INK: June 10, 2010

by | Jun 10, 2010 | Labor Relations Ink

inkquill22 Labor Relations INK In This Issue:

  • EFCA Update
  • Blunt Talk About Unions
  • IAM Organizing Drive Goes “Net”
  • Labor Relations Insight, ULP Charge of the Month, and more…

Labor Relations Insight from Phil Wilson Have Unions Lost Their Political Mojo? Mini Super Tuesday is now in the books, and unions have got to be feeling a little hung over after the $10 million dollar bender they just finished in Arkansas. So far the strategy to rescue their friends (aka Arlen Specter) and punish their foes (aka Blanche Lincoln) has notched a big goose egg on the scoreboard for 2010. The Specter debacle wasn’t really that bad. To be honest, unions (and POTUS Obama) only half-heartedly came to Specter’s aid in that primary. I think everyone just decided the Democrat turned Republican turned Democrat just wasn’t worth saving, and that he’d be replaced by a “labor guy” anyway. No big loss. Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas was an entirely different matter. Senator Lincoln gave the finger to labor movement on Employee Free Choice Act. She then took their best shot in the primary and gave them the finger again Tuesday night in her victory speech. Unions dumped $10 million dollars in union dues down the drain (no word yet on a refund for members, but we’ll keep you posted…) supporting a candidate who at least one insider thinks was even more likely to turn his back on unions than Lincoln. All this to punish a sitting U.S. Senator and to make an example for any other Democrat who might have thoughts of bucking the wishes of “big” labor. How’s that working for you? Lincoln not only survived the anti-incumbent wave sweeping the nation, but flipped the union strategy right back at them. Ironically, the main thing that saved Lincoln was probably the union attack itself. First, the Lincoln camp expertly used the Employee Free Choice Act as a way to illustrate that her opponent, Bill Halter, would not take a position on the issues. Halter’s contortions to avoid answering whether he supported card-check were comical. He looked worse than a typical politician… he looked like a typical politician who wasn’t even good at it. Second, Lincoln was able to use the attack by unions and Moveon.org as proof that she really wasn’t a Washington insider and that her opponent was being bought and paid for by outside interests. At the end of the election when Bill Clinton came to her defense, he used these attacks as proof that Arkansas citizens should trust Lincoln to have their back in Washington. Even worse, unions may have helped Lincoln set the stage for an improbable win in November. Lincoln trails the Republican nominee in early polling. But the extra runoff campaign followed by her dramatic come from behind victory is just the kind of story-line that could propel Lincoln to victory in November. It worked several times for Bill Clinton. Unions have said they may not endorse Lincoln in November (gasp! perish the thought!) But if unions learned anything from the Arkansas debacle (they didn’t…), they need to endorse Lincoln and spend another $20 million on her re-election bid. With that kind of support it is certain that the people of Arkansas will give her the boot. The problem for unions is the same one they always have: the citizens of Arkansas (not to mention average working people everywhere) aren’t stupid. They don’t like being told what to do by a bunch of outsiders who think they know more about what’s better for the people of Arkansas than the people who actually live there. Have unions lost their political mojo? It is beginning to look like it. It is a bad time to be seen as part of the political establishment, and when your members are mainly government workers and your leaders hobnob every day with Washington insiders and you spend like a drunken sailor on political campaigns, well that’s about as establishment as you can get. Unions are still the most potent political force for the left. But if they keep pulling stunts like they did in Arkansas they are likely to become more of a liability than an asset to political candidates, especially those in the middle of the country (what genius picked Arkansas as their Waterloo anyway – there are no union members there…) And then the mojo will be gone for good. ********* EFCA Update Much has been made of the manner in which the basic tenets of the EFCA could be enacted via regulatory action and by adding various elements of the former EFCA bill into other pieces of legislation. David Bego, a CEO who has first-hand experience fending off an SEIU corporate campaign, presents another manner in which card check could be implemented without actually addressing the issue directly! Here is how he sees it unfolding: The recent DOL rattling regarding rule changes to employer and consultant reporting add financial and jail-time penalties for failure to adhere to the potential new rules. This can be turned into a host of ULP charges filed by unions against an employer. With the substantially increased penalties, and a union-friendly NLRB left to interpret the validity of these charges, many employers would simply succumb to the union’s offer of a neutrality agreement in order to make the charges go away. Voilà – card check and a muzzled employer in one fell swoop! Exacerbating the issue is the departure of the current NLRB General Counsel, Ron Meisburg. The position will surely be filled with another union-friendly appointee, and the General Counsel can significantly add to the union tilt in the execution of NLRB processes, as was noted by this law blog post:

The General Counsel can heavily influence the agenda and timing of cases that come before the full Board. There are a host of cases that can be lined up for decision, many of which can serve to overturn Bush era precedents unpopular with organized labor. One can expect the Board to revisit issues relating to the definitions of supervisors and independent contractors; whether employees have the right to call for an election after voluntary card check recognition; whether temporary employees can be organized; the use of email; whether non-union employees have Weingarten rights; pre-recognition bargaining; bannering; cessation of dues checkoff after contract expiration; whether “salts” must have a genuine interest in the job, and many more issues.

The NLRB emphasized its new pro-union stance in a June 3rd decision. The issue involved the status of medical interns and research assistants, and rather than using the most recent (2004) precedent to direct their actions, the board relied on an older decision (1999) to classify them as “statutory employees,” and thus open to union organization. In an interesting sideshow, Wisconsin Governor Doyle signed into law a bill that allows employees to legally refuse to attend employer meetings where union issues will be discussed. Union political interests may find themselves one-upping themselves in this one! Supreme Court decisions clearly hold that federal law (in this case, the NLRA) prevents states from regulating in areas covered by the Act. Therefore the NLRA should continue to protect employer free speech about unions even in Wisconsin. However, in a strange, but not unthinkable twist, the NLRB could “rule-change” its way so that federal law matches Wisconsin’s new ban on employer free speech. The Machinists are also looking to take advantage of a new labor-friendly Board by filing unfair labor practice charges against Boeing for locating a new plant in South Carolina. Apparently Boeing’s “crime” was locating brand new work in a right-to-work, low-union-density state! How the NLRB responds to this ploy should be entertaining. We recently mentioned U.S. Representative Phil Roe’s statement that card check (as a piece of legislation) was “deader than a doornail.” Evaluating recent NLRB and NMB activity, this may simply be a smokescreen to put business interests off their guard. In the only bright spot in recent activity, the airlines won a 20-day reprieve in their fight against the National Mediation Board rule change making it easier for unions to organize workers. The court allowed more time to hear arguments in the lawsuit filed against the NMB. As an INK subscriber, you may have already seen the flash news item we sent out last night. The NLRB just issued an information request on how they can abandon the current election process in favor of an electronic one that can be held off-site. Read the details and the actual release here. ********** Special EFCA Update: DOL Reporting Requirements – Free Webinar DON’T MISS THIS!!

  • Unions are on a campaign to choke off employer free speech, and they are using the Solis Department of Labor to do it.
  • Are unions asking the DOL to fine your company for its employee orientation program?
  • Do they want you to spend time in the slammer for talking about unions?

This special one-hour Free Webinar will begin at 2PM Central Standard Time on June 30thSeating is limited, so please go to this page now for more details, and to register: https://lrionline.com/dol-reporting-webinar ********** Blunt Talk About Unions In this refreshing video, New Jersey Governor Christie takes on the teachers unions. Although he is referring to a public sector union, his comments can easily be more broadly applied. It’s worth the 4 and ½ minutes! [flashvideo provider=youtube file=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ksLlAi3iIc&feature=player_embedded /] ********** SEIU Watch Although SEIU pledged to “create WWIII” to drive NUHW out of California hospitals, they seem to be fighting an uphill battle, and losing. 600 USC University Hospital Workers joined the NUHW after the SEIU teamed up with hospital management to run a “no-union” counter-organizing campaign. The integrity of SEIU’s interest in “workers” rings clear, when they would rather employees choose “no-union” over an SEIU rival! In the continued tussle over 47,000 Kaiser Permanente union members, 1,300 mental health workers filed a petition to leave the SEIU for NUHW. The SEIU is also stringing together a run of political failures. First, they failed to get enough signatures to put a third party on the ballot in North Carolina, a measure designed to punish Rep. Larry Kissel, who voted against the health care bill. Their efforts in Arkansas also failed when Blanche Lincoln won her primary. In another interesting “fight,” SEIU and George Soro’s Moveon.org urged their members to support a move to ban the American flag from public schools. Not much more to be said about that one… Although Mary Kay Henry had pontificated about SEIU cleaning up its act, recent activity seems to indicate “same ole, same ole.” Rickman Jackson, who resigned from an SEIU post in disgrace having pilfered tens of thousands in dues money (and was “banished” to Canada for a season), has recently resurfaced in the company of SEIU Executive VP Gerry Hudson. Indicating that SEIU doesn’t intend to diminish its Washington presence, they signed ABC News’s deputy political director, Teddy Davis, to the post of Assistant Director of Communications to work on political campaigns and policy agenda. On the political front in California, the SEIU funded a study designed to criticize Gov. Schwarzenneger’s budget. Finally, though Henry touts to spend $250 million to gain 120,000 new SEIU members this year, most of those appear to be employees who are tied to government funding, or are public employees already. Apparently, the “value” offered by unions cannot stand up in the labor free market. ********** FREE 2009 NLRB Elections Report With the DOL bending over backwards to make it easier for unions to attack your company, now more than ever it pays to have solid intelligence about what unions are up to. LRI has created a new NLRB Elections Report that will provide a birds-eye view of union activity. Filled with colorful, easy-to-read charts and graphs, and broken out in a variety of ways, the information is easy to digest. We want to send you this free 22 page report for 2009 as a thank you for being an LRI INK subscriber. Head to this page to see more details, and to download your free report. https://lrionline.com/elections-report ********** 12 Union Myths Exposed In our ninth installment of The Cato Journal’s January 2010 “Are unions good for America?” issue, we cover the ninth 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 Nine: Right-to-work laws harm employees and prevent employers from freely contracting with unions. Fact: Right-to-work laws improve the economy, and employers freely contracting with unions is prohibited by the Wagner Act. That Act forces employers to bargain with unions “in good faith,” which is interpreted to mean that employers must capitulate to virtually every demand of the unions or be accused of acting in bad faith. This is hardly freedom of contract. Right-to-work laws mitigate, but do not entirely fix, this problem.

I have some experience with this, since I once worked in a non-right-to-work state and was forced to join the union. I would rather have negotiated my own terms; I’d likely have gotten a better deal. It seems many Americans agree, as millions of them have moved from non-right-to-work states to right-to-work states in the last decade, a migration that shows no signs of stopping. Richard Vedder, economics professor at Ohio University, found that both predictive models and real world evidence show that right-to-work states experience more economic growth than non-right-to-work states.

Download the PDF here. Check out the Cato Journal and access all 12 PDFs here. ********** ULP Charge Of The Month Bradley had a difficult time with his union. He was physically assaulted and choked by union officials, in front of the president of the IUOE Local, who then allegedly perjured himself to the local sheriff deputy. He was then denied a dispatch (as a crane operator) until one of his potential employers “threatened” to hire him as a non-union employee. Oh, if only we were all represented so! Download PDF of ULP Of The Month here. ********* IAM Organizing Drive Goes “Net” Machinists organizers working at two Toyota plants in Canada have taken their organizing campaign to the internet. On their website, you can download a brochure about the IAM, an authorization card, and other documents. There is an FAQ section, bios and introductions to each of the IAM organizers, and other information. The campaign also says it is using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. ********* National Nurses United on a Roll Over the last few weeks, the new nurses super union has added more than 1900 Texas nurses to their ranks. Hospitals in El Paso, Brownsville, Corpus Christi and McAllen have joined the ranks of the only prior Texas hospital to succumb to unionization, Cypress Fairbanks in Houston. Some have described the run as a “historic sweep that could alter the nation’s labor and political landscape.” Texas is predominantly a non-union state, but contains the 3rd highest concentration of nurses in the country behind California and New York. SEIU recently won the representation of some of the non-nurse employees in one of the El Paso hospitals above. If these trends continue, coupled with the implementation of the healthcare bill, unions may rise like a phoenix out of the ashes. Hammering that point home, the NNU is attempting to flex its muscle by threatening to take 25,000 nurses out on an illegal strike in California and Minnesota today (June 10th). A statement by the University of California Medical Centers called the action “unlawful, a violation of good-faith bargaining requirements and a clear violation of the parties’ contract.” In a further demonstration of disregard for both workers rights and labor law, the CNA/NNU attempted an end-run during the campaign at Cypress Fairbanks mentioned above. The NLRB issued a formal complaint for the union and management negotiating contract obligations prior to the union receiving majority support of the employees. A news release from the National Right To Work Foundation Legal Defense Fund reads in part,

“CNA operatives foisted themselves on Cypress Fairbanks nurses through a backroom deal designed to impose unionization,” said Patrick Semmens, legal information director for the National Right to Work Foundation. “It is telling that these union bosses are so intent on forcing themselves into nurses’ workplaces that they were willing to violate the rights of the very employees they claim to represent.”

********** Job Security Trumps Children’s Health We’ve mentioned before the argument being made by unions in California that non-medical school personnel should be restricted from administering life-saving injections to epileptic children. Big Labor is ratcheting up the fight by attempting to thwart a bill that would allow this life-saving measure for the state’s 63,000 epileptic students. The unions are against the measure, despite the fact that there are no medical risks whatsoever for non-nurses to be trained to deliver the injections. According to medical experts, even if the drug in question is administered unnecessarily, there are no ill effects. However, jobs are at stake. And while California is bleeding red ink, the unions are not interested in the health of children, or the prospects for taxpayers, but only the welfare of the few school nurses who would keep their jobs if the bill fails. ********** Show Me The Money! Even though their pension funds are in horrible financial shape, and unions like the SEIU are deeply in debt, union money will still flow like a river during the 2010 campaign season. AFSCME (government employees) will spend about $50 million this year, while SEIU promises $44 million to bolster its favorite candidates. The AFL-CIO has yet to commit to a figure, but it is sure to be fat. Keep in mind these are only the “official” numbers and hard dollars. Far more millions will no doubt be channeled via PACs, shell games, and “boots on the ground” manpower contributions. ********** Carpenters Union Sued “Bigelow Aerospace has had to explain to customers and government officials that despite the union’s banner and leaflets, it does not have an ongoing labor dispute with any union. These instances resulted in undue embarrassment to Bigelow Aerospace and jeopardized multi-million dollar procurement contracts,” the lawsuit reads in part. Carpenters Union Local 1977 has been engaged in a “false smear campaign” against the space contractor, ostensibly due to a long-running dispute between the union and contractor Pete King Construction. Bigelow Aerospace asserts that it does not conduct any business with Pete King, although a company owned by the same magnate, Bigelow Development, apparently does. The suit further charges that, “Defendants continue publishing falsehoods against Bigelow Aerospace in a misguided attempt to injure the business reputation of Bigelow Aerospace, intimidate its employees and interfere with its business relationships.” ********** How Obnoxious Can You Get? The giant rat has seemingly worn out its welcome in New York City. According to an organizer from the Carpenters local, the rat became a turn-off with the general public, not garnering the attention the union had hoped. What to do instead? The union has launched a new strategy: blowing whistles for 2 solid hours while walking the picket line. City dwellers are not charmed, but when an attempt was made to call in the disturbance, the caller was told not to hold their breath – the racket would probably subside before they could arrive, and besides, there was an 8-hour window on a noise complaint. Most would probably welcome back the inflatable rat – at least he was easier to ignore! If you want to hear what all that noise sounds like, watch a few seconds of the video available on the link. ********** Union Tries Flash You’ve probably seen the YouTube videos of the phenomenon known as a Flash Mob – a group of people who at first seem to be just part of the crowd at a train station (or other public space), who suddenly gel as if by magic into a well-choreographed song and dance routine, purely for the thrill and entertainment value. Not to leave any tactic untried, a group in San Francisco attempted to contribute its talents to a campaign against a hotel. Talent was not exactly on their side, but it is an interesting attempt! Wonder where they’ll turn up next… Watch the video here. Watch this and others on our union video YouTube channel. ********** Sticky Fingers Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials: Terri Lou Dunkelberger ATU $24,000 http://www.nlpc.org/union-corruption-update

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