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Union’s Free Spending Raised Free Speech Concerns at Issue in Court Case

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Photo Credit: Flickr Creative CommonsUnion leaders based in Chicago racked up more than $13,000 in hotel charges to attend President Obama’s second inauguration and more than $6,000 to purchase booze for a Christmas party the month before.

If the bosses of the Service Employees International Union plan to continue spending in that fashion, though, they may have to find some new sources of cash to cover expenses such as the $1.1 million in travel their Indiana-Illinois health care unit logged in fiscal 2013. The SEIU no longer can force home-based personal care assistants to pay dues-like fees to the union.

That’s because Pamela Harris, an Illinois mother who provides health care services to her disabled son prevailed yesterday in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that challenged compulsory union dues as unconstitutional under the First and 14th amendments.

The case, in which justices decided 5-4 in Harris’s favor, is known as Harris v. Quinn. Harris and six of the other seven plaintiffs provide care for disabled family members in Illinois. They are paid under the state’s Medicaid program but are hired by the patients they serve.

Read more from this story HERE.

Unions Push State Legislatures for Labor History Courses

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Photo Credit: Fox News Unions and their allies are trying to flex their muscle in state legislatures, pushing for labor history to be included in social studies curriculum and hoping a new generation of high school students will one day be well-educated union members.

But the results are instead shaping up as a reminder of the tough political landscape faced by organized labor. In six states, opponents have pushed back against demands that teachers offer lessons about the first craft unions in the 19th century, the large-scale organizing drives that powered the growth of industrial unions in the 1930s, the rise of organized labor as a political machine and other highlights of America’s union movement.

California and Delaware are the only states with laws that encourage schools to teach labor history.

Kevin Dayton, a policy consultant to non-union construction companies in California, said the legislation was pushed by unions to boost their ranks.

“They believe that one of the reasons young people are not organizing in unions is because they’re not taught in schools the benefits of being in a collective workforce,” he said.

Read more from this story HERE.

States Give Criminal Exemptions to Union Goons

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Photo Credit: National Review By Alec Torres.

Labor organizers and union enforcers are exempt from important criminal laws in some of the country’s largest states. California, Illinois, and Wisconsin are among the states that allow union members to stalk, harass, and threaten victims — so long as they are putatively doing “legitimate” union business.

As National Review Online recently reported, one such state, Pennsylvania, is pushing to repeal exemptions that give union members freedom from prosecution for stalking, harassing, or even threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Other states have similar laws on the books, but unlike the Keystone State, they’re not even trying to fix this double standard.

California, for example, has a union carveout for stalking and trespassing. Those engaged in “collective bargaining, labor relations, or labor disputes” are also legally free to “willfully [block] the free movement of another person in a [public-transit] system facility or vehicle.” If an ordinary Californian did that, he or she would face a $400 fine and 90 days in prison.

The Golden State even exempts those “engaged in labor union activities” from prosecution for making “a credible threat to cause bodily injury.”

Read more this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsLittle-Known PA Law Shields Unions From Stalking, Harassment Charges

By Fox News Insider.

We heard an unbelievable story on Fox and Friends this morning about a Pennsylvania businesswoman who says she has been repeatedly harassed by union workers. And because of a little-known state law from the 1930s, nothing can be done about the menacing tactics.

The dispute between Sarina Rose and local Philadelphia union members started when her employer, Post Bros., hired some non-union workers to build apartments. The company refused to hire an all-union labor force for the job, and the resulting dispute led to daily protests at the site by union workers.

Rose says non-union workers were routinely harassed on their way to and from work and their vehicles were damaged as the behavior became more and more violent.

“In a couple of incidents, guys were chased with crowbars. Some were actually hit,” she explained to Steve Doocy this morning. But prosecutors are handcuffed by a clause in state law that protects parties in labor disputes from charges of stalking, harassment, and terroristic threats.

Rose said that many lawmakers she has spoken to about the exemption are “perplexed” about it.

Read more this story HERE.

Complaint: UAW, VW Coerced Workers Into Accepting Unionization

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Photo Credit: APTennessee autoworkers have filed a second set of complaints alleging that Volkswagen’s corporate headquarters pressured employees to join the United Auto Workers Union.

Four autoworkers filed a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board alleging that members of the German-based company’s board of directors threatened to end plant expansion in the right-to-work state if employees did not join a European-style works council.

The support that corporate leaders are lending to the UAW amounts to coercion, according to the complaint filed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTW).

“Bernd Osterloh, vice-chairman of VW and head of VW’s global works council, who makes production decisions for VW, said publicly that employees in Chattanooga must form a works council and bring in the UAW as their agent if their plant is going to be given the opportunity to produce additional products for VW,” the complaint states.

“Volkswagen AG through their officers, directors, and/or agents are thus interfering with Chattanooga facility employees’ rights to choose whether or not to engage in self-organization to form, join, or assist labor organizations.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Video: Obama Calls for Striking Union Workers to be Fired

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Photo Credit: YouTube Screenshot

Photo Credit: YouTube Screenshot

Hilarity ensues as a panicked Barack Obama – fresh off his defeat at the hands of elderly World War II veterans – grabs a microphone and makes a compelling case for firing every union worker who goes on strike:

The poor saps cheering him are almost as funny as Obama himself. The only thing that would make this clip better would be a quick reaction shot of an aide facepalming himself into a coma, or maybe a union boss beginning to applaud until he realizes what the President just said, at which point he slowly stops clapping.

Read more from this story HERE.

Laborers’ Union: Fix Obamacare or Repeal It; ‘We’re Getting Our A– Kicked Here’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Terry O’Sullivan, president of the 600,000-plus-member Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), often referred to as the Laborers’ Union, said that if Obamacare is not fixed, then “it needs to be repealed.”

At a convention in Las Vegas of the AFL-CIO, with which the Laborers’ Union is affiliated, O’Sullivan took to the podium to endorse a proposition and then launched into a criticism of Obamacare, how it is hurting union members’ health coverage, and demanded it be fixed, adding that if it is not fixed, labor will make the issue a “big fricking deal.”

“If the Affordable Care Act is not fixed, and it destroys the health and welfare funds that we have all fought for and stand for, then I believe it needs to be repealed,” said O’Sullivan. “We don’t want it repealed, we want it fixed, fixed, fixed, and I commend Richard Trumka and the AFL-CIO for leading that charge. ”

Read more from this story HERE.

Study: More than 400 Union Officials Made Over $250K in 2012

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

More than 400 labor officials earned more than a quarter of a million dollars in salary in 2012, according to a new study.

Media Trackers found that the top 100 highest paid union officials garnered more than $52 million in 2012, salaries paid by membership dues of the laborers and government employees they represent.

The top-paid union official is NBA Player’s Association head G. William Hunter, who made more than $3.1 million on the year. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees chief Lee Saunders rounded out the top 100 with gross pay of $353,580, according to the study.

Read more from this story HERE.

Citing Obamacare, 40,000 Longshoremen Quit the AFL-CIO

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picture - trumkaIn what is being reported as a surprise move, the 40,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) announced that they have formally ended their association with the AFL-CIO, one of the nation’s largest private sector unions. The Longshoremen citied Obamacare and immigration reform as two important causes of their disaffiliation.

In an August 29 letter to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, ILWU President Robert McEllrath cited quite a list of grievances as reasons for the dissolution of their affiliation, but prominent among them was the AFL-CIO’s support of Obamare.

“We feel the Federation has done a great disservice to the labor movement and all working people by going along to get along,” McEllrath wrote in the letter to Trumka.

The ILWU President made it clear they are for a single-payer, nationalized healthcare policy and are upset with the AFL-CIO for going along with Obama on the confiscatory tax on their “Cadillac” healthcare plan.

Read more from this story HERE.

Union: EPA Carbon Regulations Costing Jobs

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Pennsylvania local union officer argued last week that hundreds of families will lose their jobs due to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) anti-coal agenda, according to the Pittsburg Post-Gazzette.

Raymond C. Ventrone, business manager of the Boilermakers Local 154 union, explained that the coal industry has already invested millions of dollars in clean air technology. Even though coal usage tripled in the last 30 years, sulfur dioxide levels fell by 56 percent thanks to this new technology.

However, according to Ventrone, the EPA disregarded these innovations by the coal industry.

Read more from this story HERE.

Union-Free America, Beware: Obama’s NLRB Is Locked, Loaded and Ready To Do Union Bosses’ Bidding

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Photo Credit: Red StateIt is now official. Barack Obama’s union-dominated National Labor Relations Board is now up to its full anti-employer potential with AFL-CIO attorney Nancy Schiffer and union lawyer Kent Hirozawa being sworn in, along with union attorney Mark Pearce resuming his role as chairman.

This is the first time the NLRB has had five sitting members since 2003, when Democrats began crippling George Bush’s NLRB in an effort to diminish its capacity on rulings.

While two Republicans, Harry I. Johnson, III and Philip A. Miscimarra were also sworn in, they are in the minority and, as a result, will only be useful for their dissent (which can sometimes be useful in federal courts).

Although Obama’s NLRB had been stymied for a period of time, thanks to the bi-partisan deal cutting by Senate Republicans, union-free employers are facing a more hostile environment not seen for the last 30 years or more.

Read more from this story HERE.