LaborPains.org

According to analyses of the White House visitor logs released last year, former SEIU president Andy Stern was the most frequent visitor to the White House. This fact was repeated often by many SEIU critics, who wondered why Stern was spending so much time in Washington instead of addressing the concerns of his workers.

Well Rensselaer Polytech Institute recently crunched the numbers again, and Stern has been officially exonerated!

So, it turns out that as of May, when the Rensselaer team last went through the list, the most frequent visitor to the White House was (drum roll, please) Anna Burger.

Anna Burger? She was just ahead of Robert Wolf and Andrew Stern. Other names on the top-15 list were more familiar: Sens. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., as well as Richard Trumka of the United Mine Workers Union (editor’s note: I think he meant the AFL-CIO).

So the SEIU isn’t guilty of sending its number one official to Washington more than anyone else to push its agenda on the president. It was the SEIU’s number two official who was doing that. Burger is the former secretary-treasurer of the SEIU and a close friend of Stern’s. She was widely expected to succeed Stern when he stepped down earlier this year, but ended up losing the leadership election to Mary Kay Henry. Why? Burger was, well, a lot like Andy Stern.

Burger was either “not widely liked” or “widely disliked,” according to many SEIU officials and staff.  Critics saw her as “mean” or a “bully.”  Various reports described her presentations of her candidacy this past week as stiff and arrogant. She was closely identified with Stern, especially his emphasis on political action that has only grown since he led the split of the AFL-CIO to form Change to Win.

Henry’s election was widely viewed in the labor community as a repudiation of Stern and Burger. Specifically, workers were tired of Stern’s constant saber-rattling with other unions and his obsession with making Washington connections. But has Henry really changed anything? The SEIU is still waging its wars with other labor groups. It’s still wasting massive amounts of money to influence elections.

We’ll have to wait and see if Mary Kay Henry turns up in the White House visitor logs too.

Sal Rosselli is the gift that keeps on giving. When Rosselli broke away from the SEIU and formed the National Union of Healthcare Workers, we could not have imagined just how many headaches he would cause for Andy Stern and Mary Kay Henry. Now, roughly a month after the NUHW lost a battle with the SEIU over Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers in California, the wrangling continues, according to the Sacramento Business Journal.

National Union of Healthcare Workers, an upstart rival to Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, won two of three unit elections tallied Wednesday for almost 2,000 Kaiser Permanente members in Northern California.

Behavioral health services workers voted 603 to 196 for NUHW over UHW and optical workers voted for NUHW over UHW 154 to 142. Medical-social workers voted to stay with UHW, 148 to 139.

This is a win for the NUHW, although they already lost the lion’s share of Kaiser’s 47,500 healthcare workers back in October. Current score: SEIU, 43,000; NUHW, 4,300. The NUHW disputed the October results, claiming that the SEIU worked with management to intimidate members into voting their way.

Imagine that! If true, this wouldn’t be the first time the SEIU has used top-down intimidation tactics to achieve its goals in southern California. For more, read this damning letter by Paul Krehbiel, a former SEIUer who left in disgust and joined the NUHW.

Democrats took a severe beating last night, losing over 60 seats in the House of Representatives, and at least six Senate seats. Republicans also had momentous pick-ups among governors and state legislatures. Exit pollsters found that voters thought the government was too big and that they disliked Barack Obama’s agenda.

The results are very bad news for the country’s labor unions. Organized labor broke the bank this election season trying to stem the Republican tide. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the largest public-sector union in the country, spent an astonishing $87.5 million to get Democrats elected, the biggest contribution in the race. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) donated another $44 million.

It made very little difference. Now comes the day after. Just how will America’s most lovable labor leaders try to rationalize their way out of this one? Some did better than others.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka:

“We did our job. No matter what demographic, you look at our membership, we had large margins for progressive candidates approaching 30, with Harry Reid it was higher. … I think [Democrats] are cognizant of what we did and if they aren’t they should pay heed to it.”

In other words, don’t blame us…or else.

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry:

“[W]e are looking to the new leaders elected tonight to show up in January ready to work for the American people — not for the agenda of the nameless, faceless corporations who poured hundreds of millions of dollars into our political process.”

I.e. please ignore the millions we pumped into campaigns.

United Food and Commercial Workers President Joe Hansen:

“In stark contrast to 2008, the election of 2010 will be remembered because the results were fueled not by hope, but by anger, frustration, and fear. … Empty and inflammatory rhetoric that derides health reform as ‘Obamacare’ and demonizes leaders as socialists will not right the imbalance in our economy or help working people make ends meet.”

In other words, we’re angry that you’re angry.

National Education Association President Dennis Van Roekel:

“NEA stands ready to work with the new Congress to put students first and ensure that education is the engine that moves America forward. We will work with all policymakers to maximize the achievement, skills, opportunities and potential of all students, to make sure they are prepared to become creative and productive citizens in our democratic society and diverse world.”

Because the NEA is all about students, not teachers.

AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee:

“The loss of the U.S. House of Representatives is a real setback for working families. Washington Republicans have done nothing since the last election to curtail the Bush recession and bring down unemployment.”

It’s also a real setback for our wallets, which are feeling pretty empty this morning.

Whatever stages of grieving union leaders are at, soon the reality will set in.  With a Republican-controlled House, labor legislation will get very little traction over the next two years.

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.

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.

As cities across California and moreover, the entire state face financial obligations they can’t meet, the city of LA was on the cusp of reducing costs when the SEIU stepped in to bully another union.

Heaven forbid that the city of LA should be able to reign in employment costs and that another union be able to accept a deal the SEIU isn’t happy with.

According the the LA Times:

“Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and his top budget advisers thought they negotiated a labor contract last week that would begin to address the steadily rising cost of employee healthcare benefits. But that deal, reached with the 4,800-member Engineers and Architects Assn., has come under attack from members of another civilian employee union, which contends that the agreement contains “unprecedented and dangerous” concessions and should be rejected.

With the Engineers and Architects voting on the tentative agreement this week, organizers with Service Employees International Union Local 721 have begun warning that the proposed pact is part of a larger effort to “divide and conquer” the city’s civilian employee groups.”

The head of the beleaguered union says that behind the SEIU’s interest in the deal is their ongoing attempts to raid his union. So much for the “new directions” under Mary Kay Henry:

“Any move by one union to interfere with the negotiations of another union will ultimately backfire,” Szabo said, “because the city is likely to impose these healthcare provisions and more on those who opt out of the deal.” Michael Davies, interim executive director of the Engineers and Architects, said the Service Employees International Union is opposing the deal as part of its push to raid his union’s membership. Last fall, nearly 2,000 workers from his organization moved to the SEIU.