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In this issue:
Union Bailout Update Bill Would Permit Merit Pay in Union Shops Machinists Striking Once a Member Always a Member Labor Relations Insight, Sticky Fingers and more…
NOTICE: You can make a PDF of this issue of INK directly from the post. Click here for instructions on how to do so.
http://lrionline.com/easy-way-to-make-our-posts-and-ink-issues-into-pdfs
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Labor Relations Insight by Phillip Wilson
What have we learned in the first week of the “ambush election” rules?
There are two questions I’ve been asked a lot over the last couple of months, and especially in the last week:
Will petitions increase after the new “ambush election” rules go into effect? How far will election times decrease under the new “ambush election” rules?
Here’s what we’ve seen
Continue reading INK May 10, 2012
SEIU is collecting signatures in California to put two measures on the ballot this fall. Both measures are written in a manner that rewards the two major hospital chains with SEIU contracts and punishes hospitals the union has been unsuccessful in organizing.
 Dignity Health, the state’s largest hospital chain, and Kaiser Permanente, the largest HMO, will not be subject to the proposals. SEIU represents nearly 60,000 workers in those two systems. The measures would prohibit their private competitors from charging more than 25% above the actual cost of providing care and require nonprofits to devote at least 5% of their patient revenue to free care for the poor.
At least a quarter of California’s private hospitals would be exempted from the measures, according to the state’s
Continue reading SEIU Watch
In this issue:
• Union Bailout Update • Yes, America, the Unions Are Killing Your Twinkies • Will the Unions Screw Up the Superbowl? • Laborers Vow Never to Forget Keystone • Picket Line Do’s and Don’ts • Teamsters Watch, Sticky Fingers and more…
NOTICE: You can make a PDF of this issue of INK directly from the post. Click here for instructions on how to do so.
Union Bailout Update
The NLRB held a “meet and greet” on Jan. 12 between lawmakers and the three newly sworn in Board members at the center of the latest NLRB firestorm. Members of Congress were denied the chance to question or even scan the resumes of Richard Griffin and Sharon Block as the two Democrats’ names were only first
Continue reading INK January 19, 2012
 Recently released Health and Human Services documents show that, far and away, union administered insurance funds are still the top recipients of Obamacare waivers, even after application rules were tightened in the summer in response to the first wave of waiver controversy. Early on unions were the biggest boosters of Obamacare, pushing relentlessly for employer mandates, even threatening to unseat any Democrat who dared vote against them.
Public employee union plans (listed as “non-Taft Hartley” plans here) alone received waivers for 659,871 participants since June 2011 while multi-employer union plans received waivers that covered another 1.2 million workers in the private sector.
To contrast, self-insured businesses received waivers that covered only 69,813 employees. Of greater significance, non-union health insurance providers were granted around 970,000 participants waived,
Continue reading Unions Still Evading Obamacare Mandates
In this issue:
• Union Bailout Update • Occupy Does Union Bidding in Port Protests • UAW Not Targeting Nissan, Much • Teamster $150K Club • Scoreboard, SEIU Watch, Sticky Fingers and more…
Union Bailout Update
Breaking News:
President Obama announced late Wednesday evening that he plans to nominate two lawyers to the National Labor Relations Board. The Board will no longer be able to issue decisions or create major new rules without a three member quorum and Craig Becker’s recess appointment ends on Dec. 31.
The president will nominated Sharon Block, deputy secretary for congressional affairs at the Department of Labor, and Richard Griffin, who is the general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers. Both would be considered
Continue reading INK December 15, 2011
 In Florida, Jackson Health System announced furloughs for 11,000 workers, while in the midst of negotiations with SEIU. The union lamented the move as a cheap shot, stating, “We believe this is an illegal action and cannot be implemented. It is merely a bargaining maneuver that he [Chief Executive Carlos Migoya] probably thinks will cause the employee unions to meet his demands for concessions.” Speaking of the protracted negotiations, Migoya said the measure was necessary to adhere to the balanced budget demanded by the public hospitals board and the County Commissioner. “In the absence of an agreement on concessions, we have an obligation to control short-term costs by other means,” Migoya.
At another public hospital across the country in Washington State, Olympic Medical center secured an injunction preventing SEIU
Continue reading Health Care Battles Continue to Rage
 According to National Nurses United (NNU) and the AFL-CIO, the healthcare sector has the fastest growth rate in the organized labor movement. If you attended or viewed our “Rising Storm in LTC” webinar, you are aware that nurses and nurses aids are two of the employment groups expected to see explosive growth in the next few years. It should come as no surprise that Big Labor is drooling over this employment sector, since their work cannot be outsourced and their numbers are growing.
About 170,000 RNs (about ten percent of RNs in acute-care hospitals) are represented by unions out of the current total potential of 1.6 million hospital RNs. That’s a huge pond in which to fish! Since 2009, NNU has organized 11,000 RNs.
Continue reading Decline of American Healthcare?
 McKnight’s Long Term Care News & Assisted Living contacted LRI president Phil Wilson to get his perspective on the challenges facing the industry. An August webinar led by Wilson, Rising Storm in LTC, highlighted dozens of issues converging in the LTC arena, making it a highly-charged environment susceptible to continued union organizing pressure.
“If you look at next year,” Wilson says, “you’re going to see brutal political campaigns, possibly a second recession but certainly not any dramatic [economic] growth, long-term care will stay under the same pressures it’s been under, and more and more people are going to be in nursing homes.”
  
 On Monday in LA, SEIU raised the bar for dumbest waste of dues by sending a “flash mob” of SEIU staff (and staff wanna-bes) to eight different area businesses they labeled “bad actors” including Target, JP Morgan Chase, McDonalds and Chipotle. It appears SEIU intends to somehow shape corporate practice by publicly humiliating its own staff members. ( Perhaps as a team building exercise? ) Just imagine the union outrage if Chipotle or Chase demanded their employees dance around on street corners in plastic garbage bags and zombie makeup in order to keep their jobs!
Be sure to visit the LRI Union Free YouTube Channel to view this and other entertaining and informative videos.
The number of unionized healthcare workers in Florida has risen by almost a third in the last year according to The Florida Times-Union. Most of that growth has been in Hospital Corporation of America facilities that signed neutrality agreements with the major healthcare unions last year.
“From a hospital’s viewpoint, unions can divide the workplace, restrict management’s ability to make decisions and cut profits’, said Miami lawyer Bob Norton, who helps hospital administrators fight unions. ‘Look at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, where employees are members of 1991 SEIU’, he said. ‘The hospital is plagued by administrative problems and $500 million in debt. You’ve got union people constantly going around and contesting the decisions made by their supervisors,’ he said. ‘What that has done in terms of damage to the hospital is probably beyond repair.’”
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