Wall Street Journal: Business, Labor Groups Find Little Accord on Immigration
The agreement involves “guiding principles” that both sides have agreed to, but is not the comprehensive plan that was hoped for.

Anchorage Daily News:  Labor lawyers try to rip apart mayor’s proposal to rein in unions
Labor speaks out against the Anchorage proposal that would reform benefits and pensions.

Washington Times: Editorial: Disorganized Labor
The editors explain why it’s wrong to allow violent union activists to have exemptions from criminal laws.

Jillian Kay Melchior of the Franklin Center just concluded her three-part series, “Goon City,” at the National Review Online this week. Her articles took an inside look at labor unions in the ironically nicknamed “City of Brotherly Love” and found that union destruction and terror is a way of life.

Melchior details vandalism — ranging from burning down the construction site of a Quaker meetinghouse to ruining construction equipment — and violence, including videos of union members crushing a nonunion engineer with a fence.

Unless people like the Pestronk brothers, who are chronicling, on video, labor thugs at their job sites on PhillyBully.com, continue to stand up and expose these problems, not much can be done. As Grover Norquist and Patrick Gleason highlighted yesterday, state laws often protect the bad behavior of labor unions. This Chamber of Commerce report explains that Pennsylvania is one of those states.

SEIU Healthcare Michigan Hit With ULP
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), now unanimously pro-union, found that SEIU Healthcare Michigan violated the rights of one of its own employees by not handing over files it is required to share. The Washington Free Beacon reports that the SEIU must post a notice that it was found to have committed an unfair labor practice (ULP). The notice will read: “The National Labor Relations Board has found that we violated Federal labor law … We will not in any like or related manner restrain or coerce you.”

Union Violence in Philadelphia
National Review has been covering the violence of the Philadelphia labor unions and what they are willing to do to get their way. Arson is one of the more popular tactics. We’ve covered this activity in the past, proving that the union thug tradition continues.

UFCW Local Takes a Mulligan on its Election
Supermarket News reports that the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 5 must redo its elections because of potential violations found by the international union. The chief opponent to the incumbent president says that he was fired prior to the election for just daring to run. The challenger says that he did not believe the president was doing enough to find for the best interests of the membership.

Check out all of January’s reports from the Office of Labor Management Standards here.

Union violence is far from a new story, but sadly, it’s a recurring one.

Police in Philadelphia say that the vandalism and arson — notably $500,000 in damage done to the site where a Quaker meetinghouse is being constructed by a nonunion company — is “absolutely” related to a union dispute. Michael Resnick, the public safety director in Philadelphia, said that the union members “have a First Amendment right to stand out with their signs and say what they want to say, but they do not have a right to destroy property or hurt people.”

Union members, of course, are feigning surprise that they are being implicated in the investigation of the December 21, 2012 incident. One leader told the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Getting asked these type of questions is like being asked, ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ ” said Pat Gillespie, business manager for the Philadelphia Building and Construction Trades Council.

The “union thug” is a reputation that labor has long tried to shed: The “Hug-a-Thug” events this summer wanted to portray a kinder, gentler labor union member. And certainly, the vast majority of union members are average citizens, individuals who can think and act (and donate to political causes) without a union boss telling them what to do.

But the reputation is also one that labor has capitalized on, because it makes their threats all the more credible. Karen Lewis of the Chicago Teachers Union even recalled labor’s heyday, memorializing that “The labor leaders of that time, though, were ready to kill. They were. They were just–off with their heads. They were seriously talking about that.” But it isn’t something she disavows — she followed that up with a quick “I don’t think we’re at that point.” Hopefully she’ll give us a “heads up” when she’s there.

Dennis Duffey, a labor boss in Toledo, Ohio, declared just last week that the City Council President should be “removed, tarred and feathered, or de-nutted” according to reports from the Toledo Blade. There are no reports of an apology from Duffey, but there are plenty of references to Duffey’s image: In 2005, the Blade referred to Duffey as a “union strongman” and a local Democratic Party leader characterized Duffey’s tactics as “twisting arms” in 2011.

The title of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s piece standing alone is also instructive: “Meetinghouse vandalism brings look at tactics in labor disputes.” [emphasis added]. Violence and threats are just items in labor’s toolbox. And thanks to lax federal and state laws, criminal activity by labor unions is too often ignored.

The Employee Rights Act would criminalize union threats of violence — threats that today often evade prosecution.

It also bears mentioning that this report is coming from the Philadelphia Inquirer– a paper that is ensuring it’s own labor strife. It’s sister paper, the Daily News, reports that the two publications, along with the website Philly.com, are facing liquidation on Friday if their unions don’t come to a new agreement with their parent company.