Interesting site, LaborPains.ORG.
They make a few points, today:
- Union membership is down to 7.4 percent of private sector employees and down to 12 percent overall (government employees are highly unionized, at a rate of 36.2 percent) – that’s down from a high of 20.1 percent in 1983
- Union bosses continue to be criticized for their lavish salaries, even while their membership declines
- Even after several major unions split from the AFL-CIO to improve their growth, some have found little success
- The International Longshoremen’s Association had a $10 million operating shortfall last year, and union assets were down 34 percent from 2005 to 2006. Lawyers’ bills will do that. Meanwhile, the union’s president managed to pay himself more than $580,000, and his son grabbed another $292,000 last year.
- In the last couple of years, UNITE HERE officials have been found guilty of invading employees’ privacy by illegally running their license plates through the DMV so they could find where they live and make unannounced visits. And a jury ordered them to pay $17 million for defaming medical professionals after union officials falsely told expectant mothers their babies could be in danger at a hospital caught in the middle of a labor dispute. To top it all off, UNITE HERE may be liable for $75 million after union officials tried to steal life insurance benefits from their own retired staff. The staff sued the union when they saw their key retirement benefits cut by 95 percent.
Then there’s this.
Decades after organized labor came into its own by improving working conditions for Americans, the movement is adrift. It is reeling from decades of corruption, embezzlement, internal rifts and a record of customer service that makes the cable company look good.
Right now, labor is a mere shadow of its past. The kind of labor union that most of us grew up knowing just isn’t there anymore. Aside from the famous failed air traffic controllers strike in 1981, big work stoppages are fewer and farther between and involve fewer employees. Membership has been declining for decades, and with it labor leaders’ power to stave off economic realities like, say, competition.
In an effort to rebuild their former influence, union officials have drawn up a political agenda that should give all Americans shivers.
It centers around stealing rights from employees and rigging federal laws to monkey-wrench business operations.
Take a recent story from The New York Times, which could easily have been published decades ago. Union officials are petitioning the federal government’s labor board to re-allow “minority unionism.”
This scheme would force businesses — small or large — to deal with any number of employees who want to be represented by unions, even if a majority of employees don’t want the union in their workplace.
Think this development isn’t a big deal? Think again.
The union game plan is to organize employees in an area that is highly leveraged for power, like cooks in a restaurant’s kitchen. The idea is to organize the group, bargain to impasse, and then walk off the job (while being able to provide wage-replacement benefits for just a few people). Anyone familiar with labor relations can envision how the rest of the scenario plays out.
Business leaders would do well to keep better abreast of these threats. After all, fall asleep at this switch and you may wake up to find small unions of unhappy employees in key areas of your business.
It’s also time to take note of labor’s increasingly capable public relations machine.
Union leaders are reaching out to spread their propaganda to millions more. Unions enjoy endless connections to “community groups” — many funded by labor leaders — that rush to help attack employers. The AFL- CIO operates an organization called “Working America” for more than a million sympathetic individuals who aren’t actually union members.
That is a large number of politically
(ill-)informed voters who can be convinced to start changing laws to make America less competitive.
The biggest rule change of all would be the passage of the ridiculously misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.
Few voters have heard of it, and that’s just the way labor leaders want it.
After all, who would want to advertise the fact that they are holding a political gun to candidates’ heads to end the practice of people voting their union sympathy (or lack of it) in private? If politicians — especially Democrats — don’t drink the Kool-Aid, they will be denied their chance to gorge on a feast of forced dues dollars.
Given this below-the-radar campaign, it’s not surprising that most people don’t know that union bosses have shoved this atrocity through the House and received majority approval to move forward on the Senate floor. The other shoe drops if a Democrat is elected president in 14 months. All the leading candidates have pledged passage of this law and a newly elected president will have many cards to play with a new Congress.
Union officials are willing to take extreme measures to push this terrible bill precisely because they see it as a magical elixir to cure labor’s pains. They seem to be in denial of their real problem: few people want to buy their “services.”
In the labor world, more membership equals more dollar signs.
President James Hoffa of the Teamsters union predicts this law will help double his dues income. Conservatively estimated, EFCA’s financial impact would be an additional $5 billion to $10 billion in cash flow to unions each year. That slush fund would go largely toward supporting anti-business groups and lobbying for even more power.
Of course, wishing for the best is not a plan of action. Hoping union officials will restrain themselves from grabbing power at the expense of employees is futile: it just ain’t gonna happen.
It’s sad that as Americans celebrate the original labor leaders who gave us the weekend, today’s union officials are busy trying to stick it to the rest of us.
It’s as I’ve been saying for decades, people… Unions are KILLING America.
Addendum: (Bit)
I see Michelle noting the same site. She has more of the like from various sources.
Tags: BitsBlog, Union Thugs
