The New York State teacher union spent an incredible $5 million in lobbying and campaign contributions in New York last year and their political spending helped secured a lucrative retirement deal that is an enormous hit…
General Motors is owned in part by the United Auto Workers. In an effort to help spin the bankruptcy and bailout, the Obama Administration recently made an outrageous claim declaring that the company had "repaid" its $6.7 billion loan from the government. Malarky. Fox News reports that the repayment was made by dipping further into the bailout money pot: "The hype is not the reality," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote in a column on FoxNews.com over the weekend. "It is far from clear how GM and the Obama administration could honestly say, much less trumpet in prime time television ads, that GM repaid its TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) loans in any meaningful way." Grassley wrote a letter last week to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner expressing his concerns and asking for more information about why the company was allowed to use bailout money to repay bailout money. The $6.7 billion is also just a fraction of the $52 billion General Motors received in government aid. Grassley said lawmakers are being told government losses on GM are expected to exceed $30 billion.
The April 2010 issue of The National Right to Work Committee Newsletter is available for download in an Adobe pdf format for your convenience to read and share. It is the Committee’s official newsletter publication that provides an excellent monthly…
Right to Work Activists Will Now Be Able to Do More, Faster (Source: April 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) A new weapon in the war against forced unionism was introduced early last month, as National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix made the Committee's new web site available to Internet users around the world. The Committee web site -- still accessible at www.NRTWC.org -- now features a new Legislative Action Center (LAC). Committee members and supporters are already using the LAC not just to track federal and state Right to Work-related legislation, but also to contact state and federal legislators through the site and contact their local media and send letters to the editor and other comments. Right to Work activists are also using the LAC to get locations and times for town hall meetings with their elected officials. Complete Information Can Make Right to Work Members Even More Effective "The LAC is a valuable tool for promotion of the freedom of choice for the individual working man and woman," explained Mr. Mix. "Until now, the Committee web site has helped build public awareness about the Right to Work issue, and specifically about the damage wrought by federal and state laws that authorize and promote union monopoly bargaining and forced union dues. "The Committee is now launching the LAC to enable Right to Work supporters to do more, faster when they engage in grass-roots lobbying against forced-unionism laws and legislation."
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is taking on the government unions head on. George Will describes the financial situation in New Jersey as “the nation’s worst.” Christie has issued executive orders that have saved $2.2…
Andy Stern is living in a world of delusion. According to the soon-to-be retiring union boss and President Obama confidant, forced unionism “is the greatest middle-class, job-creating mechanism that we have ever had in America that doesn’t…
Monopoly-Bargaining Mandate Would Bust Budgets Across Nation (Source: April 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) Over the course of the past few decades, public servants, especially state and local government employees, have become Big Labor's bread and butter. By 2009, union officials wielded monopoly-bargaining power over 7.5 million state and local employees, nearly 43% of all such employees nationwide, compared to just 8% of private-sector workers. Moreover, for many years now, Big Labor featherbedding and counterproductive work rules have sharply increased real taxpayer costs for compensation of state and local government employees. In fact, from 1998 to 2008 alone, taxpayers' aggregate real costs for compensation of state and local government employees soared at a rate nearly 50% faster than the total real growth of private-sector employee compensation! And now, incredibly, the Big Labor Congress is poised to sock it to taxpayers again. This spring, the U.S. House and Senate are on the verge of rubber-stamping a new federal mandate ensuring that public-sector union bosses get monopoly-bargaining privileges over additional hundreds of thousands of state and local public-safety employees. Kildee-Gregg Would Pave Way For Dragooning All State, Local Employees Into Unions This federal mandate (H.R.413 and S.1611), respectively introduced in the House and Senate by Big Labor Congressman Dale Kildee (D-Mich.) and Big Labor-appeasing Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), goes by an innocent-sounding moniker, the "Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act." But this label mocks the reality that the legislation would incite conflict between government agencies and employees and hurt taxpayers. H.R.413/S.1611 would institute a federal mandate foisting union "exclusive representation" (monopoly bargaining) on state and local police, firefighters, and other public-safety employees nationwide.
Monopoly-Bargaining Mandate Would Bust Budgets Across Nation (Source: April 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) Over the course of the past few decades, public servants, especially state and local government employees, have become Big Labor's bread and butter. By 2009, union officials wielded monopoly-bargaining power over 7.5 million state and local employees, nearly 43% of all such employees nationwide, compared to just 8% of private-sector workers. Moreover, for many years now, Big Labor featherbedding and counterproductive work rules have sharply increased real taxpayer costs for compensation of state and local government employees. In fact, from 1998 to 2008 alone, taxpayers' aggregate real costs for compensation of state and local government employees soared at a rate nearly 50% faster than the total real growth of private-sector employee compensation! And now, incredibly, the Big Labor Congress is poised to sock it to taxpayers again. This spring, the U.S. House and Senate are on the verge of rubber-stamping a new federal mandate ensuring that public-sector union bosses get monopoly-bargaining privileges over additional hundreds of thousands of state and local public-safety employees. Kildee-Gregg Would Pave Way For Dragooning All State, Local Employees Into Unions This federal mandate (H.R.413 and S.1611), respectively introduced in the House and Senate by Big Labor Congressman Dale Kildee (D-Mich.) and Big Labor-appeasing Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), goes by an innocent-sounding moniker, the "Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act." But this label mocks the reality that the legislation would incite conflict between government agencies and employees and hurt taxpayers. H.R.413/S.1611 would institute a federal mandate foisting union "exclusive representation" (monopoly bargaining) on state and local police, firefighters, and other public-safety employees nationwide.
Scheme Injurious For Millions of Unionized Workers, Retirees (Source: April 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) Last month, the Big Labor Congress gave final approval to, and President Barack Obama signed into law, what is surely the greatest expansion of federal government power over consumers, employees and businesses since last century's Great Depression. And, even more than Mr. Obama, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), or any other elected official, top Big Labor bosses are responsible for Congress's reconstruction of America's enormous health-care system. On March 22, the day after the House rubber-stamped both H.R.3590, the version of ObamaCare Mr. Reid had rammed through the Senate early Christmas Eve morning, 2009, and a "fixer" bill (H.R.4872) amending the Senate measure, the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) demonstrated how it all happened. "Supporters of both measures received out-sized support from labor unions," concluded the CRP's Michael Beckel in his legislative wrap-up. He went on to specify that, since 1989: "Members who voted for both bills received an average of about $917,500" in reported contributions alone from labor union bosses. Furthermore, in "the final push for a vote," many union bosses and union operatives "also displayed their clout through threats to withhold endorsements from lawmakers who failed to back the bill. They also vowed to support primary challenges or third-party bids against incumbents who opposed the bills."