In April we exposed Obama’s overseer of union financial disclosure and his personal conflicts-of-interest.  Now we have well-sourced evidence that Director John Lund is telling union officials to bypass Department of Labor investigators and work with him personally.  Imagine if U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Mary Schapiro invited delinquent reporting corporate presidents and treasurers to deal with her directly and ignore SEC personnel. Lund is the Office of Labor-Management Standards Director who oversees investigations and audits of union financial records and union officials’ conflicts-of-interest reporting, and he is using his new position to benefit his old clients form Big Labor. From the previous BigGovernment post:

John Lund’s Conflicts-of-Interest

The Obama Ethics Executive Order requires appointees to pledge that they will refrain from involvement in matters involving their former employer or clients.  The AFL-CIO and other unions are former clients of John Lund , and these unions remain clients of his former and current employer, the University of Wisconsin School for Workers (Lund is currently on unpaid leave while at DOL).  The Wisconsin School for Workers’ primary mission is to train union officials; the very officials that Lund now purportedly investigates for corruption.

Lund currently attends conferences and union training meetings like he did while he was the School for Workers director — a U.S. Government employee on the taxpayers’ dime.  While at the conferences and meetings, he hands out business cards like candy to those he has federally-granted power over.  He tells these Big Labor bosses “If you have a problem come to me, and ignore the field investigators.” Why?  Because by going to Lund, union bosses can work out deals to avoid jail time or criminal charges.  He can personally advise them how to “clean up” their reports to avoid consequences.  On the other hand, if pesky Department of Labor investigators get involved, then government investigative records will be made, facts will be verified, and falsehoods will be documented.

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At the Florida Democratic Party State Convention over the weekend, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis insulted members of the Tea Party, referring to the activists as “teabaggers.” Teabagger is a pejorative term used to refer to a certain sexual act. Liberal talk show hosts such as Rachel Maddow brought the phrase into the mainstream in 2009, using it as a tongue-in-cheek insult.

As reported by Tallahassee Democrat and Sunshine State News, after voicing her support for large federal programs, Solis warned, “I’ll be darned if I’m going to set that aside now because a few teabaggers want to somehow muzzle my voice,” Solis said. “We don’t have to sit back and allow a minority in the Congress, known as the tea party, to dominate the discussion in our households.”

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz echoed Solis’ sentiment, telling the crowd of Democratic partisans, “the unfortunate thing is that the problem, in fact, stems from a brutally fanatic right wing group of extremists, who put politics and ideology above principles and people.”

“These fanatics are destroying our state and our country and the contrast between their agenda and ours has never been more stark,” continued Wasserman Schultz.

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In yet another example the Obama Administration’s pandering to its union cronies while thumbing its nose at the other 88% of America that is union free, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis will be headlining (at taxpayer expense) to an AFL-CIO “summit” later this week in Minneapolis. The subject of the conference? How to unionize young people (and others).

Targeting younger workers has been part of the AFL-CIO’s strategy since Richard Trumka took over the reins of the AFL-CIO in 2009. Elizabeth Shuler, the AFL-CIO’s Secretary Treasurer, has been spearheading the effort and is hosting the “Next Up: Young Workers Summit” in Minneapolis later this week.

The summit was announced back in March on the Communist-run People’s World website:

The AFL-CIO’s new young workers advisory council is taking charge of the movement to invigorate the labor movement – and make its leadership more youthful – says Liz Shuler, the federation’s secretary-treasurer.

One key step, she said, will be a second “Next Up” summit for young workers and activists, to be held in Minneapolis-St. Paul from Sept. 28-Oct. 2.

Shuler has led the effort to make labor’s leadership younger and look more like its members.  The first summit, in D.C. last year, drew approximately 300 delegates from around the country.  Shuler hopes for 800 this time. (more…)

Last week, the public comment period closed on the Obama Labor Department’s proposed regulatory change to alter a 1959 law that would make employers and their service providers (attorneys and various consultants) file financial disclosure statements and make personal information public, all in order to give union bosses hit lists of individuals and companies to target. Prior to the closing of the public comment period, there were nearly 6,000 comments—4,000 of which came within the last ten days or so as more people became aware of  the union-backed proposed rule.

So far, it has been remarkable that almost no attention has been given to this issue on Capitol Hill. However, it may be that very few have actually understood the DOL proposal’s unprecedented overreach and broad ramifications until these last few weeks. Yet, since so many of the law firms who donate to high-ranking Democrats (as well as to Republicans) will likely be deemed ‘persuaders’ and be required to report their incomes under the DOL’s proposal, there may yet be some interest raised in Congress over the issue.

Nevertheless, in addition to many of the comments from individuals urging the union appointees within the Department of Labor to drop this unbelievably broad proposal, several larger groups expressed their harsh criticism through their comments.

Among those comments, Over 1500 came from persons affiliated with the Society of Human Resource Management. Outside of attorneys, with 250,000 human resource professionals, SHRM members are probably the single largest grouping of individual service providers who will be affected by the DOL’s proposed change.

What follows below are some excerpts [with emphasis added] of a few of the comments received by the Department of Labor: (more…)

NLRB Chairman’s Former Law Partner Defends Union Violence

A little over a month ago, in a case that drew national attention, a man was targeted at his home, shot and injured, all because he dared to run union free business. Now, in Buffalo, New York, a case involving outrageous allegations of labor-racketeering and union violence aimed at non-union construction workers and company owners is proceeding through the judicial process. Its outcome, however, may have wide-ranging ramifications on a national level.

Forget for a moment that a man was stabbed in the throat, hot coffee thrown on non-union workers, sand put into gas tanks and a woman threatened with sexual assault. Forget the fact that the judge presiding over the federal racketeering case against Operating Engineers, Local 22, in Buffalo, NY ultimately rejected the AFL-CIO’s attempt to file a amicus brief, the sheer fact that the national AFL-CIO even attempted to intervene speaks volumes:

“We’re not condoning the allegations or arguing that union officials are completely immune from prosecution,” said Jonathan D. Newman, a lawyer for the AFL-CIO. “Instead, we simply want to make sure that the [federal law] is not interpreted in a way that could have a chilling effect on legitimate union activity.” (more…)

As a preface, sometimes it helps to have been “on the other side” when trying to determine what the unions’ game plan is within the Obama Administration. What you are about to read comes from having been on the other side and, quite frankly, putting two and two together. And, if you are not alarmed when you finish reading this, you should be, because there may be something much more sinister afoot at the Department of Labor than most people realize.

Yesterday, information was shared with you about the importance of submitting a comment by Wednesday on the Department of Labor’s proposed regulatory change on who would be newly classified as ‘persuaders.’

There has been one sentence, more than others, in the Department of Labor’s 160-page proposed rule change that indicates the DOL’s expansion of the definition of ‘persuader’ to mean just about any vendor who has anything to do directly or indirectly with an employer’s relationship with employees since activities may implicitly influence the decisions of employees with regard in the exercise of their rights in the workplace.

Until now, however, one part of the sentence has been overlooked which, unless addressed, may cause individuals great harm—literally, physical harm. (more…)

The question needs to be asked: Is it ignorance or malice? There was a time after the subprime mortgage meltdown when, if sound decisions on policy and financial initiatives had occurred, the American economy may not have been hobbled as badly, its credit rating might not have been downgraded, the recession might have been curtailed and so many Americans might not have been so negatively affected. However, rather than helping a recovery by letting the quasi-free market adjust, contract and expand again, at almost every turn, Barack Obama and the union appointees and crony capitalists within his administration are, whether out of malice or ignorance, seemingly doing everything they can to destroy an already fragile economy. It’s really no longer a question of  ”if,” but “why.”

In 2008, Barack Obama was caught on camera explaining his redistributionist desire to spread the wealth around. At the time, in classic Saul Alinsky fashion, Obama’s union pushers tried deflecting the issue by the stomping on the reputation of ‘Joe the Plumber,’ the man who asked Obama an innocent question.

Now, 18 months after his first stimulus failed, Barack Obama has cynically proposed spending another one-half a trillion dollars (paid for by redistributing the wealth of the not-so -wealthy. Even pundits realize it is a “nakedly political” plan to paint his political opponents as ‘radical.’ However, even with the politicization apparent, policies of Obama and his union cronies go beyond the typical ‘tax and spend’ stereotype afforded to Keynesian liberals.

Unfortunately, from coast to coast, the Obama Misery Index (OMI) is leaving almost no sector untouched. From the seemingly politically-motivated raid in Nashville on legendary (and non-union) guitar-maker Gibson to the EPA killing 500 jobs in Texas, the attacks on America’s job creators are not only disturbing, they are alarming. Is it ignorance or malice? (more…)

In the abysmal economic climate America presently finds itself in, almost no one is immune from unemployment, because joblessness threatens everyone. While Barack Obama duffs around on the golf course, one can’t help but wonder if he fully grasps the fact that, thanks to his own incompetency, the potential to be dismissed from his highly sought-after job is more than a distinct possibility. Except for “saving and creating” jobs for the slew of workers needed to staff the Department of Labor’s unemployment division, Obama continues to singlehandedly undermine both the economy and job creation. Wherever he goes, crowds are waving layoff notices in lieu of the typical “Yes we can” banners Barack Obama is more used to seeing.

If America is the employer, and if polls are the equivalent of a job evaluation, Obama is definitely on probation. In fact, Obama’s discharge papers are already filled out and tacked to the White House door. Rather than respond to the threat by working toward winning the title of “Employee of the Month,” the President is doing everything one should never do when unemployment is a looming likelihood.

Knocking around on the beach when he should have forgone the down time and chosen to stay on the job, the president doesn’t seem to be concerned that within the next year he might find himself in line with unemployed Americans who are stimulating the economy by collecting  jobless benefits.

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Hall of Fame ceremonies are reserved for those people who stand out from the masses, whether it is football, country music or rock and roll.  However the latest inductions into a new kind of Hall of Fame are those who hand out unemployment insurance checks.

Yes, now no one can say President Obama hasn’t done anything about unemployment—he is allowing those bureaucrats who sign the checks to be recognized for their work.

In 2010, the unemployment insurance (UI) program celebrated its 75^th anniversary.  To commemorate, a new awards ceremony was introduced.  The Department of Labor (DOL) established the UI Innovation Awards and the UI Hall of Fame to recognize the outstanding work of individuals and state UI agencies.

The 2011 awards ceremony will be held Oct. 17-20 at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence, R.I.  The going rate for a junior suite with two king-sized beds during the convention is $119 a night, not too bad.   Of course since this is a federal government department, you can assume your tax dollars are paying for the convention as well as probably contributing to the UI Hall of Fame celebration.

A request of the budget for this convention from the organizer of the awards ceremonies at the Department of Labor went unanswered.  Americans for Limited Government (ALG) is currently working on a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to find out the cost to taxpayers for this event.

To nominate a person for the UI Hall of Fame, whether dead or alive, one of more of the following achievements must have occurred (as reported from the DOL’s information on the award):

1. Promoting Legislation or Public Policy

Nominee has made important contributions to the achievement of significant Federal legislation or public policies that have improved and strengthened the Unemployment Insurance program.

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Remember that time the Department FOR Labor spent taxpayer money for a broken mobile app that actually could have shortchanged some workers? Well, their latest foray into mobile apps ought to be just as embarrassing.

This week the DOL, busy working to ensure small businesses can’t fight off union organizing drives, has shown off its flare for helping mobile developers create apps based on DOL data—as long as that data can be used to smear business but NOT Big Labor. (In fact, the Department is even putting $35,000 more in taxpayer money into prizes to spur more creation of anti-business, pro-union apps.)

But …. the data sets released by DOL so far have mysteriously failed to include anything from the Office of Labor-Management Standards, which gathers up information on union-boss pay and perks, political cash thrown to lefty groups like ACORN and anti-corporate campaigns, and tracks investigations into union-boss corruption and abuse of members.

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Last week, the union extremists controlling the U.S. Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board conducted a coordinated attack on America’s job creators. The first punch, a 160-page rule-making proposal by the Department of Labor was issued on Monday for public comments. However, it was quickly drowned out by the second punch: Tuesday’s NLRB rule-making proposal to modify election procedures, which are intended to fast track union elections giving unions greater ability to unionize employees.

It is important to note that both rule-making proposals are intended to work together and, like an axe in an executioner’s hand, they are intended to make an employer’s resistance to unionization futile.

On the one hand, the NLRB’s proposal to ’streamline’ union elections is meant to make it easier for unions to unionize employers in the least amount of time with the least amount of resistance, while giving union organizers access to employee telephone numbers and e-mail addresses and drastically curtailing employers’ ability to appeal NLRB decisions.

However, on the other hand, in an effort to broaden the definition of “union busting,” it is the Department of Labor’s proposal to redefine the term ‘persuader’ that will force many unsuspecting businesses, associations, and “consultants” (i.e., lawyers, human resource consultants, PR firms, and others, as well as seminar attendees and providers) to report their fee arrangements to the federal government—or face jail time and/or fines for failing to do so. (more…)

Over the last year, the Obama Administration, through its regulatory agencies, has been conducting a quiet war on American business—those enterprises that are the nation’s job creators. Earlier this week, the union extremists in Obama’s Department of Labor and the “independent” National Labor Relations Board (the same agency that may cause 1,000 Boeing employees in South Carolina to lose their jobs) launched an all-out offensive designed to maximize unions’ ability to unionize the 93.1% of America’s private-sector employees who are union free.

The Department of Labor writes its own DISCLOSE Act.

On Monday, using retread and biased psuedo-studies, the Department of Labor issued an expansive 160-page notice for proposed rule-making; request for comments. It is, in sum, a radical overhaul of the reporting requirements for employers who wish to remain union free and the consultants, lawyers, and firms that provide human resources, employee and labor relations services.

Since 1959, under a little known law called the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, labor relations consultants who ‘persuade’ employees in the exercise of their Section Seven Rights (the right to unionize or not) have been required to file financial disclosure statements, as do the employers who hire labor relations consultants.

Now, the Department of Labor wants any person who is contracted to directly or indirectly persuades employees to file be required to file reports. To the union zealots at the Department of Labor, any person, lawyer or firm who trains supervisors on how to lawfully communicate with employees about unions, any company that produces videos, conducts seminars, or vulnerability audits (like employee opinion surveys) would be required to file and disclose their earnings which then become made public. (more…)

Speaking to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., over the weekend, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis admitted she was biased toward unions.

Unions only account  for 11.9 percent of the workforce, but Solis’ favoritism puts them ahead of the other 88 percent of the American workers.

From the Washington Examiner:

President Obama is staying mostly quiet about the union battle going on in Wisconsin. His labor secretary, Hilda Solis, is not.

“The fight is on!” Solis told a cheering crowd at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting over the weekend in Washington. Giving her support to “our brothers and sisters in public employee unions,” Solis pledged aid to unionized workers who are “under assault” in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

It’s no surprise Solis sympathizes with the unions against Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s budget reform proposal. After all, Solis often tells audiences how proud she is that her father was a Teamsters shop steward and her mother belonged to the United Steelworkers union. “Admittedly, I am a little biased,” she told the DNC, “because … I come from a union household.”

But is it the role of the secretary of labor to take sides in a fight that pits public employee union members against workers and taxpayers who support Walker’s reforms? After all, the Labor Department mission statement says its purpose is “to foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States.” It doesn’t say anything about unionized wage earners, job seekers, and retirees.

While Obama downplays his links to the Wisconsin protesters, Solis’ language is quite similar to the president’s original knee-jerk reaction.

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A funny thing happened on the way to the voting booth: Americans discovered that most federal “stimulus” funds were being used to stimulate government, not the economy.

I was on the road recently, driving from my home in southeast Louisiana through a long stretch of Mississippi to Tuscaloosa, Ala., then to the outskirts of Birmingham and on to Auburn, Ala., and finally back to my home by way of Montgomery and Mobile. Along the way I was slowed from time to time as I passed by road and bridge repair projects marked with prominent signs indicating they were funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, President Obama’s so-called stimulus bill.

Naturally I was thrilled to see my tax dollars at work, although honesty compels me to report that not much actual work seemed to be going on at any of the sites. Most of the visible workers were just standing around. Of course, such standing around is typical of public construction projects, so I don’t suppose that what I saw was in any way owing to the stimulus funding in particular.

This huge legislative enactment provides for a great variety of increased spending and some reduction in taxes over a period of 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office computed that the net amount of money to be injected into, or not removed from, the economy as a result of the stimulus bill totals about $787 billion.

At the time the bill was being debated and discussed, a common plea in its defense had to do with funding so-called shovel-ready projects to repair or replace public roads, bridges and other structures widely taken to be in a state of decay or disrepair. This plea made an appealing talking point, since most Americans place at least some value on such infrastructure.

Alas, only a tiny proportion of the funds expended so far has been directed to this well-advertised objective.

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Now that the election is over and we’ve seen in stark light the rebuke that Obama has received, many are wondering if he’ll moderate his far left agenda. But a few movements in the Labor Dept. will disabuse anyone of the notion that Obama intends to drop his left-wing agenda.

Leave it to an Obama appointee to the National Labor Rights Board (NLRB) to want to push votes to install unions in the workplace on an accelerated schedule. I guess all the payoffs and special favors that Obama and his cohorts have given to labor unions in these two of the longest years any president ever had have not been enough.

On Oct. 21, NLRB Member Mark Gaston Pearce said that the time period between filing and the holding of elections for new union representation in a company should be “as brief as possible.”

Of course, this shortened election period is nothing but a sop to Big Labor and intended to hurt businesses that might try to put up a fight against the encroachment of unions.

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Outrageously, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Hilda Solis and other DOL Obama appointees appear to have blatantly disregarded the President’s Executive Order #13490 – the Ethics Pledge.

According to a report by the National Right To Work Committee, Solis and several other appointees gave themselves unilateral waivers on the two-year moratorium in direct conflict with President Obama’s two-year mandate:

Revolving Door Ban [for] All Appointees Entering Government.  I will not for a period of 2 years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts.

The White House Press Office

Solis’ only publicly available signed ethics pledge is provided by Olga Pierce and Christopher Weaver at Propublica.  National Right To Work reviewed it and other ProPublica provided ethics pledges. It is clear that other DOL appointees followed Solis’ lead and granted themselves ethics waivers in conflict with the presidential order.  The report identified Deputy Secretary Seth Harris, Assistant Secretary Phyllis Borzi, Assistant Secretary T. Michael Kerr (SEIU & AFSCME), and Assistant Secretary Jane Oates.

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In a victory for free labor, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has cancelled its solicitation for bids to build a new Jobs Corps Center in the state of New Hampshire. Why is it a victory? Because initial plans to receive bids would have discriminated against non-union construction companies per President Obama’s orders. Over 80% of all construction companies are non-union.

Executive Order 13502, signed early in Obama’s term, was applied to the New Hampshire construction project and instituted what is known as a Project Labor Agreement (PLA). A PLA is a way to force all companies working on a construction project to agree to union rules, dues, pensions and payments whether they are union shops and their employees are union members or not.

In effect, a PLA turns every employee and company working on a PLA enforced project into a unionized force. Naturally, this drives up costs, lengthens deadlines, and forces employees to fork over dues money even if they don’t belong to a union.

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When we at the Education Action Group Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-partisan, non-profit organization, launched AFTexposed.com this fall to examine the agenda, finances and tactics of the American Federation of Teachers, little did we realize we would draw such an immediate, ugly response.

AFT10809letter –

On Friday, October 9, we received a threatening letter from the AFT’s general counsel (which was carbon copied to AFT President Randi Weingarten), demanding we immediately stop using the acronym ‘AFT’ anywhere on the site, effectively neutering it, and turn over the domain registration to the union. [See the letter here.] How can we have a website completely dedicated to analyzing the AFT and its agenda if we aren’t allowed to use the acronym ‘AFT?’

It was an outrageous attempt to squelch our First Amendment rights to voice our opinions, which are based in fact.

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If you have been following the unending revelations about ACORN on BigGovernment.com, then you are likely aware of ACORN’s $1 million embezzlement cover-up which has now grown to an alleged $5 million embezzlement cover-up. 

This new $5 million revelation was posted just days after ACORN founder and the embezzler’s brother Wade Rathke nonchalantly explained his reasons for the embezzlement cover-up to Megyn Kelly on Fox News:

“Because we made a decision that between restitution and retribution, that restitution was more in the interest of the [ACORN] organization and that decision was unanimous.”  

From National Right to Work:

Most readers are already aware of a growing scandal involving the pro-forced unionism Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) in New York, Baltimore, Washington, and now, California. For those who missed it, ACORN representatives were caught on camera giving advice to undercover journalists on how to open an illegal brothel, launder its profits, and commit a host of other illegal activities.

According to The Washington Examiner, teacher union officials have contributed over 1.3 million dollars (in mostly forced union dues) to ACORN since 2005.

We decided to do a little digging into union financial disclosure forms on the Department of Labor’s website. After examining union financial records, it turns out that officials of several high-profile unions diverted large sums of mostly forced union dues dollars to the same ACORN offices in Washington and New York that are implicated in the hidden camera scandal.

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