Shame on Big Labor Bosses! For years they have used the tactic of “shame” in an effort to pressure, bully and demonize employers who might stand against their efforts. They have used “shame” in their efforts to misinform the public – to create a misperception that their target is guilty of an unconscionable act and should bear the scarlet letter of these acts. These attacks have been not just against the targeted employer, but against anyone who might oppose them, including the employer’s customers and advertisers, non-union employees, even their own membership if it suits their purposes. Recently, Big Labor has taken the weapon of “shame” to the political arena, both in Wisconsin and now in Indiana.

“Shame” was the word of the day when the SEIU ran one of its Corporate Campaigns against EMS across the Midwest in 2005-2007. The Big Labor bosses never shirked from using the phrase to intimidate loyal EMS employees and customers as they attempted to cross SEIU picket lines. With banners in hand they would publicly attack EMS with incorrect statements and half-truths.

“Shame” was on display constantly last year when Big Labor bosses poured millions of dollars and thousands of foot soldiers into Madison, Wisconsin in an attempt to intimidate Governor Walker and the General Assembly into withdrawing the needed measures to restore fiscal responsibility to a state deeply in debt (see America at a Crossroads! As Wisconsin Goes, So Goes America!). Now, as we approach The Most Important Non-Presidential Election of the Decade, Big Labor bosses are at it again, attempting to “shame” the electorate into replacing Governor Walker via a recall election and then reversing the bills that have arguably put Wisconsin on a path to solvency.

(more…)

To be blunt, I’m not a big fan of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But my animosity isn’t because OECD bureaucrats threatened to have me arrested and thrown in a Mexican jail.

Instead, I don’t like the Paris-based bureaucracy because it pushes a statist agenda of bigger government. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity study has all the gory details, revealing that OECD bureaucrats endorsed Obamacare, supported the failed stimulus, and are big advocates of a value-added tax for America.

And I am very upset that the OECD gets a giant $100 million-plus subsidy every year from American taxpayers. For all intents and purposes, we’re paying for a bunch of left-wing bureaucrats so they can recommend that the United States adopt that policies that have caused so much misery in Europe. And to add insult to injury, these socialist pencil pushers receive tax-free salaries.

And now, just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, the OECD has opened a new front in its battle against America. The bureaucrats from Paris have climbed into bed with the hard left at the AFL-CIO and are pushing a class-warfare agenda. Next Wednesday, the two organizations will be at the union’s headquarters for a panel on “Divided We Stand – Tackling Growing Inequality Now.”

Co-sponsoring a panel at the AFL-CIO’s offices, it should be noted, doesn’t necessarily make an organization guilty of left-wing activism and mis-use of American tax dollars. But when you look at other information on the OECD’s website, it quickly becomes apparent that the Paris-based bureaucracy has launched a new project to promote class-warfare.

(more…)

For many Americans, Labor is the unofficial end of summer, but this year’s Labor was a chance for the Obama White House and Big Labor to demean and advocate violence against their political opponents, which happen to be Republicans and the Tea Party Movement.

President Obama traveled to the decaying city of Detroit for an astrotruf Labor Day Rally complete with Big Labor Boss Jimmy Hoffa Jr. and his stuffed labor shirts. In remakes before the President spoke, Hoffa warmed up the crowd with red meat stating personally that, “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.” President Obama in his remakes said that, “He was proud of Hoffa and other union leader.”

Hoffa calls for Big Labor to take out their political opponents AKA Son of a Bitches

Not to be out done by big labor the White House even unleashed Vice President Biden on Labor Day and the forever suffering Foot-In-Mouth Diseased Vice President did not disappoint at an astrotruf rally sponsored by AFL-CIO in Ohio. Vice President Biden boasted that, “It was big labor holding back the barbarians at the gate that is why they want you so bad.”

Vice President Biden tries to rally AFL-CIO support throught demeaning tactics

Big Labor has much to be angry about this Labor Day as its 30 million Dollar effort in Wisconsin was turned back by the Tea Party Movement, with public opinion in the State of Ohio favoring the governor’s efforts there to reform collective bargaining. The most recent job creation numbers should give Big Labor pause as President Obama has public stated that it has been Big Labor that has been advising him from the start on issues of job creation and stimulus spending, Americans are fully aware on how that has panned out with, “0” job creation last month and his upcoming speech before Congress, that most even the President’s own handlers have sought to downplay in recent days.

(more…)

One of the big unspoken fights in Wisconsin over these past few weeks has been Scott Walker’s proposal for the state to stop collecting union dues for the unions. The other has been to make paying union dues voluntary, as opposed to requiring payment as a condition of employment. To unions, that is like cutting their oxygen off. Unions cannot survive without the millions they pull in from workers and, if they had their druthers, union bosses would rather see workers fired than have them refuse to pay union dues.

Generally speaking, there are three ways for unions to collect union dues. The first is that union bosses can chase their members down on payday with their hands out; the second is that members can send the union its dues (or pay it in person); and, the third is that unions can convince employers to withhold the union dues from the members’ paychecks (employers then send the money to the unions). In this last case, which known as “dues check off,” employers becomes the unions’ dues collection agency. It is very common and, of course, union bosses love not having to spend the resources going to collect their own dues.

Well, earlier today, the Florida State House voted to stop the state from being unions’ dues collection agency. (more…)

If it wasn’t clear enough with the auto bailouts, the health care battle, the effort to effectively eliminate secret-ballot elections on unionization, as well as the provocatively pro-union actions of the agencies governing labor-management relations (the NLRB and NMB), the Battle of Wisconsin should make it crystal clear: The Democratic Party has become America’s de facto Labor Party.

When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s plan to limit (not eliminate) public-sector unions’ ability to keep their hands firmly on Wisconsin taxpayers’ throats become the rallying cry for unions, the Democrat National Committee’s Organizing for America immediately jumped into the fray. Since then, Nancy Pelosi has begun fundraising for the union cause, Sherrod Brown [D-OH] has taken to comparing those opposed to unions to Hitler and Stalin, while Charlie Rangel says that abolishing bargaining rights is akin to slavery. Accuracy? No. Lunacy? Absolutely.

Now, with Maryland Governor Marty “Muscles” O’Malley joining the union fight as a commander, Democrats are wholly and openly coordinating the fight with, and on behalf of, union bosses:

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley is building a Democratic offensive to Republican governors’ union-busting proposals, according to O’Malley spokesman Shaun Adamec.

O’Malley is meeting in Washington on Wednesday with top executives of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest labor union.

“He will discuss the political power grabs that many Republican governors are attempting, and what Democratic governors can do to work with public employees’ labor unions and the business community to create jobs,” Adamec told The Washington Examiner. The morning meeting will be held at the AFL-CIO headquarters.

One might find the unions’ singular ownership of a political party strange given that unions only represent 12% of the entire American workforce. However, Democrats know that, without the unions’ money and the boots on the ground at election time, they are finished as a party. However, the problem for the American taxpayer is inextricably linked to this perverted political process.

(more…)

The showdown in Wisconsin has generated competing claims about whether state and local government bureaucrats are paid too much or paid too little compared to their private sector counterparts.

The data on total compensation clearly show a big advantage for state and local bureaucrats, largely because of lavish benefits (which is the problem that  Governor Walker in Wisconsin is trying to fix). But the government unions argue that any advantage they receive disappears after the data is adjusted for factors such as education.

This is a fair point, so we need to find some objective measure that neutralizes all the possible differences. Fortunately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and this “JOLTS” data includes a measure of how often workers voluntarily leave job, and we can examine this data for different parts of the workforce.

Every labor economist, right or left, will agree that higher “quit rates” are much more likely in sectors that are underpaid and lower levels are much more likely in sectors where compensation is generous.

Not surprisingly, this data shows state and local bureaucrats are living on Easy Street. As the chart illustrates, private sector workers are more than three times as likely to quit their jobs.

This helps explain why the unions are treating the Wisconsin debate as if it was Custer’s Last Stand. The bureaucrats know they have comfortable sinecures and they are fighting to preserve their unfair privileges.

The only bit of semi-good news for Wisconsin taxpayers is that state and local bureaucrats are not as lavishly over-compensated as federal bureaucrats.

(more…)

Even though the Obama Administration claimed that squandering $800 billion on so-called stimulus would  keep the joblessness rate below 8 percent, the unemployment rate today is almost 10 percent. There are many reasons for the economy’s tepid performance, including a larger burden of government spending and the dampening effect of future tax rate increases (tax rates will jump significantly on January 1, 2011, when the 2003 tax cuts expire).

A closer look at the unemployment data, though , suggests that minimum wage laws also deserve a big share of the blame. In this Center for Freedom and Prosperity video, a former intern of mine at the Cato Institute (continuing a great tradition) explains that politicians destroyed jobs when they increased the minimum wage by more than 40 percent over a three-year period.

Mr. Divounguy is correct when he says businesses are not charities and that they only create jobs when they think a worker will generate net revenue. Higher minimum wages, needless to say, are especially destructive for people with poor work skills and limited work experience. This is why young people and minorities tend to suffer most – which is exactly what we see in the government data, with the teenage unemployment rates now at an astounding (and depressing) 26 percent level and blacks suffering from a joblessness rate of more than 15 percent.

Since the video is focused on economics, it does not examine why politicians would enact legislation that destroys jobs.

(more…)

Last year, when Tea Party activists almost derailed ObamaCare, the White House and its comrades in the House of Labor knew they had to somehow neutralize Americans who voiced opposition to their agenda. Ever since President Obama dispatched his soldiers to take on concerned Americans at townhall meetings last year, unions have tried to downplay their culpability in targeting tea party activists. But the targeting has not stopped. In fact, it seems like a new assault takes place every month.

In February, the union campaign against the Tea Party movement was publicly exposed.  In fact, the union-backed website TheTeaPartyisOver.org openly states  that “Patriot Majority is also putting together a tracking program of Tea Party activity nationwide to monitor outbreaks of actual violence, threats of violence or other types of extremism.” [Emphasis added.]

In March, Teamster boss James P. Hoffa took aim at Tea Party activists accusing them of being ‘manipulated’ and ‘misdirected.’

In April, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced a bill that eviscerates the First Amendment called the DISCLOSE Act.  The DISCLOSE Act is another attempt by the union-controlled Democrat Party to shill for its big union bosses.

As Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) noted here on Big Government, ”the White House and their allies on Capitol Hill see honest criticism as a threat to forcing their big government, liberal agenda through Congress.”  While the DISCLOSE Act provides exemptions for traditional news media, Reason’s Bradley Smith and Jeffrey Patch point out:

(more…)

The political process often resembles an unseemly racket as politicians take money from people who earn it and give it to another group in exchange for campaign cash and political support. The modern bureaucracy is a good example. Government workers have now become a cosseted elite, with generous pay, extravagent benefits, lavish pensions, and ironclad job security. In exchange for this privileged status, they reward the politicians with millions of dollars of support and a host of in-kind contributions.  I have documented many of these outrages in my “Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats” series at the International Liberty blog. Well, now we have a video detailing how the government workforce has morphed into a fiscal nightmare for taxpayers.

There are three things in the video that deserve special emphasis. First, bureaucrats are vastly overpaid. The government data cited in the video show that total compensation for the federal civil service is twice as high, on average, as it is for workers in the productive sector of the economy. There are some bureaucrats who deserve above-average pay, such as scientists dealing with nuclear weapons, but it is outrageous that the average drone in the federal bureaucracy is getting twice as much compensation as the taxpayers (serfs) who pay their salaries.

(more…)

Government employee union officials have enjoyed a big advantage over their political competitors: the power to compel members to contribute funds to their causes.

Such political power has served as a massive force in favor of the unsustainable spending that has forced cities like Vallejo, California into bankruptcy with unrealistic salaries and pension benefits for their unionized employees.

Normally only a tiny fraction of Americans choose to donate to candidates or political causes. Yet many government employee unions enjoy the power to compel virtually all of their members into supporting the unions’ advocacy, regardless of how the individual worker feels about that agenda.

That’s one heck of an advantage on the political battlefield, but it comes at the price of forcing, for example, Republican union members to fund Democrat campaigns. Or, conversely, Democrats in Pennsylvania funding then-Republican Arlen Specter’s re-election.  It’s wrong, and abuse of the practice has led states like Utah and Idaho to ban the practice.

(more…)

On Friday, 20 November 2009, The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation (Foundation) decided enough was enough and filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court demanding that they compel the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to comply with the Foundation’s April 6th Freedom of information Act (FOIA) request.

The Foundation’s FOIA requested:

• Records from communications and recorded events where specified Obama appointees and Big Labor official were present
• Lists of lawsuits involving the Department of Labor and Deborah Greenfield within the past eight years.
• List of any gifts received by Solis in the past 5 years from Big Labor or its officials
• Specifically provide in detail (a) notes, (b) agreements, (c) communications, and (d) agendas related to the regulations related to the labor union and officer disclosure rules
• Copies of phone logs
• Copies of any notes or documents related to any enforcement of any labor laws and any outside groups such as labor unions, American Rights at Work, or ACORN

(more…)