LaborPains.org

The unions have got their walled-city approach wrong. Here’s the UFCW, which has been losing membership at a steady pace, turning down a historic opportunity. You can’t organize stores that don’t exist, Stu. Supermarkets have been pulling out of the city, not moving in, given the high costs and the competition from retail banks for the store space. And Wal-Mart has kicked the UFCW’s ass all over the country — there’s not a single union Wal-Mart store anywhere. Whatsa matter, Stu, you don’t got game for those hicks from Arkansas?

Those are the taunting words from TIME business writer Bill Saporito, who mocked UFCW leaders’ celebration of Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott’s comments that the discount retailer is less than enthused about trying to expand into New York City. As Saporito sees it, the UFCW’s Stuart Applebaum is all wrong to try to keep the store out of the city, where current supermarkets offer patrons little variety and high prices.

Saporito’s challenge: “The unions should be welcoming Wal-Mart and then getting busy. Don’t gloat. Organize.”

A federal judge in New York is allowing construction company ALR to proceed with its racketeering lawsuit against Laborers Local 78, in spite of the union’s argument that a Supreme Court decision, United States v. Enmons, protects the local from extortion prosecution. Incredibly, that’s not an incredible argument — Enmons really does protect labor unions from being prosecuted for racketeering conducted in the course of a strike.

But this time, according to the Daily Labor Report (subscription required), activities like the following …

ALR alleged that over the course of almost two years, Local 78 business manager Edison Severino, union members, and unknown persons engaged in a campaign of violence and extortion aimed at forcing the corporation and its President George Kourkounakis to enter a collective bargaining agreement with the local.

ALR and its president alleged that one union member broke Kourkounakis’s hand, and that others attempted to run over Kourkounakis with a car. ALR’s vans and employees’ vehicles were vandalized, the company alleged, and an employee was menaced with a vehicle on a New York expressway. Kourkounakis’s house was hit with spray paint and bricks, the company alleged.

Evidence showed that the violence was aimed at forcing a union contract on the company, the plaintiffs alleged, citing threatening statements such as: “You should join the union” and “You just crossed the line by calling the police; I will investigate where you live and break your windows.”

… are not protected under Enmons because they weren’t part of a strike. Got that? You can break a man’s hand and attempt to run people over with no fear of an extortion charge … as long as it’s part of a strike.

 We recently told you about a speech by former National Labor Relations Board member John Raudabaugh, who warned a Federalist Society lunch audience about the misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act.” We got hold of his prepared statement, and it’s worth sharing as Senator Edward Kennedy tries to follow Congressman George Miller’s feat of pushing EFCA through the House of Representatives.

But as Raudabaugh asks:

Has no one heard or read about Labor’s violations during these same organizing and contract negotiations periods? Have Congressmen Miller and Kennedy and their fellow supporters not read about Labor’s corporate campaigns? As an example, the Labor Board recently required a union to post a single-spaced, four page “Notice to Employees and Members” regarding its corporate campaign (organizing and bargaining) activities, the first paragraph of which reads:

WE WILL NOT brandish or carry any weapon of any kind, including, but not limited to, guns, knives, slingshots, rocks, ball bearings, liquid-filled balloons or other projectiles, sledge hammers, bricks, sticks, or two by fours at or near any picket line, handbilling effort, rally or in any vehicle engaged in ambulatory picketing…or following the private vehicle of any…employee.

The ninth paragraph of the same Notice is instructive too:

WE WILL NOT threaten to kill or inflict bodily harm, make throat slashing motions, make gun pointing motions, challenge or threaten to fight or assault employees, threaten to sexually assault non-striking employees or their family members, threaten to follow non-striking employees to their homes, use racial epithets or obscene gestures at non-striking employees….

I don’t know whether Miller or Kennedy have heard about his, but it’s time more people do. Read the whole thing by downloading it here. But one more quick excerpt:

To make a “free” “choice”, you must be (1) informed to enable a choice and (2) you must be able to register that choice free of any pressure. Labor’s bill – the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” – eliminates both critical elements. Card-check campaigns are, more often than not, conducted by stealth for the purpose of not attracting attention that would prompt counter-information. Labor’s card-check is not like a Labor Board secret-ballot – the union card-check solicits a “YES” only decision. And, signing a card in front of a union organizer where the only choice is “YES”, even without overt inducements, threats, or coercion, is not without peer pressure.

Angered by Mayor Richard Daley’s veto of the economically moronic “Big Box Living Wage,” unions are back to prove Chicago is their kind of town. Now one business group is saying union bosses tried to use their members’ money as a battle ax to intimidate Chicago’s City Council. The Chicago Sun-Times picks up the story today:

Organized labor sent a “message of intimidation” to the City Council by pumping more than $1 million into just five aldermanic races — with some challengers receiving 100 percent of their campaign contributions from unions, a business group charged Tuesday.

Of course, SEIU was a leading spender. A review of campaign finance records is certainly interesting:

It showed that organized labor contributed $1.02 million to challengers in five wards and that the beneficiaries relied almost exclusively on union money. They were 3rd Ward challenger Pat Dowell ($147,000 or two-thirds of all contributions); 12th Ward candidate Carina Sanchez ($171,000 or 96 percent); 15th Ward candidate Toni Foulkes ($250,000 or 100 percent); 16th Ward challenger Joann Thompson ($248,000 or 100 percent); and 21st Ward challenger Leroy Jones Jr. ($210,000 or 96 percent).

Apple CEO Steve Jobs hasn’t been silent about the link between the state of our education system and teachers unions. Last month he deplored the “unionization and lifetime employment of K-12 teachers” as “off-the-charts crazy”. A little more research, however, demonstrates that Jobs has been sounding this alarm for quite some time.

From 1995:

The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it’s not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can’t teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.

And another, wherein the technology guru indicates that technology isn’t the answer:

It is so much more hopeful to think that technology can solve the problems that are more human and more organizational and more political in nature, and it ain’t so. We need to attack these things at the root, which is people and how much freedom we give people, the competition that will attract the best people. Unfortunately, there are side effects, like pushing out a lot of 46 year old teachers who lost their spirit fifteen years ago and shouldn’t be teaching anymore. I feel very strongly about this. I wish it was as simple as giving it over to the computer.

(Hat tip: Internet & business blogger Donna Bogatin)

This morning’s Seattle Times has a must-see report on a deal between officials from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and some of Washington’s healthcare providers. SEIU’s leaders are using their lobbying clout to push for more than $60 million in additional tax money to be directed to nursing homes, but the deal involves terms that may actually hurt union members.

One long-time SEIU leader has called such deals “the very antithesis of true rank-and-file unionism.” Here’s an excerpt from the Times report:

Under a confidential written agreement with several operators of for-profit nursing homes, Local 775 has promised to help push for more money, and in exchange, the companies have pledged to bless the union’s organizing efforts.

Although the main goal of the agreement is to pursue public money, its details have been kept secret. The Seattle Times recently obtained a draft copy of the agreement.

As part of the 10-year agreement, SEIU Local 775 promises no strikes and agrees to let the nursing-home operators — not the union or workers — decide which homes are offered up for organizing. The union also agreed not to try organizing more than half of a particular company’s nonunion homes.

In a true understatement, the paper reports “critics accuse the union of being too focused on adding new dues-paying members, and too willing to forsake workers and consumers.” Don’t forget that the tax money SEIU is lobbying for comes from, well, taxpayers.

As the Times notes, this follows on the heels of SEIU representing home health-care workers who negotiate with the state even though they are not public employees, an arrangement that has already cost taxpayers $250 million.