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General Motors opened a new lithium battery plant in Michigan in January. To the surprise of most, the company hired no laid-off UAW members for its work force, but instead hired non-union labor. Quipped blogger Ed Niedermeyer, “If GM can get away with using non-union workers at a crucial plant that’s supposed to represent the firm’s future, things aren’t looking so good for our friends in organized labor.”
Additionally, GM joined with Chrysler and Toyota to outsource Teamster car haulers’ work to non-union trucking firms, replacing the Teamster drivers at Ryder Truck with a non-union company. It will be interesting to see how the weakened UAW will respond.
Trumka and the AFL-CIO propose a novel way to create jobs: tax Wall Street financial transactions and use the revenue to fund “infrastructure” jobs, such as road-paving. These jobs tend to be unionized. In addition, the AFL-CIO plan suggests jobs meet “minimum labor standards,” another way to say “likely to be union” jobs.
Although some financial mavens have agreed that implementing certain transaction taxes may mitigate rampant speculation in the markets, neither the government nor the U.S. Chamber of Commerce agree that taxes are the answer to speculation issues or to job creation.
The AFL-CIO intends to unleash a grass-roots campaign for the jobs program, called “Jobs Now Make Wall Street Pay,” in mid-March. Trumka is hoping to capitalize on voter anger over the government bank bailout scheme.
Although Trumka says his plan would raise $100 billion dollars per year in revenue, Martin Regalia, chief economist for the
Continue reading Soak The Rich To Create More Union Jobs
 Labor Relations INK
In This Issue:
• Labor Relations Insight by Phil Wilson
• EFCA Update
• Health Industry In For Rough Ride
• Soak The Rich To Create More Union Jobs
• SEIU Watch, and more…
Labor Relations Insight from Phil Wilson
Open Government?
 Yesterday I got an interesting email from the Department of Labor. The DOL is soliciting ideas for “Open Government.”
“Open government” ranks right up there with “jumbo shrimp” or “civil war” in the oxymoron department. I’d love to see an estimate of the carbon footprint of the Freedom of Information Act. I know we send in thousands of FOIA requests each
Continue reading INK: March 12, 2010
 Mr. Teflon, Andy Stern of the SEIU, has thus far evaded any further inquiry into his alleged violation of lobbying regulations, and received an Obama appointment to a special “debt panel.” Since Congress doesn’t have the moral resolve to take action into the runaway federal deficit, Obama created an 18-member panel tasked to recommend ways to balance the federal budget by 2015. After observing the last several years of SEIU tactics, it seems Stern may be quite the dubious choice.
Stern’s leadership of SEIU received a solar plexus punch when Local 1021 swept his appointed leaders aside in a recent election, capturing all of the major offices and winning almost total control of the Executive Board. The outcome was salt in the recent wounds
Continue reading SEIU Watch
Not only are unions losing members, they are losing respect among Americans. In the latest nationwide survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, only 41% say they have a favorable opinion of labor unions. In January 2007, a clear majority (58%) had a favorable view of unions.
Even among union households, almost a quarter of those responding held an unfavorable view of unions.
 Installation repair technicians at Comcast in Fairfield, N.J. recently elected to be represented by the Electrical Workers Local 827. According to the AFL-CIO blog,
Union leaders say this latest win will likely have a ripple effect, setting a precedent for future efforts. IBEW Telecommunications Director Martha Pultar said this victory is a good sign for more than a dozen other ongoing Comcast campaigns from New England to Washington and Oregon.
Private sector wages over the last 2 years have basically kept up with inflation, growing at 3.3%. The financial industry saw minimal growth, rising only 4.1% during that time. Where does one go to find a business sector that is growing? High tech, biotech, healthcare?
The answer leads to an industry that produces nothing of value to the GDP, and typically restricts the growth of the enterprises it is connected to: the Labor Union Industry. The wages for employees of labor unions skyrocketed and incredible 24.9%!
The other option would be the “enterprise” that labor unions are now so deeply embedded with: government employees.[2] It should surprise no one that the two enterprises that contribute nothing except more restrictive bureaucracy and regulation, and that takes their salaries out of the
Continue reading Good Work If You Can Find It…
In our third installment of The Cato Journal’s January 2010 “Are unions good for America?” issue, we cover the third myth.
Here is The Homeland Stupidity web site’s synopsis of this myth, and a link to each of the 12 Cato articles.
Myth Number Three: Project labor agreements reduce project costs and delays and are good for construction workers as a whole.
Fact: Project labor agreements increase costs and only help union workers. PLAs are agreements between construction project owners and unions that contractors on the project must use union labor, even if they otherwise would not. David G. Tuerck, economics professor and chair at Suffolk University, cites numerous examples of how nonunion workers were harmed when they worked under PLAs, “first by forcing them to pay twice for benefits already offered their workers and second by forcing pay cuts on their workers.” Then, unions use veiled threats to
Continue reading 12 Union Myths Expose
 Although the latest data indicates that union membership in the private sector has been shrinking, the trends for health care are moving in the opposite direction. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that 693,000 health care workers were union members in 2000 (about 12.9%). In 2009 the number rose to 962,000 (13.6%).
Early indications for 2010 seem to indicate the trend will continue. “Unions very much want to gain inroads in expanding sectors of the labor force, and they know that if they can organize nurses and other health care workers, they will have a future,” said Gary Chaison, PhD, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.
Continue reading Health Industry In For Rough Ride
Our friends at LaborPains.org reframed the fight over the Employee Free Choice Act quite well: EFCA is now a proxy label for an ongoing fight between the interests of Big Labor and U.S. businesses. It is highly unlikely that the original EFCA will ever see the light of day as an intact piece of legislation, or that it will ever even move forward as such. That hasn’t stopped Big Labor leadership or their political puppets (like VP Biden) from pushing it, nor the U.S. Chamber of Commerce from fighting against it. Both sides now seem to use “EFCA” as shorthand for aggressive labor law change, whether legislative or regulatory.
Some still suggest that U.S. business leadership is quite in the dark about the dangers posed by even incremental changes to labor law. As James V. Meath put it,
“In short, they [the
Continue reading EFCA Update
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