WASHINGTON, D.C. – It’s no secret that Big Labor is dependent on dues and fees automatically withdrawn from the payroll checks of union members and non-members alike.

The automatic deductions funnel millions of dollars into public sector union coffers each year, with a portion frequently going toward partisan political causes and liberal candidates who promise to preserve or expand the unions’ forced dues racket.

But this vicious cycle is finally being challenged in states and municipalities around the nation. Perhaps the most important challenge, Knox vs. Service Employees International Union, was heard earlier this month by the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The case is one of a growing number of examples of how public employees, including public school teachers, are pushing back against forced union dues – something many consider a violation of their First Amendment rights. American citizens should not be forced to financially support an organization or political causes they don’t agree with, union objectors rightly contend.

By forcing members and non-members to subsidize its radical political agenda, Big Labor may have finally cooked its Golden Goose.

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GRANT, Mich.  – Ever wonder what it costs to quit a labor union?

For one Michigan educator, the annual costs of “non-membership” in the local, state and national teacher unions total $544.28.

But Andrew Buikema, 10-year teacher with Grant Public Schools, is willing to pay the price, just for the privilege of being seen as a true professional, instead of a union worker.

Michigan is not a “right to work” state, which means Buikema’s job is still affected by the district’s contract with the local teachers union, the Grant Education Association. The GEA is affiliated with the Michigan Education Association and the National Education Association.

Buikema has been trying to leave the union since last spring, when he realized that GEA leaders were uninterested in helping the district control costs, even in the face of a multi-million dollar deficit.

By refusing to make wage and benefit concessions, the union contributed to conditions that led to 27 teachers – including Buikema – receiving layoff notices. The district was also forced into making cuts to student academic and extracurricular programs.

Buikema’s job was saved at the last minute, but he was disgusted by the union’s selfishness.

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In Ohio, as union bosses have embraced Occupy Wall Street’s (OWS) class war between the “99 percent” and the “1 percent,” it has becomes increasingly difficult not to ask an obvious question:

Aren’t union bosses basically the 1 percent?

Throughout the run-up to Ohio’s Issue 2 election on November 8, in which voters will consider a referendum on the state’s new public sector labor reforms, I’ve met pponents of the bill at Occupy Columbus who say they are fed up with “the rich taking from the middle class.” They direct their class warfare energies at the abstract Wall Street anathema, but the scenario is literally accurate–and not in some obtuse, Marxist form–as a description of the fiscal dynamic between union bosses and rank-and-file members.

I asked one teacher how, being an Occupy demonstrator and opponent of Ohio labor reforms, she justified the $210,000 annual salary of Larry Wicks, executive director of the Ohio Education Association (OEA), of which she is a dues-paying member. She paused for thought–understandably, since that fact would seem to justify class warfare against the “rich” Mr. Wicks. Ultimately, she concurred with my criticism, and even condemned her very own OEA.

Other Ohio teachers are even less hesitant to criticize their union. One teacher (who wished to remain anonymous for her own safety) shared that she had requested a waiver to opt out of paying the union’s political assessments, to which the response was, “We’ll get back to you.” They didn’t. (more…)

Union bosses have been engaging in class warfare for so long now that it’s become standard for the media to echo the meme without challenge. An example of such mainstream Marxism is in today’s Bloomberg piece entitled ‘Runaway CEO Pay’ Could Support 102,000 U.S. Jobs, AFL-CIO Says. Bloomberg’s piece relies heavily on the AFL-CIO’s Executive Pay Watch, which was set up years ago to conduct a haves vs. have nots class warfare campaign to eventually have CEO pay limited by law or regulation. This was something union bosses accomplished to some degree with last year’s “Wall Street Reform.”

However disdainfully un-American it is to argue whether someone makes too much money in what was once the nation known as the land of opportunity, sometimes you have to roll with the pigs in the pigsty to show how stupid their arguments are. So here goes:

Here is the AFL-CIO’s statement:

In 2010, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index company CEOs received, on average, $11.4 million in total compensation. Based on 299 companies’ most recent pay data for 2010, their combined total CEO pay of $3.4 billion could support 102,325 median workers’ jobs.

Using a simple calculator, it is easy to determine that the “workers’ jobs” would pay $33,227 per year (about $16 per hour), not counting union dues, of course.

Given the AFL-CIO’s penchant for pushing an eat the rich ideology, it seemed worthwhile to use the unions’ own logic to run our own set of numbers to determine how many workers’ median jobs one years’ worth of union dues could support.

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From John Fund in the Wall Street Journal:

Labor historian Fred Siegel offers further reasons why unions are manning the barricades. Mr. Walker would require that public-employee unions be recertified annually by a majority vote of all their members, not merely by a majority of those that choose to cast ballots. In addition, he would end the government’s practice of automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks. For Wisconsin teachers, union dues total between $700 and $1,000 a year.

“Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits,” Mr. Siegel told me. After New York City’s Transport Workers Union lost the right to automatic dues collection in 2007 following an illegal strike, its income fell by more than 35% as many members stopped ponying up. New York City ended the dues collection ban after 18 months.

Myron Lieberman, a former Minnesota public school teacher who became a contract negotiator for the American Federation of Teachers, says that since the 1960s collective bargaining has so “greatly increased the political influence of unions” that they block the sorts of necessary change that other elements of society have had to accept.

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Last summer, unions spent an estimated $10 million on the Democratic primary in Arkansas in a failed attempt to defeat then-Senator Blanche Lincoln. It was $10 million worth of their members’ dues that was wasted.  Unions did not waste their members’ money because Blanche Lincoln opposed higher wages or better benefits. Union bosses wasted their members’ money because Blanche Lincoln fell out of union bosses’ favor for not by backing the job-killing Employee Free Choice Act (aka card-check).

On the mid-terms, unions spent hundreds of millions on voter registration, campaign donations, TV ads, manpower and GOTV efforts. Nearly all of that money went to union-bought Democrats.

In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that union members who object to having their union dues spent on politics can get a refund for the portion of their dues used for politics. Since then, however, many union members have found the process of getting their dues refunds an burdensome process.

This week, at CPAC, Republican Saul Anuzis (a former member of the Teamsters) announced the launch of a new website specifically designed to give union members assistance in getting refunds for the portion of their dues used on politics.  It is not “anti-union,” it is a site with one purpose—to help union members who do NOT want their dues money used on politics, regardless of party.

The site is UnionRefund.org

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Grandpa Wouldn’t Recognize Today’s Unions.

Nationwide, as many Americans have begun to see, unions have become one of the largest special interest groups in the nation—and often at the expense of taxpayers and, in many cases, other workers. As unions have moved more into politics, this transition from building unions for workers to building a progressive political party to “reorder America’s priorities” has left many union members wondering whether their unions have been hijacked for purposes outside of the betterment of the workplace.  As more and more politicians get bought off by union bosses, it certainly seems clear that today’s unions are more about building a ‘progressive’ political movement than representing many of their members’ interests.

In all, unions collect over $13 billion dollars per year in union dues and fees from workers, the majority of whom have no choice but to pay the union or be fired from their jobs.  Once the money leaves the workers’ pockets, though, union bosses are pretty much free to use the money how they see fit.  For example, in addition to paying themselves and their staffs, union bosses also take the money and spend an astronomical amount of money pushing their progressive agenda.

While hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on direct political activities and lobbying, unions also spend hundreds of millions on funding shadowy groups to push for things like nationalized health care, the job-killing Employee Free Choice Act (which effectively eliminates workers’ right to a secret-ballot election), as well as the effort to nationalize America’s retirement system.

Despite the use of union dues being used with little input from the workers themselves, throughout the country, there are cracks beginning to appear in the more “progressive” (read: socialist) union bosses’ veneer.  As union bosses have pushed open borders and the legalization of illegal immigrants as a means of replenishing their depleted ranks, some have taken exception.

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You’re hoping for another 1994, eh? Well, you’re not going to get it if D.C.’s biggest union bosses have their say — and they don’t just have a say, they have a checkbook to put where their mouths are. And both words and munitions are taking on an overtly combative tone.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting:

The AFL-CIO plans to roll out its biggest political campaign ever, surpassing the $53 million spent in 2008 to help elect President Barack Obama, to try to avert a repeat of the 1994 midterm election when Democrats lost a majority in Congress.

If that sounds a bit aggressive, that’s nothing compared to the powerful head of the AFSCME public employee union, who is saying “The time has come to draw a line in the sand…Regardless of your party affiliation, if you’re not with us, you are against us.”

(We’re pretty sure we’ve seen other people get hammered for using the same language, but we digress…)

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Courtesy of Victor Skinner, writing on NEAexposed.com:

A recent study of contributions made by the nation’s two largest teachers unions reveals that both shelled out millions in 2008-09, with a good chunk going to radical and scandal-ridden organizations.

The study, posted online by the Education Intelligence Agency, is further proof that the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers are out of step with their members, which union officials claim are evenly split between Democrat, Republican and Independent parties.

This is what the EIA found:

The AFT gave $46,894 to the scandal-plagued Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). That organization’s members gave tax evasion advice to pimps and prostitutes, encouraged struggling homeowners to walk away from their mortgages, and championed radical causes like softer immigration regulations and a government takeover of health care.

The AFT’s interest in government-run healthcare is also apparent in its $407,208 donation to the Economic Policy Institute, a union-funded progressive think tank that advocates for the expansion of unionized government jobs, and generally promotes organized labor’s interests.

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“…California remains one of the best places in the world to start a successful small business.  All you have to do is start with a successful large business”

US Rep. Tom McClintock; (R) Rocklin (CA)

This week, the ordinary American citizens known as Tea Party Patriots— the pesky nemesis of power-drunk, spendthrift politicians—have laid down a gauntlet, building on the momentum of the protests in towns all across America as well as the 1+ million Tea Partiers who took part in rallies across the country on September 12th.

Making the transition from single-event political protest rallies to a sustained political activism campaign, the Tea Party Patriots have filed an initiative to appear on the November 2010 ballot in California.  The initiative is the first official act within the true grass roots’ political activism platform we’ve titled “The Citizen Power Campaign”.

What is the first target the Tea Party Patriots’ ‘Citizen Power Campaign?’

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With the health care debate raging and, what seems like, new bills being proposed everyday, it is easy to get bogged down in the details and corresponding rumors. One aspect of Democratic healthcare plan that will never change is whatever bill Democrats end up with, they intend to pay for it through taxes on so-called “Cadillac health care plans” (and several other tax increases).

While the “tax anything we can” rhetoric delights most on the Left, it doesn’t play so well with the party’s largest contributor and loyal ally, organized labor.

Unions have spent the past few decades bullying employers into giving them overly generous health care plans (think United Auto Workers) often to the detriment of the companies they work for. Unfortunately for labor, the healthcare plans they spent years negotiating are now considered “Cadillac plans” and are under attack by the same people they helped spent $450 million to put into office.

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