LaborPains.org

Recently, a number of groups taking the form of “worker centers” have staged walkouts of fast food restaurants in several cities. The most prominent has been Fast Food Forward in New York City, but Chicago, St. Louis, and Detroit have also seen some activity. The Detroit Free Press reports on events in that city:

Organizers in Detroit said several hundred food workers participated in the walkouts, which succeeded in disrupting operations at six chain restaurants in the city, including two McDonald’s, a Subway, a Burger King, a Long John Silver’s and a Popeyes. […] The Detroit strike was organized by a coalition of labor, faith and activist groups calling itself the Michigan Workers Organizing Committee.

Of course, these “Workers Organizing Committees” aren’t exactly forthcoming about who sponsors them. Unsurprisingly, the Service Employees International Union, which has been plotting a campaign to organize fast food restaurants for years, appears ultimately and financially responsible. Unions’ federal financial disclosures show that the SEIU has put over $2.5 million into the organizations fronting the NYC campaign.

With that level of investment, don’t expect unions to give up chasing a potentially deep source of dues—and perhaps just as important, mandatory initiation fees. Unions hope that by rebranding themselves, by dodging reporting requirements and picketing rules by using “workers centers” to lead the line, and by standing in the way of highly popular governance reforms (like the Employee Rights Act) they can reverse their decline. Workers deserve better than that.

Usually when the SEIU is in a (figurative) dogfight with another group, it isn’t another union. In California though, the SEIU is fighting another union (the National Union of Healthcare Workers or NUHW) for the right to represent employees of Kaiser Permanente hospitals.

SEIU, which lost 45,000 members last year, currently represents Kaiser employees, but the NUHW (which incidentally is run by former SEIU officials) wants the possible dues windfall that poaching them offers. The Wall Street Journal reports on how the battle is playing out:

The SEIU is pulling out all the stops to hold on to Kaiser Permanente. Over the past five years, the SEIU has spent tens of millions of dollars to fend off the NUHW. The smaller union represents just 10,000 workers, but is backed by the California Nurses Association, which has provided $4 million to the NUHW since the beginning of the year, according to NLRB testimony by an official at the nurse’s union viewed by The Wall Street Journal. That is on top of a $2 million loan the nurse’s union made in 2009.

There’s clearly a lot of dues money at stake, as well as prestige. The Journal notes that losing the Kaiser bargaining units to NUHW would lead to a reduction in SEIU’s membership of up to 45,000 workers. As the Journal notes, with workers more reticent to sign on indefinitely with a labor movement with a checkered recent record, the NUHW model of raiding an existing union for new members becomes attractive.

Only 6.6 percent of private-sector workers are now unionized, the lowest level of private-sector unionization in 70 years. That’s as strong a sign as any that workers are fleeing the sinking ships of un-reformed labor unions. Thus far the labor movement has rejected widely supported reform proposals like the Employee Rights Act that might bring some of those workers back. Until they do, unions will have little to do but fight over the scraps.

The SEIU front group Fast Food Forward is holding its second “strike” in New York City. The strikers marching under the banner of this “workers center” — see our previous coverage of these unions-in-sheep’s-clothing here — chose to walk out today because 45 years ago, civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in Memphis.

And it is in the second item that labor reveals the second half of the pincer in its “new labor” model. We noted last year that labor unions were preparing a campaign to try to define union organizing as a “civil right.” The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is also marking this anniversary to unjustly link modern unions with a source of moral authority. The Fast Food Forward organizers additionally found veterans of the civil rights movement to give speeches and consult with the unionization supporters.

But like the misleadingly named Employee Free Choice Act that would have effectively killed union members’ secret ballot, declaring a “civil right to collective bargaining” is another way for unions to curtail employee rights. Rather than adopting reforms supported by wide margins of union households (like those in the Employee Rights Act), labor unions hope that the courts can use legal blunt instruments to force more employees to pay union dues they would rather not pay.

Where they’ve been asked to weigh in, employees see through the smokescreen of undeserved moral authority. In the labor stronghold of Michigan, the notion failed when it was put to a vote. Indeed, labor’s overplaying its hand there probably helped lead to the granting of full free association rights to Michigan employees under the state’s new right-to-work law.

According to the federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of private-sector employees in unions has tumbled to a 70-year low. Only 6.6 percent of private-sector workers were union members in 2012.

Unions’ failure to represent their members’ interests and overzealous defense of unsustainable benefits has hamstrung the airline, manufacturing, and automotive industries, and their numbers are showing the effects of this poor leadership. The most recent prominent victims of union stubbornness were Hostess employees sent to the unemployment line by a Bakers’ Union (BCTGM) strike.

And many former union members are wiser than the declining unions. The Associated Press reports:

Don McGough lost his job as a union steelworker. He found a new position and a decade later, he voted no when the machinists’ union tried to organize workers at his company, JWF Industries, in Pennsylvania. “There are so many companies that just closed their doors because the union wouldn’t budge,” he says.

Unions hope that by expanding organizing efforts to new industries, they can reverse their decline.

While unions representing U.S. manufacturing might — auto and steel — have become smaller, the emphasis in recruiting new members has shifted to the service sector.

The Service Employees International Union, which represents nurses and lower-wage service employees including janitors, security, hospital, home health and child care workers, has doubled in size since 1996, to 2.1 million workers. It says it has added 50,000 workers annually in the last decade.

But unless unions change their ways, such moves might only lead the new industries to follow the traditional unionized industries into bankruptcy court. Instead of clinging to the same old adversarial model on new turf, they should endorse the accountability reform proposals endorsed by 80 percent of union households contained in the Employee Rights Act. Only by reforming themselves and acting in the interests of their members can unions reassert their relevancy.

We’ve been chronicling the tactics of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) for years. But David Bego knows what the SEIU is like up close and personal.  In his first book, Devil at My Doorstep: Protecting Employee Rights, Bego details how the SEIU aggressively came after his business in a typical anti-corporate campaign. His company, EMS, was targeted for unionization for years by Andy Stern’s organizers. Bego said he was happy to allow a union in—but only if the employees were able to vote via secret ballot. Not surprisingly, the SEIU was not interested in democracy. Instead, they took to their usual, outrageous tactics, including:

-  Offering money to employees to sign a card.
-  Getting children to hand out flyers in Bego’s neighborhood on Halloween.
-  Filing dozens of unfair labor practice charges.

In his latest book, The Devil At Our Doorstep, Bego, coming off several victories against the union, explains how his battle is but one small part of the larger war that organized labor has waged on the American people. Bego makes it clear, however, that it takes more than just the labor unions to make this happen. He explains that union officials are able to work with others in the far-reaching progressive community, notably the media and politicians. Without that support, unions would be in even worse shape than they are today.

Bego also provides a plan on how to combat the overreach of labor unions and to take the fight to them. For too long, too many people have been happy just to play defense against organized labor. Bego’s account shows that, unquestionably, unions will not rest until they have regained their former power.

Bego’s book is worth a read to get the perspective of someone who has dealt with the SEIU’s bully tactics firsthand—and won.

Turn to page A13 of the Wall Street Journal this morning, and you’ll find our Executive Director Richard Berman alerting readers of the country’s highest-circulation newspaper to our research into union collective bargaining agreements and the minimum wage clauses that can be found in them.

While ranting against Berman’s article, Wade Rathke, of ACORN infamy, admits that United Labor Unions Local 100 also includes the minimum wage provisions in many of its contracts:

ILA Local President and Assistant Face Long List of Federal Charges
Darryl “Mike D” Payne, former president of International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) Local 1526, along with his assistant, Tianni Latrice Brown, are the targets of a 17-count indictment for a whole host of federal crimes. Both are charged with a conspiracy to steal from the union and share several counts of theft of union assets, and one each for obstruction of justice and making false statements. Payne is looking at an additional three counts of mail fraud. A Department of Justice press release explains the heart of the scheme:

According to the indictment, Payne and Brown prepared and used false and altered documents to deceive union officials and obtain union funds purportedly to pay for legitimate assets, goods, services and travel expenses for the use of the union.  In fact, however, those expenses covered the personal expends of the defendants and others.

The other charges stem from creating additional false documents.

Overzealous SEIU Local Caught Overreaching on Employee Representation
The Boston Herald reports that several employees of Complete Cleaning won a federal settlement with SEIU Local 615, following an unfair labor practice charge. The settlement orders the union to stop claiming it has collective bargaining power over all employees until it can prove a majority of employees want that representation.

Sheet Metal Works Fined Over Romney Sign Swipe
Four members of Sheet Metal Workers Local 33 in Toledo, Ohio pleaded guilty to a lesser charge driving around in a pickup truck registered to the local, with the stolen signs from Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign in the back. The Toledo Blade reports that the fines, court costs, and restitution added up to less than $400.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Right-to-work building interest in Missouri Capitol
Packed-house hearings suggest that there will be a long road ahead, but some proponents are feeling the momentum.

New Hampshire Union Leader: Right-to-work legislation put down hard
The right-to-work bill does not make it out of the House this year. In 2012, state senators refuse to hear the bill, and in 2011, right-to-work was vetoed by then-Governor John Lynch, and did not get enough votes to override his veto.

Hoffa in the Detroit News: Right to work is a right-wing conspiracy
We quote Hoffa’s opinion on those who support right-to-work and other labor reforms:

It is exactly what Hillary Clinton called it: A vast right-wing conspiracy.

OpenMarket.org: “King” Of Nowhere: UAW Chief Makes Noise, Not War
CEI scholars look at the ineffectiveness of Bob King, president of the United Autoworkers .

New York Times: Seeking Growth, Nurses’ Union Links to Teachers’ Union
The American Federation of Teachers poaches a 34,000 member nurses union.