LaborPains.org

It's hard to tell anti-capitalist protesters from AFL-CIO leaders these days. (Photo credit: csuspect)

The AFL-CIO is demonizing millionaire CEOs that make their money the old-fashioned way—by working hard and earning it. According to the union, more than 100,000 median wage earning workers could be supported if the nation’s top earning CEOs were, presumably, eliminated or magically decided to work for free. The AFL-CIO’s “Executive PayWatch” website states:

In 2010, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index company CEOs received, on average, $11.4 million in total compensation— a 23 percent increase in one year. Based on 299 companies’ most recent pay data for 2010, their combined total CEO pay of $3.4 billion could support 102,325 median workers’ jobs.

Taking a page from the AFL-CIO’s book of wishful thinking, bloggers at The Union News reverse-engineered the union’s argument to see what would happen if billions in union dues hadn’t been collected in 2010 and blown on “salaries and benefits of union bosses, their staffs, and their golf courses, airplanes, and other costs.” The results, though speculative, seem to shatter the glass house in which the AFL-CIO enjoys throwing its rocks:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2010, there were 14.7 million union Americans belonging to unions. While that only represents 11.9 percent of all wage and salary earners, there is a substantial amount of dues money flowing to unions.

If we were to use a conservative figure of $50 per month for union dues, in 2010, unions collected $735,000,000 per month in union dues from America’s unionized workers. Multiply $735,000,000 by 12 months and you get a whopping $8,820,000,000 that was collected in union dues in 2010.

Divide $8,820,000,000 by $33,227 and you’ll find that if unions did not take union dues from workers in 2010, 265,447 workers’ jobs could have been supported.

We’re guessing AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka probably won’t be testing out The Union News’ theory to see if it holds any merit, and for obvious reasons.

The Daily Caller has another fascinating article about an Obama Administration policy that could give unions a membership boost:

By increasing the number of “green” requirements truckers have to comply with in order to get into some major United States ports — like Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland — the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency are helping push previously independent truckers into companies, which then makes them vulnerable to unionization or, in many cases, forced to join a union. As these aren’t administrative laws from the EPA per se, trucks that don’t fit this new “green” standard, which is meeting at least 2007 EPA emissions levels, are still allowed to operate throughout the country. But each of the major port authorities won’t let them in if they don’t fit the new environmental regulations, which would force many independent truckers out of business if they resist since many truckers depend on business from the ports to survive.

And sure enough, the Caller goes on to quote a spokeswoman for a coalition of groups (including the Teamsters) saying she wants to stop the “misclassification” of truckers as independent contractors. Far better for distant labor leaders to decide truckers’ employment arrangements rather than truckers and trucking companies.

This is a story to watch for two reasons. First, it’s another example of the government stacking the deck in favor of labor unions, which look increasingly unable to survive without the feds. Second, it shows the continuing efforts by organized labor to co-opt the green movement and use it to gain members. As we’ve noted in the past, the Teamsters have embarked on a protracted effort to eliminate independent truckers — all under the guise of being “environmentally friendly.” Now they’ve enlisted the EPA in their scheme.

Image courtesy of Hugo90.

In October 2009, UNITE HERE hotel workers in San Francisco voted to go on strike against several hoteliers. The workers organized ostensibly because they don’t feel the hotels are doing enough for them to cover health care costs.

But the hotels aren’t the only ones supposedly depriving them of benefits. UNITE HERE was caught diverting money from a union benefit fund to spend on their strikes:

After the National Labor Relations Board brought a legal case against Unite Here Local 2, which represents 12,000 hotel employees in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, the union agreed to reverse its actions and restore the monies to the proper funds with interest, hotel spokesman Pete Hillan said in a written statement.

In May, the Grand Hyatt and Hyatt Regency complained about the practice to the NLRB, and the agency subsequently intervened, Hillan said. Before the union redirected the funds, the money had been going to fund child care and elder care.

“One million dollars is a lot of money to chase business away from San Francisco,” San Francisco Grand Hyatt General Manager David Nadelman said Tuesday at the first of two dueling news conferences at the Union Square Grand Hyatt.

The employees are striking primarily over a reduction in health benefits. Organized labor has reacted with outrage when states don’t fully fund their benefit funds. Alleged attempts to “raid the Social Security and Medicare funds” have also elicited dramatic responses from unions.

There can only be one solution. In order for UNITE HERE to be consistent, it has to go on strike against itself. Any business or government willing to raid its employees’ benefits for cynical purposes must be taught a lesson. That’s their talking point, right?

Image courtesy of Marshall Astor.

This isn’t us spouting off either. This is Bob King, president of the United Auto Workers. King is threatening to go after foreign-owned automakers in the American South with all the subtlety of a Mack truck. “I don’t want to use the word boycott,” he said last week. Our thought: Then don’t. Oh wait, he did.

In a strikingly candid interview today, King admitted that the UAW’s very survival depends on this campaign:

“Here’s the terrible position we’re in (with) autos,” King said. “Because we’ve fallen so far in the percent of workers represented by the UAW in autos,” the union can’t demand big increases because of non-union competitors.

“So if we go in, we dramatically raise fixed costs for Ford, General Motors or Chrysler, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot…. We don’t want to disadvantage the (Detroit 3) companies.”

Welcome to the real world, Mr. King. This is as clear an admission as you’ll ever get from a labor leader that unions drive costs up for businesses and make them less competitive. Foreign automakers have apparently acted as a check on the UAW, keeping its demands reasonable. Now the UAW wants to do away with that check.

Why? It seems the UAW is getting nostalgic:

“What we’re really committed to is creating the UAW of the ’40s and ’50s and ’60s. The UAW of those days was an activist union — members were mobilized all the time,” King said.

Just what the country needs right now: more business disruptions.

Image courtesy of TrevinC.

Last year, the UNITE HERE union, which consists mostly of service workers, reunited with the AFL-CIO. So it’s probably not surprising that UNITE HERE has been using hardball tactics that seem downright…Trumka-esque. While most unions might file a single complaint, UNITE HERE likes to shoot a little higher.

Union-represented housekeepers filed injury complaints against Hyatt Hotels Corp properties in eight U.S. cities on Tuesday, but the company said the filing was a union ploy to gain leverage and members.

The 12 filings with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration asked for an investigation into what the union, Unite Here, said were high rates of injuries among overworked housekeepers at Hyatt properties.

“Unite Here is making false charges about our work environment in hotels where we are currently trying to negotiate new union contracts,” Robb Webb, Hyatt’s chief human resources officer, said in a statement.

These complaints, timed perfectly, are an intimidation tactic to pressure Hyatt. And this is nothing new. In July, UNITE HERE led a high-profile strike against four Chicago Hyatt hotels, angry that workers were being laid off.

Then there was this amusing demand.

A union representing hotel workers has asked the Democratic National Committee to rule out two of its four convention-site finalists, Cleveland and Charlotte, N.C., because they lack sufficient unionized hotel facilities.

“Among the DNC’s four finalist cities, only St. Louis and Minneapolis” have the capacity to “house a large portion of the delegates and other guests … in unionized hotels,” John Wilhelm, president of the international UNITE HERE union of hotel and textile workers, wrote in a letter to DNC Chairman Tim Kaine.

Taking business from an economically-strapped city like Cleveland is apparently no problem for UNITE HERE. This isn’t really about the economy or hotel workers, after all. In fact, one of the hotels that UNITE HERE is picketing, the Hyatt Regency Chicago, was listed as one of the best places to work this year by Crain’s. UNITE HERE’s real goal is to attract attention to the union and stick it to successful businesses.

With the Employee Free Choice Act off the table, unions are looking for another way to tip the scales in their favor. Enter the so-called “quickie election.” Rather than implementing card check, the NLRB could shorten the amount of time between workers submitting a union petition and the election over unionization. Currently the median amount of time taken is about 38 days. But NLRB member Mark Pearce has said that time span should be “as brief as possible.” He pointed to the Canadian system, where elections are typically held between five to ten days after petition, as a model for the future.

It all sounds very inconsequential and loaded with jargon. Marty Payson and Roger Kaplan, labor lawyers at Jackson Lewis explain:

Of course, employees are much less likely to vote for union representation once they have had the opportunity to hear their employers’ side. But because union organizing is  usually conducted secretly, employers would not know they need to share their  views with their workforce until an election petition has been filed. A “quicky” election, then, really seeks to cut off debate over unionization before it begins. It  would make an employer’s statutory “free speech” rights under Section 8(c) virtually meaningless.

Unions file their election petitions by getting employees to sign authorization cards without employees necessarily knowing all the facts. The quicky election would simply  rubber-stamp the cards. Casting a ballot would be mere window dressing, an exercise  almost as meaningless as the drafters of EFCA could have hoped.

If employers don’t have the opportunity to sit down with their workers and respond to a union’s propaganda, those workers will be far more likely to vote to organize. Employers could find their workplace unionized before they even know what hit them.

Unions should be careful what they wished for. Many employers have already begun to include union organizing information in their employee orientations. For every action, there’s a reaction — and management’s reaction to this could leave organized labor worse off than they were before.

Still, it just goes to show that there are two sides to every argument, and unions don’t want you hearing the other side. Even the demise of EFCA won’t change that.

Andy Stern may no longer be the head of the Service Employees International Union, a post he left in April, but that doesn’t mean he’s out of the news.  According to the AP, he’s being dragged into an FBI investigation.  Just read:

“The FBI and the U.S. Labor Department are investigating prominent labor leader Andy Stern in their probe of corruption at the Service Employees International Union, according to two people who have been interviewed by federal agents. The two organized labor officials met with federal agents this summer to answer questions about a six-figure book contract that Stern landed in 2006 and his role in approving money to pay the salary of an SEIU leader in California who allegedly performed no work. [...]

One person who spoke to federal agents twice, in May and June, said they asked about a 2006 contract in which Stern received a $175,000 advance from Simon & Schuster to write the book “A Country That Works.” The SEIU and its locals bought thousands of copies of the book after it was published. The union also paid thousands to fact-check and promote the book, but Stern pocketed the advance.

As the article notes, Andy Stern left the SEIU because he “wanted to focus more on his personal life.” In Washington, that could mean any number of things, but there is one thing it rarely means: the individual wants to focus more on their personal life.

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.