Bankruptcy and Big Labor
Three California cities have declared bankruptcy and analysts believe more are coming. The cause is clear — the political alliance between government labor unions and politicians has squeezed city budgets and taxpayers…
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Teachers Union Dues Fund Everything But Better Education
The Wall Street Journal continues to examine big labor’s ability to use coercive forced-union dues money…
Billions and Counting
The Wall Street Journal reports that big labor “spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought.” Generally thought? …
Treasure Trove?
In another blow to compulsory unionism, emails obtained by the Daily Caller indict President Obama’s former auto czar and Department of the Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson had a hand…
US Treasury Trove?
[media-credit id=7 align="alignleft" width="300"][/media-credit]President Barack Obama’s former auto industry adviser and two former Treasury Department officials cracked at the last minute before a House oversight committee subcommittee hearing and agreed to stop stonewalling an investigation into alleged union favoritism during the administration’s General Motors bailout, the Daily Caller reports. Observers expect the documents to be a treasure trove of information on how the administration used the bailout to reward their big labor buddies at the expense of taxpayers and workers. The Caller continues: Ron Bloom, Obama’s former auto czar, and former Treasury officials Matt Feldman and Harry Wilson have refused to give interviews to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) about their roles in topping up pensions for union workers while non-union workers lost nearly their entire pensions. The Treasury Department’s actions during the auto bailout caused 20,000 non-union workers from Delphi to lose most of their pensions. Delphi, a GM company, is one of the largest automotive parts manufacturers in the world. Its workers lost their pensions when the government bailed out GM. While those non-union Delphi workers lost nearly their entire pensions, United Auto Workers union members’ pensions were topped off and made whole. While Feldman, Bloom and Wilson have maintained they think no preferential treatment was given to the unions during the bailout, emails The Daily Caller obtained in June 2011 show senior officials corresponding with senior GM officials on how to make certain decisions regarding who was going to win and who was going to lose.
Union Bosses And Senate Democrats Try to Stop Worker Pay Raises
Sen. Marco Rubio writes on the pages of National Review about the RAISE Act, legislation that would permit an employer to award individual employees with financial incentives beyond the pay or compensation level specified in a collective bargaining agreement (CBA): The basis of the American Dream is that one can work hard, play by the rules, and realize one’s potential. But big-government policies deny this freedom to millions of Americans. One of these policies can be fixed when the Senate votes on the RAISE Act later today. Under federal law, private-sector union contracts do not just set the minimum wage employers pay, they also set the maximum wage. Businesses may not pay more than the union rate without negotiating it. Unfortunately, unions often say “No” when employers propose rewarding productive workers. Unions prefer contracts that, to quote Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa, “create uniform standards for all employees” — no matter how hard they work. Only about one in five union contracts permit performance pay.
Wisconsin Scott Walker's Battle for Freedom
[media-credit id=7 align="alignright" width="300"][/media-credit]Leave it to AFL-CIO union boss Richard Trumka to try to redefine the word freedom to suit his purposes. In anOpEd published in the Huffington Post, Trumka argues that Independence Day is a really a call for more government, more coercion and more union boss power. This line of argument would have our Founding Fathers spinning in their grave. Trumka's obfuscation of our history did not go by unanswered by the Washington Examiner: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has a 4th of July-themed column in the Huffington Post musing on the word freedom and how it is interpreted by the Republican Party. His conclusion is that they use the word to con people. Let’s call this right-wing “freedom” catch phrase what it really is: a grossly political strategy to dupe the public, which holds the word “freedom” as something sacred. According to Trumka, giving people or groups complete discretion in how they conduct their affairs is a bad idea because they might make the wrong decision. That is, they might decide to do something that Trumka thinks is a bad idea, such as opting out of Social Security.
Wisconsin Scott Walker's Battle for Freedom
[media-credit id=7 align="alignright" width="300"][/media-credit]Leave it to AFL-CIO union boss Richard Trumka to try to redefine the word freedom to suit his purposes. In anOpEd published in the Huffington Post, Trumka argues that Independence Day is a really a call for more government, more coercion and more union boss power. This line of argument would have our Founding Fathers spinning in their grave. Trumka's obfuscation of our history did not go by unanswered by the Washington Examiner: AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has a 4th of July-themed column in the Huffington Post musing on the word freedom and how it is interpreted by the Republican Party. His conclusion is that they use the word to con people. Let’s call this right-wing “freedom” catch phrase what it really is: a grossly political strategy to dupe the public, which holds the word “freedom” as something sacred. According to Trumka, giving people or groups complete discretion in how they conduct their affairs is a bad idea because they might make the wrong decision. That is, they might decide to do something that Trumka thinks is a bad idea, such as opting out of Social Security.
Three Words -- Thousands of Jobs
Three words helped create thousands of jobs in Alabama when Airbus, the European aerospace firm, announced it would invest $600 million in a new airline factory in Mobile, Alabama. Those words are “Right to Work.” “We are a right-to-work state,” Gov. Robert Bentley said.