Bittersweet End for Boston’s Big Dig
America’s most notorious union-only project labor agreement (PLA), Boston’s "Big Dig," will come to completion with the end of 2007. What a bittersweet day for citizens of Boston. The Associated Press puts it this way:
"Don’t expect any champagne toasts."
As also noted by the AP, the Big Dig’s history was "littered with wrong turns" such as a major tunnel leak in 2004, as well as the tragic death of a motorist in 2006.
Financially, the Big Dig sapped taxpayers for $14.8 billion, over five and a half times the original cost estimate of $2.6 billion.
This train wreck of a public construction project should serve as "exhibit A" of the gluttonous waste inherent in PLAs. Such projects are also a "lose-lose" for employees that wish to remain nonunion because they are blackballed from working, as well as for the taxpayers forced to foot the bill.
Teamsters Union Vows Not to Leave Housekeepers Alone
Speaking of not taking no for an answer, local story from The Morning Sun in Michigan highlights that the housekeeping staff at the Soaring Eagle Casino & Resort rejected the Teamsters union in a vote against unionization by more than 2-to-1.
On the surface, one would think that it was a victory for the employees at the hotel and casino. But having received news of the election defeat, Teamsters bosses promised to stick around for another year to make sure they successfully influence the next vote in their favor.
The Morning Sun reports:
“They waxed us pretty good,” said Ed Morin, business agent for Teamsters Local 486. “We’re not walking away from it.”…He said the Teamsters will not go away, and will continue to try to organize other employee groups. “We’ll be around to talk to the other people,” Morin said.
The employees have spoken, but Teamsters officials just refuse to listen.
Employees Describe Their Fight Against Abusive Union Power
Employees Michael Ashby and John Hurley describe their fight against abusive union power in this short video clip from the National Right To Work Foundation’s video, The Perilous Fight.
View more video clips on the Foundation’s growing YouTube channel here.
No Means No
A group of Laidlaw bus employees outside the Windy City voted to kick out the unwanted Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1028 this week, with help from the National Right to Work Foundation.
Though the employees had already rid their workplace of the unwanted union earlier in the year, once their employer was bought out by another company, union officials began bargaining over workers’ wages and working conditions with no legal authority whatsoever! The Foundation helped Russell Haasch and his coworkers immediately take action at the National Labor Relations Board.
Employees need to be vigilant, particulary when union officials don’t take "no" for an answer. However, only a Right to Work law will provide widespread for Prairie State employees. Decertification elections are extraordinarily hard to come by and union lawyers often delay them for years by filing baseless charges.
Laidlaw Transit Busing Employees Vote to Kick Out A Union that Won’t Go Away
**Batavia, IL (December 20, 2007)** – Laidlaw Transit, Inc. busing employees have voted to remove Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 1028 as the “exclusive bargaining representative” of approximately 160 transit workers. In an election held earlier this week, Laidlaw Transit employees voted 83-64 to oust the unwanted union from their workplace.
The election result comes just months after a majority of employees had already petitioned their employer to withdraw recognition of the ATU union. However, after a British company, FirstGroup PLC, completed the purchase of Laidlaw Transit in October, the bus company and ATU Local 1028 officials illegally began bargaining over the wages and working conditions of employees that the union did not even “represent.”
With free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys, Laidlaw Transit employee Russell Haasch filed federal charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Haasch highlighted that ATU union officials had been negotiating a contract with FirstGroup, despite the fact that he and his coworkers had successfully ousted the union earlier this year.
In spring 2007, Haasch collected signatures from an overwhelming majority of his coworkers and in June presented the petition to their employer, Laidlaw Transit, which legally and properly ended its recognition of the ATU union as the monopoly bargaining agent. Haasch and his coworkers soon realized that the successor employer, FirstGroup, was negotiating a contract with ATU officials, despite the fact that the employees had shown that the union did not have their support.
According to the National Labor Relations Act, by bargaining over the contracts of employees that the union does not legally represent, the union and FirstGroup engaged in illegal “pre-recognition” bargaining. As part of their negotiations, the union sought a forced-dues clause in the contract that would make payment of union dues a job requirement. Facing an embarrassing federal prosecution, officials of ATU Local 1028 and FirstGroup had no choice but to agree to the secret ballot decertification election.
“Despite ATU union officials’ attempt to force this unpopular union on employees’ like-it-or-not, Haasch and his coworkers have once again shown them the door,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “With the lack of respect these union officials have for the employees, it is no surprise that workers have repeatedly rejected this union hierarchy.”
As a result of the decertification victory, Laidlaw Transit employees will now be free to negotiate their own terms and conditions of employment, and be rewarded on their individual merit. Decertification elections are an uphill battle for workers to obtain or win. In particular, union lawyers are adept at gumming up the works by filing baseless charges that often block an election for years. Employees can only obtain such elections during narrow periods every few years, and incumbent union hierarchies often retaliate against dissenting employees.
Merry Christmas- You’re Indicted
A high-level Teamsters official from New York yesterday was indicted on federal embezzlement and extortion charges for demanding among other things:
"…that his employees mow his lawn, clean his gutters and chauffeur his family."
Sounds like quite the life. According to the article:
"The indictment said the employees complied with Rumore’s demands because they feared they would suffer economic harm or even lose their jobs if they did not."
Rumore was released on $250,000 bond, I wonder where he got all that cash. He also faces up to 25 years in prison.
As noted by the late Senator John McClellan, "Compulsory unionism and corruption go hand-in-hand." These are the sorts of misdeeds union officials perpetrate at the expense of rank-and-file workers when the do not face the accountability instilled by a Right to Work law.
The Card Check Sucker Punch
Following up on last week’s post on Big Labor’s push for mandating coercive “card check” organizing, the New York Post had a great article about the dangers of the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act.”
Tim Miller wrote this after one presidential hopeful promised to go “10 rounds with anybody” in order to help union officials:
“EFCA would strip employees of the right to a secret ballot vote, and make it much easier for union organizers to push employees into union membership – which in turn means more dollars for labor leaders.
In other words, ‘going 10 rounds with anybody’ involves sucker-punching working Americans.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Another Expert Says Union Dues Should Be Optional
For some time now, we have highlighted the immense advantages Right to Work states have over forced unionism states. But one particular Midwestern state just keeps inching its way back into the limelight – and not in a good way: Michigan.
Workers in this struggling, economically-depressed state have been forced to pay tribute to a union in order to get or keep a job for years. Correspondingly, the data shows the state’s economy is one of the worst in the nation and has a 7.7 percent unemployment rate.
In this Grand Rapids Press piece, Paul Kersey (director of labor policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy) tells Michiganders that it’s time to take a long, hard look at and the vice grip that compulsory unionism has on workers. Kersey writes:
“…it’s time we made union dues optional and let workers decide whether the union is representing them well. States that make union dues optional have been outperforming Michigan for better than 30 years.”
No person should be compelled to pay dues to a union if they don’t want to and Michigan’s situation proves forced unionism doesn’t pay off. Only when the payment of union dues is strictly voluntary, maybe then Michigan’s economy will see prosperity like Oklahoma, which was the most recent state to pass a Right to Work law.
SEIU Low Down Dirty Tactics
One National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge recently overturned a very close decertification election and more than suggested that another election take place after union operatives practically rigged a vote in their favor.
Actually, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 399 did win the tainted election – but by a difference of two highly questionable votes.
According the NLRB investigation, SEIU union thugs used intimidation tactics, including threats, harassment of employees, and efforts to bribe the petitioner into withdrawing the decertification petition, in order to help with the electioneering. Administrative Law Judge Gregory Z. Meyerson wrote that the SEIU union’s underhanded tactics likely scared employees so badly, that they were afraid to oppose the union in the decertification election:
“…wherein union business agent Ronquillo verbally and physically threatened Alan Smith…[and] union business agent Rodriguez offered Smith a number of benefits for abandoning his support for the decertification effort, including purple scrubs, a position as a keynote speaker at the Jesse Jackson rally, and most significantly, a job with the [SEIU] Union.”
Meyerson continued that the SEIU union’s low down dirty tactics “prevented the employees from freely and fairly exercising their choice in the election.” It is plain despicable these thugs will do anything in order to keep forced dues coming into their coffers.
Read Meyerson’s full recommendation here.
Pomona Nurses Seeking to Kick Out Unwanted SEIU Union
Nurses at the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in California are today filing a decertification petition, which is a fancy way of saying they’re asking for an election to kick out the unwanted SEIU Local 121RN union.
This should come as no suprise as the National Right to Work Foundation helped a nurse at the facility hit Local 121RN with federal charges for threatening nurses with arrests, jail, and fines for refusing to walk off the job during a union-ordered strike. Some union "representation."
Union operatives also distributed a threatening flier, despite a claim to the contrary by a top union official.
