LaborPains.org

Where are your union dues going? You might find them in court, where union officers are facing embezzlement charges. Freda Hensley, a former Steelworkers Union president, recently admitted to ripping off members to the tune of $38,000. U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston gave her five years of probation — a slap on the wrist. But others might not be so lucky.

Take Claude Huff. The day before the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1385 held hearings on allegations that he overpaid himself with union funds, Huff resigned as its president. Now, a federal court has indicted him for the alleged theft. He’s on the hook for over $100,000.

Then there’s Laura Dixon, accused of pilfering as much as $170,216 in five years from the Ohio and Vicinity Regional Council of Carpenters. Her defense?

“Ms. Dixon’s attorney, Rick Kerger, said that the employee did not take money for her own use but instead falsified the financial records to help those having difficulty paying their union dues.”

Even if that oddball alibi wins out in court, it’s still a symptom of a larger problem: dues are routinely spent by labor leaders on partisan causes and political candidates, without the approval or support of members. Dropping those expenditures would certainly make sense to union members trying to fit dues into their strained budgets.

The picture these cases paint, meanwhile, is of a union system with corrupt officials who not only spend union money as they wish but siphon off handsome sums for themselves. Federal courts can haul in these abusers on a case by case basis, with long and costly trials, no doubt, to follow.

The campaign to educate Americans about the need for labor law reform continues today as the Center for Union Facts placed a new ad in the New York Times.

Once a workplace is unionized it is nearly impossible for employees to decertify a union. As a result, millions of unionized employees work in union shops where they have never had the opportunity to vote on whether or not they want to remain represented by that union.

The Employee Rights Act requires that every unionized workplace have a supervised secret ballot election every three years to determine whether employees want to continue to be represented by any incumbent union.

You can read more about the Employee Rights Act at www.Employee Rights Act.com or you can join our new Facebook page.

Part of the Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) Director’s job is to oversee the investigations and audits of union financial records and union officials’ conflicts-of-interest reporting. Obama appointee John Lund should have never been given this position, as performing those duties would be a conflict of interest for Director Lund. Don Loos first broke the story in April.

The Obama Ethics Executive Order requires appointees to pledge that they will refrain from involvement in matters involving their former employer or clients.  The AFL-CIO and other unions are former clients of John Lund , and these unions remain clients of his former and current employer, the University of Wisconsin School for Workers (Lund is currently on unpaid leave while at DOL).  The Wisconsin School for Workers’ primary mission is to train union officials; the very officials that Lund now purportedly investigates for corruption.

Now, even more disturbing details have surfaced. Lund is purportedly telling union officials they can bypass Department of Labor investigators and instead work with him personally. And a new U.S. Department of Labor internal document seems to back up the claim of Lund’s flagrant abuse of power. Don Loos explains the dirty details:

[B]y going to Lund, union bosses can work out deals to avoid jail time or criminal charges.  He can personally advise them how to “clean up” their reports to avoid consequences.  On the other hand, if pesky Department of Labor investigators get involved, then government investigative records will be made, facts will be verified, and falsehoods will be documented.

Loos also points out that had the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman similarly invited corporate presidents to deal with her directly and ignore SEC investigators, it would be breaking news with investigations to follow. Instead, Big Labor will continue to reap the rewards of Lund’s appointment at the expense of their dues paying members (who the OLMS department is supposed to protect). A thorough investigation should be made into the abuse of power at the Department of Labor, and specifically into Lund’s actions while at the DOL. When the fox watches the hen house, the village always goes hungry.

A high ranking official in the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is under investigation for allegations of financial misconduct. SEIU spokeswoman Inga Skippings said the investigation is focused on “one individual only,” namely, the union’s international vice president…yes, you’ve heard of him…Bruce Raynor–the man who cannibalized UNITE-HERE.

SEIU’s internal investigation of Raynor revealed that he “abused his expense account,” Politico’s Ben Smith reported Tuesday. Smith noted that labor unions typically don’t conduct formal investigations of such violations, suggesting SEIU and Raynor have much bigger issues between them:

Raynor’s alleged breach is something many unions would handle without a formal investigation — particularly against a senior official. However two SEIU sources said the union’s executive board discussed the matter in closed session Monday, and is in the process of hiring a hearing officer to oversee the probe.

Raynor told Politico that he is the victim of “an ugly, naked exercise in political retaliation,” insisting that he was protecting a female SEIU official “from political retaliation within the union by keeping her name off of expense reports and [dining] receipts.”

The charges against Raynor will be referred to an “outside independent hearing officer” who will suggest a course of action to SEIU’s International Executive Board. It should come as no surprise that a man responsible for wresting a bank away from another union and transferring $12 million to supportive constituents is somehow under investigation for financial misconduct at his current job?

Don Todd previously headed up the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) under President George W. Bush. Now he’s charging that, instead of keeping unions honest, the Department of Labor is working hand-in-hand with organized labor:

“In a worst-case scenario, your union organizer comes to you, offers you a deal to unionize, you say, ‘no,’ and, the next thing you know, OSHA’s [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] at your door,” Todd said in a phone interview. “Then, Wage and Hour show up, and they want to publicize it. They always find something wrong – it’s like with bed-checks in boot camp in the army.”

Todd said some companies will fight the DOL’s intimidation tactics, but many will give in to unionizing forces.

“It makes it the path of least resistance,” Todd said.

There’s much more where that came from. Click here to read the full story.

The core problem is that the ideologues at DOL see their role as solidarity with, not enforcement of, organized labor.

Image courtesy of gfpeck.

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.

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.

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.