In the 2013 edition of their Union Membership and Earnings Data Book, labor economists Barry Hirsch and David Macpherson report data showing that, from 2002 to 2012, unionized employment in motor-vehicle and motor-vehicle-equipment manufacturing fell from roughly 413,700 to 208,000,…
Surprise, Surprise, President Obama's new NLRB nominees spent their working years at big labor trying to enact the Card Check Forced Unionism Scheme: One of President Barack Obama’s new National Labor Relations Board nominees dedicated her career at the AFL-CIO to doing away with secret ballots in labor elections—a tactic critics say would make it easier to unionize and expose employees to intimidation. Nancy Schiffer spent nearly three decades as a union attorney in a career that took her from Detroit’s United Auto Workers to associate general counsel at the AFL-CIO, a Democratic power broker that spent $30 million on the 2012 election. Schiffer took the lead in many unionization efforts across the country and has spent the past few years trying to do away with the secret ballot in union elections. “[Card check] is needed to address a severe violation of human rights,” she testified to the House Education and Workforce Committee in 2004.
Big Labor is spending $1 million in forced union dues money on TV ads pushing amnesty, according to CNN: As the U.S. Senate prepares for its first procedural votes on the “Gang of Eight” immigration plan, a top labor…
The Wall Street Journal reports that big labor “spends about four times as much on politics and lobbying as generally thought.” Generally thought? …
Union bosses in Indiana are pressing for a judicially imposed bailout, arguing that the state's new Right to Work Law will reduce revenues to the union since membership is no longer compulsory. The LibertyLawSite looks at the lawsuit and the impact the law has had on job creation in the state: Amidst a series of setbacks at both the ballot box and the court house, the fate of the compulsory union movement may depend in large measure on the outcome of two lawsuits currently pending in Indiana. In early 2012, Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law a bill that made Indiana the nation’s twenty-third right-to-work state. Unions have filed two challenges to that law, one each in state and federal court. The outcome of those lawsuits will help to determine whether Indiana remains a right-to-work state and whether other states follow Indiana’s lead. In its first few months of operation, the right-to-work law has, by almost any measure, helped to attract new businesses to Indiana. Indiana has only 2.2 percent of the nation’s population. In April, the first full month after the law took effect, more than one in eight jobs created around the country were created in Indiana – more than in states several times the size of Indiana. According to the state’s economic development arm, almost fifty out-of-state companies cited the right-to-work law as one reason that they were considering opening a location in Indiana.
Peter Schweizer of the Government Accountability Project has discovered that the biggest funder of the Occupy Wall Street movement is receiving millions of dollars from Wall Street. The SEIU has an exclusive deal with Visa that is putting millions into their pockets. Here is the story: With the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFL-CIO spending tens of millions on political activism, including the recall election of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, union members might do well to see where the money is coming from. Big unions are morphing into the kinds of big businesses and banks they decry, hawking to their members everything from high interest credit cards to home loans. And contrary to Big Labor’s claims, these products offer no real benefit to union members—only to the union bosses. As the collection of union dues have dipped, union bosses are increasingly looking for ways to bend the revenue curve in their favor by profiting off loans and credit extended to their members. Consider, for example, the "SEIU New Rewards Visa Card" and the AFL-CIO "Union Plus" card. With each new enrollment and subsequent swipe of the card, the union bags a fee and a percentage respectively.
Union activists have littered a construction project in Philadelphia with bottles of urine because a new company had the audacity to hire non-union construction workers on a new development project. “We’re going to continue to embarrass the Pestronks [project owners] until they start doing the right thing for our community and our society, and that is pay fair wages and standards that have been established,” said Pat Gillespie, a boss in the Philadelphia Building and Trades Council. Of course, doing the "right thing" means filling the union's coffers. And, apparently, "the right thing for our community and our society" doesn't mean revitalizing a neighborhood as the construction project will do. A statement from the Pestronks' website: "Our dispute is solely with the organized extortion being carried out by the Building Trade Unions management. They are trying to force a majority of non-local workers onto our projects, and force us to pay a huge tax to sustain the Unions’ power structure. The unmatched public defamation of our company, harassment, bullying, vandalism, racism, property damage, and physical assault all add up to EXTORTION by the Philadelphia Building Trades Unions."
Union activists have littered a construction project in Philadelphia with bottles of urine because a new company had the audacity to hire non-union construction workers on a new development project. “We’re going to continue to embarrass the Pestronks [project owners] until they start doing the right thing for our community and our society, and that is pay fair wages and standards that have been established,” said Pat Gillespie, a boss in the Philadelphia Building and Trades Council. Of course, doing the "right thing" means filling the union's coffers. And, apparently, "the right thing for our community and our society" doesn't mean revitalizing a neighborhood as the construction project will do. A statement from the Pestronks' website: "Our dispute is solely with the organized extortion being carried out by the Building Trade Unions management. They are trying to force a majority of non-local workers onto our projects, and force us to pay a huge tax to sustain the Unions’ power structure. The unmatched public defamation of our company, harassment, bullying, vandalism, racism, property damage, and physical assault all add up to EXTORTION by the Philadelphia Building Trades Unions."