My last word on unions

Did a little digging and came up with some little tidbits:

Watch the following video…….then read the article.

http://blog.heritage.org/2011/02/20/video-myths-vs-facts-of-the-wisconsin-union-protest/

 Some other excerpts from newspapers and older reports on union presidents (didn’t have time to look for others).

1.   Stacy Billings, a parent of two Madison students, told the Wisconsin State Journal that she supports unions and opposes Walker’s proposal but is against a teacher protest during school hours: “That’s not acceptable to me. My tax dollars pay for the teachers to teach and not to protest.”

 What Billings does not understand, but is about to learn, is that like all government unions, Madison Teachers, Inc., does not care about teaching her children. Former American Federation of Teachers President Al Shanker put it bluntly: “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” That is what this fight in Wisconsin, and across the country, is really about: money. And not money for government employees—money for government unions. The government unions themselves are admitting this every day the fight drags on.

2.  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote in 1937: “All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. … The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.”

3.   This is why private-sector unions are regulated by the federal National Labor Relations Act but government unions are regulated by the states. Wisconsin is actually the birthplace of collective bargaining power for government unions, granting them the privilege in 1959, but many states have always operated, and still do, just fine without them. Virginia, for example, gives no collective bargaining power to government unions, but according to the Pew Center on the States, it still somehow manages to be one of the best managed states in the country.

4.  When President Obama came into office, he shielded government unions from transparency by ending their reporting requirements to the Department of Labor. As a result it is impossible for the American people to know for sure how much of their taxpayer revenue is being diverted into union coffers. But if you assume that each union member pays between $500 and $750 annually, taken involuntarily directly from their paychecks, that means the government union industry in Wisconsin is worth at least $100 million a year.

6.  If government employees want to voluntarily form associations and lobby the government for higher pay, better benefits, and working conditions, that is their constitutional right. But they have no right to force all employees to join their organization and take money from their paychecks every week. Governor Walker’s bill fixes these problems: It affords government workers the right to quit their union and keep their jobs; it requires unions to demonstrate their support through annual secret-ballot votes; and it stops state and local governments from collecting union dues through their payroll systems. 

7.  Ernie Duran, Jr. – President of Local 7 – lost his re-election bid to Kim Cordova, a rank and file union member who works at Safeway. Along with Cordova union members voted in a new Secretary Treasurer, a new recording Secretary, and 19 of 25 board candidates who campaigned as part of Cordova’s reform slate. Change has come to the labor movement in Colorado.

 Why were union members so upset with their long serving President? Because he used their hard-earned union dues for his own personal gain. The President paid himself $162,000 a year, and put his son Ernie Duran III and his daughter Crisanta Duran on the union payroll for $134,000 a year each. The average Denver area grocery cashier, by contrast, earns only $24,000 a year and pays over $450 annually in mandatory dues to fund this largesse.

 Not content with paying himself and his children six-figure salaries, Duran also expensed top-shelf margaritas, a new blue tooth, and even Denver Bronco’s tickets to the union. All of this was paid for by rank and file workers mandatory dues. So it shouldn’t be surprising that he controversially spent those dues heavily to defeat a ballot initiative that would have made paying union dues voluntary.

8.   In August of 2008, the president of the largest SEIU local in the country, former-Los Angeles local member Tyrone Freeman, resigned after the Los Angeles Times revealed that Freeman fleeced his fellow union members — who make about $9 an hour caring for the infirm and disabled — of over $1 million in 2006 and 2007 alone. When Freeman was first faced with the charges, he sent out “lieutenants” to force other union members to sign loyalty oaths supporting his continued presidency. Now President Barack Obama has made it easier for future Freemans to get away with their crime.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/apr/27/obama-team-reverses-union-transparency/?page=2

 What did union officials do to protect the union dues of its members? Nothing. According to the Los Angeles Times, SEIU national president Andy Stern had been repeatedly made aware of Freeman’s nefarious activities since 2001 but declined to do anything about them. His spokeswoman told the LAT: “Until we read these allegations in the L.A. Times, nobody ever brought before us serious credible evidence of wrongdoing.”

 If it had not been for the Los Angeles Times, this story never would have broke and Freeman would still be stealing from hospital workers. How did the LAT break this story? By examining LM2 reporting forms that, thanks to Bush administration regulations, increased union transparency. Now the Obama administration has moved to gut those transparency rules. The Washington Times reports:

 9. The Labor Department also is rescinding another key labor financial disclosure regulation. The expansion of the so-called LM-2 rule, approved during the last days of the Bush administration, requires unions to report more information about finances and labor leaders’ compensation on annual reports.

 Under what pretense is the Obama administration weakening LM2 requirements? According to the Times: “unions say the Bush administration reporting rules were unfair and burdensome.” Considering how unburdend Andy Stern was by Freeman’s reported theft, we believe unions deserve some heavy burdens in transparency reporting.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-stern31-2008dec31,0,1403726.story