International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers Union Bosses Grow Fat

International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers Union Bosses Grow Fat

Forced-Dues Fed Fat Cats The salaries, perks and benefits of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers is raising eyebrows -- to say the least -- among the 59,000 members of the union.  It appears that union members are finding their union due's money spent on the personal benefit of the union bosses including family members on the payroll; Outrageous salaries among the union bosses and suspicious travel reimbursements. McClatchy Newspapers has the story: First-class travel. Six-figure salaries for half the 132 officers and staffers. Plenty of plum jobs for family members. Life is good at the top of the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers, Iron Ship Builders, Blacksmiths, Forgers and Helpers. The union, with its headquarters in Kansas City, Kan., represents about 59,000 workers in the U.S. and Canada who make and repair boilers, fit pipes and work on ships and power plants. The recession has hit their trade hard, reducing union membership.
Will Big Labor Get Its Revenge in Wisconsin?

Will Big Labor Get Its Revenge in Wisconsin?

Union Bosses Plot to Recover All of Their Forced-Dues Privileges (source: National Right To Work Committee April 2012 Newsletter) Early last year, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) infuriated the union hierarchy, in his own state and nationwide, when he introduced legislation (S.B.11) that would abolish forced union dues for teachers and many other public employees and also sharply limit the scope of government union monopoly bargaining. In response, teacher union bosses in Madison, Milwaukee, and other cities called teachers out on illegal strikes so they could stage angry protests at the state capitol and at legislators' residences. Government union militants issued dozens of death threats against Mr. Walker, his administration, and their families. Fourteen Big Labor-backed state senators, all Democrats, temporarily fled the state to deny the pro-S.B.11 Senate majority a quorum to pass the bill. But thanks in part to public support mobilized by the National Right to Work Committee's e-mail and telecommunications activities, pro-Right to Work legislators were able to withstand the Big Labor fury. Ultimately, S.B.11 was sent to Gov. Walker's desk, and on March 11, 2011, he signed into law the measure now known as Act 10. '[T]o Get Things Out of the Contract and Make Needed Changes Was Impossible'
Big Labor Hires Priests, Rabbis, and Imams as Union Organizers

Big Labor Hires Priests, Rabbis, and Imams as Union Organizers

From BigGovernment.com: A Los Angeles Times article exposed part of Big Labor’s undisclosed labor persuader scheme that uses the pulpit to promote compulsory unionism. The Times’ Stephanie Simon reported that the AFL-CIO “… hired more than three dozen aspiring ministers, imams, priests, and rabbis to spread the gospel …”of Compulsory Unionism. Her article provides a solid example of years of labor union bosses’ hiring religious leaders to act as labor persuaders; here the persuaders are attempting to use their religions to cloak the Big Labor message. AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, paid seminary students to organize “… security guards in metropolitan Washington, carpenters in Boston, hotel maids in Chicago, [and] meatpackers in Los Angeles. Some spend their days with the workers, trying to give them courage [read motivation] to mobilize. Others visit local congregations to urge solidarity with the union cause.” These AFL-CIO contracted “ministerial” apparatchiks “… march on management, quoting Scripture, hoping the power of prayer -- and embarrassing public theater -- might force concessions come contract time. ‘We're showing up in their office,telling them that God does not want them to act the way they're actingtoward their workers,’ said rabbinical student Margie Klein, 26. ‘They're going to get the message.’” Typically, the targets of these unionists are non-union employees and employers -- even employers who pay more than union wages and employees who receive better than union wages. [stream provider=youtube flv=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DUfu_xQE49WQ img=x:/img.youtube.com/vi/Ufu_xQE49WQ/0.jpg embed=false share=false width=580 height=360 dock=true controlbar=over bandwidth=high autostart=false /] It will not come as a shock to Dave Bego and his employees, who experienced SEIU “corporate campaign” assaults that included clergy coordinated events and political pressure. (Years later, one member of the union organized clergy contacted Bego and said, “Mr. Bego I want to apologize to you. I have read your book, and I have done some soul searching, and I had already begun to have doubts about the SEIU. … I was behind the scenes. ..I was at the rally downtown where the other clergy were. I was there, and I spoke against you. That was wrong. I apologize; … I would be happy to write letters on your behalf recommending your company.”) SEIU’s religious organizing is highlighted in the Times article. Simon writes, “Rabbinical student clasped hands with Islamic scholar and Methodist seminarian. Heads bowed, eyes closed, they sang ‘Amazing Grace.’ And prayed that the security guards employed here would join the Service Employees International Union [SEIU].”
Right to Work is about Freedom and Jobs not Political Parties

Right to Work is about Freedom and Jobs not Political Parties

President Obama, pandering to a crowd of Democrat party AFL-CIO union activists, attacked Right to Work laws as being more about politics than economics when the inverse is true -- opposition to Right to Work laws is about the Big Labor-owned Democrat party not economics. The President's own Department of Commerce's proves our point: Somethings never CHANGE, no matter how much we HOPE it does. Today the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis posted annual personal income data for 2011 on its web site. The data show that Right to Work states continue to enjoy a substantial income growth advantage over forced-unionism states. The Right to Work growth advantage is especially strong when it comes to private-sector compensation – that is, the wages, salaries, bonuses and benefits businesses provide for their employees. From 2010 to 2011 alone, private-sector compensation increased by 2.2% in the 22 Right to Work states, after adjusting for inflation with the U.S. Labor Department’s consumer price index (CPI-U). In the 28 compulsory-unionism states, real private-sector compensation increased by just 1.7%. (Just this month, Indiana became the 23rd Right to Work state as the law banning forced union dues and fees signed by Gov. Mitch Daniels in early February took effect.) Over the past 10 years, from 2001 to 2011, real private-sector compensation in Right to Work states grew by 12.5%. That increase is four times as great as forced-unionism states’ aggregate gain of just 3.1%.
Standing up for Workers? Hardly!

Standing up for Workers? Hardly!

For decades, Thomas Sowell has been a voice of reason and that voice continues with his latest column, "The Last Thing Unions Are Concerned About Is Free Choice For Workers." Sowell writes: Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do. Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off." That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous. As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents — signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.Now that the administration has appointed a majority of the National Labor Relations Board members, the NLRB has imposed new requirements that employers give union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules. In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union.