LaborPains.org

Via The Union News blog comes this video with a different take on the Hollywood writers strike:

Dave Weigel at Reason has this great ad up on Hit & Run (and we thank him for a kind head-nod on our own ads):

This week labor leaders are trying to get the Senate to vote on the “Employee Free Choice Act.” EFCA, frequent readers will remember, is the bill that would end secret ballot elections for employees deciding whether to join a union and impose a government arbitrator’s contract on employees and employers alike. At the Center for Union Facts, we’ve kept some powder dry just for occasions such as this.

Today, readers of the New York Times, USA Today, and Roll Call all will see our new full-page ad highlighting the view of union “leaders” — that “there’s no reason to subject the workers to an election.” Sure, subject them to unionization without a vote and subject them to forking over dues to corrupt or bungling leadership, but don’t subject them to an election!

If the morning paper isn’t your cup of tea coffee, tune into CNN and Fox News to see our new TV spot warning of the intimidation inherent in the “card check” method of organizing employees. For those in D.C., you will pretty much find it impossible to avoid our ad.

The AFL-CIO played an exceptional and praiseworthy role in the fight against Soviet tyranny, which truly oppressed labor rights, most notably in the union’s active and often covert support of Poland’s Solidarity movement. How sad that a once positive force for voting rights and freedom of association in Poland has abandoned those principles at home.

– Carter Wood over at NAM’s blog, Shopfloor.org, on the AFL-CIO’s mad scramble to pass an anti-democratic organizing bill. Read the whole post. I’ll keep updating EFCA news today.

This week will pretty much be all EFCA, all the time. The special interest bill to deprive employees of a secret ballot vote when they decide to unionize is rearing its ugly head in the Senate. John Fund at the Wall Street Journal‘s Opinion Journal is on the trail:

Unions have a right to participate vigorously in the democratic process, and they take full advantage of it. That’s why it is so jarring to see them support a measure that tampers with the sacred right to use a secret ballot when deciding something as critical as who will speak for people in the workplace.

Indeed, many of the congressional supporters of a card-check law sang an entirely different tune a few years ago about the importance of a secret ballot. In 2001, Rep. George Miller of California, the chief House sponsor of the card check bill, joined Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and 14 other Democratic colleagues in writing Mexican labor authorities that “we feel that the secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose.” Apparently, a secret ballot is imperative to protect Mexican workers, but on the U.S. side of the border it’s an impediment to Mr. Miller’s domestic political agenda.

Looks like it’s the season for strikes:

• UFCW-represented employees of Kroger in Dallas have approved a strike vote
• UFCW-represented grocery workers in Southern California have until June 21 to reach a deal before another strike/lockout, according to employers
• SEIU will strike a Burbank hospital June 12

A Chicago Sun-Times editorial last week calls our attention to a new program being tested in Windy City schools: merit pay. Teachers in schools participating in the pilot will receive bonuses proportionate to how much their students improve over the course of the school year. If the program is done properly, merit pay tends to have two salutary effects: it encourages current teachers to work better and it draws a different breed of teacher candidates, attracted by the prospect of being rewarded for success rather than being shielded from failure. The private sector has known the virtues of merit pay for decades, while public schools are just now starting to catch on — click here to read about Little Rock’s merit pay program, how it seems to be improving education there, and how it drove a wedge between many teachers and their union.

Unsurprisingly, Chicago Teachers Union President Marilyn Stewart opposed the plan when it was first unveiled in November, writing in her union’s newspaper: “Why does the board feel some teachers deserve more for their hard work but others do not?”

More surprisingly, however, union president Stewart has come around to see the merit in the idea. As the Sun-Times writes:

To her credit, Stewart has come around to endorsing the pilot program despite her strong reservations. She was swayed by the role teachers have played and will continue to play in shaping it, the input the union will have and the fact that rewards will be based not on student test scores but on ongoing evaluations of factors including classroom performance.

While Stewart still needs to back off of her original objection (yes, better teachers really should get paid more than less good teachers who work just as hard), it’s good that, in the end, her objection did not cause her to oppose the new program.

A popular radio talk show duo in New Jersey walked out of the middle of their own show earlier this month to take their families into hiding after State Troopers Fraternal Association President David Jones (himself an active New Jersey state police officer) held a press conference throughout which he waved the home address and license plate number of one of the talk show hosts for cameras.

It appears that someone leaked to the radio hosts a conversation on the state troopers union’s web forums in which anonymous state troopers discussed the possibility of a May ticket-writing blitz in retaliation for complaints about state police. The hosts went on to publicize the discussion, which provoked Jones’s press conference. The Gannett news service reported:

“I’m going to release the names and addresses of these people and then their sponsors, and all of the car dealerships and everybody else that sponsors that show is going to have to deal with the reality that they’re putting public servants and the public in general in harm’s way, and I’m going to make sure that everybody knows, until they get their act together, who these people are, where they live, what they do and how it is that they’re misleading the public and creating this furor,” Jones said…In an interview, Jones said, “I don’t believe in intimidating anyone.”

For good measure, Jones had some words for the person or persons who leaked the “blitz” discussion (presumably from the membership of his own union):

Jones said he did not know who floated the idea of a ticket-writing campaign on the union Web site but believes he knows who leaked the information. He said it didn’t matter if police were threatening to go on a ticket-writing campaign.”If guys, be they troopers or not troopers, choose to vent on a blog board, that’s their right, and that’s a board that’s supposed to be shared,” Jones said. “A couple of cowards obviously compromised it, and when I find out who those Girl Scouts are I’m going to crush ‘em like bugs.”

The radio hosts have since come out of hiding. As of today, Jones has not been fired.