Big Labor – Page 6

Astroturf vs. grassroots

It’ll be David taking on Goliath once again tomorrow evening in Annapolis.

On the astroturf side, union protesters, joined by teachers, are expected to be bussed in between 5,000 and 10,000 strong to Lawyers Mall for a rally tomorrow evening. AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka is expected to be the keynote speaker for the two-hour long union march and rally. For them, it’s all about keeping their hold on the goodies because Maryland already is a state under Democratic Party control and even though right-to-work legislation has been introduced it’s not likely to advance to even a committee vote.

The grassroots will be represented across the street by a few dozen who realize that the union’s goodies have started the state down the road to financial ruin and believe the steps taken in Wisconsin are necessary to right the ship. It’s most telling that the unions objected loudest not to the changes in pension and healthcare contributions Wisconsin public sector employees would have to shoulder, but to the new reauthorization schedule and taking away the dues checkoff in paychecks. Follow the money.

Locally, Cathy Keim is spearheading the effort to represent Salisbury at the event, and I plan on going with her to cover and participate. There are two slots left in her vehicle, although if others wish to drive that would certainly help. Cathy can be reached at (443) 880-5912.

Unions have their place in this nation, and I have no animus toward collective bargaining in the private sector. But there is a reason public-sector unions were discouraged until the 1960’s. Moreover, unions overstep their boundaries once they force workers to participate and contribute money to candidates and causes the rank-and-file may not completely support.

Come up to Annapolis and be part of that “irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” Before long, we won’t be the minority anymore!

Give Maryland workers true freedom!

The timing on this couldn’t be better, as the Madison protests and associated labor strife have put the power of Big Labor on display. Yet in reality the effort to make Maryland a right-to-work state like its neighbor Virginia culminated with the introduction of HB743 on February 10, before the Madison protests broke out days later.

However, this effort truly started two years ago when the so-called “Fair Share Act” was passed and signed by Governor O’Malley. It changed a standing prohibition on unions charging non-members a service fee for representation, and that effort bore fruit for Big Labor last month when just over 5,000 members of the 23,000 member AFSCME union in Maryland voted to ratify a new three-year contract which included a service fee provision. Since that group of 5,000 or so was 89% of the members who could be bothered to vote on the pact, it passed – and slapped a service fee of up to $400 on both union and non-union workers. If all 23,000 members were maxed out, this would be a $9.2 million bonanza for AFSCME – as it stands they still should rake in seven figures, with a significant portion of that ransom surely going for political purposes.

Yet one key difference between Maryland and neighboring Virginia is that right-to-work law Virginia employers enjoy. Without the advantage of a closed shop, unions in the commonwealth have found it a much tougher go and political results reflect this fact: Virginia has a Republican governor and Republican legislature. While having closed shops in a state isn’t necessarily a death knell for Republican chances – both Ohio and Michigan have a heavy union influence in their urban areas but both elected GOP legislatures and chief executives last fall – it certainly presents less of a barrier if unions are kept honest by the open shop.

This afternoon is the hearing for HB743, and we can be sure that Big Labor will have its place at the table.

Yet the battle really isn’t all about politics; it’s about the role labor unions now play in our government. This has become especially true over the last half-century as the once-dominant private-sector unions have withered away and most union organization occurs in the public sector. In the case of public-sector negotiations, it’s akin to two wolves debating a sheep over lunch: one wolf is the public-sector union and the other is the government, with taxpayers being fleeced in their role as sheep. When a group of taxpayer-paid employees negotiate with another group holding the power of taxation, it’s no surprise that both groups can find mutual benefit by picking the pockets of hard-working taxpayers.

Opening the shops is a good way to starve the beast and make the union sell itself on why they should collect dues from each and every worker for the services they do provide in negotiating wages and benefits and standing up for the worker when unfairly targeted by management. If they stayed out of the political realm and returned to their proper role as collective bargainers, their perception may improve.

But when a huge pot of money is collected, the tendency is for less-than-honest people to skim a little off the top and the tendency for less-than-principled politicians is to accept every dollar of ill-gotten gain they can get for the perpetual re-election campaign. It’s the problem we seem to have in many areas of the country, and Maryland can take a positive step in the right direction if the majority party would break their chains and stop serving their masters in fleecing taxpayers.

A time to protest

In this civil (or perhaps uncivil, for as Axl Rose says, “What’s so civil ’bout war anyway?”) war around our land, the one which has progressed beyond ballots but thankfully not yet to bullets, it seems we’re as divided as we have been in any recent time. Even in Maryland, which is written off as a hopelessly single-party state, there’s a rear-guard action which requires the attention of the status quo in power.

For example, even though the same-sex marriage bill passed a key hurdle in the House of Delegates by narrowly passing the House Judiciary Committee on a 12-10 vote, there’s still hope that the correct course of action will be taken and the House at-large will defeat the bill, since the pro-gay forces have no guarantee they’ll get to the magic number of 71 Delegates needed to pass the bill. To that end, Robert Broadus of Protect Marriage Maryland is seeking a daily protest this week in Annapolis:

We are arranging a PROTEST in front of the Maryland State Capitol Every Day Next Week!! If unions (and) teachers can protest in Wisconsin over union benefits, we can certainly protest in Maryland over marriage!! I am asking ALL of you to please come WHEN you can.

We must now redouble our efforts. Are there enough people who care about this issue in MD to sustain a week long PROTEST here in Annapolis?

Maybe, maybe not. But this fight will drag on for at least the next few months as opponents have vowed to place the bill to referendum. In a Presidential election year, a referendum vote may hinge on black turnout as that community tends to oppose gay marriage and President Obama will presumably be on the ballot for re-election.

And then we have the mother of all protests next Monday, the 14th. Dubbed the “Rally to Keep the Promise” by its organizers, the Maryland State Education Association, it’s certain the usual big-government apologists will be there. And there’s nothing like a little class envy to fire up the troops:

We’re rallying to ask the General Assembly to prevent devastating cuts to public education and the retirement security of educators, police, health care workers, librarians, and many more hard-working Marylanders.

These cuts will threaten the quality of our public school system and the quality of the public services that we depend on everyday.

As Maryland recovers from the recession brought on by the excesses of Wall Street, we urge legislators to keep their promises to Main Street and provide great public schools, great public services, and a great future for Maryland.

What about their fiduciary promises to taxpayers and the solvency of the state? There is a point where taxation works to negative results like job losses and capital flight. And – how does revamping teacher retirement affect the classroom in the here and now? Their job should be to teach children, not worry about contributing a few more dollars toward their retirement. In that respect, welcome to the world most of the rest of us share.

The principle of bargaining between those who receive taxpayer funds to run operations and who receive taxpayer funds to perform a service leaves one side always a loser – the taxpayer. It’s why those of us who are Taxed Enough Already (a.k.a. the TEA Party) are calling for a stop to the madness. We’ll be represented in Annapolis, too, and although our numbers may be smaller we’re not going to be quiet and allow our representative to be bullied. Governor Walker is on the right track, and although it’s going to be a long 3 1/2 years until we can rectify the problem here we’re setting out to do just that.

Step one is cutting the piggishness of Big Labor down to size.

Friday night videos – episode 59

Another edition of this long-running series is upon us, and the star doesn’t need rehab! Let’s see what we’ve got this time.

The recent CPAC event was a gold mine of video inspiration for conservatives. For example, Human Events interviewed Ann Coulter before she made her remarks.

Not to be outdone, Townhall.com latched onto Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann for her take.

And on it went, as both entities catalogued dozens of interviews there.

Since the last time I did this, a number of videos have looked at the battle between TEA Party stalwarts on one side and Big Labor on the other, in Wisconsin and elsewhere. I have four different videos on the subject, beginning with Wisconsin’s protest.

Americans for Limited Government has its take on the Madison protests, then covered the event in Annapolis.

Expanding on the coverage was Renee Giachino and CFIF’s Freedom Minute.

But there’s one more protest which comes from inside the Wisconsin state house.

Sore losers. Wonder what would happen if Maryland Republicans adopted the same style of tactics?

This is different and a humorous take on overbearing nanny state governance from CEI, who is usually good at this sort of thing.

I don’t wear makeup but I sure don’t drink coffee with soy milk either.

Okay, there’s no music video this time because next week will be an all-music edition. So that’s it for this edition of FNV.

Odds and ends number 26

I have a bunch of stuff today which piqued my interest but only needs anywhere from a sentence to a couple paragraphs to take care of. So here goes.

Over the last few days as the Madison protests continue, we’ve had Big Labor flex its muscles in a number of locations around the country. Needless to say I can’t be everywhere at once, and I was working during the Annapolis protest.

However, my blogging cohorts have helped me out. With on-the-spot reports I feature my Potomac TEA Party Report friend Ann Corcoran from Annapolis and the excellent photojournalist who goes by the moniker ‘El Marco’ reporting from his hometown of Denver on his Looking at the Left website.

Corcoran also lets us know that the unions will be back with their Astroturf in Annapolis on March 14, with the intent of making this a bigger and better protest. (By the way, school is scheduled to be in session for Wicomico County students on March 14 so the teachers here risk the last preparation day for grade 3-8 assessment tests if they skip town to attend.)

Turning to national politics, the other day I was talking about the prospects of Ron Paul’s third Presidential bid. Well, the ‘money bomb’ on Monday for the Liberty PAC that Paul leads raised over $750,000 – the ticker inhabits the front page of the Liberty PAC site. Guess he can afford those plane trips now and, if I were a betting man, I’d wager an announcement of his 2012 campaign will occur shortly after (or even during) the Iowa trip.

Finally, let’s talk about a poll or two. This morning Rasmussen released a poll claiming that 67% of Americans don’t support the ‘cut-and-run’ Democrats in Wisconsin (and now, Indiana) – naturally, the only group which approved by a bare plurality (48-44) are those who self-identified as Democrats.

Speaking of those who identify themselves as progressives, I have some exciting news on a new experiment.

I’m working with Progressive Delmarva‘s ‘Two Sentz’ on a joint poll which will appear at both sites later this afternoon; it’s the final polling on the City Council primary race.

While I’ve found that the fundraising results roughly parallel the polling I’ve done insofar as the top contenders are concerned, it’s obvious my readership skews to the right. So in order to perhaps get a clearer picture of the electorate I figured I needed to add some lean to the left. So we’ll see what the results show when the poll ends on Monday.

And then we’ll all see just how accurate we were Tuesday night.

Madison: the shape of things to come

I’ve written for The Patriot Post for a number of years, but they invited me recently to contribute to their commentary page.

Last May we saw violent political riots in Greece and last week a February of discontent began in Madison, Wisconsin. While the issues at the heart of the Wisconsin protest aren’t exactly identical to the austerity measures dictated to the Greek government as a condition of accepting a continent-wide financial bailout, they’re still all about spending money the government doesn’t have.

The Madison protest arose from a GOP bill which would both curtail the negotiable items in labor contracts and bring to heel the ability of public sector unions to continually collect dues by removing “closed shop” provisions for certain employees and mandating annual authorization elections — those provisions strike (no pun intended) at the heart of the Big Labor political machine. To stall the inevitable passage Democrats in the Wisconsin Senate took advantage of a rules loophole and left the state, leaving their Republican counterparts fuming but powerless to take action on the law. Considering these Democrats have been offered sanctuary by religious leaders in adjacent states, they could be gone awhile.

(continued at the Patriot Post…)

If Ravens fans weren’t already bummed…

They may have to wait for quite a while to see their heroes take on the Steelers, or any other team for that matter.

With a player lockout looming in March, the 2011 season may be in doubt and players are being told to be prepared for a long work stoppage – save their money.

Interestingly enough, players are appealing to the fans to put pressure on the owners to negotiate but there’s a class envy element present in this dispute which you normally don’t see in a typical strike – in this instance you have millionaires taking on billionaires (even rookies who play a full season are assured a minimum salary of $325,000, with longtime veterans grossing at least $860,000 a year.) Nor do they seem to have a receptive audience in Washington.

Yes, it can be argued that the career span of an NFL player is relatively short, as most players wash out of the league in five years or less. One key aspect of the dispute is the owners’ desire to extend the regular season to 18 games by cutting the final two exhibition games – players contend they’ll run an even larger risk of serious injuries by extending the season. (This doesn’t count the numerous minor injuries they suffer during a season, like twisting their ankles or pulling muscles.) NFL players tend to have a shorter life expectancy than society at-large because of the abuse their bodies take.

But there is a conscious choice being made by these men, who generally have the opportunity to have their college education paid for thanks to their athletic ability. Many NFL alumni have taken advantage of their education and name recognition to build successful second careers after their playing days, but others cannot for various reasons.

As far as I’m concerned, the dispute can push the season back to open around the first of November, just in time for the conclusion of the World Series. My suspicion is that we’ll see the advent of the 18-game season by 2014 after the current four-year scheduling cycle ends and in return the players will keep the same percentage of revenue they currently receive. Maybe the post-career health insurance package will be sweetened as well.

It’s not unprecedented for an entire season to be wiped out, as the NHL lost the 2004-05 season to a labor dispute. Major League Baseball has lost portions of several seasons due to player strikes, with the 1994 season ending early and no champion crowned. The NFL lost a large portion of the 1982 season due to a strike and used ‘scab’ players for a few weeks during the 1987 season.

So Baltimore fans, you can just hope the Orioles have a good season because you may not have the Ravens to talk about this fall.

A Labor Day message

There’s something about Labor Day which has always bothered me. Perhaps it’s the onset of fall and the ending of the summer season that I enjoy most, not to mention the close of the Shorebirds season, but our celebration of the American worker seems too tied in to glorifying the unions and less to honoring those who both create the jobs by opening the business which employ most Americans and those who had the foresight to invest in these dreams. After all, had Henry Ford not enticed investors to believe in his idea we wouldn’t be driving our Escapes, Crown Vics, or F-150s that are primarily built by UAW members.

It could simply be my upbringing, too. Three years ago I wrote:

I guess some of the issue I have with unions comes from my upbringing. I was raised in a Teamster household but really there wasn’t all that much to show for it. My dad was (and is) a hard worker but people who did nothing made the same amount of money, and that never appealed to the side of me that desires fairness and justice in life. And I’ve heard too many anecdotes of union shops intentionally slowing down production so their quota wouldn’t be increased. It’s sort of the same thinking as the governmental agency spending big money on office supplies and the like at the end of the fiscal year so they make sure they spend their full budget and not have it cut.

Also, to me it was quite sad to see the streets of downtown Toledo full of people and politicans for the annual Labor Day parade when the annual Memorial Day parade was shunted to the Saturday before and was lucky to have a couple thousand watching. Yes, Toledo is a union-dominated city but still I felt their priorities were way out of whack.

Certainly today the unionistas of Toledo are out driving their trucks and their equipment festooned with the paraphernaila of Democratic politicians – they even get a visit from both Vice-President Biden and Ohio Governor Ted Strickland today. But closer to home we even see that same dichotomy because while Brian Murphy is touring the Shore today both Bob Ehrlich and Martin O’Malley are marching in Labor Day parades. (Obviously Maryland is a less hardline state; perhaps it’s because more union members come from the ranks of government employees compared to private-sector workers. My bet is most of the union participants will still be wearing the O’Malley green.)

Yet we sometimes fail to remember that without employers we would have no employees, and for many of those employers today is just another day of work to keep their businesses afloat during trying economic times. The relationship works both ways, and while workers create these shop owners invest time and money in the hopes of supporting their own families. And while you hear about the fat-cat CEOs who make millions, the vast majority of business owners are only among the middle class. We forget they have mortgages to pay and kids to send through college, and they scrimp and save like the employees do. Many pay themselves last so their employees don’t go without during tough times.

Therefore, it’s in our best interest to enjoy the day off if you have it, but remember that there are those working so you can enjoy the holiday. Perhaps the labor and toil of these job creators today will pay off in better opportunities for you or your family down the road so let’s celebrate them too.

Driving out the competition

In one of the first acts of his presidency, Barack Obama crafted an Executive Order reinstating the use of Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) on federal construction jobs where total costs to the government exceed $25 million. This gift to Big Labor overturned a previous ban on the practice President Bush instituted early in his term back in 2001.

It took bureaucrats almost a year to devise the regulations, which were released last week. Naturally the Administration was pleased with the effort. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis called the new red tape “a win-win; they benefit businesses, workers and taxpayers. I’ve seen the track record in cities like Los Angeles — high quality work on projects done on time, on budget and good job and training opportunities that strengthen our communities.”

But Obama’s first attempt at enacting a PLA resulted in the cancellation of bidding on a New Hampshire job training center because a non-union contractor balked at the restrictive pro-union rules it would have to follow as a winning bidder.

Most telling about the arrogance of Washington bureaucrats, though, is their claim (page 8 here) that these regulations are not a “major rule,” which allows them to circumvent the Congressional Review Act. Their ludicrous assertion is that PLAs will not create an effect on the economy of more than $100 million, cause a major increase in costs, or lead to significantly adverse effects on competition.

It’s a claim which is laughable. According to the Associated Builders and Contractors, these PLAs will increase construction costs 20 percent at a time when 1 of every 4 in the industry is unemployed. Thus, taking the ABC at face value, just $500 million in construction contracts let would bring the price of these new regulations above the $100 million threshold and certainly a 20 percent increase would be termed “major” to most unbiased observers. The Associated General Contractors also weighed in, calling the new regulations, “unnecessary…costly and counterproductive.”

While the proposed rules leave some wiggle room for discretion against PLAs in certain situations, it’s unlikely that this labor-friendly regime will allow exceptions but for rare cases. With billions of dollars in stimulus money still to be given out, the timing of these rules is key to promote the cause of Big Labor just in time for the midterm elections.

This is another article I did for Red County National; they chose to title it “Another Day, Another Economy-Wrecking Gift to Big Labor.”

Who’s running the government now?

This from Americans for Limited Government explains a lot. A few excerpts:

An email sent from an Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lobbyist to Democratic members of the U.S. Senate shows that the SEIU had advance knowledge of when key votes on Craig Becker were to be held. Becker is one of Barack Obama’s nominees for the National Labor Relations Board.

The email was released by Jeri Thompson, co-host of the Fred Thompson Show. Thompson described the email as “marching orders to the Senate HELP Committee, telling them what their schedule was going to be.”

According to the email sent from Alison Reardon, legislative consultant for SEIU, “Your attendance at is crucial to appointing Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Please attend Thursday’s HELP Ex. Session to report out President Obama’s nomination of Craig Becker for Senate confirmation.”

The memo continues, “This is the highest priority for organized labor, and Majority Leader Reid will file Cloture on Friday 2/5, and has assured us that Senate will vote to end debate at 5 p.m. Monday 2/8.”

The email also asks for Senators to confirm their attendance at the executive session of the HELP Committee.

In essence, the Senate was working at the beck and call of the Service Employees International Union. Talk about buying access! Their millions in campaign contributions sure are coming in handy as far as that goes.

Fortunately, it doesn’t look like the Becker nomination will go through because the GOP has another helper against him: Senator Ben Nelson, in full panic mode after word of the Cornhusker Kickback got out, has signaled he’d join with the GOP in filibustering the nominee. So the SEIU will be thwarted for now into getting their toady onto the National Labor Relations Board. (The vote today was 52-33 to invoke cloture with Democrats Nelson and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas joining the GOP cause.)

But just imagine if ExxonMobil or Halliburton had been behind a memo such as this – do you think the mainstream media and leftist bloggers wouldn’t be screaming about impeachment hearings? Yet most of what we’ve heard about this issue from the folks at the mainstream media (like this CBS News example from today) talks about how business groups held his nomination up, not the machinations to grease the skids.

Obviously the situation ended well, but the question remains whether this sort of influence exerted by the SEIU and Big Labor in general is too much for America’s good.