Amusingly, this SEIU funded web-widget is not that far from the truth.

The battle over EFCA has become less a battle about EFCA, and more a proxy battle in a larger conflict about political sway, public opinion, and economic ideology.

In the Huffington Post on Friday, third-generation union organizer Mike Elk asked “If EFCA is DOA, Why is the Chamber Still Lobbying Against It?”  He wrote:

“For months now in Washington, it has been known that the Employee Free Choice Act won’t ever see a vote. However, this hasn’t stopped the Chamber of Commerce to continue flooding Capitol Hill with lobbyists against a dead bill.

He continues by goading the them:

“[I]t’s important that we not give up the Employee Free Choice Act. If we don’t keep fighting, Big Business will just start pushing more aggressive assaults on labor and weaken the political position of labor. Remember the best defense is always a strong offense.”

I find it a wee bit ironic that while he is crying fowl about the Chamber not laying down their swords. Even after EFCA died, labor leaders are continuing to harp on EFCA weekly, acting as if indeed EFCA were not DOA.

AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker and Director of Organizing at the AFL-CIO, Stewart Acuff have called for its passage, among others. Even Vice President Biden is calling for EFCA. And everyone has certainly been calling for Craig Becker to be approved to the National Labor Relations Board, a man whose position could make him the very personification of card check legislation.

Bottom line: EFCA is now a beleaguered placeholder in the middle of a proxy war.  Is it also a shorthand way of showing one’s hand–hence Blanche Lincoln’s trouble in Arkansas.

The SEIU is using the Vancouver Olympics as a perfect media moment to attack their nemesis, French-based Sodexo.  Sodexo is a big fish to fry.  It’s the largest facilities management and catering company in the world–and the SEIU has set their sights on them.

The Soxedo-SEIU battle, spanning oceans, has proved less-than-sexy to the media despite transcontinental protests.  After other labor setbacks, the SEIU has decided to bring the Olympics, specifically Olympic athletes into the fray. From a press release:

“The Service Employees International Union, the nation’s largest healthcare union, is raising questions about the safety of food being provided to athletes at the Vancouver Winter Olympics by Sodexo, a global food service contractor based in France who served contaminated meat at a camp in Virginia sickening more than two dozen boy scouts.”

It should not come as a surprise that SEIU’s motives in Vancouver have little to do with athletes’ safety.  According to Politico’s Ben Smith, “Sodexo is also the target of an intense SEIU organizing campaign.”  The SEIU hates Sodexo for the wages they pay American workers and for Sodexo somehow avoiding massive unionization drives, according to the New York Times. According to Business Week, the SEIU has been using “The Embarrassment Factor” to attack Sodexo, among other European companies, and this Olympic attack is more of the same.

Using the Olympics and Olympic athletes to aid in a union drive is irresponsible, opportunistic, and potentially damaging to the athletes. Olympic athletes, many of whom I am sure have torrid relationships with food as it is, don’t need the SEIU messing with their game….or messing with the Games.

The SEIU should leave the Olympic athletes alone.

Image courtesy of KevinDooley.

The Senate just voted 52 to 33 on Obama’s nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board. Sixty votes were necessary for confirmation.

The question that remains is whether Obama will use a recess appointment.

Oregon voters have approved a tax increase for the first time since 1931.  The SEIU had the following to say:

“Aside from funding essential services, the vote also restored some fairness to the state’s tax structure. [...] Oregon voters made a clear statement of their priorities: the government’s top job must be to preserve vital services and infrastructure and stimulate the economy. [...] Prior to the passage of this measure, more than two-thirds of corporations doing business in Oregon paid just $10 a year for the corporate minimum income tax.

Now, the corporate minimum tax will be $150; the tax rate on upper-level profit will be higher–as will the tax rate of people with a taxable household income over $250,000.

The SEIU and AFSCME are thrilled with these results because they paid for them. According to the Wall Street Journal, they poured more than $1 million into the campaign.  Read HERE or HERE for even more breakdowns of the funding of the “yes” campaign. These unions have millions to gain because the new money will help keep unionized public sector employees on the job.  As the Wall Street Journal explained before the election:

“Oregon’s public employees have one of the sweetest deals in America. Their average pay is about one-third higher than that of private Oregon workers, and Oregon public employees don’t have to pay anything toward their health-care benefits. In the last budget, the Democratic controlled state legislature doled out a $259 million pay raise to the government work force, even as the state was facing a near $1 billion deficit. In the last three years, the state has added 25,000 new public employees while losing 40,000 private sector jobs.”

Image courtesy Misserion.

It appears that labor leaders and government officials have reached a compromise on excise taxes, according to the New York Times. The details are not fully clear yet, but FoxNews has reported the following:

A senior Democratic official speaking on background told Fox News that the threshold for exemption would be raised from $23,000 to $24,000 per family but would remain the same at $8,500 for singles with high-value plans. Dental and vision plans would be removed from that calculation, however. State and local workers and union members are exempted until 2017. A Democratic source with close union contacts said labor leaders are not particularly happy with the tentative deal, but are much less angry than they were at the previous plan.

The chatter in the last few days that been that unions might convince the Administration and Congressional Democratic leadership to exempt collectively-bargained health insurance plans from paying the excise tax, the majority of plans over the threshold.  It’s a deal that would increase the cost of the health care legislation.  While the compromise announced today doesn’t go as far as the one that’s has been bandied about, it will be interesting to see what its final form really is. Unions exempt until 2017? What’s to say that the exemption doesn’t get an permanent extension.

Why on earth should union insurance be exempt with state and local workers (many of whom are union), while the rest of us with expensive plans pay the price?

If indeed collectively bargained health insurance plans are exempt from the excise tax for the next 7 years, former SEIU staffer Michael Whitney who now blogs over at FireDogLake says it could be very, very bad thing for unions in the short and  medium term.  It only proves that unions are guided by “blind self interest.” And it may jeopardize the public willingness to swallow EFCA. The “deal” that FDL is talking about below, for the record, on the union excise tax exemption sans the 2017 caveat, but I’d say the principle holds.

From FireDogLake:

If unions take this “deal,” if the labor movement decides to fold and exempt themselves from the excise tax, they fulfill one of the worst of stereotypes of labor unions: blind self interest.  By abandoning the nonunion middle class and protecting only their own, the labor movement is throwing any hope of future relevancy out the window.

The ideal of unions is to organize the unorganized, to protect the unprotected.  Sure, unions should fight for their members, no question.  But in the biggest public policy and political fight of a generation, unions simply cannot exempt their members from the dangerous excise tax and call it a day. And if Rahm does come through on his end of the deal – a vote on the Employee Free Choice Act – expect unions to be very much on their own in that fight if they sell out on health care.

We’ve written before about the amount of money that California spends on prison personnel, at the expense of both the prisoners and the entire state’s budget. It’s pretty ugly stuff, and Schwarzenegger seems hell bent on righting some of these wrongs.  According to the Fresno Bee this week:

Prison, legal and financial experts generally praised Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to shift state prison funding to public universities, but said a constitutional amendment that ties the government’s hands in perpetuity could cause more harm than good. “The governor, some years ago, railed against autopilot budgeting,” said Steve Boilard, director of higher education for the nonpartisan California Legislative Analyst’s Office. “This is just another set of restrictions that may not make sense in future years.” Beginning in 2014, the governor’s proposed amendment would dedicate at least 10 percent of the state general fund to the University of California and California State University systems and limit prison spending to no more than 7 percent – approximately reversing the amounts in those lines in this year’s budget.

That plan would have to roll back vast increases in prison outlays in recent years, used in part to underwrite rising wages and benefits, and new medical programs. […]

Schwarzenegger also proposed increased privatization – using private employees in state prisons or contracting out the housing of prisoners to corporate prisons – to cut costs. According to Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation figures, California spends about $50,000 per prisoner annually, compared to a $32,000 average for the next 10 largest states. Department spokesman Gordon Hinkle agreed that costs could be reduced sharply by using more private prisons. Joan Petersilia, a leading prison expert and professor at Stanford Law School, said contracting out low-security prisoners to private prisons is a proven cost-saving measure. Currently, California sends about 8,000 of its approximately 170,000 inmates to private facilities in Mississippi, Oklahoma and Arizona. “It’s so cost effective because 70 percent of housing someone in a California prison is due to personnel costs, and our costs are higher in California,” she said.

Image courtesy of Funky64.

I can’t take any credit for the research leg-work on this. The credit is due to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy for hammering away at the sham that is the SEIU Member Action Center, Inc and their new tax credit at the expense of Michigan’s taxpayers.  I can’t even hyperlink you to the website for the company, because it doesn’t work.

Never heard of SEIU’s MASC? Not surprising. It didn’t exist until October 22 of this year, according to the Center, but yet somehow managed to apply for a grant from MEGA (Michigan Economic Growth Authority) beforehand. On November 17, Michigan’s state government announced that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation would be helping ten businesses through MEGA, one of which it the aptly-named MASC:

“SEIU Member Action Service Center – The corporate subsidiary of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) plans to invest $3 million to create a shared organization in Redford Township to provide administrative services for the SEIU and other local labor organizations. The project will create 322 new jobs, including 224 directly by the company. The MEDC estimates increased economic activity created by the project will create an additional 108 indirect jobs. Based on the MEDC’s recommendation, the MEGA board today approved a state tax credit valued at $2 million over five years to help convince the company to expand in Michigan over competing sites in Missouri and Florida. Redford Township is considering an abatement to support the project.”

What about the “competing sites” in Missouri and Florida? Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath while the SEIU tries to produce these “competing sites”.  According to MCPP, there is no evidence that any paperwork was filed. So thanks to the tax break, Redford Township, MI, a township in the district represented by the speaker of the Michigan House, will get the SEIU’s new “company” jobs.

What’s so scandalous about the $2 million tax write off, an expected additional abatement from the town, and the timing of the whole thing? The very peeved Mackinac Center for Public Policy explains:

“The SEIU already benefits from its legal status as the workplace representative for more than 12,000 state employees, and annually receives more than $6 million in membership dues and agency fees — all effectively guaranteed and collected by Michigan government.”

“There are at least two problems with this deal. First, did the tax write-offs compromise the union? About two weeks after the Michigan Economic Development Corp. announced its decision to award the tax credit, SEIU Local 517M agreed to revise its contract with the state and make concessions, accepting a less-expensive health care plan for new employees and agreeing to a two-year wage freeze. These concessions were controversial; at least one other union representing a different group of state employees announced it would not follow suit. Even if there was no explicit quid pro quo, the tax break for the union subsidiary might have made the pay cut easier for SEIU officers to swallow.”

“Second, the Member Action Service Center will supposedly provide administrative support, such as grievance intake and record keeping, for union locals. But taxpayers know little about what the SEIU will do with the office space and equipment that the taxpayers’ “generosity” will allow them to rent or buy. The computer networks, photocopying machines, conference rooms and telephones will still be available after hours, and the temptation will be strong for SEIU to use these same state-supported resources for organizing campaigns, political activism, fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts.”

The hysterically sad thing about this whole affair is that the SEIU and local government billed this little coordinated project as “Project Cherrywood.” Don’t ask me why, because who the heck knows. If you google that name, you’ll find the Redford Township Board agenda docket from Nov. 10, 2009:

Funny names aside, it’s the Michigan taxpayers who will pay the price.