Facing a legislative vote that would make Indiana a right-to-work state … Labor activists are deciding whether to go ahead with protests that could include Teamsters clogging city streets with trucks and electricians staging a slowdown at the convention center site of the NFL village.

“The last thing the city needs is a black eye,” said Jeff Combs, organizing director for Teamsters Local 135.  [But, apparently Combs is willing to give it one.]

“You can tell them we’ll take the Super Bowl and shove it,” said Combs, the Teamsters organizer. Teamsters gathered at the Statehouse Wednesday wearing T-shirts with the roman numerals 46, referring to the Super Bowl, crossed out on the back.  He said truckers would be willing to risk arrest by causing traffic jams.

Why does Big Labor from across the USA plan to converge on Indianapolis?  Union bosses fear ‘Voluntary Unionism’ and the freedom that Right To Work will bring to Hoosiers.  Without ‘Compulsory Unionism,’ currently imposed in Indiana, union bosses will have to create reasons for employees to join their union; and, that is a lot more work that state-sanctioned compulsion.

In an expected vivid example of “union organizing,” international and state union bosses are about to disrupt and diminish what should be one of the most important weeks in football players’ lives. Super Bowl Week is the week of festivities that leads up to the Super Bowl kickoff on Sunday, February 5^th.

The Big Labor irony is that both teams playing the game contain players from compulsory unionism states, New York (New Jersey) and Massachusetts.  This means both teams are loaded with union members and/or forced fee-payers.  These few players appear to be nothing but pawns in the Big Labor machine as it poises to crush one the biggest weeks of these players’ lives, and disappoint the thousands of fans in the stadium, as well as the millions of football fans who will be watching the game on television.

Perhaps, the real Super Bowl is playing right now underneath the Dome of the Indiana State Capitol:  the bulky old Compulsory Unionism team versus the freedom embracing Voluntary Unionism team.  Maybe, this Super Bowl will be settled before Big Labor tries roll over the NFL’s Super Bowl.

The fact is, until 1935, the United States Government did not force people to pay tributes to union bosses in order to get or keep a job.  If there was a conspiracy, it was between the AFL, CIO, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and a Democrat Congress passed the Wagner Act, selling the concept as “workers rights.”  The Wagner Act foisted union servitude on millions of working Americans overnight.  We see the AFL-CIO, the president, and Congress attempting the same scam today.

The only workers who can escape from Wagner Act compulsion work in the 22-states which chose a Right to Work law to protect their citizens from this tyranny.  This Wagner Act forced-dues tyranny can be clearly blamed on Big Labor Bosses.

Then-A.F.L. president William Green boasted of Big Labor’s role in the Wagner Act in Liberty Magazine: “We helped write it. We thought of it as ‘Our Baby’.”  And at a union convention Green said, “The A.F.L. is wholly and fully responsible for the Wagner Labor Relations Act.”

Mr. Hoffa, freedom is no conspiracy.  Freedom is an ideal that both men and women aspire to obtain.

The real conspiracy occurred in 1935, and it continues today as Big Labor bosses spend billions in forced-dues filled treasuries on stopping worker freedom and promoting legislation, executive orders, and regulations that expand worker compulsion.

It is time to end Big Labor’s conspiracy against worker freedom and pass a National Right To Work Act that gives workers choices rather than compulsion.  Then, Mr. Hoffa and his kind will have to earn and justify any dues that they receive.

From the WTOL 11, CBS affiliate in Toledo, Ohio:

National Teamsters President Jim Hoffa called Issue 2 a war on workers in his visit to Toledo Wednesday.

Reps from a half dozen unions rallied at the Teamsters Hall –

“Do you know there’s a war? You know there’s a war because they declared war on us,” Hoffa said.

Hoffa says his 250,000 members across the country and thousands in Ohio are under attack.

“They introduced Right to Work in 14 different states simultaneously. Do you get the conspiracy?” Hoffa asked.

I regret to inform you that you are not the “99 Percent.”

The 99 Percent dislikes big banks, but also dislikes big government–and big messes.

The 99 Percent does not occupy property it does not own, public or private.

The 99 Percent does not steal from local businesses, does not attack police officers, does not storm national museums, and does not defecate in public.

Flyer at #OccupyWallStreet - the address for donations is a small building in Washington, DC shared by Code Pink and other "progressive" organizations

The 99 Percent does not rank people’s views based on their skin color, gender, or socioeconomic status.

The 99 Percent does not repeat, zombie-like, every word it hears out of a leader’s mouth.

The 99 Percent would not deny a veteran civil rights leader and member of Congress the opportunity to speak when he had asked to do so, even if it disagreed with him.

The 99 Percent understands the difference between a mob in the street and our democratic Republic.

The 99 Percent does not belong to a labor union or an anarchist hacker collective.

The 99 Percent does not want to raise taxes, to let the government withhold freedom of the press, to open the nation’s borders to anyone who wants to cross, to deny workers a secret ballot in labor union elections, to spend trillions of additional taxpayer dollars on transportation and the environment, or to forgive all existing debts.

No, you are not the 99 Percent.

We know who you really are.

You are the Democrats.

You are the Working Families Party.

You are the Democratic Socialists of America.

You are Big Labor–the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and so on.

You are the institutional radical left–Media Matters for America, ThinkProgress, MoveOn.org, and various other George Soros-funded organizations.

More than anything else, you are the anti-war movement.

That’s why you can gather thousands of Americans–without displaying a single American flag, which you could “could just as easily have burned” (your words).

That’s why you have the support of those Ron Paul fans who are less interested in election than insurrection.

That’s why you are taking marching orders from anarchists like Lisa Fithian.

That’s why you have the drum circles, the hippies, and the joiners who have no idea why they are there.

Many wondered where you, the anti-war movement, had gone for the past few years.

After all, President Barack Obama has done many of the same things that the anti-war movement had complained about when President George W. Bush was in power.

Worse, Obama went to war without the permission of Congress, and has now started targeting and killing American citizens with drone attacks.

And yet you had been strangely, suddenly, and stubbornly silent.

The Obama administration and the institutional left asked you to be quiet, once they had achieved “change” you could believe in.

But they soon realized that they could not survive without you.

Their health care campaign, their war against the rich, their attacks on Republicans over the debt ceiling–all failed without you.

And so Obama, the Democrats, and the unions came back to you–the anarchists, organizers, and online activists of the anti-war brigades.

And they bought your support–cheaply.

President Obama, slow to embrace the protests of the Arab Spring, sprang to embrace your cause.

And yet look carefully at the price you are paying.

While you get arrested, and spend weeks in the open, the Democrats are raising money off your backs.

Your ideals have been reduced to policies that resemble the party platform at the Democratic National Convention.

Do you know what you stand for? Do you know why you are doing this? Did you ever?

My fellow Americans (and somewhat antisemitic Canadians), you are not the 99 Percent.

You are the co-opted.

Violence is possible, as local police and security officers seem unprepared for a confrontation with thousands of activists converging on the Hyatt from multiple other staged demonstrations in Chicago.

Fithian, a veteran anarchist organizer who is widely credited with shutting down the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999, has apparently arrived in Chicago after participating in the #OccupyWallStreet demonstration in New York.

According to Big Government sources, Fithian is currently training union leaders from the Service Employees’ International Union and the Teamsters Union in preparation for today’s demonstration. Her strategy may be to draw law enforcement officers to multiple protest sites, then to shift demonstrations suddenly to one central site.

Democratic activists and leaders, including Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), are expected to address the demonstrators today as part of “Stand Up Chicago,” a broad coalition of community organizing groups coordinated by the SEIU and promoted by left-wing bloggers in the area.

The Chicago demonstration is the latest example of cooperation between anarchists, unions, and Democrats, who share an interest in targeting America’s free market system–some with the explicit intention of destroying it, others with the hope that the spectacle will help President Barack Obama’s re-election efforts by “inspir[ing] the progressive base.”

Citizen journalists are urged to record and report the demonstrations, and to contact law enforcement regarding any illegal or violent activity. Follow #OccupyChicago, #TakeBackChicago, and #occupymortgagebankers to monitor protest activities on Twitter.

UPDATE: The Chicago Teachers’ Union has posted its plans for the demonstration, including training led by Lisa Fithian. Fithian’s apparent strategy, as anticipated, is to stage multiple demonstrations that will then converge on one location.

UPDATE 2: The convergence point appears to be the Art Institute of Chicago. Activists in Washington, DC clashed with security guards at the National Air & Space Museum this past weekend.

The first, “feeder” protests have begun, with anti-capitalist signs and Guy Fawkes masks:

UPDATE: #OccupyChicago has posted detailed plans for the various events it has planned for today. The plans include a call for activists to “take matters into our own hands,” and describe training classes in “police confrontation.”

SEIU organizers from Kansas and Missouri are also on the scene. Anarchists have arrived wearing industrial masks underneath black handkerchiefs, in possible anticipation of tear gas and pepper spray.

UPDATE: A citizen journalist has emailed the photograph below, which shows two earpiece-wearing #OccupyChicago organizers surveying their handiwork. The man on the left appears to be Stephen Lerner of the SEIU.

Stephen Lerner, at left?

UPDATE: Rep. Jan Schakowsky has shown up at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, together with political director Alex Armour (wearing a red “Solidarity” t-shirt–that’s not a Starbucks coffee in his hands, is it?).

UPDATED: Police have turned out in larger-than-anticipated numbers. Activists attempted–thrice–to occupy the Hyatt Regency and were removed without arrests. Rep. Schakowsky addressed the crowd. Not since 1968 have the Democrats–in whole or in part–aligned themselves so closely and openly with the radical left.

UPDATED: Lerner and other activists are now staging an outdoor sit-in. Aerial photographs posted on Twitter suggest that turnout is somewhat smaller than the 7,500 that organizers had predicted, and nowhere near the 30,000 for which some activists had hoped.

UPDATED: A source on the scene has reported (6 pm Chicago time) that police have just told activists staging a sit-in outside the Art Institute that they must clear the street or they will be arrested. The unofficial crowd estimate is now in the range of 6,000-10,000 people.

UPDATE: Police have begun moving through the crowd, and multiple sources now report that the first arrests are under way amidst rising tension in the crowd.

UPDATE: Activists are now dispersing, with some arrests continuing and a few scuffles with police. The crowd, now estimated by sources to be about 2,000 (down from a new unofficial estimate of 5,000-7,500 at peak), is beginning to disperse.

UPDATE: About 300 activists remain in downtown Chicago, and have begun their “General Assembly” meeting. Stay tuned to Big Government for follow-up posts.

UPDATE: According to local news, Chicago Police have issued an official crowd estimate of 3,000. There were 24 arrests, one for battery to an officer.

]]> http://biggovernment.com/jpollak/2011/10/10/breaking-violence-feared-at-occupychicago-today/feed/ 265 http://biggovernment.com/dloos/2011/09/15/when-teamsters-like-hoffa-say-take-out-these-sobs-you-should-worry/ http://biggovernment.com/dloos/2011/09/15/when-teamsters-like-hoffa-say-take-out-these-sobs-you-should-worry/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:33:06 +0000 Don Loos http://biggovernment.com/?p=332300 The Teamsters union has been mired in the mob underworld even before Jimmy Hoffa. Jr.’s dad took over the union. During a congressional hearing, Robert F. Kennedy* said, “I told [Jimmy Hoffa, Sr.] frankly that I did not think he was tough enough to rid his union of the gangsters and hoodlums he had put in power.”

Even today, when any legitimate business interest would have been put out of business by the federal government, the Teamsters remain under federal court ordered oversight for its organized crime connections:

WHEREAS, the International Union entered into a Consent Decree with the United States on March 14, 1989 to resolve a civil lawsuit titled United States v. Teamsters, and WHEREAS, in entering into the Consent Decree, the International Union acknowledged allegations of past problems of organized crime corruption in various elements of the IBT [Teamsters]…

When Hoffa tells his army to take someone out, it is a serious matter. In one particular case, the National Labor Relations Board required the Teamsters union to post a sign to remind Hoffa’s army of what not to do. Here’s a small part of the four-page document:

WE WILL NOT threaten to kill or inflict bodily harm, make throat slashing motions, make gun pointing motions, challenge or threaten to fight or assault employees, threaten to sexually assault non-striking employees or their family members, threaten to follow non-striking employees to their homes, use racial epithets or obscene gestures at non-striking employees or otherwise threaten unspecified reprisals on any non-striking employee of Overnite or any member of his or her family or any employee of a neutral employee doing business with Overnite …

WE WILL NOT batter, assault, spit on, blow whistles loudly near a person’s ear, throw any liquid or solid object at, or attempt to assault any non-striking employee of Overnite or any member of his or her family or any employee of a neutral employee …

WE WILL NOT use or threaten to use a weapon of any kind, including but not limited to guns, knives, slingshots, rocks, ball bearings, liquid-filled balloons or other projectiles, picket signs, sticks, sledge hammers, bricks, hot coffee, bottles, two by fours, lit cigarettes, eggs, or bags or balloons filled with excrement against any non-striking Overnite employee…

WE WILL NOT brandish or carry any weapon of any kind, including, but not limited to, guns, knives, slingshots, rocks, ball bearings, liquid-filled balloons or other projectiles, sledge hammers, bricks, sticks, or two by fours at or near any picket line…

(Click the poster image above or click here to download the full Teamster Overnite Poster)

It is time to end forcing good Americans to pay Big Labor goons against their will. It is time to stop forcing Americans to pay into union treasuries that spend $2.2 billion electing candidates and supporting political positions that they oppose.

It is time to pass the National Right To Work Act, that makes union membership a choice in every state and ends the ability of unscrupulous union bosses to force employees to pay them tribute in order to get or keep a job.

We are at a time when job choices for Americans are dwindling; it is more unfair now to force employees to make a choice that contradicts their morals in order to feed their family. Congress must pass the National Right To Work Act NOW.

I dare President Obama to veto it and continue taking freedom away from working Americans. Congress, it is time to send bills to his desk and force him to actually veto legislation.  The National Right To Work Act and the repeal of ObamaCare would be my first two choices.

*Robert F. Kennedy. The Enemy Within: The McClellan Committee’s Crusade Against Jimmy Hoffa And Corrupt Labor Unions

The day before his declaration of war on the Tea Party movement, Teamsters President James Hoffa appeared on CNN and deemed American companies as “unpatriotic,” according to the Political Ticker.

“I think the president should challenge the patriotism of these American corporations that are sitting on the sidelines,” Hoffa said. “The problem in America isn’t that we don’t have enough money. We’ve got more money than any other country in the world. The problem is American businesses not spending it and not getting it in the game.”

Is Hoffa willing to have his own patriotism challenged?  Because some inconvenient truths emerge from the financial report his Teamsters union filed with the federal government.

According to an LM-2 report filed earlier this year, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which represents truck drivers and some school employees, ended 2010 with $108,608,477 in the bank.  That’s a whopping 24.9% increase in net assets over 2009, when the union reported $86,942,076 in assets.

In contrast, the Teamsters reported $88,371,439 in liabilities.  So if the union could afford to go without any new revenue and still meet its obligations for well over 12 months.

There is a trend in the union’s growing net assets.  The Teamsters ended 2009 with $86,942,076 in the bank, according to that year’s LM-2 report.  That’s an even more impressive 33.4% increase in net assets over 2008, when the union reported $65,148,734 in assets.

From 2008 to 2010, the Teamsters net assets grew an impressive 66.7% – a rate that would make any corporate board of directors smitten with its CEO.

So, James, where is your American spirit?  You’re hoarding cash, just like you accuse the corporations of doing. Why doesn’t the union do its part and hire some unemployed Americans to do whatever the Teamsters actually do?

Or is that just the responsibility of the fat cat, jet-owning, unpatriotic CEOs?

And while we’re at it, let’s talk about your $368,000 annual compensation package. Where’s your solidarity with the unemployed workers of Detroit?  Can’t you give up your “fair share” of your salary and perks so they can have a little? Or do you enjoy living like a corporate CEO?

The reason corporations – and apparently unions – are hoarding investment dollars is because President Obama and his administration have cultivated an unstable environment in which to do business. Companies don’t know what their tax, regulatory and health care liabilities are going to be under this anti-business administration, so they’re sitting on the sidelines.  They’re being responsible to their investors and existing employees.

The best thing to do is to drop the strong-arm rhetoric and convince the president to create a stable environment to allow business to do what it does best – create job opportunities for Americans.  But that would run contrary to the leftist, Hoffa-type gasbag narrative of evil, unpatriotic corporations, and we just can’t have that in an election season.

The group Citizen Patriot Response is coordinating efforts. From its website:

Citizen Patriot Response is preparing to begin delivering cold bottles of water to firefighters in the Bastrop area in an effort to do our part. Many other organizations and individuals in Texas are doing the same. We need support, we need more efforts initiated across the state, and we need communication and collaboration between group leaders to ensure that men and women fighting the Texas wildfires have full support.

The group will also provide a shelter for those families whose homes are threatened by the fires.

This is something the left would do well to try to understand. Of course we need a certain amount of government, but we need far less than they imagine. Free citizens have repeatedly banded together to assist one another.

They would also do well to rethink their virulent rhetoric about the tea party. Again, there isn’t a ‘tea party’ per se. Rather, it is simply some significant percentage of the American public who is concerned about the direction of this country. And, considering that over 70% of Americans think the country is on the wrong path, that’s a whole lot of people.

To call these people ‘barbarians’, as the sitting Vice-President did the other day, isn’t just vile and wrong, it is politically insane.

God speed to Citizens Patriot Response and tea party groups in Texas and good luck in their efforts to help those battling and victimized by the wildfires. Oh, and let us know if or when the Teamsters decide to pitch in.