extending the tenure threshold to five years) have–to date–been resoundingly defeated.  Unions like the California Teachers Association have spent millions to keep the two-year tenure rule in place.  The Wall Street Journal took time to count the cost of this today:

“Even when bad schools close, which happens all too rarely, teachers from those schools take jobs at replacement schools or are sent to work at other schools in the system. And union contracts typically allow those with seniority to bump younger colleagues from other schools, even if the younger teachers are getting better classroom results. […]

It’s not impossible to get rid of bad teachers, but it’s extremely hard and expensive. A report this month in LA Weekly noted that in the past decade the Los Angeles Unified School District “spent $3.5 million trying to fire just seven of the district’s 33,000 teachers for poor classroom performance.“

The result? Four were fired, two others were paid large settlements and one was reinstated. The paper also reported that 32 underperforming teachers were initially targeted for removal “but then secretly paid $50,000 by the district, on average, to leave without a fight.”"

So as governors across the country look for areas to cut their state budgets, they need look no further than the seemingly innocuous line item “Education”.  Turns out, education’s budget has nothing to do with children (at least according to the teachers unions).

As it is, the California Teachers Association is asking everyone to save the date (March 3th) and “Stand up for Schools.”  “It’s time everyone paid their fair share,” opines their plea that students and parents not let the state cut education funding.

We agree that it’s time for everyone to pay their fair share. It’s just that teachers who shouldn’t even be in a classroom are paying no price at all. And California’s children and their parents are paying the full price.

Image courtesy of DonBuciak.

Turns out that labor leaders have been doing a little cost-benefit analysis behind our backs.

Labor leaders balked when they discovered that many unionized employees were eligible for increased taxes in the Senate’s health care bill. At the time, a deal was reached that would make collectively bargained jobs exempt from the tax until 2017; and threshold for family insurance raised from $23,000 to $24,000.

Unions agreed to the whole thing when they thought that the benefits of a comprehensive bill outweighed the potential cost of the excise tax. [Mind you, the labor unions collective "cost" was offset by sweetheart deals, $10 billion to assist unfunded pension liabilities, and exemptions from the excise tax.]

But with a comprehensive bill pretty much off the table, unions see the excise tax in a whole new light–and they are backing off their support. According to The Hill.

“But labor leaders have grown wary that the Obama administration and Congress are scaling back their ambitions for healthcare reform despite the president’s insistence that he has not. Losing union support for the healthcare effort would be a damaging blow. Organized labor has been one of the staunchest proponents of finishing the job on healthcare reform.

“”It appears that the administration and Congress will be taking a much more modest approach to healthcare reform. The cost and value of such reform would not justify using an excise tax,” Larry Cohen, president of the Communications Workers of America, told The New York Times. The communications union has been among the most vocal labor organization in its opposition to the tax.

The story ran in The New York Times, citing union leaders faulting Massachusetts as their canary in a coalmine on the excise tax:

“But as a practical matter, labor leaders said, the excise tax was killed by the election in Massachusetts, where the Republican candidate, Scott Brown, won the Senate seat long held by Edward M. Kennedy. [...] Michael A. Podhorzer, deputy political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said Massachusetts should be a warning to Democrats, like “a canary in a coal mine.”

“Fully 42 percent of voters believed the health care bill would tax employer health benefits, and these voters supported Brown by two to one,” Mr. Podhorzer said.

With comprehensive health care reform–or reform of any type–unlikely, unions have more to gain complaining to Democrats than not. It’s just one more failed thing that labor leaders can torture Democrats with in November, hopefully leveraging their sympathy (and need for campaign money) to push the labor movement’s policy priorities.

Image courtesy of BULLETSAYS’.