INK: November 18, 2010

by | Nov 18, 2010 | Labor Relations Ink

inkquill22 Labor Relations INK In this issue:

  • EFCA Update
  • Social Media Savvy
  • Campus Heat
  • Scoreboard, ULP Charge of the Month, Sticky Fingers and more…

EFCA Update The Administration is using another federal agency to bring pressure on health care organizations. The goal is to subject these heavily regulated organizations to further legal scrutiny, which can in turn be used by Big Labor in organizing and/or corporate campaigns. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) is trying to use hospitals’ status as a TRICARE network provider (TRICARE is the Defense Department’s healthcare program for uniformed service members and their families) to qualify them as “subcontractors” who would fall under the OFCCP jurisdiction. In yet a further “tilt” to unions, the administration posted a list of 111 companies or groups that received waivers from having to participate in the Obama healthcare scheme, and 13 of those entities were unions or union-related. The administration attempted to keep the news quiet, and buried the list 6 clicks deep in a government website (click here to see the entire list). The waivers are viewed as an admission that the healthcare legislation is a failed piece of law. In an interesting twist on the Card Check question, Big Labor may have found a way to force more “union-friendly” labor laws via the United Nations. Obama is attempting to entangle the U.S. in the U.N. Human Rights Council, and one prospect of any international treaty is that it circumvents national sovereignty and balance-of-power safeguards. The position paper submitted to the Council as background for the labor law component of the discussion was of course developed by such regulars as the SEIU, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters and the Steelworkers. In one bright spot, a Wisconsin law passed in May preventing employers from requiring employees to attend management-led meetings that discussed unions was in essence nullified. ********** Social Media Savvy This week, we had an interesting conversation with the HR director of a large company that recently defeated a union organizing drive. When we asked her about the use of social media and technology in the counter-organizing campaign, she laughed and described how her efforts were trounced by the union. Their internal email systems were constantly taken over by those working on behalf of the union, text messages and voice mails were left on employees cell phones at two o’clock in the morning, and web sites and social media pages in support of the union effort flourished. She had to adopt a strategy of simply conceding the social media/technology effort to the union, and apologizing to the employees for the unauthorized messaging they were receiving through supposedly protected, internal channels. In just the last week we have run two related stories: one involving the NLRB’s categorization of Facebook conversations as “protected concerted activity”, and another about the successful use of social media strategy against Dr. Pepper Snapple. In the latter article we pointed to the November convention of the International Labor Communications Association (ILCA), which will feature a special panel on “Winning Campaigns with Social Media.” We encourage you to seriously evaluate your social media strategy. A proper evaluation should include such questions as: 1. Am I familiar with all or most of the potential venues that could be used in a campaign against my company? 2. Do I have people on staff that understand how to navigate in these venues? If not, have I identified resources who can help fill that gap? 3. Have we developed a proactive strategy to engage our workforce using social media? 4. Have we considered a defensive strategy for social media used against us? LRI is offering a FREE SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY CALL for those wishing some expert help assessing their preparedness for social media campaigns. Phil Wilson, president of LRI, will conduct a 30-minute conference call to help you answer questions like these. More important, Phil provides pointers on how to respond to social media attacks during an organizing campaign and even offers some surprising “old school” tactics that are very effective counter-attacks. Phil will take the mystery out of this new communications venue for you and your team. Call Tammy now at 800-888-9115 to schedule your 30-minute call. ********* ULP Charge Of The Month Seems the United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America don’t like the bargaining process very much. At this manufacturing company in Ohio, the union has encouraged disruptive behavior by employees, defamed the company, condoned defacement of machinery by employees, and threatened to call in the NLRB instead of using the grievance-mediation arbitration procedures – all designed to harass the employer. Sounds like good faith bargaining, union-style. Read the entire ULP charge here. ********* Campus Heat In a 2 to 1 NLRB decision, the board agreed to reconsider allowing graduate students to unionize, paving the way for the board to issues a full-hearing decision soon. Private universities would then have to contend with the potential of grad students organizing under such stalwart unions as the United Auto Workers, much like their public university cousins do now. Prof. Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell, believes that urban universities would be the most ripe for organizing, because they have more “students of color and students with a personal or family background in labor.” Almost under the radar, the SEIU is running a full court press to organize on private university campuses (see this recent example at Colgate). They are also extending their reach beyond their usual constituents (cafeteria and janitorial workers) to the adjunct professors. As this Canadian news source points out, “US colleges and universities were once the finest in the world. Today, they run the risk of ending up like General Motors. As the SEIU continues to rack up unionizing successes, more and more institutions of higher learning will find that they can no longer fire incompetent professors and that some of their best and brightest teachers are choosing to leave rather than pay to support an organization they detest. If the SEIU has its way, America’s colleges and universities will find themselves in a headlong free-fall to the bottom. “ ********** SEIU Watch When two SEIU members attempted to support a rival union (UNITE HERE), SEIU retaliated by attempting to include contract language during the latest round of talks with their employer to reduce their pay and advancement opportunities. The NLRB lodged an unfair labor practice against the Rochester Regional Joint Board of Workers United (an SEIU affiliate). In its ongoing battle with the NUHW, a judge denied the SEIU’s request to squelch the activities of the NUHW by increasing the amount of the bond the NUHW was required to post after the April $1.57 million jury verdict. “The court is convinced that the true reasons motivating plaintiffs’ counsel and plaintiffs have to do with vengeance and retribution and not with maintaining the integrity of the Bar of the State of California,” the judge stated in court documents. SEIU lost approximately another 1,500 Kaiser mental health professionals and optical workers in Northern California from the Kaiser health system fight. The behavioral science unit vote was a landslide, 603 for NUHW to 196 for SEIU, while the optical unit was much closer. ********** Free Test Drive! Many of our clients have benefited from our TripwireTM Training for supervisors and managers. Front line managers learn how to detect signs of union activity, often long before a petition is filed, and what to do about it. NOW – this valuable training is available online, as a part of our Online Active Interval Training system. In less than an hour, those who are in the best possible position to detect the early warning signs of union organizing will learn how to pick up on these subtle behavioral signs. Their skills will be honed through pre- and post-training questions, engaging lessons, and interactive experiences. And – the training can be reviewed as often as necessary to keep their senses sharp! Test drive the module today. Click here to get set up for a free 15-day trial. If you haven’t yet checked out our entire 8-module Online Active Interval Training system, click 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

**********

A Change Of Uniform Fidel Garza used to wear the logo of American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO Local Union 2063. He’ll soon wear the uniform of the New Mexico prison system. It seems he couldn’t distinguish between his personal credit cards and those of his union.

Garza will serve four months in prison and three years of supervised probation, and is required to pay $77,400 in restitution to the union local, and $10,000 to Fidelity Deposit Company of Maryland.

********** More Money Madness? Law officials are still trying to unravel how much Big Labor was involved in money shenanigans during the recent election cycle. The Manhattan DA’s office has opened a probe into the Transport Workers Union Local 100, attempting to ascertain whether the union local’s new boss, John Samuelsen, mishandled some of the $400,000 pot of political money.

The probe started when documents were allegedly handed over by an employee recently fired by Samuelsen. “This is all political nonsense,” Samuelsen said. “Everything I’ve done was done responsibly and within the boundaries of the union’s constitution.” That may be true. Unfortunately for Samuelson, being within the boundaries of the union’s constitution isn’t quite the same thing as being legal.

********** Union Life Raft Losing Air The upcoming reapportionment, based on the 2010 census, is a study in contrasts.

States that will gain seats include Texas (four seats), Florida (two seats), Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington (one seat each). States losing seats are New York and Ohio (two seats each) and Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania at one seat apiece.

Now, do a quick comparison. The states gaining seats have an average state personal tax rate of 2.8% – those losing seats 6.05%. Per capita government spending is lower in the states gaining seats ($4008) vs. the losers ($5117). And, in 8 of the 10 loser states, workers can be forced to join a union as a condition of their employment, whereas 7 of the 8 winning states are Right-To-Work states. Americans intuitively know what’s best for them, and are voting with their feet! ********* Sticky Fingers Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:

Patsy Fontenot UFCW $6,943
Warren Annunziata ATU $250,000
Duane DeJoie AFGE $5,369
Henry George Green Sr ILA $35,566
Lawrence DeAngelis CWA $60,000
Carolyn Sue Alderman-Connon Boilermakers $1,200,000
Nickolas Weihert USW $17,256
Lucy Irene Hastings AFGE $3,328

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

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