INK: January 20, 2011

Labor Relations INK   In this issue:

• Union Bailout Update
• All Mobbed Up
• Indoctrinating The Young
• Scoreboard, Social Media Spotlight, Sticky Fingers and more…

  Union Bailout Update Wow – it seems that as soon as the EFCA was put to rest, every government friend of Big Labor, from the halls of Congress to the backrooms of bureaucratic agencies, has opened their toolbox to find every possible way to continue to work on behalf of their benefactors. Fortunately, friends of American Enterprise seem to have stepped up their engagement in the tug-of-war. Our story below (Public Union Debacle…explains the effort of many state and municipal leaders to reign in costs by reforming public pensions (many of them union) and nullifying collective bargaining agreements. At the federal level, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) introduced a House Resolution aimed at preventing the federal government from bailing out failed public employee pension funds. Many states are ratcheting up the assault on both public and private unions, including the banning of the right of public employees to form unions, banning the right to strike for public school teachers, and implementing Right-To-Work laws (Missouri and Minnesota so far). The newly named Education & The Workforce Committee released a statement that said in part, “Republicans will oppose policies that strip workers of their right to a secret ballot in a union election, whether those policies are advanced in the halls of Congress or through decisions made behind closed doors by unelected bureaucrats.” It remains to be seen how much energy will be expended in this effort, and this panel discussion by former DOL agency members emphasizes the difficulty of galvanizing congressional action (approximately a 1-hour video, and very interesting). Big Labor’s powerful friends have not been deterred by the recent election results. As we reported a few days ago, while several states passed laws protecting the right to a secret ballot for union representation elections, the NLRB has declared such laws unconstitutional and threatened to sue. Further board actions detrimental to business include: • The potential implementation of a “religious purity test” for organizations that are exempt from the NLRB due to religious purposes, as was as was upheld as recently as the 2009 case Carroll College Inc. v. NLRB. • Changing the rules on appropriate bargaining units within acute care nursing homes. NLRB member Brian Hayes fears changing this rule would change the broad test used to determine the appropriate units in all industries, which has stood for 50 years. • The inclusion of new default language in settlement agreements which heavily penalizes employers for failure to comply, and provides that signing the agreement constitutes a wavier of any right to file an answer. Another DOL agency, the Office of Labor-Management Standards, has also chimed in with a move of their own, designed to allow electronic voting for union officials, removing union members even further from legitimate democratic voting rights. Statistics from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) indicate that charges were up more than 7% in 2010 versus the previous year. Interestingly, for the first time since the EEOC became operational in 1965, race was not the most prevalent category of alleged discrimination. Rather, retaliation under all statutes (36,258) surpassed race (35,890) as the most frequent basis for filed charges. As we have continued to warn, it appears that unions may be encouraging employees to use such filings to bring pressure on employers for organizing or collective bargaining purposes. Similarly, this labor official suggests that OSHA is grievously outdated, and is calling for a “makeover” at the agency for the purposes of increasing its enforcement capacity. It doesn’t take much imagination to wonder how the unions would use this to their advantage. ********** All Mobbed Up It will apparently take more than hauling its top officials off to jail and placing the New York City District Council of Carpenters under supervision to disentangle the union from the mob. According to a 71-page report, supported by hundreds of pages of exhibits, includes evidence and allegations that the union still operates in much the same fashion, union officials are still under the control or influence of organized crime. David M. Walsh, the court-appointed reviewer, stated, “My office has deep historical knowledge and is developing current information about actual and attempted influence of organized crime over the affairs of the district council and the funds. We have developed sufficient information to reasonably suspect that there are certain district council employees who have been and are currently under the influence of La Cosa Nostra figures.” Walsh also noted “that efforts to achieve systemic reform have been trampled by the seemingly limitless capacity of racketeers to blithely disregard the orders of this court and the risk of criminal prosecution as they pursue wealth, political power and satisfy their sybaritic yearnings.” ********* Top 10 Union Corruption Stories for 2010 The National Legal and Policy Center maintains a running tally of union corruption stories, and is the source for our Sticky Fingers section in each issue of INK. They just released their list of Top Ten union corruption stories for this past year. Making this year’s list: 10.) John Orecchio receives a lengthy sentence for union benefit scams. 9.) M. Patricia Smith, confirmed by the Senate as Labor Solicitor, goes after private-sector employers. 8.) Former Sandhogs union benefits manager Melissa King indicted for $42 million theft. 7.) Union official Warren Annunziata pleads guilty to extortion of school bus companies. 6.) Andrew Stern yields SEIU presidency to Mary Kay Henry. 5.) President Obama appoints Craig Becker to National Labor Relations Board. 4.) Grand jury indicts Colombo mobsters and associates; two defendants may have fleeced Teamsters benefit fund. 3.) Unions negotiate key provisions in final health care bill. 2.) SEIU likely rigged ballots to win Senate re-election for Harry Reid. 1.) Michael Forde, nine others convicted in Carpenters district council racket scheme in New York. Kicking off the new year comes another corruption story. Jesse Daniels of Chicago, retired from the Steelworkers, has been indicted for stealing from the USW Local 1011. As the financial secretary for the union, he was owed a salary of $500 per month, but back in November of 2005 he began padding his salary by an additional $500 per month, and continue the theft until March of 2009, amounting to about $20,500. ********** Indoctrinating The Young As Big Labor scrambles to attempt to retain relevance to new generations of the American workforce, brainwashing tactics are not outside their scope. The Young Emerging Labor Leaders (YELL) is the latest such program, launched by the Oregon AFL-CIO. The group is part of a new national “outreach” program aimed at America’s youth. Similar efforts include AFSCME’s national Next Wave program, the Futures Program sponsored by the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, Baltimore’s Young Trade Unionistsand Young Workers United in California. The AFL-CIO is doing all it can to capitalize on the misdirected energies of these young idealists. They put them to work on phone banks during the recent election cycle, and plans include sending the YELL group to proselytize at Boy Scout meetings. As you would suspect, YELL and all of the similar organizations mentioned are big on connecting via social media venues. ********** Social Media Spotlight Unions continue to grow in their social media savvy. An Australian union writer released this Social Media handbook for unions, which you can download as a PDF if you are interested. The SEIU has actually begin spending dues money to advertise on Facebook, in this example trolling for security guards. The need for care in crafting a social media policy continues to loom large. In another case pending before the NLRB, a nurse was fired for posting to Facebook that she had come “face to face” with a “cop killer,” referencing an afternoon incident where she had treated a mortally wounded police officer and the gunman who had shot him. The hospital claims the post was a HIPAA violation and broke patient privacy rules. According to the MDNews site, “Social media policies are a must have for any health care provider. Given the high stakes of possible HIPAA violations or employment claims, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Beyond the careful crafting of an SM policy, employers can also find themselves in hot water for posts related to employees. In Pittsburgh, a sports bar employee complained to her managers about a case of sexual harassment. A week later, the waitress claims that the bar owner’s Facebook page contained threatened comments she believes were aimed at her. The employee resigned from her job and took legal action. ********** NOTICE: Social Media Listening Tools SPECIAL OFFER So many of our INK readers responded to our offer for a Social Media Strategy session that we had to design a webinar to handle the requests. It became obvious after doing several of the calls and dealing with questions on the webinars that some companies needed help setting up one of our key recommendations: tools to listen for chatter about your company in the social media sphere. If you need help, LRI will set up your Google reader account, create a series of custom alerts to feed into the reader, and help locate appropriate blog RSS feeds to send to the reader. Before turning over the keys, we will also spend 3 months monitoring the listening system with you and tweaking the alerts and feeds to be most appropriate for your business. All for only $995. For details, call 800-888-9115. If you missed the webinar, and are wondering why this could be important to your business, you can watch the webinar here. ********** SCORE BOARD Who are the winners (and losers) of the labor movement? Don’t guess, just check the LRI Scoreboard

View this month’s scoreboard (archives also located here).

Download a PDF of this month’s scoreboard

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Public Union Debacle Educating America About Unions One of the most promising side effects of the discourse related to the contribution of public employee unions to various state and municipal budget crises is the growing public awareness of the harmful impact most unions have on their “host” companies, in this case government entities. As many Governors are announcing moratoriums on collective bargaining agreements and proposing public pension fund reform, more private sector employees are waking up to the realities of the destructive nature of union collective bargaining agreements. As the New York Times reported, “Faced with growing budget deficits and restive taxpayers, elected officials from Maine to Alabama, Ohio to Arizona, are pushing new legislation to limit the power of labor unions, particularly those representing government workers, in collective bargaining and politics.” Big Labor has recognized the threat. Stewart Acuff, head of the Utility Workers Union of American, commented, “This is a very serious effort… to cripple the American labor movement and remove it as a serious force in American life.” Big Labor plans to counter with a PR campaign designed to boost the image of government employees. Naomi Walker, director of state government relations at the AFL-CIO, said unions plan to use phone banks, public rallies, and stepped-up lobbying efforts in at least a dozen state legislatures to attempt to polish the tarnished image of public union employees. The AFL-CIO isn’t the only union player engaged. SEIU’s strategy is to use the Tea Party as a foil to promote Big Labor and Big Government as the answer to the nation’s economic woes. “It’s no secret there’s a crisis here and labor’s been put in a tough bind,” said SEIU spokeswoman Inga Skippings. “We are looking at everything we can do to address this in a bigger way.” Big Labor’s overreaching into the public sector as their ranks of private sector membership dwindled seems to have led them into quicksand. ********** UAW Gasping For Breath In a blog post yesterday, we mentioned United Auto Worker kingpin Bob King’s forecast that his union’s survival is in serious doubt. This admission makes it easier to understand the UAW’s incredulous posturing against U.S.-based foreign auto makers in recent weeks. We already covered the “set of principles” the union delivered to the auto makers, hoping (beyond hope) that they would succumb to what in essence was a neutrality agreement. The union then stepped up the rhetoric by deputizing itself as the “Human Rights” police, threatening to subject employers who don’t respond as they wish to protests and demonstrations, backed by an $800 million war chest (built from dues extracted from hard-working Americans). As usual, the UAW knows that it will require all of the political muscle it can muster, and made the familiar pilgrimage to D.C. to lobby their friends in Congress for a little support. ********* SEIU Watch SEIU, along with a few of its bully friends, is again going about the business of threatening a private citizen at his home who is simply trying to his job. Walmart is attempting to build a store in D.C., and Pratt Development is leasing land to the company for the store. The union group is circulating a flier with the home address of the head of Pratt Development, to send people to his home to intimidate him – and included on the flyer is a gun range style target. SEIU also put a halt to the building of an assisted living facility in Falmouth, MA. SEIU Healthcare represents the over 200 Falmouth residents working at Falmouth Hospital, Cape Cod Hospital and the Marine Biology Lab in Wood’s Hole, and the SEIU-driven Campaign to Improve Assisted Living is designed to pressure assisted living centers. In yet another display of intimidation and pressure tactics, SEIU released a harassment campaign against a hospital CEO. The union represents about 600 of the hospital’s employees. The union set up a robocall that played a pre-recorded messaged designed to incite the person who answers the phone against the hospital. The message also encouraged the listener to press a number to be transferred to the hospital CEO’s extension. King’s Daughter Medical Center is suing the union, indicating that the hospital’s call logs identified the hundreds of the calls as originating from only one phone number, believed to be used by SEIU. Joyce Gibson, a union spokesperson, said, “We’re prepared to defend the suit. It’s nothing new; we’ve done this before.” In a somewhat absurd move, the SEIU is attempting to sandbag a poll to promote eliminating the American flag from public schools. Out in California, which seems to be rife with SEIU misconduct, another group of hospital employees made their wishes known to boot the union, and SEIU-UHW member Sophia Simms has accused UHW official Dave Regan of election violations in an upcoming UHW officer election. Sims sent an email to SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, stating in part, “The remedy is to have [Regan] withdraw now, if you don’t then we get the Office of labor-Management Standards to do an investigation. Can SEIU really afford another scandal, I DON’T THINK SO.” Sims was careful to cc an official from the DOL on her complaint. There also appears to be a little saber rattling from SEIU’s old nemesis, the California Nurses Association. This flyer put out by the CNA contrasts the union’s recent bargaining gains against SEIU contracts. After taking a two-year hiatus, is the battle between these two aggressive unions about to escalate again? In Philadelphia, the SEIU has picked its next organizing target: private security officers at the cities colleges, corporate offices, and other institutions. Local 32BJ, which holds over 120,000 of the cities janitors in its clutches, claims there are 18,000 such officers in the city, and that as more municipalities try to trim police forces, the ranks are swelling. This explains the SEIU Facebook advertisement we mentioned above aimed at security guards. *********** Sticky Fingers Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:

 http://www.nlpc.org/union-corruption-update