INK: June 25, 2009

Labor Relations INK

Download a PDF of this issue with links here.

In This Issue:

• EFCA Update
• Union Intimidation Up Close & Personal
• RAISE, Not RESPECT
• PLUS June Scoreboard, Only In A Union, and more…

EFCA Update

A bit of detective work uncovered another fraud perpetrated by Big Labor in attempting to persuade members of Congress that a new coalition of businesses supported the Employee Free Choice Act. Even though their website gives no list of names, the group attempted to claim 1000 members. We checked our LRI Database and discovered that the chairman is CEO of a life insurance company whose members are represented by OPEIU Local 277. Of course he would want all his competition unionized! Rick Berman, of the Center for Union Facts, dug behind the scenes to uncover the hoax. “Business Leaders for a Fair Economy is a front group for a few financial companies who stand to profit from forced unionization,” said Rick Berman. “Although they claim to be a ‘coalition of 1,000 businesses,’ it publicly turns out to actually be a hodge-podge of fewer than 200 non-profits, union consultants, and businesses that don’t even exist.”

As it becomes clear that Big Labor is desperate to keep the forced arbitration provision in the bill to protect unions’ failing pensions, they are once again attempting to frame the debate by ignoring the fact that the system is not broken, and focusing the discussion on a “working arbitration system.” Read our refutation to such a system on our blog.

Another prominent Democrat, Florida State Senator Rick Dantzler, has come out against the EFCA, another state business group (225 small businesses in Colorado) have come out supporting the bill, and Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas is dancing around attempting to find a way to support a “proposal both business and labor could support.”

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FREE! EFCA Strategy Review & Vulnernability Audit

This has quickly become one of our most popular programs, in light of upcoming labor law changes. It is more important than ever to assess both the internal and external factors that contribute to your company’s vulnerability to union penetration, and formulate action plans to shore up any uncovered weaknesses.

• What are the most likely labor law changes, and how will they impact my vulnerabilities?
• What are the six strategies I can implement to strengthen my defense against union encroachment?
• When do I talk to my employees about unions? What do I say about unions?

CLICK HERE to schedule your free 30-minutes consultation with Phil Wilson, LRI’s President and General Counsel.

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Has SEIU Overreached?

Both sides are claiming victory in the recent Fresno battle between the SEIU and the breakaway National Union of Healthcare Workers. In the election for home healthcare workers asked to select a union to represent them, SEIU ultimately took the vote tally by a slim margin while the NUHW is challenging the election, claiming that SEIU engaged in tactics both unethical and illegal. The cost to SEIU was 1000 field workers tied up on the ground, and an estimated $10 Million or more spent on the campaign, only to emerge with a shallow victory and a tarnished reputation.

For a look at the detailed parallel with the U.S. quagmire in Vietnam, read this article. SEIU is in for a long, hard season of bitter conflict, as it continues to tangle with NUHW and UNITE-HERE, while attempting to lobby for the Employee Free Choice Act.

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Only In A Union

Shawn Clark, who was business manager of Somerville, NJ-based Local 455 of the International Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, claims that all $85,000 that he spent on entertainment, $65,000 of it in go-go bars, was legitimate business expense. Clark was expelled from the New Jersey Regional Council of Carpenters and fined $50,000, but still intends to plead not guilty to embezzlement charges.

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Union Intimidation Up Close & Personal

One of the Big Labor arguments attempting to frame the debate for the Employee Free Choice Act is an accusation that employers intimidate their employees during union organizing campaigns. Unfortunately for the unions, most evidence of intimidation points to unions and their members as the perpetrators of acts of violence and intimidation. This short collection of videos provides a glimpse into the reality of union intimidation, from the perspective of former union organizers who engaged in the practice, FBI bribery footage, and the experiences of employees selected as targets.

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Healthcare Tug-of-War

The nurses at Shasta Regional Medical Center in Redding, CA, recently came to the conclusion that they didn’t need a union, and decertified the United Public Employees of California, which had represented them for twelve years. “We said, ‘You know what? Why bother?’ ” said Sue Washburn, the SRMC nurse who led the decertification effort.

Across the country in Boston, the states largest hospital group signed an agreement with the SEIU that restricted management’s ability to communicate about unions to their employees, leading to a recent win for SEIU at Caritas Carney Hospital in Dorchester. Although some hospitals or hospital management groups are pressured into signing such agreements, other will choose to fight back, and may find themselves targets of SEIU corporate campaigns. According to union officials, there are organizing campaigns targeting every hospital in Boston.

One labor consultant , Jeff Toner of Kennebunk, ME, describes such campaigns: “Corporate campaigns can target executive compensation, they can picket the homes of board members,” Toner said. “They make it as uncomfortable as possible for executives, and they cast aspersion on a hospital’s standard of care to the patient community.”

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Political Activism The New SEIU Export

The Service Employees International Union has announced it is establishing a huge member activist campaign across Canada. According to the union, members will use the political action program to mount campaigns and speak with politicians, to insure that SEIU-identified issues will remain on the agendas of politicians “at election time and every day in between.”

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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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Employee Relations Tip Of The Month

Recognize those who volunteer in their community with a community service award.

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RAISE, Not RESPECT

Two laws intended to amend the National Labor Relations Act are headed to Congress.

The Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees Act (RAISE) would permit employers to pay unionized employers incentive wages outside the normal limits imposed by collective bargaining, giving management a way of rewarding those workers who show themselves to be more productive. This is good.

The Re-Empowerment of Skilled and Professional Employees and Construction Tradeworkers Act (RESPECT) would reclassify management supervisors to make it impossible for them to legally engage in the kind of shop-floor activities that are a normal and essential aspect of their jobs, forcing companies to have to hire more workers to compensate, and depriving those companies of the expertise of their seasoned veterans. This is bad.

Lobby while you can!

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Raynor Accused of “Creative” Financing

According to UNITE-HERE sources, Bruce Raynor, the ousted co-president of the union, illegally transferred over $12 million dollars out of the union’s coffers and into the tills of union locals loyal to him, and to a consulting group with SEIU ties. Allegedly, those funds were then used to finance the succession of most of those locals from UNITE-HERE into a new union, which then affiliated itself with the SEIU.

John Wilhelm, the UNITE-HERE leader, has accused Raynor and Stern of orchestrating the split in order for SEIU to be able to encroach upon UNITE-HERE’s prime organizing turf, gaming and hotel industries.

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Bargaining Chip?

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Representative Steve King (R-IA) have introduced the Truth in Employment Act of 2009 in both houses of Congress. The bill seeks to protect employers from union “salts,” people who secure jobs for the express purpose of fomenting unrest in the company leading to union organizing efforts.

Salting is an age-old union tactic, and similar legislation has been presented several times during the recent decade, to no avail. One might wonder if it will be used as a bargaining chip in the EFCA-derivative debate.

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Your Union Dollars At Work

In Atlantic City, you can get a good glimpse of union dues hard at work. While the UAW is negotiating contracts for employees at Bally’s and Caesars, they are engaged in a “multi-million” advertising campaign trying to pressure the casinos.

Tired of taking it on the chin in the public arena, Harrah’s Entertainment has struck back with a radio spot of their own. “We have had more than 50 bargaining sessions with the UAW. … We’d like to agree on a contract that is reasonable, economically feasible and one that allows us to remain competitive in these difficult times.” Harrah’s says more ads are coming, although their spending won’t quite reach the level of the UAW media campaign.

With the union pouring millions into media, and the casinos having to fight back to protect their reputation, it’s a good time to be in the advertising business in Atlantic City. Casino employees, however, are seeing their pay raises frittered away. Good thing they voted in a union.

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Bank Of America’s Turn In Crosshairs

I’m sure Bank of America must be reeling. First, they loan $80 million to the SEIU for the construction of a new headquarters building. In return, Stern and company viciously attack the bank, staging protests outside Bank of America offices, called for the resignation of bank CEO Ken Lewis, and demanding improvements in wages, bargaining rights, and health care benefits for Bank of America workers through public campaigns and in testimony before Congress. Then, another union that is in the middle of a ferocious battle with the SEIU, files charges with the National Labor Relations Board against the SEIU and the bank, charging that the loans are illegal.

SEIU officials claim the charges are baseless, while Bank of American claims they are “being inserted into the middle of a dispute between two unions.”

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Branson Highlights Tough Reality

Said Richard Branson, head of Virgin Atlantic, about his company’s relationship with Boeing, “If people in Seattle build our planes and deliver them on time and, to be frank, don’t go on strike, then we’ll continue to work with Boeing. If we have our airline completely messed up, with tremendous damage done to our own work force, then we’ll go to Embraer or Airbus.”

The machinists union better pay attention. Their recent strike began the rumblings of the possible gutting of the aerospace industry in the northwest, and by year’s end we may see the fallout. Boeing has already indicated that without proper concessions from the machinists, they will establish a new 787 assembly line elsewhere.

Other industries would do well to take notice. The government does not have the wherewithal to add Boeing to the “General Motors”-style bailout program.

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UAW Attempts to Shaft Wisconsin Children

While business executives are being excoriated in the media for using private jets, the UAW is attempting to keep afloat a posh UAW-owned golf resort that has lost $25 million over the last 5 years. The union is trying to secure $3 million in tax relief from township officials, seeking to rob the school districts of much-needed funding to keep alive the elegant union leadership getaway.

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Labor Relations INK is published semi-monthly and
is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel
free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you
think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up
by visiting:

http://lrionline.com/free-stuff/newsletter-signup/

If you use content from this newsletter please
attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and
include our website address: www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger

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Pay-To-Play And Lawmaking

I never cease to wonder at the creativity of corruption.  As Congress begins to focus on how to attempt to pay for the 1.6 Trillion socialized health care proposals the new administration is seeking to implement,  Congressmen are factoring in giving the unions a bye on sharing their part of the cost.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., is working on several proposals to tax health care benefits.  But the plans offer exemption to unionized employees!

INK: June 11, 2009

Labor Relations INK

Download a PDF of this issue with links here.

In This Issue:

• Insight from Phil Wilson
• EFCA Update
• Internicine Battle Rages On
• Organizing Campaign Moves To Public Square
• and more…

Labor Relations Insight from Phil Wilson

Baby Boomers the Secret Key to Engagement?

A recent study by Boston College’s Sloan Center on Aging & Work, researchers found that employee engagement among younger workers has dropped significantly during this recent economic downturn. That’s not really surprising – as I discuss in my book The Next 52 Weeks, job security is one of the keys to job satisfaction.

What is surprising is that the engagement of older workers has hardly budged during this economic downturn. Read the rest of the article here…

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EFCA Update

Big Labor ratcheted up their pressure tactics, finding a creative point of leverage to intimidate fund managers on Wall Street from speaking out against the Employee Free Choice Act. In a questionnaire, managers were asked such questions as, “Has your company made any public statements in support or opposition to EFCA?” The implied threat is that unions will move their pension monies out of these fund managers’ hands, which is basically an illegal act of coercion. Read a letter sent by one Teamsters local to their fund managers.

We’ve already written about the stacking of the National Labor Relations Board with pro-labor appointments. Meet Craig Becker in this 6 minute video to get a sense for the radical pro-union flavor these appointments will bring to the board.

Some are wondering if the 3-way conflagration between the SEIU, UNITE-HERE, and the fledgling breakaway union Workers United will hamper the efforts of Big Labor to push the EFCA forward. Not likely, but it does make for high entertainment value (see story below)!

Investors Business Daily, meanwhile, points us to a fascinating National Bureau of Economic Research study that concludes that companies typically lose 10% of their stock value after being unionized. The study found the average loss per company was $40,500 in 1998 dollars for each worker eligible to vote.

Another group of business leaders, this time an Hispanic organization in Colorado, has weighed in to lobby their senator to oppose the bill, and another Wall Street Journal editorial points to additional problems caused by binding arbitration provisions in the EFCA: union leaders will be harder to hold accountable, and it will be even harder than it is now to get rid of a union once it is in place

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FREE! EFCA Strategy Review & Vulnernability Audit

This has quickly become one of our most popular programs, in light of upcoming labor law changes. It is more important than ever to assess both the internal and external factors that contribute to your company’s vulnerability to union penetration, and formulate action plans to shore up any uncovered weaknesses.

• What are the most likely labor law changes, and how will they impact my vulnerabilities?

• What are the six strategies I can implement to strengthen my defense against union encroachment?

• When do I talk to my employees about unions? What do I say about unions?

CLICK HERE to schedule your free 30-minute consultation with Phil Wilson, LRI’s President and General Counsel.

**********

Internecine Battle Rages On

You will not find better soap opera on TV. As UNITE HERE begins to crumble with the recent leadership split, one former co-leader (Bruce Raynor) charges the other with tactics “more reminiscent of the Sopranos than anything I’ve ever seen in my trade union career,” then resigns, while the other side charges Raynor with using internal resources to organize a breakaway faction intending to join the Service Employees International Union, and claims to have been planning to boot him anyway. Meanwhile, it appears John Wilhelm (the surviving head of UNITE-HERE) is attempting to use the affair to combat his arch enemy, Andy Stern and the SEIU, by planting stories in the media accusing Stern of directing the entire affair as a way to sabotage Wilhelm’s union.

As the drama unfolds, Raynor and his new Workers United union are pleading to SEIU for financial assistance, claiming they are running a deficit of $300,000 a month. Raynor is also besmirching the reputation of Amalgamated Bank, whose holding company is his former union, claiming that UNITE-HERE is in “total chaos.”

SEIU continues with its own troubles. As its largest local seceded to become a separate union (the NUHW), other SEIU officials have either been indicted for fraudulent activity (we’ve covered in detail over the past year), or have resigned in disgust at SEIU practices.

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Follow The Money, Or Lack Thereof!

We’ve  reported before some of the troubles that union pension plans are having, and why this is one of the driving factors in the desperate push for the EFCA by Big Labor. Some have done the math, and calculated that the enactment of some EFCA-type bill would put upwards of $637,500,000 per year into union coffers, equating to over $35 billion in the next 10 years for Big Labor to meddle in politics and the continued degradation of Americas businesses. Additionally, the poor state of union pension funds could be turned around as fresh dues payers/pensioners pay in for the benefits of already retired workers.

Pension funds are a big issue. A recent report indicated almost half of the nation’s 20 largest unions have pension funds that federal law classifies as “endangered” or in “critical” condition due to being underfunded. In a vile travesty of moral failure, union officer pension funds remain in top shape despite this erosion of employee funds. One researcher, Diana Furchtgott-Roth, lamented, “Unions attract members by telling them they will look after them and that these plans are fully funded but they are not. Yet they are fully funding their own officer pensions. What we have are new members joining up so they can guarantee that the officers will have a secure retirement. In some cases they are giving up existing 401k pensions that do better than these underfund Ponzi schemes. The membership dues are not being used to build up assets they are being used to fund the officer’s retirements and to cover current retirees.”

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Only In A Union

Shortly after members of IBEW Local 459 went on strike near Reading, Pennsylvania, specialized electrical equipment belonging to the Pennsylvania Electric Company was vandalized, creating a minor emergency and initiating the response of crisis repair crews. The company was forced to increase security measures, and contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Homeland Security to apprise them of the situation.

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Pro-Company Workers Take Action

A chain of grocery stores in Arizona has been fighting a long-running battle with the United Food & Commercial Workers, including the filing of a defamation lawsuit, and defending Unfair Labor Practice charges before the National Labor Relations Board. In a recent development, fed-up Bashas employees joined the fray and began a series of protests outside the UFCW Local 99’s Phoenix offices.

The group hopes other employees will join in the grassroots effort to protect their company against deceitful UFCW organizing and corporate campaign tactics.

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Internal Finger Pointing, Ad Naseum

Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and a member of the AFL-CIO’s finance committee, stated that the AFL-CIO has used “creative accounting” to mask its dismal financial position.

The largest U.S. labor organization in the country has seen its assets decline to a negative $2.3 million as of June 30, 2008, from a $66 million surplus on July 1, 2000. “If we are not careful, insolvency may be right around the corner,” Buffenbarger’s report said.

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Organizing Campaign Moves to the Public Square

Typical scenario:

• Union wants national company to allow the organization of its employees via card check rather than secret ballot.
• Company says no.
• Labor federation begins corporate campaign against company to bring public pressure to bear.

Recently, Change To Win played this well-worn card in a 9-city “protest” against CVS Pharmacy, claiming that the company was selling products past their expiration dates. CVS is a constant target of both the SEIU and UFCW, both members of Change To Win. Change To Win denies the allegation, but an employment lawyer familiar with corporate campaigns said, “I’d be amazed if this is purely a coincidence.”

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SEIU vs. NUHW

As SEIU continues to battle the newly formed National Union of Healthcare Workers, companies currently represented by SEIU are being dragged into the fray. In the latest episode, employees of a Kaiser Permanente facility in Stockton, CA, picketed on behalf of the NUHW. Kaiser claimed neutrality, but protesters disputed the claim. “We strongly disagree that Kaiser is neutral in this. We are forced to pay dues – $72.90 a month – to SEIU, a union that is not working in the best interest of the worker. We’re here to make sure everybody knows about it,” said one protester, Robert Nevarez. Protesters want the opportunity to oust SEIU in favor of NUHW, but is claiming Kaiser is working to prevent the action because SEIU won’t push for raising wages.

Across the state in Fresno, the SEIU is working to quash a move by Fresno home health care workers to elect out of SEIU and into NUHW. At a rally held on Sunday May 31, SEIU-UHW Trustee Dave Regan told SEIU staff to “administer an old-school ass-whipping” to NUHW supporters. “In other words, what we gotta do here, my old-school friends, is we have to administer an old-school ass-whipping over the next two weeks,” he said. “I know everybody knows what that means. We gotta give a butt-whipping they will never forget,” he added. “We gotta put them in the ground and bury them.” Watch the video here.

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Transform Your Workplace!

A step-by-step guide on how to dramatically improve employee engagement at your company. Includes checklists, action-planning guides and more.

• How to determine your company’s internal and external vulnerability – and why you have to deal with both kinds of vulnerability.

• Critical training for your first-line supervisors, and how you can turn them into a key to your employee engagement strategy.

CLICK HERE to find out more about The Next 52 Weeks: One Year To Transform Your Work Environment by Phillip B. Wilson

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UAW Tanks General Motors

If you’re still wondering exactly how much GM’s high labor costs played into its demise as a viable auto manufacturer, read this quick report. Robert Dewar, author of a recent book about the auto industry debacle, in a recent visit to China shared compelling data to back his claim.

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Danger In The Shadows

In another example of the many back-channel means that Big Labor supporters are looking to reward their union funding sources, New York state legislators recently tried to slide two new labor-friendly bills quietly past the public. One bill would force employers to pay up to 50% of a union’s lost dues if “extreme provocation” led to a strike, and the second makes it easier for unions to block public employers from imposing new rules. The legislation would lead to illegal strikes by public employees.

The Mayor of New York City got wind of the ruse. “Rather than rewarding illegal behavior, our Legislature should make sure that these potentially life-threatening events never happen again,” a spokesman for the mayor’s legislative office said.

On the opposite side of the country, Oregon is attempting to become the first state to pass an employer gag law that would severely restrict what employers could say to their employees during union organizing campaigns. Washington state just defeated such an attempt, and despite the bills dubious legality, Oregon legislators seem bent on pressing the matter home.

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Win for Right-To-Work

A field-tech with Verizon, located in Tampa, FL, was part of a team assembled to work in California, but was sent home by the CWA because she was not a member of the IBEW in her home state, a right-to-work state. When she applied for a similar second work team headed to that state, she was again denied. The National Right to Work Foundation assisted the employee in a filing a suit against the company and both unions for discrimination based on union membership, in which she won compensation for lost time, and an agreement that the unions will post notices that such discrimination is illegal.

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Labor Relations INK is published semi-weekly and
is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel
free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you
think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up
by visiting:

http://lrionline.com/free-stuff/newsletter-signup

If you use content from this newsletter please
attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and
include our website address: www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger

You are receiving this email because you
subscribed to receive our labor relations
newsletters and updates. You can manage your email
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any of our email communications.

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Labor Relations Institute
7850 South Elm Place – Suite E
Broken Arrow, OK
74011
US

INK: May 29, 2009

Labor Relations INK

Download a PDF of this issue with links here.

In This Issue:

• EFCA Update
• SEIU Red Ink
• IAM’s Suicide Solution
• PLUS May Scoreboard and more…

PDF with links: http://lrionline.com/ink/images/052909/ink_052909.pdf

EFCA Update

In a nice op-ed piece, Bret Jacobsen highlights another coup of the EFCA proponents in controlling the language of the debate: using the word “compromise” to denote what will end up being the bill they will push through into law. We have taken to calling it the “EFCA or derivative,” rather than suggest that any change to the current law is validly required via some type of compromise with Big Labor. As former NLRB member Peter Kirsanow has suggested, none of the “compromise” options being floated are really a compromise at all, including mail-in ballots.

Another reason for the desperate drive for Big Labor to have an easier time organizing (and pushing for mandatory arbitration) was exposed: the need to strengthen drastically underfunded union pension plans (see also here and here).

Meanwhile, Andy Stern calls Democracy an “ugly thing” and continues to push for a degradation of democracy in union elections via coercive card-check, and Senator Harkin threatens to back some Democrats against the wall (who have been wavering on EFCA) via a straight-out vote on the bill. On another front, 16 states are in various stages of using legislative action to instruct their Washington Congressional contingent to vote “No” on the legislation. In one such skirmish, the Attorney General of Arkansas struck down one such proposal. Keep in mind the “compromise” label – it may allow Democrats (and others) to follow the union lead by saying they were “against” the EFCA, but believed in labor’s (false) need for equity, and thus voted for the derivative bill.

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SEIU Red Ink

The aftermath of SEIU’s big campaign spending is a mountain of debt. The SEIU basically financed its part of the “buying of the administration,” but even though their balance sheet in physical terms is looking rather shoddy, you can’t claim that the money was misspent when you review the political assets purchased (former SEIU operatives now in positions of power within the administration). They gambled big – and it looks like it paid off.

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IAM’s “Suicide Solution”

It is likely that the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers may be poised to committed harakiri at a Harley Davidson plant near Baltimore. Following the UAW legacy of fighting for wages and benefits over job security, Harley may close the plant and move to another state where the climate is a lot more “non-union.”

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Only In A Union

In another fancy scheme designed to defraud union members using ambiguous fines, the notoriously corrupt New York City carpenters union is trying to force members to sign a card authorizing such fines or forfeit their vacation pay. Members are wary of their corruption-ridden leadership, yet fear reprisals. “What sort of ‘voluntary’ organization is it where the members are afraid of the very organization that claims to be speaking for them?”

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Deck-Stacking Continues

In yet another move to cement a bureaucracy in Washington sympathetic to Big Labor concerns, Obama has appointed a former SEIU legal counsel to the Federal Election Commission. The appointee, John Sullivan, has questioned the need for disclosure rules on advertisements aimed at influencing voters. J. Gerald Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, contends that Sullivan’s stance was “so radical that not even the most visible, well-known opponents of campaign finance restrictions supported it.” Sullivan is on record as questioning rules on coordinated communications between candidates and outside groups, such as unions.

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SEIU Takes A Punch

When the largest SEIU local left the fold to form an independent union, Stern & company fought hard to prevent the loss. The National Union of Healthcare Workers (NUHW) won the latest round as workers at a hospital in San Pablo voted overwhelmingly to join the new union.

Almost 100,000 SEIU members are currently waiting for an opportunity to leave SEIU and join NUHW instead. SEIU is spending millions on advertising and direct mail to prevent the loss, but if the vote at San Pablo (158 to 24) is any indication, and SEIU’s financial woes continue, SEIU may see quite an exodus.

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Insight Into SEIU/CNA Collaboration

The truth is beginning to emerge about the “kiss and make up” effort between the Service Employees International Union and the California Nurses Association-NNOC. According to this assessment by a labor-movement side observer, a huge impetus for the truce is likely an SEIU maneuver against the rogue California SEIU local that spun off into a new union, the NUHW (see story above).

As the leadership of the NUHW was extracting itself from the local that had been placed under trusteeship by Andy Stern, CNA stepped to the plate to pay the health benefits costs of the new union’s staff. However, as a part of the new pact between the CNA & the SEIU, CNA will cut off all funding help to its former natural ally, the NUHW. With the battles between the CNA & SEIU currently on hiatus, more cash will now be left in the strained coffers of the SEIU to continue to fight the fledgling NUHW.

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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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Employee Relations Tip Of The Month

If you must downsize, it is important to help maintain the dignity of those being laid off, as it will effect the remaining employees. Follow these tips:

• Notify each employee in private

• Allow them to say goodbye to their friends and transfer their responsibilities in an orderly way

• If possible, provide them with outplacement services

• Do not escort them off the premises as if they are criminals (unless absolutely necessary)

Hat tip to HRTools for the suggestions.

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It’s About the $$$

CNA has blocked every effort by nurses at Fremont-Rideout Health Group to oust the union using both Unfair Labor Practice charges and the courts. Now that the union has used the courts to force management back to the bargaining table (for now), the CEO is sure that the union “security clause” will not be up for debate.

The CNA seems willing to gamble the loss of the entire facility rather then give up the ability to force nurses to pay dues, even if the nurses don’t want to be a part of the union. Doing the math, CNA stands to glean $600,000 a year in dues (almost $2 million over a 3-year contract). It’ll be interesting to see how their “all or nothing” strategy will pan out.

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RAISE Act: Don’t Hold Your Breath

Congressman Tom McClintock (R – California) will introduce a bill that would allow employers in a unionized company to recognize employees who achieve outstanding performance or innovation, or in some other way make a stellar contribution to the success of the business. The piece of legislation is called the “Rewarding Achievement and Incentivizing Successful Employees” (RAISE) Act, which would amend the National Labor Relations Act and eliminate the de facto pay cap imposed on working Americans through stifling collective-bargaining agreements.

One estimate indicates that this act would provide union workers the opportunity to earn an additional $2,600 to $4,300, which is three to five times higher than the middle-class tax cuts promised by the Obama administration. It would obviously increase the incentive for employees within unionized companies to actually be more productive. Big Labor will never stand for it. It will be too much of a threat to their status quo seniority system, which completely stifles worker productivity, as this personal testimony attests.

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Sticky Fingers!

Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:

Brian McLaughlin – IBEW/NYCCLC: $2,200,000

Belinda K. Woods – CWA: $10,988

Dianne Drawdy – SPFPA: $18,000

Monica Smalls – AFGE: $500

Robert and Theresa Ann Carr – UA: $45,000

Kevin Welch – CWA: $1,000

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Labor Relations INK is published semi-weekly and
is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel
free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you
think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up
by visiting:

http://lrionline.com/free-stuff/newsletter-signup

If you use content from this newsletter please
attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and
include our website address: www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger

NOTE: if you are using Internet Explorer v. 6, read the text version,
as the html will not load properly in IE6. We recommend upgrading to IE7.

Labor Relations Institute
7850 South Elm Place – Suite E
Broken Arrow, OK
74011
US

INK: May 14, 2009

Labor Relations INK

Download a PDF of this issue with links here.

Labor Relations Insight from Phil Wilson

The Employee Free Choice Act:  When Should I Start Talking To My Employees?

This week we posted a blog item on an interesting study about the Employee Free Choice Act. In it a solid majority of employers (nearly 60%) say they think some form of EFCA will pass this year. This note is to them. The other 40% of company leaders in that survey are smoking crack … a compromise bill is being negotiated as we speak and will become law this summer. 

I’ve been doing a series of strategy calls with companies around the country over the last month. These calls are a blast (if you’re interested in doing a Free Choice Act strategy call for your company you can learn more here - until EFCA passes I’m doing them for free). The companies we’ve talked to range from large, multi-facility organizations who are already doing a lot of the right things to companies that are just learning that EFCA is coming. For the bigger companies we are able to really roll up our sleeves and work on advanced communications strategy. We work on a basic game plan for the smaller companies. But one question comes up in every call, no matter how big and sophisticated the employer: When should I start talking to my employees about EFCA?

It’s a great question.

read the rest of the article here…

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EFCA Update

There is no let-up in the furor over the Employee “Forced” Choice Act. Almost every day, a new editorial in some local paper comes out either pushing the act as the one piece of legislation to save the middle class, or aghast at the end of democracy.

The list of Democrats coming out against the bill continues to grow, while Dem stalwart George McGovern spoke out a second time, this time attacking the arbitration provision. McGovern nicely quotes former AFL-CIO head George Meany condemning mandatory arbitration as “an abrogation of freedom.” New studies decrying the negative economic impact of EFCA arrived. The government’s own recent data even dispelled the myth that the unions are playing on an “uneven field.”

Big Labor and their allies are scrambling to salvage the bill, continuing to float alternatives, including “card checks by mail.” What a ride!

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Companies Fight Back

Two supermarket chains have had enough of the lies and bullying tactics of unions, and have mounted a public defense of their businesses. Arizona-based Bashas’ mailed flyers to homes in Phoenix, countering the smear campaign being waged by the United Food and Commercial Workers. Times Supermarkets in Hawaii actually filed a defamation suit against the Teamsters. “The union has carried on a campaign of negative, untrue and unlawful attacks against us and our customers in an effort to smear Times Supermarkets’ name and extort concessions from the company,” said John Quinn, president and CEO of the chain. When the Times workers decertified the union, they intensified a radio and web boycott campaign.

Even with the economy as soft and fragile as it is, unions are still willing to toss the strike trump card on the table. In Colorado, 17,000 part-time workers in the grocery industry were on the trip-wire of strike, part of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, over contract issues with Safeway and other grocery chains. In response, the grocers began advertising for potential replacement workers.

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Stacking The Deck

While the EFCA rollercoaster continues to careen wildly, the administration continues to steadily work in numerous other ways to provide every possible advantage to Big Labor. Both of his recent nominees to the National Labor Relations Board are former militant union operatives, one of which is on record espousing the elimination of any role of the employer in union representation elections. In another deft move, the Department of Labor drastically reduced funding for the Office of Labor-Management Standards, which monitors the fraudulent activities of unions (obtaining 929 convictions of corrupt union officials and the recovery of more than $93 million on behalf of union members from 2001 to January of this year), while increasing the budgets of other offices within the Employment Standards Administration, which monitor employer behavior.

Meanwhile, the courts created a scare from out of left field when one appellate court canceled 300 NLRB decisions made last year, while another court contradicted this ruling by upholding the decisions as valid. No telling where this one will settle, but if Obama has his way with court appointments, the outcome is easy to predict.

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SEIU Raiding Techniques

Here is another reminder that unions care nothing for America’s workforce but are only interested in growing their own power base and bank accounts. This under-three-minute, well-constructed video describes the sophisticated raiding process deployed by Big Labor’s most aggressive attack dog, the Service Employees International Union.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Find this YouTube video here.

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ULP Charge of the Month

It’s always amusing to see how unions treat their own employees, especially when it involves SEIU.

Download a PDF of this ULP here.

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SEIU Imbedded

If you have any questions about how “pay to play” works at the federal level, this short video should answer them! Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, brags that

“SEIU is on the field, it’s in the whitehouse, it’s in the administration…SEIU members and staff are now all throughout the White House.”

You don’t have to look far to see how this plays out. Witness the sway the SEIU apparently has in withholding stimulus funds to the state of California in an attempt to prevent the state from implementing needed wage cuts to some of its labor force (SEIU members).

Any questions?

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Find this YouTube video here.

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Union Members Picket Their Union

“Anna Burger is a hypocrite,” said Malcolm Harris, president of the Union of Union Representatives, which represents 210 employees of the SEIU. Anna Burger is a top executive in the SEIU and head of the Change To Win coalition. SEIU recently laid off 75 workers in a way that violated their contract, and according to the picketers, used “union-busting” tactics to quell opposition.

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SEIU Abandons Members

A group of employees who were discriminated against in an internal job reshuffle, filed a grievance with their union, the SEIU. Since the union had agreed with the changes made to the status of the workers, the SEIU did not pursue the grievance. The employees, having no other option, filed suit against the company.

Here’s where it gets fun! The SEIU negotiated with the employer that any such issue would be handled by arbitration only. By rejecting the grievance, the union had refused to submit to arbitration. When the workers lawsuit ended up at the Supreme Court, the court agreed that the workers had signed away their right to sue by allowing the union to bargain such a clause into their contract. The only entity left for the workers to sue – is their union!

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EFCA Threat Provokes Action

A recent study indicates that companies are at least beginning to plan on taking action in anticipation of upcoming labor law changes. According to the survey,

• 64% of those taking action are planning, considering adding, or increasing supervisor management and training programs

• 47% are planning or considering improvements to unit climate and engagement

While, most of the respondents (70%) rated their current work climate as positive, only 35% had actually administered employee opinion surveys to address union avoidance and vulnerability. Our recent blog post addressed this concern and provides some details about the proper use of the survey process.

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Sticky Fingers

Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:

James Decker – ISDWU: undisclosed

Don Padgett – AFGE: $186,997

Donna Simpson – USW: $87,823

Christine Throckmorton – HERE: $9,674

William “Willie” Brown – UA: $4,942

**********

Labor Relations INK is published semi-weekly and
is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel
free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you
think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up
by visiting:

http://lrionline.com/free-stuff/newsletter-signup

If you use content from this newsletter please
attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and
include our website address: www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger

Labor Relations Institute
7850 South Elm Place – Suite E
Broken Arrow, OK
74011
US

INK: April 23, 2009

Labor Relations INK

Download a PDF of this issue with links here.

EFCA Update

Do not fall asleep behind the wheel, lulled either by a false sense of security, or by numbness stemming from the confusing messages related to the prognosis for the Employee Free Choice Act. It does seem that the cards are stacking up against the bill passing “as is.” Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) has indicated he may pull his support, another business group has added to the fray on the side of EFCA opponents, and a Teamster-endorsed recent senatorial candidate got away with dodging confession of support for the bill. However, bubbles of compromise discussion have continued to surface, and even those who have said “no” to the bill, have typically qualified their “no” by specifying they are opposed to the current version of the bill.

Big Labor mogul Andy Stern attempted to bolster his union comrades. “We are on the hunt for a solution,” he said, and indicated that it would be a mistake for Big Labor to wait for the next election cycle, hoping to pick up more votes for the current form of the bill. The AFL-CIO posted a list of grassroots efforts working on behalf of “reform,” and in a move straight out of the standard union playbook, the SEIU appears to have “stolen” signatures used in a non-EFCA related petition and applied them to a petition in support of the law!

While both sides are claiming tactical victories for their camp, it doesn’t appear that the EFCA proponents are close yet to pulling a passable bill out of the hat. That’s good news for American businesses, IF they take advantage of the lull before the storm. Big Labor will not rest – there will be labor law change, whether it comes via one “big” bill like EFCA, a compromise bill, or a group of smaller actions. It will become more difficult for businesses to overcome organizing attempts in the near future, and more businesses will be susceptible to organizing than ever before. They must prepare now, or they will pay the price for their procrastination in the very near future.

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“An’ You Don’t Mess Around With … Andy?”

Andy Stern, volatile head of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is a scrapper par excellence. Having buried the hatchet and come to an agreement with the CNA-NNOC to split the proceeds of hospital organizing (nurses to CNA, service staff to SEIU), he is now taking advantage of the rift in UNITE-HERE by wooing away the UNITE side of the war-torn organization to join the SEIU. The move was a bold encroachment into the gaming turf Stern has set his sights on.

John Wilhelm, co-president of UNITE HERE, calls Stern’s efforts “a naked power grab,” accusing him of attempting a “hostile takeover of another union’s jurisdiction in a way that is unprecedented in the modern labor movement.”

Labor experts disagree with Stern’s “growth at any cost” strategy, which makes concessions on benefits and working conditions in exchange for making it easier to organize in specific locations.

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Jaws Revisited

SEIU is calling for Kenneth Lewis’ head on a platter. Why would a union be after the CEO and Chairman of Bank of America? Simply put, they are trying to capitalize on the controversy and consumer angst that the $45 billion in government funding has created, to push their agenda for labor law change, specifically the Employee Free Choice Act.

“They’re after blood. They’re chumming the waters for sharks,” UNC Charlotte finance professor Tony Plath says of the union’s campaign. “I’m not a cheerleader for BofA. But let’s be objective about this: These attacks are all about card check.” Plath reasons that by accusing a major company of abusing consumers and workers, Big Labor stands to gain support in Congress for changes they are trying to push through. There are no unionized banks, but with the proposed changes in labor law, that could all change rapidly.

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Only In A Union

While Big Labor is attempting to force American workers to give up the protection of a secret ballot in exchange for the easily manipulated “card check” process, the Teamsters are showing the disrespect they hold for any democratic process. Three
Teamster members are on trial for rigging an election in 2004, apparently in collusion with the attorney of their local.

Now that’s democracy, Big Labor style!

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LRI Website Update

We’ve made it easier for you to find what you need on our web site. Hard-hitting videos, on-target publications, a growing inventory of free resources, and our exclusive library of databases, everything you need to move your company ahead of the competition. Here is a quick diagram highlighting some of the changes. Check it out – spend a few minutes on the site, and we’d love to hear your feedback!

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UFCW vs. Wal-Mart

The UFCW is wielding a new Union Authorization Card sporting a picture and quote from President Obama. In the last month or so, about 60 organizers have been sent to over 100 Wal-Mart stores across 15 states, using the new card to secure signatures.

As the nations largest private-sector employer with 1.4 million employees in 3600 stores, the unions see Wal-Mart as the key to the nations retailers, whose jobs cannot be shipped overseas. If the Wal-Mart domino falls, Big Labor knows the chain reaction will be enormous.

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Kidnapped!?

If the new trend to import all things French (socialism…) continues, we might soon see union locals kidnapping company officials. Disgruntled employees of French auto parts manufacturer Faurecia recently “sequestered” executives for over 5 hours to protest a restructuring and plant shutdowns. Sony, 3M and Caterpiller have also had to deal with this unusual method of “negotiation.” Almost half of the French population believes it is a valid means of bargaining.

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APRIL 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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Higher Ed & Big Three Auto

The UAW represents academic student employees at California State University. The latest round of contract talks have been stymied over the issue of fee waivers. Full fee waivers would cost the school between $8 to $11 million annually, and CSU is not prepared to budge on the issue.

“A strike might be something that we’ll have to do,” a UAW spokesperson said.

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Sticky Fingers!

Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:

In a side note to our union fraud section, Obama recently rescinded new financial disclosure rules put in place in the last days of the Bush administration aimed at making it easier to spot union corruption. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a former chairman of the Senate Labor Committee, complained, “In a time when the president himself said we need more accountability and transparency in government, canceling rules to help root out corruption is not the way to go.”

Lyndon Denney - USW: $24,000

Larry Ramsey – ROU: $163,222

Frankie Sanders – APWU: $13,000

Norman Stefanik - USW: $25,808

Rosa Della Porta - ILWU: $108,000

William Sargent, Jr.- AFGE: $31,000

**********

Labor Relations INK is published semi-weekly and
is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel
free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you
think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up
by visiting:

http://lrionline.com/free-stuff/newsletter-signup

If you use content from this newsletter please
attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and
include our website address: www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger

Labor Relations Institute
7850 South Elm Place – Suite E
Broken Arrow, OK
74011
US

INK: February 12, 2009

Labor Relations INK

Download a PDF of this issue with links here.

SEIU / UHW-West Conflict Erupts

SEIU’s Andy Stern final pulled the trigger and put the large (150,000 member) California-based local into trusteeship. United Healthcare Workers-West president Sal Rosselli, and 17 other elected officers, were ousted, and SEIU and moved to seize control of the local’s offices.

In what some observers called “trench warfare,” the UHW-West leadership first refused to vacate their offices, and then opened a new union, the National Union of Healthcare Workers, to rival SEIU for the membership of the local, petitioning for elections in 62 hospitals and healthcare facilities.

The west-coast dispute was mirrored in the east, as the UNITE side of the UNITE-HERE union took the HERE side of the executive committee to court over violations of its constitution.

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OLMS Teeth To Be Pulled?

Since the start of fiscal year 2001, the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards cumulative enforcement results include 1,004 indictments, 929 convictions, and payments or orders of restitution of $93,110,576. However, the mission of the OLMS to protect union members from financial abuses and other crimes by those who serve in positions of trust may be jeopardized, as Labor Secretary designate Solis will not commit to funding, and in fact parried the direct question into a comment antagonistic to business, rather than the unions officials OLMS is designed to monitor.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Watch the video on YouTube at this link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m55fyIT5q84

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Obama Begins Union “Dues” Payments

Whether or not the Employee Free Choice Act moves through Congress swiftly, Big Labor will have plenty to thank Obama for. He has already begun the process of tossing bones to his biggest backers. Several Executive Orders were signed giving unions preferential treatment in Federal contracts and making it harder for workers to understand their rights. Additionally, power is granted to the Secretary of Labor to blacklist union targets from federal contracts.

Meanwhile, Big Labor is keeping the heat on the newly elected Congress, and President. Andy Stern of the Service Employees International Union threatened to “hold people accountable” for their campaign promises. Keep you eyes open – Big Labor’s $450 Million election debt won’t be satisfied with just a few bones. They’ll want substantial meat, whether packaged in the EFCA or not.

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UFCW Thugs Intimidate Worker

At a Rite-Aid store in Niagara Falls, NY, an employee working in the stock room was approached and pressured by three representatives from the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. The worker had filed a petition on behalf of his co-workers to have the union removed. According to the police report filed, the union representations tried to coerce him into an after-hours meeting, and he feared they were trying to harm him.

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Employment Law Changes

Beyond the impact of the new administration on laws related to union issues, there are more changes coming that employers will have to keep abreast of. The workload of HR personnel will increase dramatically, and pity the small business owner who doesn’t have an HR manager! The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act are the first two among the plethora to come.

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Pro-Business Advocacy

Americans For Job Security is a pro-business, pro-markets issue advocacy group that has joined the fight against the Employee Free Choice Act. Among their key issues are:

- tax reduction

- free markets & free trade

- energy

- transportation

Check out their web site.

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ULP Charge of the Month

Download a PDF of this ULP here.

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Teamsters Latest Corporate Campaign

Hoffa has instructed Teamster locals across the country to sever any relationships with Cleveland-based KeyCorp bank, and move their banking business elsewhere. Why? Because Key is the primary lender for Oak Harbor Freight, an Auburn, Wash., company where more than 600 Teamster members had been on a lengthy strike.

Teamster-owned assets to be moved could run as much as $18 Billion. Just another example of Big Labor’s strategy to drag a third party into a labor squabble.

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Sticky Fingers!

Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:

Kenneth Campbell – IUOE: $290,000

Carl White – IATSE: $86,000

Gerald Conaway – FOP: $5,500

Stephen Snyder – USW: $78,893

Rick Radek – BLET: $6,700

Joseph Johnson - IBB: $102,519

Richard Klemser - IAM: $60,000

Jeffrey Baker - IAM: $16,050

Danny Tilley - TBCTC: $9,719

Linda Peterson - APWU: $6,505

**********

Labor Relations INK is published semi-weekly and
is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel
free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you
think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up
by visiting:

http://lrionline.com/free-stuff/newsletter-signup

If you use content from this newsletter please
attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and
include our website address: www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger

Labor Relations Institute
7850 South Elm Place – Suite E
Broken Arrow, OK
74011
US

INK: January 22, 2009

Labor Relations INK

Download a PDF of this issue with links here.

Labor Relations Insight from Phil Wilson

Online Organizing

A really interesting article in The Nation about the promise – and perils – of online organizing. Among the most interesting things it discusses is how the web 2.0 world is actually a threat to unions in the traditional sense of the word.

The “distributed” nature of the web can destroy hierarchical structures (just as it has in the business world). Where a group of workers can self-organize around a problem, why do they need to fund and deal with the politics of a super-structure with its own agenda? They don’t.

read the rest of the article here…

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SEIU Meltdown

The SEIU International Executive Board approved plans to split apart one of it’s largest locals, United Healthcare Workers-West. The rift between UHW and SEIU international goes back to April of 2007, when the local’s leader, Sal Rosselli, questioned SEIU practices that were aligning the union against groups advocating for better patient care. In response to the IEB vote, UHW’s executive board notified SEIU President Andy Stern that rank-and-file members are calling for a disaffiliation referendum for the entire local.

SEIU has repeatedly used strong-arm tactics to replace leaders of dissident locals with those loyal to Stern. Three such Stern allies, Annele Grajeda, Tyrone Freeman, and Rickman Jackson, have all been implicated in corruption scandals involving millions of dollars of union funds.

Since the vote, tensions have increasing. In Oakland, and off-duty policeman apparently hired by SEIU as a private investigator aggressively photographed members of the local union and assaulted a UHW staff member.

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UFCW Pension Woes Stacking Up

Ron MacDougall, a former employee of a pork plant on Prince Edward Island in Canada, received a letter informing him that the pension benefits were being cut in half. The UFCW-run plan had been seriously underfunded, and serious problems came to light several years ago about the way union heads mishandled investments.

Another pension run by the UFCW for the Dunsmore, PA, Department of Public Works, was announced to be insolvent. The pensions of other public service workers of the borough remain intact, as they were not handled by UFCW. The DPW’s involvement in the UFCW pension “was a decision by whomever was running DPW at that time, and I mean on the union side. It’s their call,” said Jerry Hart, borough council vice president.

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Big Labor Consolidating Power

David Bonior, a former Michigan congressman and a member of President Barack Obama’s economic-transition team, facilitated a meeting of members of the AFL-CIO and breakaway rival Change To Win. The presidents of twelve unions representing most of the unionized workers in the country met to discuss how to reunite the labor movement.

According to a released statement, “The goal of this meeting is to create a unified labor movement that can speak and act nationally on the critical issues facing working Americans.” The real target is to capitalize on the opportunity presented by the new alignment of the Congress and White House with pro-union issues. “Political action on the national level may be enhanced,” said Gary Chaison, a labor expert at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

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Only In A Union

A teamster organizer broke into a youth camp run by the rival Fraternal Order of Police and installed surveillance equipment, purchased with Teamsters funds. He was attempting to catch Metro police officers working at the camp who he believed were drinking after hours.

At the time, the Teamsters Union was locked in a struggle with the FOP for the right to represent Metro police officers in negotiations with the city.

**********

UAW “Roach Motel”

A machine operator at an automotive parts plant gathered signatures of more than half of the 150 workers seeking to drop their representation by UAW Local 19. However, the UAW fought back, stating that the multi-plant local would have to be decertified not just at this plant, but at all 12 plants now operated by the owner of this particular plant.

“The issue is that they make it very easy to get into the union but they make it very difficult to get out. It’s sort of like the roach motel,” said Glenn Taubman, the attorney representing the employee’s petition.

Unions want to have their cake and eat it too. Although it is possible to organize distinct units within one facility, as long as it can be shown that they have some commonality that qualifies them as a “bargaining unit,” the unions will throw up any smokescreen to impede such a unit being decertified.

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Teamsters: Strike vs. Talk

Rather than do their research prior to entering negotiations, the Teamsters allowed 2 votes & 10 weeks of a strike before submitting an information request to the employer. In a statement released to a local paper, Metalworks President and CEO Tom Paine asserted, “the union is just now asking the company for negotiating information, a process that should have been done months ago…The union leadership has caused a severe economic hardship to all members because of a strike that they initiated and continue to promote. Instead of working through the economic and competitive challenges, the Teamsters union instructed their membership to walk off their secure jobs.

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JANUARY SCOREBOARD

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.

**********

Employee Relations tip-of-the-month

Know your HR law! The more competent HR personnel are at their job, and the more the better job they do at answering employee questions in understandable language (sans jargon), the more confidence your employees will have in their opportunity to flourish.

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Top Ten for 2008

National Legal Policy center’s top union corruption stories of last year.

10) Senate appointment scandal has union connections.

9) ACORN is knee-deep in voter-registration and internal fraud.
Los Angeles SEIU chieftain is exposed, dismissed.

7) Law enforcement agents arrest Operating Engineers local thugs.

6) Union investments fuel progressive activism.

5) Mexican unions are bastions of government favoritism and corruption.

4) Labor Department puts more teeth into financial reporting rules.

3) Federal prosecutors expose New Jersey construction locals.

2) Five dozen Gambino family mobsters plead guilty.

1) Barack Obama is elected president.

**********

Labor Relations INK is published semi-weekly and
is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel
free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you
think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up
by visiting:

http://lrionline.com/free-stuff/newsletter-signup

If you use content from this newsletter please
attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and
include our website address: www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger

Labor Relations Institute
7850 South Elm Place – Suite E
Broken Arrow, OK
74011
US

INK: January 6, 2009

Labor Relations INK

Download a PDF of this issue with links here.

“Big Labor” Secretary Solis

It is no surprise that Obama would appoint a Labor Secretary that is strongly in support of Big Labor. The comments of several from the Labor sphere can be read here.

A NYTimes article put it quite succinctly:

“Ms. Solis has championed a bill, called the Employee Free Choice Act, that is the No. 1 priority of organized labor… She is the only member of Congress on the board of American Rights at Work, a pro-union group pushing for the bill.”

Some insiders believe that Solis’ pro-labor stance will add weight to the contest over the EFCA. Although it is now being called “controversial” by even the mainstream media, and as prior proponents in Congress are beginning to wane in vocalizing their continued support, Solis may be the trump card pushing the bill to near the top of the legislative priorities.

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Airlines a Reflection of Big Three Auto?

The oil price fluctuations and a weakened economy have taken their toll on the airlines, but the ongoing challenge of dealing with unions and union rules could be the albatross around the neck that brings this industry to it’s knees.

American is wrestling with flight attendants, while Delta is struggling to merge the recently acquired Northwest employees, many of whom were unionized, into it’s ranks, and pilots at Continental have been grappling to reach a new contract since July of 2007. Meanwhile, JetBlue is facing another organizing threat as its pilots work to form an independent union.

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How to Ride the Fence

Finally, American companies are becoming aware of the dangers of the pending Employee Free Choice Act. That’s good! Unfortunately, many of these companies will fail to join the public fracas over the bill so as not to jeopardize other legislative agendas. That’s not so good!

Many businesses are remaining on the sidelines and while allowing the Chamber of Commerce and other advocates to fight the legislative battle. Yet there is another way to fight back while remaining under the radar: make your company a hardened target to union encroachment. One possible (great) outcome is that Big Labor wins the EFCA battle, but then can’t make hay from it because US businesses have properly educated their employees about the facts of unionization.

If you’re willing to at least fight on this front, start here.

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HR Under Obama

About 1200 HR managers responded to a recent poll:

Do you think President-elect Obama’s policies on employment law will:

Make your job more difficult — 69%

Have no effect on you — 22%

Make your job easier — 9%

The article lists 10 pieces of pending legislation that will affect most businesses – and HR personnel – including the Employee Free Choice Act.

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McDonalds Ignites Union Ire

WalMart was the first large enterprise to be chastised publically by the press and unions for providing information to their management about the perils of the Employee Free Choice Act. McDonalds recently joined the ranks of those excoriated for doing the same thing – explaining to their franchisee owners the impact the passage of the EFCA could have on their operations. As is typical of Big Labor, the result was to attempt to intimidate the fast food giant.

William Whitman, spokesman for McDonalds USA, clarified McDonald’s position:

“Regarding this legislation, as a restaurant organization with 3,100 independent small businesses, we have a responsibility to inform and educate our system about legislation that could impact their business. This was the intent of the communication in question. Unfortunately, the message was leaked to the media and excerpts were used to create the impression that McDonald’s is engaged in anti-union activities. Again, this was not our intent.”

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Jack Welch Chimes In

In an admonition to business owners to educate their employees about the Employee Free Choice Act, the business icon stated,

“union work rules are one of the main reasons that the auto industry is close to bankruptcy…In 2009, Americans couldn’t less afford a resurgent unionization movement.”

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ULP Charge of the Month

Seems the ITPE Local 4873 in Tacoma doesn’t want it’s employees talking to their collective bargaining representatives!

Download the ULP here.

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Devious Strategy

The SEIU has been accused of signing contracts that are not necessarily in the best interests of its members, and of playing cozy with management. However, US businesses may find a sting in these “management-friendly” contracts.

“Stern has every intention to paralyze the businesses he now has sway over by holding over the heads of management the sheer size of his membership as newer contracts come up for negotiation. These businesses are signing their own death warrants by imagining that the SEIU has any long term interest in working with management.”

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Sticky Fingers!

Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:

Van T. Barnes – IBT: $97,661

Fidel R. Garza – AFGE: $84,000

Thomas Brown – IBEW: $6,467

Diane Martin – IBT: $1,535

**********

Labor Relations INK is published semi-weekly and
is edited by Labor Relations Institute, Inc. Feel
free to pass this newsletter on to anyone you
think might enjoy it. New subscribers can sign up
by visiting:

http://lrionline.com/free-stuff/newsletter-signup

If you use content from this newsletter please
attribute it to Labor Relations Institute and
include our website address: www.LRIonline.com

Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger

Labor Relations Institute
7850 South Elm Place – Suite E
Broken Arrow, OK
74011
US

INK: December 18, 2008

Labor Relations INK

Download a PDF of this issue with links here.

Labor Relations Insight from Phil Wilson

Bailouts and Pay to Play

As unions prepare for the upcoming epic battle over the so-called “Free Choice” Act, they were dealt a couple of embarrassing public setbacks last week. The Detroit 3-UAW bailout and the “pay to play” scandal in Illinois create a lot of questions about union claims of fighting for the little guy at a time when they really need that narrative to resonate with voters and their supporters in Congress. What impact, if any, will these have on the push for the Free Choice Act in the next few months?

read the rest of the article here…

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Under the Spotlight

The media attention over the Big Three/UAW Bail-Out battle has helped to reveal the real nature of the impact of unionization on a business, and on a national economic and political structure. With millions of dollars funneled from the dues of hard-working Americans to coerce politicians to do their bidding, the UAW has played their hand such that Bush will now likely defy Congress to forward their interests, even though many economists (not on union payroll) believe that bankruptcy reorganization would be the best hope for a viable American auto business. This despite the obvious impediments to profitability created by massive legacy costs and crippling work rules imposed by unions. It will be telling of the real power bought by Big Labor if they weather this storm enough to secure passage of the Employee Free Choice Act.

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A Tangled Web

Big Labor has many creative ways to spend it’s money and wield it’s power, including apparently negotiating with corrupt government officials to attain another pro-labor senator. Blagojevich was poised to trade a job provided by the SEIU in exchange for such a senatorial appointment as just one of his many lucrative exit strategies.

The SEIU had provided more $1.8 million to Blagojevich campaigns, and in exchange has been the recipient of several executive orders handing over more than 49,000 state workers into the fold of an SEIU local, tripling it’s income from $7 million in 2005 to $21 million in 2007. The swath of corruptions runs wide and deep, tying the corrupt ACORN with Blago, the SEIU, and convicted financial swindlers Tony Rezko and Suart Levine.

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Only In A Union

In another revelation of the SEIU playing money games, the union set up a charitable organization as a method to either launder mob money, create an untraceable slush fund, funnel more money to politicians, or all of the above.

“Of the 5,000-plus charities we’ve looked at, I don’t think we’ve ever seen one that didn’t spend anything on its charitable programs,” said Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, an online rating service.

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Twilight of U.S. Factories?

Herman Cain, noted businessman and radio talk show host, relayed this recent experience:

“I attended two corporate Board meetings with some of my CEO peers. I did not even have to raise the subject [of the EFCA], but it came up in the course of conversation. So I asked them what they thought the impact on business in America would be if the “Employee Free Choice Act” passed in Congress. Unanimously, they predicted that the proposed legislation would be the end to manufacturing and production in the United States of America.”

It is not only heavy industry that will face the onslaught. As we have highlighted several times, industries that never gave unionization a second thought will now fall directly into the crosshairs.

Mr. Cain ended by sounding the same alarm bell we’ve been ringing for over a year:

“So employers, get proactive if you are not already and then talk to your people about the pros and cons of ‘to unionize or not.’”

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DECEMBER SCOREBOARD

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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Employee Relations tip-of-the-month

Partner up with local service providers (dry cleaner, oil change/detail, shoe repair, meal delivery, etc.) and try to negotiate discounts for your employees and on-site pick up and delivery. This will help them save time, money and is a nice perk – plus it helps support another local business.

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Sticky Fingers!

Current charges or sentences of embezzling union officials:

Jeanette McFarland – GMP: $7,604

Tarris Dallas – USW: $105,000

Kathleen Kordish – USW: $20,304

Mary Schaeuble – USW: $3,379

Glen Gard – IAM: $90,500

Charles Bohanon – BLE: $18,074

William Sargent – AFGE: $800

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Contributing editors for this issue: Phillip Wilson, Greg Kittinger

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