Meet Big Labor's New Enemy -- Their Own Members

Meet Big Labor's New Enemy -- Their Own Members

Deep in the heart of big labor country, Crain's Chicago Business reports of the battle going on between big labor and their members.  With help from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, these union members have found support in exercising their rights: Multinational corporations have a new ally in their battles with organized labor: unionized workers. As organized labor loses leverage in a race-to-the-bottom global market, some workers are becoming so disillusioned by what their unions can, or rather can't, do for them that they want out. The disaffected include dozens of machinists at Caterpillar Inc.'s plant in Joliet who crossed the picket line during a strike last summer and are planning unfair labor practices complaints against the union. Organized labor's slippage is most acute in the manufacturing sector, which has lost 4.7 million jobs and seen membership shrink by almost a third since 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, private-sector union membership stands at just 6.9 percent nationally and 10.6 percent in Illinois. “Unions lack sufficient power to get their way,” says Mike Zimmer, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago. “It is a period of concession bargaining.” Many rank-and-file employees have opposed unions all along, of course. Despite organizing drives, workers have turned down collective bargaining at automobile plants across the South. Legislatures in 23 states have enacted “right-to-work” laws that allow employees to opt out of dues-paying membership at union shops; Indiana joined this camp early this year. Now some workers in union-friendly states are turning on their brethren over strikes. In Kansas City, Mo., a Honeywell Inc. employee filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board this year against an International Association of Machinists local for imposing a $7,361.36 fine for working during a strike, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an organization backed by businesspeople and individuals who oppose labor contracts mandating membership. In Los Angeles, three employees at a Boeing Co. plant brought complaints against the United Auto Workers in 2010 after it tried to discipline them for refusing to give up their jobs during a strike. The three claimed to have resigned from the union before the walkout. Similar charges have been filed and settled in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey and Connecticut, with unions including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the United Steelworkers of America named in complaints. In Illinois, the latest intra-union conflict—and potentially the biggest yet—is in Joliet. Last May, after contract negotiations stalled, nearly 800 IAM-represented employees walked off the job at Caterpillar's hydraulic-parts factory. After a few weeks, more than 100 returned to work, fed up over the lack of progress in the talks and pinched by the union's $150-a-week strike pay, some workers say.
Meet Big Labor's New Enemy -- Their Own Members

Meet Big Labor's New Enemy -- Their Own Members

Deep in the heart of big labor country, Crain's Chicago Business reports of the battle going on between big labor and their members.  With help from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, these union members have found support in exercising their rights: Multinational corporations have a new ally in their battles with organized labor: unionized workers. As organized labor loses leverage in a race-to-the-bottom global market, some workers are becoming so disillusioned by what their unions can, or rather can't, do for them that they want out. The disaffected include dozens of machinists at Caterpillar Inc.'s plant in Joliet who crossed the picket line during a strike last summer and are planning unfair labor practices complaints against the union. Organized labor's slippage is most acute in the manufacturing sector, which has lost 4.7 million jobs and seen membership shrink by almost a third since 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, private-sector union membership stands at just 6.9 percent nationally and 10.6 percent in Illinois. “Unions lack sufficient power to get their way,” says Mike Zimmer, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago. “It is a period of concession bargaining.” Many rank-and-file employees have opposed unions all along, of course. Despite organizing drives, workers have turned down collective bargaining at automobile plants across the South. Legislatures in 23 states have enacted “right-to-work” laws that allow employees to opt out of dues-paying membership at union shops; Indiana joined this camp early this year. Now some workers in union-friendly states are turning on their brethren over strikes. In Kansas City, Mo., a Honeywell Inc. employee filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board this year against an International Association of Machinists local for imposing a $7,361.36 fine for working during a strike, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an organization backed by businesspeople and individuals who oppose labor contracts mandating membership. In Los Angeles, three employees at a Boeing Co. plant brought complaints against the United Auto Workers in 2010 after it tried to discipline them for refusing to give up their jobs during a strike. The three claimed to have resigned from the union before the walkout. Similar charges have been filed and settled in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey and Connecticut, with unions including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the United Steelworkers of America named in complaints. In Illinois, the latest intra-union conflict—and potentially the biggest yet—is in Joliet. Last May, after contract negotiations stalled, nearly 800 IAM-represented employees walked off the job at Caterpillar's hydraulic-parts factory. After a few weeks, more than 100 returned to work, fed up over the lack of progress in the talks and pinched by the union's $150-a-week strike pay, some workers say.
Big Labor's Burden On Taxpayers Straining Relationships With Big City Mayors

Big Labor's Burden On Taxpayers Straining Relationships With Big City Mayors

Reason opines that the fiscal reality of many cities have ended the love affair, in some instances, between local Democrat mayors and the union who elected them. But, it will likely not bring reform aslong as political machines a mostly funded and controlled by labor union bosses: When Chicago public school teachers started the fall semester by turning down a $400 million contract offer that would have boosted pay by 16 percent over four years, my first concern wasn’t for the children. It was for the Democrats.  Sure, the walkout by Chicago Teachers Union members caused havoc for kids. But I’ve been to public school, and I can tell you they didn’t miss much.  The strike’s lasting damage was to the party that since at least the early 20th century has been labor’s best friend. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is not just some schmuck in the donkey party: He is President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, the congressional leader behind the Democrats’ 2006 House takeover, a Clinton administration arm twister so feared that he is still known by his ’90s nickname, Rahmbo.  But the strike made Chicago’s tough-guy mayor look like Chuck “Bayonne Bleeder” Wepner. Striking teachers dubbed him “Empermanuel,” accused him of having “no respect for us as people,” and even claimed (falsely, it turned out) that Emanuel was a fan of the Canadian alt-rock quartet Nickelback. When the teachers returned to work after more than a week on the picket line, they had scored a big pay increase and crippled the teacher-evaluation testing at the heart of the strike, a resolution Emanuel unconvincingly called an “honest compromise.” Emanuel is one of many recent Democratic chief executives who have, with varying levels of enthusiasm and success, tried to confront government employee unions. California Gov. Jerry Brown struggled for two years to get a minor pension bill through the legislature. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in March got a partial pension reform that is expected to save $3 billion a year out of the Empire State’s $133 billion annual budget. Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his job when he took on the teachers union. 
Big Labor's Burden On Taxpayers Straining Relationships With Big City Mayors

Big Labor's Burden On Taxpayers Straining Relationships With Big City Mayors

Reason opines that the fiscal reality of many cities have ended the love affair, in some instances, between local Democrat mayors and the union who elected them. But, it will likely not bring reform aslong as political machines a mostly funded and controlled by labor union bosses: When Chicago public school teachers started the fall semester by turning down a $400 million contract offer that would have boosted pay by 16 percent over four years, my first concern wasn’t for the children. It was for the Democrats.  Sure, the walkout by Chicago Teachers Union members caused havoc for kids. But I’ve been to public school, and I can tell you they didn’t miss much.  The strike’s lasting damage was to the party that since at least the early 20th century has been labor’s best friend. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is not just some schmuck in the donkey party: He is President Barack Obama’s former chief of staff, the congressional leader behind the Democrats’ 2006 House takeover, a Clinton administration arm twister so feared that he is still known by his ’90s nickname, Rahmbo.  But the strike made Chicago’s tough-guy mayor look like Chuck “Bayonne Bleeder” Wepner. Striking teachers dubbed him “Empermanuel,” accused him of having “no respect for us as people,” and even claimed (falsely, it turned out) that Emanuel was a fan of the Canadian alt-rock quartet Nickelback. When the teachers returned to work after more than a week on the picket line, they had scored a big pay increase and crippled the teacher-evaluation testing at the heart of the strike, a resolution Emanuel unconvincingly called an “honest compromise.” Emanuel is one of many recent Democratic chief executives who have, with varying levels of enthusiasm and success, tried to confront government employee unions. California Gov. Jerry Brown struggled for two years to get a minor pension bill through the legislature. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in March got a partial pension reform that is expected to save $3 billion a year out of the Empire State’s $133 billion annual budget. Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his job when he took on the teachers union. 
MIX: Democratic Party’s Big Labor backbone

MIX: Democratic Party’s Big Labor backbone

Right to Work top target for union allies From the Washington Times: As President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden campaign for re-election, they feel compelled time and again to remind anyone who has gathered to hear them that America's economic troubles started well before they got to the White House. [media-credit name=" " align="alignright" width="480"][/media-credit]American voters surely know that. The Obama ticket's real problem is that more and more voters are coming to understand that the current administration has no clue about which policies would help the national economy, and workers in particular, get back on track. Emblematic of the president's befuddlement was his jibe against Right to Work laws at a Labor Day rally in Toledo, Ohio. Right to Work laws make it illegal to deny an applicant a job or to fire an employee simply for refusing to pay dues or fees to an unwanted union. Mr. Obama insisted without offering any evidence that individual freedom of choice over union affiliation is somehow bad for wages and salaries. At a campaign event in Detroit the same day, Mr. Biden repeated basically the same canard and vowed that the Obama administration would block national Right to Work legislation. What are the facts about Right to Work and employee compensation? Nationwide, inflation-adjusted U.S. Commerce Department data show that wage and salary disbursements to private-sector employees grew by just 1.8 percent from 2000 to 2010. That's the smallest gain for any decade since the Great Depression. But regional data show that employees and job seekers in the 22 states that had Right to Work laws on the books at the beginning of the millennium fared far better than average, with real private-sector wages and salaries increasing by 8.6 percent, or nearly five times the national average.