Book: Unionizing America's Health Care System via ObamaCareless

Mallory Factor's new book outlines how big labor pushed for enactment of ObamaCare so it could coercively unionize 20 million new government health care workers. The National Right to Work Committee warned of the dangers to workers back in 2009 and will continue to work to see that the law is repealed. From David Martosko at the Daily Caller: In a book set for publication Tuesday, a politics and government professor at The Citadel claims President Obama’s 2009 health care reform law was, in part, a union-driven effort to organize 21 million health care workers. In "Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind,” Mallory Factor describes a December 9, 2008 memo from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare president Dennis Rivera to the Obama-Biden transition team. That memo outlined a legislative proposal calling for “increasing the capacity of the health care workforce” as part of a larger health care reform initiative. The SEIU and the [American] Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Factor writes, later coordinated with other public-sector unions to spend “literally hundreds of millions of dollars promoting Obamacare.” The Daily Caller requested comments for this article from the SEIU, AFSCME and a White House spokesman. None of them responded. Factor, who is also a Forbes columnist and senior editor of money and politics for The Street.com, recounts emails from former federal Office of Labor-Management Standards staffer Don Loos, now a senior adviser to the president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. (also see: 21.1 Millon Reasons Big Labor Pours Money Into ObamaCare)
Why Illinois is Going Broke

Why Illinois is Going Broke

The Chicago Tribune has published a remarkable editorial about the depth of coercive unionization has taken hold among government employees in the state: Across the country, union membership has plunged during the last few decades. Just 6.9 percent of the private-sector workforce is in a labor union today. Organized labor is stronger in the public sector, with unions representing 37 percent of the government workforce. And then there is Illinois. Try to find a state worker who isn't in a union. It's almost impossible. Nearly 96 percent of the state government workforce is unionized. Yes, almost everybody. Bosses, middle managers, front-line workers. Gov. Pat Quinn exacerbated the situation by cutting an election-year deal in 2010 with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The deal guaranteed union workers would not be laid off through June 2012. That meant nonunion workers got stuck with forced furlough days, layoffs and no pay raises. In some cases, they watched the union employees who worked beneath them pass them up on the pay scale. (Recall that, as the ink was drying on this agreement, AFSCME rewarded Quinn with its election endorsement. Don't you love coincidences? Those moments when like-minded people find one another?)
Big Labor Flying Too Close to the Sun

Big Labor Flying Too Close to the Sun

Fox All Star and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer discusses the meaning of the Wisconsin recall election and how taxpayers have finally had enough of Big Labor's power and pocketbook grabs while union bosses claimed mythical societal benefits arose from forced-dues: Tuesday, June 5, 2012, will be remembered as the beginning of the long decline of the public-sector union. It will follow, and parallel, the shrinking of private-sector unions, now down to less than 7 percent of American workers. The abject failure of the unions to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) — the first such failure in U.S. history — marks the Icarus moment of government-union power. Wax wings melted, there’s nowhere to go but down. The ultimate significance of Walker’s union reforms has been largely misunderstood. At first, the issue was curtailing outrageous union benefits, far beyond those of the ordinary Wisconsin taxpayer. That became a nonissue when the unions quickly realized that trying to defend the indefensible would render them toxic for the real fight to come. But as the recall campaign progressed, the Democrats stopped talking about bargaining rights. It was a losing issue. Walker was able to make the case that years of corrupt union-politician back-scratching had been bankrupting the state. The real threat behind all this, however, was that the new law ended automatic government collection of union dues. That was the unexpressed and politically inexpressible issue. That was the reason the unions finally decided to gamble on a high-risk recall. Without the thumb of the state tilting the scale by coerced collection, union membership became truly voluntary. Result? Newly freed members rushed for the exits. In less than one year, -AFSCME, the second-largest public-sector union in Wisconsin, has lost more than 50 percent of its membership.