A new report highlights a striking example of Big Labor’s strength at the local government level: the states of Pennsylvania, California, Illinois and Nevada have all exempted unions from the state’s own anti-stalking laws, the Washington Examiner reports: The report, titled Sabotage, Stalking…
[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.
[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 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.
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,”…
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,”…
From the Washington Examiner: In-home health care workers in Connecticut, like their counterparts in Michigan, may see so-called union dues deducted from paychecks they receive through a state subsidy for the poor . . . The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is trying to unionize in-home health care workers, based on the theory that they qualify as public employees because the money paid to them is subsidized by the state. "The only notice home health care workers receive concerning a union election is a nondescript mailing asking them if they wish to join the union," says the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). "Under this process, the union only needs to receive a majority of returned cards—not a majority of all workers—to be recognized as those workers’ exclusive bargaining representative." The SEIU achieved this goal in Michigan, with the result that even low-income families who receive a Medicaid subsidy to take care of their adult, disabled children are losing $30 a month to the union. "Our daughter is 34 and our son is 30," retired police officer Robert Haynes said of the Michigan unionization. "They have cerebral palsy. They are basically like 6-month-olds in adult bodies. They need to be fed and they wear diapers. We could sure use that $30 a month that's being sent to the union."
Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner raises an interesting question: Did the National Labor Relations Board violate federal law? What if there were emails showing Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor coordinating with Attorney General Eric Holder and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs on how the Obama administration should fight judicial challenges to Obamacare? At a bare minimum, Justice Sotomayor would have to recuse herself from the case, she might be impeached, and Holder would face serious ethics questions as well. But such emails do not exist ... concerning Obamacare. When it comes to the National Labor Relations Board suit against Boeing, that is a different story. Cause of Action, a government accountability nonprofit, has obtained emails through a Freedom of Information Act request showing then-NLRB Chairwoman Wilma Liebman, NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon and NLRB Public Affairs Director Nancy Cleeland coordinating the board's response to its own decision to sue Boeing for opening a factory in the right to work state of South Carolina. But, since the NLRB is an independent agency, shouldn't they be allowed to coordinate about ongoing litigation? Yes and no. The NLRB is supposed to be an independent agency, capable of creating rules, enforcing them and adjudicating them. But because the NLRB has within itself all of the governing powers our Founding Fathers believed should be separated (legislative, executive and judicial), its creators also wrote rules making it illegal for board employees who perform different functions from communicating with each other under certain circumstances. Specifically, 29 C.F.R. 102.126 and 29 C.F.R. 102.127 forbid a member of the board from requesting or "knowingly caus[ing] to be made" any ex parte communications with any interested person outside the agency relevant to the proceeding. That same regulation also forbids any "interested person outside this agency" from making any ex parte communications to board members.
Indiana Right to Work continues to move closer to reality. From the Washington Examiner: Gov. Mitch Daniels has long flirted with “right to work,” but it seems he can’t decide whether to take it to the big dance — …