LaborPains.org

Labor unions will need to devise a new mechanism for collecting dues from unwilling government employees in the Sunshine State. Members of both houses in Florida’s legislature voted this week to ban state and local governments from deducting union dues from an employee’s paychecks.

“This is what I campaigned on last year, and that’s limited government,” said Republican Sen. Scott Thrasher who sponsored the bill. “Government should not be the tax collector for unions.”

The paycheck protection bill now goes to Gov. Rick Scott who is expected to sign it into law without hesitation, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Look for the union label! (Photo credit: eggrole / Mark)

Organized labor in Northern California says it’s high time that they unite with the state’s growing medical marijuana industry. On Monday, cannabis operators in San Jose and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union hashed-out the details for their new partnership.

Angel Raich, founder and CEO of ARCH collective in Oakland, described her industry’s budding relationship with UFCW as “a meeting of the minds in a lot of ways.” Dispensary operators say that aligning themselves with one of the nation’s most powerful labor unions  brings “clout” to their industry.

UFCW Local 5 President Ron Lind told KGO-TV that the Silicon Valley Cannabis Coalition for Sensibility and Dignity was launched to help cannabis shops “build their power and legitimacy” through unionization. The Daily Caller reported in June 2010 that marijuana legalization in California would especially be a boon to UCFW membership:

By getting in on the ground floor, the UFCW has a chance to dominate in an industry where employees and employers alike are –as of this moment anyway– far less skeptical of organized labor than the long-unionized supermarket industry.

With medical marijuana sales expected to generate revenue of nearly $9 billion over the next 5 years, could it be that UCFW leaders are hoping for spillover benefits to their core industry?  UFCW employees will certainly be in a unique position to deal with any and every case of the munchies that comes their way.

The chart below is another shining example of how public-sector union benefits are bankrupting states across the nation. James M. Hohman, a fiscal policy analyst with the Mackinac Center’s fiscal policy initiative, visually demonstrates a decade (2000-2010) of Michigan lawmakers caving to unions’ incessant demands for more benefits. These costs ultimately toppled the state’s economy and stuck taxpayers with the bill (Click image below to see full size):

“Without a conscious policy direction, the value of state and local government employment benefits grew substantially in the past decade without the means to pay for it,” Hohman wrote on the organization’s blog. “It’s a problem that deserves review, regardless of public employee protests.”

Read more.

Photo credit: David Greg Katechis

Since the governors of Wisconsin and Ohio put an end to doing business-as-usual with public-sector unions, nearly 750 bills have been introduced by fiscally responsible legislators (or at least those trying to be) in almost every state. Most reports suggest the obvious: that this is a bad thing for unions and their lockstep members, of course.

The Los Angeles Times is by no means a cheerleader for these predominantly Republican state legislators, but the Times did manage to mention a few noteworthy facts on their behalf (via information it gathered, in part, from the National Conference of State Legislatures):

• Nearly half of states are considering legislation to limit public employees’ collective bargaining rights.
• A number of states are considering bills that would limit unions’ ability to collect dues from public employees.
• Other bills would eliminate a requirement that workers covered by union contracts pay union dues or fees.
• [P]roposals to roll back pensions are gaining steam.

We wouldn’t say that the days of public officials and workers being bullied into submission by union leaders are coming to an end, but the tide may just turning in favor of the taxpayers who’ve been footing the bill.

Photo credit: Bill McBain

Don’t expect the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to turn a profit any time soon. Thanks to a multi-billion dollar contract that the financially challenged (to put it mildly) agency negotiated with its biggest labor union, the USPS is poised to keep on delivering losses as routinely as it delivers mail.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) thinks the agency’s contract with the American Postal Workers Union, originally intended to save USPS $3.8 billion over 4 ½ years,  will do exactly the opposite. From Bloomberg:

“This contract falls short,” Issa said at a hearing about the Postal Service’s labor costs. “We have deep concerns that some of the provisions of the contract may in fact be the wrong direction, to less flexibility, less ability to trim the workforce and less ability to in the future make the kinds of investments we need to make.”

In other words, the agency won’t be in the black for the foreseeable future.

Adding to USPS’ financial woes, Bloomberg reports that the agency indicates it will “run out of cash unless Congress permits it to delay a $5.5 billion payment, due Sept. 30, for health benefits for future retirees.” And here’s the kicker: “The labor costs include payments for those benefits.”

Despite this grim financial forecast for USPS, Postmaster General Patrick Donohue told the oversight committee that his budget-busting negotiations with the postal workers union represent, in his mind at least, “a responsible agreement.”

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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.

Talk about inappropriate comparisons! As reported by the National Journal, Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO and one of the heavy-hitters in the labor movement, came out swinging today and racked up yet another uncomfortable gaffe.

Trumka, the nation’s top union official, said that the anti-Obama views aired by conservative commentators like Glenn Beck constitutes “hate” in his mind and that he fears it could incite violence in these frustrating economic times.

“Our country’s been there a couple of times before, and with one exception, we’ve always taken the high road,” Trumka told National Journal. “You remember when John Kennedy got off the plane in Dallas, Texas, there were people on the airwaves talking about doing violence to the president. And what happened? That kind of stuff didn’t help our country, and we want to make sure that the anger gets turned into action, and it becomes unifying and not dividing and that we get hope and not hate.”

Go ahead and add that to Trumka’s Greatest Hits, which also includes a metaphorical threat to “burn” coal companies that replaced striking union workers, and accusing recalcitrant businesses of “economic treason.”

Of course, the real reason for Trumka’s desperation is that Congress failed to pass the Employee Free Choice Act, item number one on the unions’ wish list. And with Congress looking like it will be less sympathetic to Big Labor after the election, EFCA is as good as gone.

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.