Sick of being FORCED to pay for union bosses' politics? Right To Work is the Answer

Terry Bowman, a UAW member,  writes in the The Detroit News that to end forced-dues-funded politics "the best and easiest solution is to pass a Right To Work law."  And, he is right.  The surest way to end compulsory-dues for politics is to end compulsory-dues. From Mr. Bowman's editorial: A worker's constitutional rights seem to take a back seat to the political privileges of the union. Earlier this year, UAW local 898 officials displayed their political views for everyone who drove by the union hall. "Recall Gov. Snyder, sign up here!" was the message glaring from the parking lot sign for all passers-by to see. A recent Harris poll shows that 60 percent of union households say that unions are too involved in politics, and we know that 40 percent or more of union households vote Republican. Unfortunately, union members who disagree with these partisan political attacks are forced, as a condition of employment, to financially support this message. Federal laws are supposed to restrict union officials from using regular dues for political purposes. Regrettably, it still happens all the time. In a 1988 Supreme Court decision called Communication Workers of America vs. Beck, unions were forbidden to collect full union dues from non-members; only those dues that are supposed to reflect the true cost to the union as a collective bargaining agent. In other words, members could choose to resign their union membership and then only pay what is called the "agency fee" to keep their job. Obviously, there are problems with this ruling. Workers who wish to exercise these rights have to jump through hoops, and they are then persecuted and ridiculed on the job for doing so. The agency fee also includes all the educational and subjective political activities that unions engage in. Union newsletters and magazines are full of political propaganda, and union officials travel the country spewing hateful venom and a destructive worldview, yet their salaries are paid for with regular union dues. And there is so much more.

Sick of being FORCED to pay for union bosses' politics? Right To Work is the Answer

Terry Bowman, a UAW member,  writes in the The Detroit News that to end forced-dues-funded politics "the best and easiest solution is to pass a Right To Work law."  And, he is right.  The surest way to end compulsory-dues for politics is to end compulsory-dues. From Mr. Bowman's editorial: A worker's constitutional rights seem to take a back seat to the political privileges of the union. Earlier this year, UAW local 898 officials displayed their political views for everyone who drove by the union hall. "Recall Gov. Snyder, sign up here!" was the message glaring from the parking lot sign for all passers-by to see. A recent Harris poll shows that 60 percent of union households say that unions are too involved in politics, and we know that 40 percent or more of union households vote Republican. Unfortunately, union members who disagree with these partisan political attacks are forced, as a condition of employment, to financially support this message. Federal laws are supposed to restrict union officials from using regular dues for political purposes. Regrettably, it still happens all the time. In a 1988 Supreme Court decision called Communication Workers of America vs. Beck, unions were forbidden to collect full union dues from non-members; only those dues that are supposed to reflect the true cost to the union as a collective bargaining agent. In other words, members could choose to resign their union membership and then only pay what is called the "agency fee" to keep their job. Obviously, there are problems with this ruling. Workers who wish to exercise these rights have to jump through hoops, and they are then persecuted and ridiculed on the job for doing so. The agency fee also includes all the educational and subjective political activities that unions engage in. Union newsletters and magazines are full of political propaganda, and union officials travel the country spewing hateful venom and a destructive worldview, yet their salaries are paid for with regular union dues. And there is so much more.

Athens, Greece Meets Athens, Ohio

Writing for the Fiscal Times, Liz Peek details how big labor and their big spending were able to hijack Ohio: Governor John Kasich, elected in 2010 and bequeathed an $8 billion budget gap. Like other governors across the country, Kasich took on the public employee unions, demanding limits to collective bargaining, voluntary payment of union dues and greater worker contributions towards pensions and healthcare. Having been battered in New Jersey, Wisconsin and even labor-friendly New York, union Bigs mobilized, eliciting millions in contributions from national unions like the SEIU in New York ($1 million), the AFL-CIO in D.C. ($1.5 million) and the National Education Association in D.C. ($2 million). Spending an estimated $30 million, organized labor is expected to have defeated Governor Kasich’s reforms. This script did not have to written.Near the end of the eighteenth century, agents of the Ohio Company established a new township along the Hockhocking River. They called it Athens, to remind settlers from the young United States of their debt to Greek democracy – an homage unlikely to be repeated any time soon. Watching the ongoing destruction of the Greek economy, we marvel at the depth of the country’s financial chasm, smugly secure that it couldn’t happen here. Surely, our citizens would prevent the soaring government spending and impossible promises to public workers that lie at the root of Greece’s collapse. The union juggernaut is a tragedy -- not yet a tragedy on the scale of Greece – but a scene from the same script. At the heart of the debt problems confronting Greece and other EU countries, and challenging the governments of Ohio and many other states, is the aging of our populations combined with the generous pensions and healthcare packages awarded to public sector workers. Seeking campaign support from unions, politicians for decades have paid to play.
Union Bosses, Enemies of the 99%

Union Bosses, Enemies of the 99%

Gary Beckner argues that the union bosses and Big Labor are enemies of the 99%: Since the class-warfare message of the Occupy Wall Street protests started nearly two months ago, the two largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), have taken every chance possible to stand in solidarity with the group of mostly underemployed college students and left-leaning activists. With AFT President Randi Weingarten joining in protests and state affiliates taking part and organizing protests of their own, the teachers unions are quick to point out that “public education, teachers and unions have increasingly come under attack from the one percent,” as Leo Casey, spokesman for the AFT’s New York City local put it. The union support is pouring in state after state. For example, in the union stronghold of California, California NEA affiliate President Dean Vogel called on the rich to pay more taxes. “It’s time to put Main Street before Wall Street, and for corporations to pay their fair share of taxes,” he said. Meanwhile, the union rank and file are resorting to taking the fight into the classroom with lesson plans titled “Who are the 99 percent? Ways to teach about Occupy Wall Street.” As the protests continue and the union rhetoric becomes more radical, one can’t help but find the situation ironic. While the teachers unions claim they are being persecuted by the wealthiest Americans, clearly it is the unions and union bosses themselves that have benefited from a system that takes advantage of taxpayers at the expense of our students. An examination of the staggering amount of money accumulated by the teachers unions puts the situation into perspective. The AFT collected $211 million in dues in 2010, while the even larger NEA pulled in $397 million. Taking into consideration affiliated state groups, the unions collectively take in about $1 billion, more than half of which is taken by force in states with compulsory unionism. If you take into account their vast budgets and revenue streams forcibly collected from teachers, the NEA and AFT numbers align nicely with those of the corporations they so vehemently criticize. In terms of salaries, union executives rake in nearly 10 times the average household income. AFT President Weingarten collected nearly half a million dollars in 2010, a 15 percent increase from the previous year. Are teachers or anyone in the private sector experiencing those increases in times of financial hardship? Clearly, the teachers laid off in 2010 were not made aware of  Weingarten’s impressive haul. Then again, when nearly 600 staffers at the NEA and AFT are raking in more than six figures, the interests of the rank and file seem far off.
The Government Workers Union Albatross

The Government Workers Union Albatross

Phillip K. Howard examines how union bosses for government workers are fleecing the taxpayers: The indictment of seven Long Island Rail Road workers for disability fraud last week cast a spotlight on a troubled government agency. Until recently, over 90% of LIRR workers retired with a disability—even those who worked desk jobs—adding about $36,000 to their annual pensions. The cost to New York taxpayers over the past decade was $300 million. As one investigator put it, fraud of this kind "became a culture of sorts among the LIRR workers, who took to gathering in doctor's waiting rooms bragging to each [other] about their disabilities while simultaneously talking about their golf game." How could almost every employee think fraud was the right thing to do? The LIRR disability epidemic is hardly unique—82% of senior California state troopers are "disabled" in their last year before retirement. Pension abuses are so common—for example, "spiking" pensions with excess overtime in the last year of employment—that they're taken for granted. Governors in Wisconsin and Ohio this year have led well-publicized showdowns with public unions. Union leaders argue they are "decimat[ing] the collective bargaining rights of public employees." What are these so-called "rights"? The dispute has focused on rich benefit packages that are drowning public budgets. Far more important is the lack of productivity. "I've never seen anyone terminated for incompetence," observed a long-time human relations official in New York City. In Cincinnati, police personnel records must be expunged every few years—making periodic misconduct essentially unaccountable. Over the past decade, Los Angeles succeeded in firing five teachers (out of 33,000), at a cost of $3.5 million. Collective-bargaining rights have made government virtually unmanageable. Promotions, reassignments and layoffs are dictated by rigid rules, without any opportunity for managerial judgment. In 2010, shortly after receiving an award as best first-year teacher in Wisconsin, Megan Sampson had to be let go under "last in, first out" provisions of the union contract. Even what task someone should do on a given day is subject to detailed rules. Last year, when a virus disabled two computers in a shared federal office in Washington, D.C., the IT technician fixed one but said he was unable to fix the other because it wasn't listed on his form. Making things work better is an affront to union prerogatives. The refuse-collection union in Toledo sued when the city proposed consolidating garbage collection with the surrounding county. (Toledo ended up making a cash settlement.) In Wisconsin, when budget cuts eliminated funding to mow the grass along the roads, the union sued to stop the county executive from giving the job to inmates.