Labor Pains: Because Being in a Union can be Painful

Archive: Oct 2015

  • Pennsylvania Legislature Confronts Union Violence

    Posted on Oct 29, 2015 by LaborPains.org Team

    Unions have multiple exemptions from commonly applied laws that protect people from violence and intimidation. Perhaps nowhere in the country is that more the case than in Pennsylvania, where unions have a wide exemption from stalking, harassment, and threats of violence laws. The state legislature is looking to change that: The state legislature passed the […]

  • Left-Wing Group Does Randi’s Bidding on Charters

    Posted on Oct 22, 2015 by LaborPains.org Team

    The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), a left-wing advocacy outfit based in Madison, Wisconsin, has called itself a “union shop” in reference to its unionized staff. But it’s a “union shop” in more ways than just that—in a conveniently-timed reversal of a previous position, CMD takes money from labor unions, too. (CMD doesn’t disclose these union […]

  • Firefighters Union Boss Lives Large on Member Money

    Posted on Oct 21, 2015 by LaborPains.org Team

    International Association of Fire Fighters President Harold A. Schaitberger’s expense account got the fine-toothed comb treatment from the New York Times. Citing internal documents that the Times obtained, labor beat reporter Noam Scheiber notes that the boss is a fan of the finer things in life: Then there are the meals. Mr. Schaitberger is a […]

  • Unions Subvert Democracy with Jim Crow-Era Tactics

    Posted on Oct 16, 2015 by LaborPains.org Team

    Unions talk a big game about voting rights. Every election cycle, they spend millions in members’ dues on left-leaning and Democratic-aligned get-out-the-vote groups. But when the elections are closer to home, Big Labor ignores principles of democracy. Evidence its flacking of the “Workplace Democracy Act”—an Orwellian name that reminded us of the Democratic People’s Republic […]

  • Labor’s Confused “Workplace Democracy”

    Posted on Oct 13, 2015 by LaborPains.org Team

    The Employee Rights Act (ERA) has kicked off a long-overdue debate over the future of labor policy in America’s 21st Century labor force. Labor and the radical unionist far left have now responded, with two proposals to force more employees to become dues-paying union members. This week, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont (an ally of […]

  • NYC’s Diversity-Challenged Construction Unions Try to Change the Subject

    Posted on Oct 05, 2015 by LaborPains.org Team

    Last week, we pointed out that the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York (BCTC)—the regional coalition of New York City’s construction industry labor unions—was overstating its ethnic diversity. Led by a “male, pale, and stale” executive board (to borrow former SEIU International President Andy Stern’s immortal phrase), the unions so eager to […]