The United Auto Workers Union (UAW) is the winner in the recently-concluded Ford contract negotiations. While its rank and file members will not see pay raises or recoup concessions, the union stands to gain millions in dues.

On Tuesday October 18, two large UAW local unions—Local 600 in Dearborn, Michigan, and Local 862 in Louisville, Kentucky—voted to approve their contract with Ford. The two locals had enough votes to push the contract over the line for company-wide ratification.

Before Tuesday’s vote, the fate of the contract seemed uncertain. Ford workers were almost evenly split on the new deals. An interior-parts plant in Saline, Michigan had almost 60 percent of its production workers vote against the contract. The vote totals went from 53 percent against last Friday to 63.2 percent in favor Tuesday.

Several local union leaders felt the contract did not go far enough. “People feel they deserve more,” Gary Walkowicz, a UAW Local 600 official who led a “Vote No” campaign, told Bloomberg Business Week days before the vote. “There is a lot of anger out here.”

One member went so far as to say that national leadership was more interested in gaining more dues than in what was best for workers.

Jeff Redden, a 16- year truck plant veteran and one of the leading voices against the contract at local 862 accused the union of becoming “too cozy with the company.”  Speaking to WHAS11, a Louisville news station, he criticized the union for agreeing to a $6,000 bonus instead of fighting for pay raises. (more…)

Big Government has already established that Lisa Fithian is playing an integral part in the planning, organization,and execution of the nation-wide “Occupy” protests and other union demonstrations and “direct actions.”

The Chicago Teachers’ Union has reported that Fithian trained its members, together with the Teamsters, for the Occupy Chiacgo protests. Evidence on the UAW website also shows that Fithian recenlty led members in a march to “close” a branch of designated villain, Bank of America. Fithian is also referred to as an “SEIU Commander” leading activists in a recent march on bankers in Boston.

Now, Big Government’s continued investigation of Lisa Fithian’s activities reveals another badge of dishonor to add to her shameful resume:  Israel-hater.

The “Occupy” protests have already shown startlingly brazen and unapologetic displays of antisemitism, and this newly-discovered footage of Fithian, a key driving force behind the protests, may help explain why hatred toward “Zionist bankers” keeps bubbling up to the surface at Occupy demonstrations across the country.

The footage above was shot on May 31, 2010 and features Lisa Fithian shouting through a megaphone, accusing the state of Israel of “slaughter[ing] Palestinians every single day.”  As Fithian, organizer of the Democratic Party’s new favorite mass protest, looks on, a menacing man decked out in a Palestinian keffiyeh leads her activists in the chant:

“Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea!” (more…)

Over a year ago, the president of the United Auto Workers, Bob King, announced a campaign to ’shame’ foreign automakers with plants here in the U.S. into allowing his union to unionize them–the details of which would be released at a later point in time.

Earlier this year, when King finally released his new manifesto on what he expected the automakers to agree to, it was met with well-deserved derision.

The union was silent, though, when in June Bloomberg ran this headline: Hyundai Teaches UAW Best Factory Job Doesn’t Need a Union.

However, in early August, knowing that his union’s future is looking bleak, King stated that the union was in “confidential” talks with the foreign automakers.

“The vast majority of the assemblers here in the United States have at least agreed to confidential discussions,” UAW President Bob King said at an industry conference in Traverse City, Michigan. “We’ve had productive discussions. The last thing we want is confrontation.”

This seemed to confirm the buzz that was created in July when it was reported that the UAW was talking to the Volkswagen AG’s works council and the German union IG Metal to launch an attempt at unionizing the employees at VW’s new Tennessee plant. (more…)

As expected, I won few friends within the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) administrations by exposing the communist indoctrination that occurred in their respective classrooms.

In response to a threatening letter I received from UMSL demanding that I meet with them for questioning, I submitted a Sunshine Law records request to the University of Missouri system. The emails below constitute UMSL’s reply.

UMSL fix ii

Large portions were redacted under the questionable pretense that they contained privileged communications between UMSL and its attorney.

What I learned from the visible portions was quite disturbing: numerous high-level university officials conspired in an attempt to punish me.

When this strategy proved unsuccessful, they engaged in a smear campaign against me, partly relying on inaccurate liberal blogs as “evidence.” Because senior UMSL administrators refused to take responsibility for their blatant failure of oversight in their labor studies classes, they resorted to maligning the student who spoke out about the unprofessional behavior of his professors. (more…)

Phil Christofanelli, the student who leaked videos of a radical “Introduction to Labor Studies” course at University of Missouri-St.Louis (UMSL) and University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), has obtained internal emails that reveal UMSL’s attempts to mislead the public and target the whistleblower.

Christofanelli, who had cross-registered in the UMSL course and has since graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, will release the emails later today on BigGovernment.com.

UMSL and UMKC were plunged into crisis on April 25, 2011, when BigGovernment.com published an article about violent union tactics being taught in the course (see related posts below). The post included a video of highlights from the course, as prepared and provided by Insurgent Visuals.

UMSL Chancellor Tom George and UMSL Provost Glen Cope defended the course–which included instructions on how to carry out industrial sabotage and personal intimidation; in-class recruitment by the Communist Party; and pro-union propaganda. George and Cope claimed to have watched all 30-plus hours of course video.

Internal emails reveal, however, that Cope had not even begun to view the videos when she prodded UMKC Vice Provost and Chief Information Office Mary Lou Hines Fritts for the name of the student responsible for “ripping” the videos. “Since the semester is nearly over, we need to act quickly,” Cope wrote to Hines Fritts on May 4.

Hines Fritts could not provide Cope with any direct evidence. However, she and her staff quickly singled out Christofanelli for his political views. She sent Cope a list of links about Christofanelli, highlighting his leadership of the Washington University Young Americans for Liberty, as well as his conservative opinions. (more…)

My name is Philip Christofanelli. I was a student in the University of Missouri’s “Introduction to Labor Studies” course.  The class was taught simultaneously by Professor Don Giljum of University of Missouri-Saint Louis (UMSL) and Professor Judy Ancel of University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) through the use of a live video feed that linked the two classrooms. The class met every other Saturday for seven hours, including breaks. All of the classes were recorded and put on the class website.

Class slide by Prof. Judy Ancel instructing students on how to "re-frame" messages for "State Battles" against right-to-work legislation in Missouri and elsewhere

Since that time, an organization known as Insurgent Visuals has released videos of the class, which have gained considerable media attention.  To be clear, I am not Insurgent Visuals, nor am I associated with them.  I did not edit any videos or put them online. I did, however, download the original videos off of the class website and give them out in their entirety to a number of my friends in order to obtain other opinions on the propriety of what occurred in the class, and of the steps I should take moving forward.

In this post, I will try to describe, with careful attention to context and accuracy, what occurred in these public classrooms over the course of the semester.  I believe that any reasonable person who takes the time to read this post in full will come to the same conclusion that I did: Professors Giljum and Ancel used a public university class to promote their own radical political opinions and organizations, and to train students and union members in negotiating tactics that are apparently illegal, and profoundly unethical.  Their behavior was highly unprofessional and inappropriate, and the University of Missouri should simply admit that fact and take steps to ensure that classes are not taught in that way ever again.

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Only in Washington would running out of money and prematurely limiting a program be considered a success. This Friday (May 6,) Obamacare’s first handout program will cease accepting new applications, but not before billions of dollars have been redistributed or promised from taxpayers to the political savy and well connected.

The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) was intended to bridge the time gap between Congress’s passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the law’s implementation. But it has done much more than that. ERRP is saturated with handouts, inaccurate funding assumptions, and shifts an ever greater burden onto the taxpayer.

The Obama administration implemented ERRP on June 1, 2010, as a provision in the president’s health care law. The $5 billion dollar program was supposed to last until 2014, but it has already burned through almost $1.8 billion in less than one year. On March 31, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which administers ERRP, announced that the program had doled out that sum to 1,300 participants.

Administered by the HHS, ERRP disburses funds to unions, corporations, and state governments who then subsidize early retirees’ health care, without any means testing. A business, union, or state simply needs to fill out an application and have workers retiring early—between the ages of 55 and 65—to qualify for the free money.

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In the face of public sector union reforms, leaders within these unions plan on embarking a new strategy to defeat reformist implementations.

On April 28, Newberry Library in Chicago hosted a debate on whether states can stop collective bargaining. Panelist Stephen A. Yokich, an associate general counsel for UAW, unveiled a radical idea for combatting new state restrictions on public sector collective bargaining. His strategy on behalf of the unions is to obtain a Supreme Court ruling stating that collective bargaining by public sector unions is a protecting right under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution!

The Equal Protection Clause is found in Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This section states that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

The Supreme Court has held that this clause protects classes of race, national origin, gender, or religion from laws which are discriminatory, have discriminatory intent, or have disparate impact. Never has the Supreme Court ruled that this guarantee for “equal protection of the laws” applies to any particular group of organized workers! Such a suggestion lies far outside the judicial mainstream and defies the meaning and intent of this important clause.

When a member of the audience questioned the validity of such a novel constitutional law argument, the UAW lawyer replied, “We change what we think about the Constitution in order to adapt to the times that we are in.” Candid response, indeed.

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At the Detroit Economic Club today, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tried to claim the auto bailout is a success.

It certainly doesn’t seem like a success for the taxpayers. GM stock is about $30 today, and unless it gets up to $54, the taxpayers lose money on the deal. Why would it go up? You want to fight high gas prices by buying a Volt? How does $41 grand a pop sound? And still GM loses money on every one it sells even at that price. Not only that but we are seeing that government subsides for electric cars is good tax money wasted in any case.

It doesn’t get any better. Worldwide, U.S. cars aren’t selling worth beans and domestically, GM is lagging because people who hate the bailouts won’t support it with their car-buying dollars any more than they did with their votes last year when they kicked out every incumbent they could find who’d been for it. And GM still has all its old problems, too, like those big fat union pension obligations. Sadly, nothing that caused GM’s financial trouble has been fixed.

But the spin continues.

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Desperate times call for desperate measures, and the United Auto Workers’ Bob King thinks he’s just the union boss to make a go of it. With negotiations about to start with the Big Three American auto companies (two of which are UAW-owned), King is ramping up his rhetoric against the CEO of the only automaker that taxpayers did not bailout (Ford’s Mulally), while plotting his strategy for negotiations.

Meanwhile, claiming that he’s fighting for “social justice” and the entire American middle class (as opposed to just trying to save his otherwise failing union), sounding a lot like he is using the model being used to overthrow governments in the middle east, the UAW’s top boss is recruiting global activists to attack UAW-free foreign automakers.

If action is necessary, “we have a new strategy to organize them,” Williams said, which involves mobilizing members, retirees and allies “to expose violations of human rights.”

The efforts fall under the umbrella of the newly created Global Organizing Institute that is training the activists.

“It has the potential to be the largest, sustained consumer action by organized labor,” Williams said. “We have the resources and the people to be successful in this mission.”

In the United States, the Institute has put coordinators in each state to oversee recruits from university campuses and social organizations. An initial group of activists also has been recruited abroad in countries including China, India, Brazil, Japan and South Korea.

This coordinated effort will allow simultaneous protests at a company’s dealerships around the world to press for auto plant union organization in the U.S.

A second wave of eight interns from other countries is wrapping up a visit to the United States, where they interviewed workers at nonunion auto plants in Mississippi and Alabama.

When the UAW picks a company, these young international leaders say they will take action against the target, knowing they have UAW support.

In addition, alliances have been formed with unions in Germany, Japan and South Korea.

Of course, to King and his clan of foreign crusaders, a violator of “human rights” would be any foreign auto company that does not succumb to King’s extortionate version of a “fair election.”

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With the United Auto Workers’ membership at a third of its former size, and the job-destroying card-check bill (the misleadingly-named Employee Free Choice Act) dead for now, UAW President Bob King and the rest of his Detroit henchmen have had to come up with an inventive way in which to save their dying union by getting new members.

In July, the UAW hooked up with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH coalition and vowed to target the employees of foreign-owned automakers.  In August, the United Auto Workers’ Bob King declared his intent to “shame” companies that do not accept his “Principles for Fair Union Elections.” While eyes rolled throughout the labor relations community, most withheld comment, opting to wait and see what King had up his festooned sleeve. Well, the wait is over.

Because King’s “principles” were unilaterally conjured up in some back office at the UAW’s HQ (or on one of the UAW’s fairways), and given the hints of doom and gloom if an employer did not comply, many never really expected the UAW’s principles to be necessarily fair or principled. As a result, when the UAW officially issued its “principles” on Monday, the Union of Ailing Workplaces UAW did not surprise anyone with its wrong-headedness. In fact, not only did Bob King keep the basic tenets of the failed Employee Free Choice Act in place, he’s taken it even further.

The UAW’s “Principles for Fair Union Elections” [view PDF here] is a series of 11 mostly one-sided and seemingly innocuous guidelines, a few of which are harmless, a few that are superfluous, and several which strike at the heart of an employer’s property and free speech rights. (more…)

It looks like Matt Damon’s been overdosing on Kool-Aid again.  He’s apparently doing the bidding now for the ACORN spawn, Working Families Party.  Watch as he asks you for his birthday present.

I’m about to celebrate a very important birthday myself, Matt.  On November 13^th, I turn 41 ! I know, I can’t believe it either.

If there’s something you want to give me for my birthday that’s going to really cheer me up, please tell the recently departing Working Families Party co-chair Bertha Lewis to stop referring to constitutional conservatism as “McCarthyism”.  And while you’re at it, could you please ask your friend, President Obama not to call American citizens “enemies” simply for not belonging to his political party?

I think maybe it’s time to step away from Soroswood and start paying attention to the real world.

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The question in the title of this post is more rhetorical because, in answer to the question, we are all (to varying degrees) helping to fund the demise of America and, for most of us, we are doing it every day.  In so many ways, we do it every time a decision is made to purchase something—anything—be it groceries, appliances, and even bigger ticket items like vehicles.

For example, the new Chevy Camaro is a hot looking car.  By all accounts, in addition to its looks, the Camaro fast and affordable.  But, despite all of its cool accouterments, I won’t buy one.

Moreover, despite owning two trucks that are American made (read: union-made), a significant principle was breached over these past two years that, for the foreseeable future, will not be undone. You see, it was bad enough when the UAW banned the marines from using the union parking lot (before the union quickly retracted it) a few years ago, but when the UAW’s new boss, Bob King, recently reiterated the UAW’s ban on nonunion-made vehicles in the union’s parking lot (even if made by Americans in American plants), that cinched it.

Much like those who refuse to buy British Petroleum because of the gulf oil spill, a personal decision was made to, whenever possible, not spend money on companies whose employees’ union dues are being used to help bankrupt America, whose union bosses shamelessly and egregiously are currying special favors from political puppets, transforming the nation to to a quasi-socialist state, all the while demonizing people who believe in freedom.  It’s that simple.

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Yesterday’s  E&E News PM had an item, “LOBBYING: UAW joins labor-enviro alliance”, reading in pertinent part:

The United Auto Workers has announced that it will join the BlueGreen Alliance, a partnership of labor and environment groups pushing for policies that create green jobs….

The BlueGreen Alliance was formed in 2006 by the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers. The group also includes the Communications Workers of America, Natural Resources Defense Council, Service Employees International Union, Laborers’ International Union of North America, Utility Workers Union of America, American Federation of Teachers, Amalgamated Transit Union and Sheet Metal Workers’ International Association.

Yes. Events in the early days of the Obama administration indicated it was only a matter of time before the UAW would join this enterprise seeking massive further expansion of the state. As I detail in Chapter 7 of Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America, “Obama’s “Baptists and Bootleggers”: Unions and Greens Selling Out America”, “Team Obama is teaming with big business, unions, and green pressure groups in an unholy alliance to advance an agenda relieving you of your wealth and freedoms, to their enrichment, in a collaboration designed to move decisions from individual producers and consumers to the Federal government. As part of this perverse game, the Left pulls for ‘green’ energy production and then blocks that very same production on environmental grounds or until it can use such projects to enrich favored unions and companies.”

Oddly, these groups are pushing for cap-and-trade, in addition to other mandates designed to make the price of energy “necessarily skyrocket”, as Obama so delicately put it.

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Authored with Ivan Osorio

Yesterday, the United Auto Workers union (UAW) named Bob King as its new president. Does this mean a change in direction for one of America’s most powerful unions? Not likely.

King, a UAW vice president before yesterday and a member of the union’s executive board, was described by Time magazine late last year as being “Picked – Not Elected – to Lead [the] UAW.” As Time writer Joseph Szczesny noted, “For more than 60 years, the UAW’s top leadership has blocked attempts to permit union members to vote directly for the union presidency.” Instead, the union’s executive board has picked the UAW president since the late 1940s through closed caucuses.

It’s not like the union doesn’t need change. For several decades, lavish compensation packages and restrictive work rules have helped make the Big Three Detroit automakers uncompetitive, especially in the face of increased foreign competition. Yet you wouldn’t know it from the parade of old faces at the UAW’s recent convention. Listening to their comments, it’ s no wonder why Michigan has the worst unemployment in the nation—14 percent compared to 9.7 percent average for the entire country.)

AFL-CIO President Trumka pushed the class-war rhetoric so common among labor bosses. He thundered, “We cannot ease off the fight against trade agreements that favor Wall Street over workers throughout the world.” He applauded the UAW for “fighting back” against corporate America and hostile politicians, and called on the automakers to give back concessions made by the UAW.

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In today’s Washington Examiner, the always interesting Michael Barone dissects Labor’s big loss in Arkansas:

She wanted to win reelection and knew that card check was political poison in almost entirely non-unionized Arkansas.

Big labor decided to teach her—and all Democratic members of Congress who were quailing at the prospect of voting for card check—a lesson. The lesson would be that, however much a vote for card check would reduce your chances of winning a general election, opposition to card check would result in your defeat in a Democratic primary. Their ready and willing instrument was Bill Halter, whose path to higher office seemed otherwise occluded. At the beginning of March he announced his candidacy and proclaimed himself the champion of the working man. Blanche Lincoln, in agonized response, proclaimed herself the target of outside interests. In a matter of weeks labor unions and moveon.org—originally formed to defend Bill Clinton against impeachment—sent millions to Bill Halter’s campaign. Lincoln, recently elevated to the Chairmanship of the Senate Agriculture Committee, sponsored a bill to shut off all derivative trading. The Obama White House carefully protected this bill from defeat while the primary and runoff contests were pending, while Bill Clinton campaign gallantly for Lincoln and against his appointee Halter.

The Clinton intervention may have proved decisive. Although the Clintons have left Arkansas, Arkansas voters still have warm feelings toward them, as witnessed by Hillary Clinton’s 70%-26% defeat of Barack Obama in the 2008 Arkansas Democratic presidential primary—the biggest percentage win in her campaign. Lincoln won the runoff by a 52%-48% margin—hardly inspiring but a whole lot better than a defeat.

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The most dangerous place in D.C. may well be between retiring SEIU president Andy Stern and a microphone, but the next-most-dangerous place may be as a taxpayer paying for his work. Now, in an exit interview with the Washington Post’s respectable liberal blogger Ezra Klein, the ever-controversial Stern has added one more wopper to confuse public dialogue, saying of organized labor: “It is the greatest middle-class, job-creating mechanism that we have ever had in America that doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime.”

Emphasis added, because let’s not kid ourselves: Stern’s statement is technically true enough, if the literal meaning is organized labor costs billions and billions of dimes. And that’s just in the private sector, which reason.tv has addressed admirably:

1. They cost too much. As USA Today recently noted, federal employees make on average almost $8,000 more than their private-sector counterparts. When you add in benefits, the gap spreads to about $30,000. State and local government workers make around the same as private-sector counterparts, but their health and retirement packages mean they make significantly more in the end.

2. We can’t fire them. The private sector has shed positions in response to slackening demand and the economic downturn. That sort of adjustment is painful but necessary, as it allows the economy to adjust to changing circumstances and workers and employers to move into new activities. Because it is guaranteed certain amounts of tax revenue and has a non-market mind-set, the public sector is largely insulated from such forces and keeps or even adds workers despite changed conditions. The result? We keep paying for things that we don’t use, need, or want.

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As a gloomy, snowy February came to a close in the nation’s capital, so did the most recent circus attraction on Capitol Hill.  Several days of congressional hearings on the Toyota recalls didn’t exactly deliver many more facts for Americans but they did leave behind a plethora of speculation and opinion to feast upon.  While the saga now known as GasPedalGate flailed around quietly for several years, it’s suddenly taken center stage and today plays out like a bad made-for-TV-movie, complete with its villain, its victims, and most telling, a very long list of opportunists.

To see the full picture, the story begins in California with the history of General Motors and the United Auto Workers in the 1980’s, and GM’s rescue by Toyota through a little venture called NUMMI.  Today, in 2010, the NUMMI chapter nears its close.  But before it does, the Fremont, California plant and its rank and file workers will serve as unwilling pawns in what could turn out to be an orchestrated blueprint for incapacitating the strongest competitor to Government Motors and one of the most significant threats to labor unions here and around the globe.

Today’s rendition has been so manipulated and so propagandized, the facts have all but been removed from the storyline.  The bread crumb trail of truth has been trampled upon and so broadly scattered about, the trail is almost beyond the point of recognition.

The story that emerges is the collusion of forces in Big Labor, Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Litigators and Big Progressive Philanthropy.  And no, I’m not talking Breitbart sites.

The History of NUMMI

When a bankrupt and bailed out General Motors officially announced in June 2009 that it would be pulling out of its joint venture with Toyota, it marked the end of another era.

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Toyota, which employs over 35,000 workers in the United States with factories in eight states, is the target of a government-led and union-supported attack due to recent recalls.

In the U.S., it is estimated that 15,000 Lexus HS250h and 133,000 Prius models will be recalled due to gas pedal issues, with another 500,000 Prius and other gasoline-electric hybrids needing anti-brake software modification. As unfortunate and inconvenient as recalls can be, this not the first, or last time an automobile will need to be brought back to the shop for a quick fix.

One might think this is the first auto recall in decades from the way government officials and Congressional Committees have pounced on Toyota. However, as recent as last month, Honda announced a recall of 646,000 Fit models (or Jazz in some markets) due to a faulty master switch that could allow water to enter the electrical components resulting in fires. Ford, less than one year ago, was forced to recall more than 4 million cars based on 550 vehicle fires. The recall concerned cruise-control deactivation switches that were installed in 16 million Fords. Part of the recall included nearly 1.1 million 1995-2003 Ford Windstar family van models.

There was no government outcry and no demand for Congressional hearings over these recent recalls. So why has Toyota suddenly become the target of a government-led witch hunt?

Toyota’s U.S. operations are extremely successful, not saturated by inefficient union monopolies, and are in direct competition with the now government-owned General Motors.

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