LaborPains.org

The Center for Union Facts seeks an energetic and enterprising researcher to join the group’s growing public outreach and education program.

The Center for Union Facts (CUF) is a leading union watchdog organization dedicated to educating Americans about the labor union movement. We work to expose labor leaders’ abuse of their members’ trust. We are committed to preserving union transparency, democracy, and union members’ right to work. We are also a leading voice against union’s attempts to pass “card check” legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act.

The Center for Union Facts also maintains the largest web-accessible database of information about labor unions, including union finances, union leader compensation, lobbying, hard and soft money political contributions, strikes, unfair labor practices, union elections, and much more. We work extensively with reporters, union members, labor experts, academics, businesses and anyone else who seeks information about labor unions. 

A successful candidate will work with the Managing Director and Executive Director to provide in depth research and writing on the labor movement. A researcher’s duties may include assisting in the Center’s public relations campaigns, writing detailed reports, creating compelling print, television, and online advertisements, and producing web and video content.

Other daily duties are likely to include: news updates and press clips, drafting newsletters, writing blog posts, letters to the editor, press releases, and OpEds, working with whistleblowers, updating our growing social media presence, updating website databases, filing FOIA requests, and assisting in message testing and advertisement development.

Candidates should have a college degree and at least two to five years of work experience in a job that has demonstrated an ability to think on your feet. Candidates should also have a track record of strong writing and research skills. Knowledge of the organized labor movement is a plus. Salary is commensurate with experience.

Please send a cover letter, resume, and brief writing sample demonstrating your research skills to wilson@unionfacts.com

Image courtesy of Thewmatt.

Washingtonians have grown accustomed to the Carpenters Unions’ merry band of bums marching around in circles.

If you’ve never encountered them before, the local Carpenter’s Council pays about 50 homeless people minimum wage to march and beat buckets all day long protesting non-union construction companies. The con, of course, is that the average passerby thinks that the hired-homeless are actually striking carpenters.

None of this is new, except that yesterday I saw them marching in front of an AFL-CIO financed building in 15th Street in Washington, DC.

Ben Smith (nice scoop) reports that Andy Stern is rumored to be leaving the Service Employees International Union.

Here’s my question: Will Stern be “spending more time with his family”? That, of course, is the classic excuse Washington, D.C. politicos give for being forced out of their jobs. Sam Stein reports that Stern wants to take on something different.

So what will Stern’s legacy be? Here’s a map of his multi-front war.

President Obama may have called for a doubling of U.S. exports within the next five years, but that will become increasingly difficult, thanks to another policy, according to the Wall Street Journal:

At the same time, [Obama] has moved to curb trade in certain areas under pressure from Congress and unions. But the web of existing trade treaties and global trading relationships makes it hard for Mr. Obama to protect one group of American workers without hurting another.

Backers of the trucking restrictions, led by the Teamsters union and U.S. truckers who have long opposed opening the borders to Mexican truckers, say the decision keeps unsafe Mexican trucks off U.S. highways. Opponents, including a coalition of businesses affected by the tariffs and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, say the dispute is putting 25,000 jobs at risk.

Mexican authorities are considering new tariffs on an expanded list of U.S. imports if Washington doesn’t meet its obligations under the North American Free-Trade Agreement that Canada, Mexico and the U.S. signed in 1993.

While Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa wants to call what the Mexican government is doing “blackmail”, this is old-as-the-hills, tit-for-tat, eye for an eye, foreign policy. If Hoffa didn’t think the Mexican government would retaliate for being charged tariffs on imports from the US, and having thousands of unionized workers lose their jobs–both in Mexico and the US (thanks to reduced orders from Mexico), then he clearly is addressing a different problem.

While Hoffa would like us to see him as a benevolent voice, concerned for “unsafe trucks” and the American worker, his “foreign policy” interests are quite narrow, focused on preserving Teamsters’ jobs, not the American work force–much less the Mexican workforce–as a whole.

I will let the Wall Street Journal have the final word:

Rick Bahr, head of the United Steelworkers union local that represents more than 500 employees at the Appleton plant, said six shifts have already been cut, cutting down on overtime. “The battle ends up union versus union, truckers versus the paper workers,” Mr. Bahr said. [...] Kevin Bunnow, 50, a 33-year veteran of the plant, said the reduction in shifts had meant a wage cut of several thousand dollars last year.

“When elephants fight, the grass loses,” he said. “It didn’t take me long to realize, we’re the grass.”

Image courtesy of Allmightymo

Now this is what I call bad news. This happens to be why firefighters and police officers can be part of unions–just no striking. Because people get hurt. From the National Bureau of Economic Research:

“Controlling for hospital specific heterogeneity, patient demographics and disease severity, the results show that nurses’ strikes increase in-hospital mortality by 19.4% and 30-day readmission by 6.5% for patients admitted during a strike, with little change in patient demographics, disease severity or treatment intensity.”

“This study provides some of the first analytical evidence on the effects of health care strikes on patients, and suggests that hospitals functioning during nurses’ strikes are doing so at a lower quality of patient care.”

I should note that police and firefighter lobbyists see right now as a perfect time “to expand collective bargaining rights for public safety workers,” according to The Hill. After reading the above study, imagine the scenario with police officers and firefighters striking. In this case, public safety should be paramount, don’t you think?

Image courtesy of Road Fun.

It should indicate something about the employment market when some of a trash collection company‘s employees threaten to strike… and 1600 people apply for their jobs.  It should also serve as a reality check to the union–especially when “the the average driver’s annual compensation will reach $109,553″ and the unemployment rate has been resting close to 9 or 10% for months.

From the Seattle Post Intellegencer:

More than 1,600 people have applied to work as replacement drivers for Waste Management in case of a strike by the Teamsters, a company spokesperson said Saturday. [...] The company submitted what it calls its “best, last, final offer” to union garbage truck drivers represented by Teamsters Local 174, but the offer was rejected Friday by the union. Nearly 1 million customers in King and Snohomish counties would be affected if the union votes to strike.[...]

Lang said Waste Management was not surprised by the large number of applicants. [...]“Given the economy, a lot of people are under-employed and unemployed. So the response was very strong and … it’s a very strong group of applicants.”

Image courtesy of Neubie.

Schwarzenegger is back.  After a judge declared the end to “Furlough Fridays”, the San Fransisco appellate court backed the Gubernator. From the Sacramento Bee:

Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said that for now the ruling averts other moves the governor has been weighing to cut payroll costs if furloughs aren’t an option.

“We budgeted for the furloughs,” McLear said. “If the unions are successful in blocking furloughs, it would guarantee pay cuts and layoffs. The governor is not going to shield state workers from economic realities facing other California families and businesses.” [...]

“Tuesday’s temporary stay, signed by Presiding Justice J. Anthony Kline, gives the governor until Friday to file more documents to buttress his case. SEIU Local 1000 and unions representing state attorneys, doctors and dentists have until next Wednesday to reply.”

“It’s possible that the appellate court won’t settle the issue before Schwarzenegger ends the furlough policy itself. The governor has said he wants to end furloughs June 30, at the end of the 2009-10 fiscal year, in favor of an across-the-board 5 percent pay cut, an increase in employee contributions to retirement, and a 5 percent unallocated cut to state departments next fiscal year.”

As the SEIU and other unions fight the governor on furloughs, “winning” the furlough battle may simply be “losing faster” with more layoffs, sooner.  California stares down the a massive budget deficit, and there are only so many outs available.

Image courtesy of .:Sandman.