Over the weekend, The Oregonian posted a genuinely disturbing piece on union political activism at the state and local level. According to the article, union officials poured massive amounts of money and resources into nearly every Oregon election this past May. The results were truly staggering (emphasis mine):

"Most candidates with union backing won . . . The net result was a monster victory for labor groups that helped solidify their role as one of the state’s top power brokers.

Unions played key roles in statewide victories for secretary of state candidate Kate Brown attorney general candidate John Kroger and U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Merkley. But they also got involved locally, helping Sam Adams win the Portland mayoral contest, Democrat Michael Dembrow win the House District 45 primary in Northeast Portland, and Dennis Doyle oust Beaverton Mayor Rob Drake.

The outcome left Republicans grumbling about the increasing influence of unions in state government. And it left little doubt that labor’s agenda will get red-carpet treatment when the 2009 Legislature meets in January."

Unfortunately, Big Labor’s success at the state and local level foreshadows what could be an even more impressive showing in national elections this November. As the most recent issue of Foundation Action (subscribe now – it’s free!) explains, unions are going for " . . . the trifecta: the House, the Senate, and the White House," according to American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) head Gerald McEntee.

From a recent Wall Street Journal article, the scope of union political activism is truly astounding, even for an election year (emphasis mine):

"The AFL-CIO has approved a record political budget of $53 million to help fund 200,000 union workers on the street. Its affiliated national and international unions have pledged another $200 million. The National Education Association will throw $40 million to $50 million at races. The Service Employees International Union has marked off $100 million for politics, and intends to pay 2,000 union members the equivalent of their salaries to work on Democratic campaigns. Add in union money for federal or state political action committees, for 527s, and for local and state races, and some astute members of the business community – those who have seen this coming “tsunami” (as one puts it) – estimate union political spending may top $1 billion in 2008."

Big Labor’s political priorities include an even more pliant NLRB and passage of the misleadingly-titled "Employee Free Choice Act," a piece of legislation that would allow union bosses to bypass secret ballot elections in favor of shady "card-check" organizing drives. If Oregon is a harbinger of Big Labor’s coming political ascendancy, America and particularly lovers of freedom will be facing a dark period.

The New York Times has a devastating article up on the incestuous relationship between public sector union officials and the New York state legislature. The actual controversy is downright farcical: legislators relied on a public sector union accountant to determine the cost of proposed increases to the state’s employee pension plan.

A reasonable observer might suggest that this arrangement represented a clear conflict of interest, but to New York state legislators it was just good book-keeping. According to the Times, the union actuary "reviewed" hundreds of bills for the state before being exposed by the paper’s investigation. What’s more, the Times reports that the actuary neglected to mention additional legislative costs of up $500 million in his original reports.

The Times’ description of the actuary’s "methodology" is particularly mind-boggling (emphasis mine):

" . . . in an arrangement that had not been publicly disclosed, Mr. Schwartz [the union actuary] was being paid by labor unions. He acknowledged in an interview that he skewed his work to favor the [union’s interests], calling his job “a step above voodoo.”

As a result, legislative leaders said they would no longer rely on Mr. Schwartz’s work, and a disciplinary board affiliated with the American Academy of Actuaries has begun a review of Mr. Schwartz’s conduct.

The Legislature relied almost exclusively on Mr. Schwartz — a consultant to District Council 37, the umbrella group of municipal unions as well as to unions representing firefighters, teachers, detectives and correction officers — to determine the cost of pension bills involving New York City employees."

Fortunately, Empire State legislators swung into action to reasssure the Times that they were monitoring the situation all along. I’m sure New York taxpayers are greatly reassured by their representatives’ scrupulous accounting procedures:

"Despite legislative leaders’ assertions that they undertake independent financial analyses of the pension bills, neither the Senate nor the Assembly could provide any records to bolster that claim."

Unfortunately, this sort of lax book-keeping is par for the course when it comes to union pension funds which are often managed for the benefit of union bosses, rather than the pensioners. The incident also highlights the dangerous potential for union political activism in the legislative sphere.

When things get too cozy, there really are no breaks on political corruption. In another instance, Schwartz analyzed a Big Labor supported bill and basically lied to the legislature — saying it would result in no additional costs to taxpayers.

"Mr. Schwartz conceded in an interview last month that he knew the bill would actually have a significant cost, explaining, “I got a little bit carried away in my formulation.”

He added that he made his projections look “as cheap as possible” to favor his clients."

A few Right to Work-related updates from over the weekend:

1.) A recent survey shows broad, bipartisan support for maintaining secret ballot elections in the workplace. Although the erroneously-titled "Employee Free Choice Act" has gained legislative momentum, 82% of all Democrat voters, 77% of all Republicans, and 79% of Independents oppose replacing secret ballot elections with coercive "card-check" organizing drives.

2.) Both the SEIU and the United Steelworkers unions are considering overseas expansion in concert with unions in Australia, Great Britain, and elsewhere. International efforts at unionization may exacerbate existing tensions within the SEIU over inadequate local representation.

3.) Implictly rebutting the claims advanced by union officials in a recent Detroit News op-ed, community and business leaders in Michigan are speaking out in favor of greater worker freedom. Here are a few choice excerpts (emphasis mine):

Michigan as a whole is at a critical crossroads. West Michigan wants a voice of its own," Jeanne Engelhart, president of the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, told me in a recent interview . . .

. . . Engelhart doesn’t trash the Mackinac conference; she has attended in past years and found it useful. But she does suggest that west Michiganders might be more willing than Detroiters to push hard for government spending cuts and discuss controversial topics like right-to-work legislation, which would ban compulsory labor union membership."

. . . Dick Haworth, chairman of Holland-based Haworth Inc., believes a serious discussion of right-to-work status for Michigan is worth pursuing. "The union environment," he said, "does not allow you to adapt quickly, or at all, to the world we live in."

It’s not just about wages and benefits; it’s more about flexibility, Haworth said. "In a lot of cases, we’re not using world-class methods and processes. We need to be better students of what world-class is."

 

Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson has been targeted by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) officials for making personnel decisions which union bosses say is retaliation for the union’s attempts to organize her staff. One columnist gave her the label of "union buster" in a recent article for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Since AFSCME’s Minnesota Chapter endorsed Swanson during the 2006 election for her pro-union-boss positions, this particular turn of events is rich with irony.

There are notable parallels between union "corporate campaigns" and the AFSCME’s ongoing PR assault against the Attorney General. Union operatives frequently rely on ugly public slurs to force companies into tacitly accepting coercive membership drives, and these well-honed tactics are being increasingly deployed against public officials.

According to Swanson, union bosses threatened to "place negative stories about her in the press and on Internet blogs if she didn’t support a union for the attorneys."

Other employees say they’ve suffered intimidation and harassment at the hands of union militants for refusing to support the AFSCME’s membership drive.

It’s sad, but this is what union organizing has become. Help union bosses “recruit” new forced dues paying members… or else.

The Detroit News has just published a remarkably fact-free op-ed on the economics of the Right to Work issue. Given the author makes his living from Big Labor’s forced dues gravy train (he’s a treasurer with the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters & Millwrights) which is partly responsible for Michigan’s ongoing economic nightmare, it’s no wonder he would be alarmed by the talk of cancelling union bosses’ compulsory union dues privileges in Michigan.

The author starts out with this mind-boggling passage:

"Undeniably, having Michigan become a "right-to-work" state would be bad for workers, helping dismantle freely negotiated wage standards and benefits, as well as worker protections, in many industries. In right-to-work states, nonunion members can opt out of paying union dues, even though they receive all the guarantees and protections of the existing union contract under which they work." [Emphasis added]

Freely negotiated wage standards? Really? Is that what they are calling the system of mandatory bargain-or-be-prosecuted federal labor policy? Warehousing employees into collective bargaining units doesn’t result in "free" anything, and to suggest otherwise is Orwellian double-talk.

The article continues:

"The reality is that "right-to-work" is not just a union issue. Our modern Michigan economy is in many ways "indivisible." For example, the strength and quality of our outstanding Michigan health care sector relies on the earned health care benefits of workers across many employment sectors, union or nonunion, skilled trade or service worker, blue collar or white.

Similarly, pension funds (whether defined benefit programs negotiated by labor unions in both the public and private sectors, 401(k) and similar plans provided by private employers or individual retirement accounts) are invested directly in our community, while their management supports the financial services sector of our Michigan economy."

Union officials’ corrupt history of pension fund management should immediately give Michiganders pause. And the union record on health insurance is hardly better. Take the Michigan Education Association, for example. The Association’s health insurance plan forces Michigan taxpayers to subsidize a bloated, uncompetitive payment scheme whose shady accounting procedures have been linked to union political activism.

The article concludes by citing some bogus report issued by Jeff Vincent, research director of the Indiana University Division of Labor Studies’ Institute for the Study of Labor in Society.

Vincent’s study conveniently ignores Right to Work states’ comparative advantages in both higher real earnings and lower average costs of living. In other words, workers’ paychecks go a lot further in economically dynamic Right to Work states because the goods they purchase are significantly cheaper.

At this juncture, it’s worth noting that the moral case for Right to Work principles is entirely separate from the issue of material prosperity. Here at Freedom@Work, we believe that employees everywhere have an inalienable right to choose whether or not to associate with a union, regardless of anyone’s feelings or the perceived economic benefits of collective bargaining. But it’s also nice to know that study after study has validated the significant economic, job-creating advantages of Right to Work policies.

The International Association of Machinists (IAM) has a long and troubled relationship with true workplace representation.  In fact, the union bosses’ authoritarian nature of governance more closely resembles communist North Korea.

Section B-2 of the IAM’s "Official Circular No. 813 – Strike Sanctions and Benefits" (pdf) lays out the organization’s procedures for accepting a renegotiated contract or rejecting a new offer from management and going on strike:

". . . a secret ballot vote by the membership present and voting must carry by a two-thirds (2/3) majority in order to declare a strike."

Section B-3 makes it perfectly clear that IAM officials can unilaterally "ratify" a collective bargaining agreement even if a majority of employees vote against the new contract. In other words, IAM representatives are empowered by their own regulations to ignore workers’ preferences:

"In the event that a strike vote fails to carry by the required two-thirds (2/3) majority vote, the collective bargaining agreement at issue will be accepted." [Emphasis in original]

Not exactly what you’d call fair — vote no, but get yes. A recent NLRB administrative law judge ruling (pdf) involving a collective bargaining dispute in Indiana reveals that local IAM officials agreed to a renegotiated contract despite the fact that a majority of employees had already rejected management’s new offer:

"The union put the agreement [the new contract] to a vote of employees and, following its established procedures, when less than a majority voted in favor of the contract, this triggered a strike vote requiring supermajority approval, and failing to garner approval for the strike, the contract was deemed accepted."

This situation lays bare the fraud of exclusive representation, also known as monopoly bargaining.  Unfortunately, workers have little voice when the union hierarchy is installed as the middleman… and often given other compulsory unionism privileges to boot.

With help from Foundation staff attorneys, several employees have come forward to challenge the IAM’s monopoly bargaining privilege in the above-referenced workplace. These workers are interested in having a real workplace voice, not meaningless sham elections that can be ignored on a whim. Their appeal (pdf) to the NLRB General Counsel is pending further review, but we’ll continue to post updates as the case progresses.

Regular Freedom@Work readers know that we’ve been following the SEIU’s aggressive "growth at any cost" policies for quite some time.

This entry from the Philadelphia Inquirer alludes to the reality of what Big Labor seems to be offering these days — help us or go bust.  Although most of the article focuses on a failed attempt to unionize security guards, the author also describes the union’s hostile relationship with Aramark, a food services vendor:

"In 2005, Aramark entered into a neutrality agreement with SEIU and
UniteHere, another union, Aramark spokeswoman Kristine Grow said.

Aramark, which provides food service at colleges, ballparks, companies
and schools, would remain neutral in union-organizing drives, if their
clients agreed.

In 2006, Aramark decided to terminate the neutrality agreement, which
expired last summer. Since then, SEIU has applied hard pressure to the company."

Aramark’s experience highlights the dark underbelly of the SEIU’s "corporate campaign" strategy. Having withdrawn from this so-called neutrality agreement designed to force unwilling workers into union ranks, Aramark found itself again targeted by a series of PR broadsides, including an SEIU-sponsored website where users anonymously post unverified attacks on Aramark’s performance and services.

Folks, this is what union organizing has become: when workers aren’t interested, just bloody the company until it essentially agrees to do the organizing for you.  Par for the course when it comes to the SEIU.