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Posts Tagged ‘labor unions’
September 8th, 2023 at 2:46 pm
Image of the Day: Public Overwhelmingly Considers Unions a Negative Force
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Joe Biden carelessly and repeatedly labels himself “the most pro-union president in history.”  Well, this snapshot of public opinion illustrates his tone-deafness on the issue, and might also offer insight for those who can’t fathom why he remains so wildly unpopular.  Namely, an overwhelming share of Americans consider unions a negative force in the private sector, not a positive one:

Americans Consider Unions a Negative Force

Americans Consider Unions a Negative Force

February 17th, 2023 at 4:57 pm
Big Labor Targets Tech Company findhelp
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Here at CFIF, we’ve written at length about how unionization rates in the United States have reached record lows. Despite talk of Big Labor’s resurgence, spurred by a pro-union White House and a federal government that tips the scales in unions’ favor, American workers are just not sold by the self-enrichment of union leadership and hostile negotiating practices that ultimately harm workers more than help them.

America’s growing tech sector, which typically maintains non-unionized workforces, perfectly illustrates today’s workforce realities.

A company named findhelp in Austin, Texas, however, suddenly finds itself at the center of an unwanted drama that threatens the company’s future courtesy of Big Labor.

By way of background, findhelp is a social care network to connect people with community services. It’s a “public benefit company” backed by private equity that employs approximately 250 workers.

On January 25, the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) announced that findhelp workers formally sought a union representation election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Naturally, deep-pocketed Big Labor groups like the AFL-CIO leapt at the announcement to claim it as some sort of watershed moment for workers in the tech sector.

Instead of a watershed moment, however, the reality appears to be Big Labor doing what it is notorious for doing: instigating worker unrest. This case offers a particularly chosen opportunity to Big Labor, as it desperately seeks to gain a foothold in the tech sector, and in a right-to-work state whose growing population and business prosperity are due in large part to the fact that it remains a refuge from the destructive public policies pushed by Big Labor.

At the center of the effort to unionize findhelp’s employees is the “findhelp Solidarity Network,” a glossy, public relations effort claiming employees at the company are “missing a voice at the table.” Parroting commonplace Big Labor Union slogans, it expresses a desire to “ensure that findhelp becomes, and stays, a place where all team members have a living wage, competitive benefits, and a respectful work culture.”

Those are curious charges against a tech start-up like findhelp, but ones that are all too recognizable for anyone familiar with Big Labor’s antics.

Meanwhile, on the popular company-review website Glassdoor, findhelp maintains an average rating of 3.4 out of 5. Companies like findhelp in early stages of development naturally experience growing pains, and complaints on Glassdoor by current and past employees like issues with “transparency,” “trust,” and management allegedly refusing to respond to employee feedback are commonplace at start-ups. An NLRB complaint charges findhelp with coercive actions, coercive rules and coercive statements, among other typical boilerplate union charges. Which raises the question of whether such commonplace complaints justify a full-blown union representation campaign threatening to drive a fledgling company into the ground through union representation.

It also makes for an odd irony, because many tech sector companies maintain left-leaning employee cultures, often at the encouragement of left-leaning executives themselves. Accordingly, one might expect them to welcome unionization, since in the abstract those same left-leaning cultures would favor Big Labor and its partisan agenda.

Tech sector employers, however, operate in an environment demanding fluid development and the ability to pivot on a moment’s notice. Unions, by their very nature, inhibit that sort of fluidity and flexibility.

It’s an issue of obvious concern for management, investors and even customers who may question the ability of a company with Big Labor’s bullseye on its back to function as effectively and efficiently as needed.

Unfortunately, all of this threatens to further embolden Big Labor, which may in turn have a substantial impact on startup companies across our economy, particularly in the tech sector.

In the meantime, all eyes will be watching findhelp and how it navigates this sudden and unwanted disruption.

April 26th, 2017 at 10:18 am
Nat’l Free-Market Orgs Urge Missouri Governor to Champion Public Sector Union Reforms
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Today, a broad coalition made up of nearly two dozen of the nation’s largest and most influential free-market organizations, led by the Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”), sent a letter to Governor Eric Greitens congratulating him on Missouri becoming the 28th state to enact right-to-work legislation and urging him to go further by championing reforms to hold public sector unions accountable to their members and Missouri’s taxpayers at large.

The coalition of organizations pointed to the successful public sector union reforms championed by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in 2011 and urged that, “Missouri has a real opportunity in 2017 to join Wisconsin in leading government union reform.”

Specifically, the organizations noted that “House Bill 251, a comprehensive government union reform package containing paycheck protection, regular recertification elections, union transparency requirements and prohibitions on union release time, is currently in the Senate and awaits final votes from both chambers” of the Missouri legislature.  The letter goes on to state, “As the legislative session quickly comes to a close, we urge you to help Missouri become the next state to see government union reform become a reality.”

“The reforms in House Bill 251 not only protect the rights of workers, but also bring immediate, demonstrable benefits to states enacting them, as Wisconsin’s recent example proves so vividly,” said Timothy Lee, CFIF’s Senior Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs.

“With Governor Greitens’ leadership, House Bill 251 provides a real opportunity for Missouri to become a model for the rest of the nation in terms of holding government unions accountable to their members and taxpayers,” CFIF President Jeffrey Mazzella said. “We urge Governor Greitens to lead the way on this important issue.”

In addition to CFIF, the organizations making up the coalition include: American City County Exchange, American Commitment, American Conservative Union, Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC Action, Center for Freedom and Prosperity, Center for Worker Freedom, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, Frontiers of Freedom, Institute for Liberty, Institute for Policy Innovation, Jeffersonian Project, Less Government, Missouri Club for Growth, National Taxpayers Union, 60 Plus Association, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, Taxpayers Protection Alliance and The Market Institute.

Read the letter here.

July 28th, 2014 at 9:28 am
Big Labor’s Latest Targets: Women and Student Athletes
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In an interview with CFIF, Aloysius Hogan, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, discusses the recent SCOTUS decision in Harris v. Quinn, labor unions’ targeting of women, and the latest on the proposed unionization of student athletes. 

Listen to the interview here.

April 11th, 2014 at 7:11 am
Video: Will Labor Unions Take Over College Football?
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CFIF’s Renee Giachino takes aim at the recent National Labor Relations Board ruling allowing college football players at Northwestern University to unionize.

December 2nd, 2013 at 3:12 pm
Podcast: Right to Work
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Aloysius Hogan, Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, discusses recent efforts to repeal laws that require workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment, why union membership offers little value, and a Supreme Court challenge to union practices.

Listen to the interview here.

December 21st, 2012 at 9:08 am
Video: Defending the Right to Work
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On the heels of heated protests in response to the state of Michigan passing legislation that prevents workers from being coerced to join a labor union, CFIF’s Renee Giachino sets the record straight on the benefits of right-to-work laws.

 

November 12th, 2012 at 2:02 pm
Does Obama Owe His Reelection to Right-to-Work Laws?
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Oh, irony of ironies. What little hope there is on the economic front (which was at least sufficient to reelect the president) may have stemmed from policies antithetical to his worldview. From the National Institute for Labor Relations Research:

Right to Work states (excluding Indiana [which didn’t implement its right-to-work law until earlier this year]) were responsible for 72% of all net household job growth across the U.S. from June 2009 through September 2012.  If these states’ job increase had been no better than the 0.85% experienced by forced-unionism states as a group, the nationwide job increase would have been less than half as great.  And the President wouldn’t have been able even to pretend the economy was in recovery.

August 10th, 2012 at 12:52 pm
American Airlines’ Labor Union Antics Continue

In yet another example of big labor flexing its destructive muscle to undercut American Airlines’ bankruptcy restructuring, the Allied Pilots Association this week rejected a contract offer from American that included pay raises and a 13.5 percent stake in the company, among other generous terms. 

To make matters worse, afterwards, the union board forced its president David Bates – who has a reputation for being both reasonable and pragmatic – to resign as seemingly a sole consequence of his support for American’s offer. 

It’s now beyond clear that the pilots union is going all in with US Airways CEO Doug Parker, who has made numerous promises to labor in his recent attempts to prematurely force a merger with American. This is the same CEO Parker who, since uniting America West with US Airways seven years ago,  has been unable to settle terms with the pilots of those airlines, even while he is now actively negotiating with American’s pilots. 

The fact remains that the entire airline industry was bloated during the last decade, and every legacy carrier has been forced to restructure to reduce their costs. While American – whose onerous labor costs are the highest in the industry – waited the longest to restructure, the company has recently excelled financially. To sustain its recent performance, however, there is no getting around the fact that it will need  to continue to cut costs, which means labor will have to agree to reasonable concessions.

Fortunately, a number of other unions have been more agreeable in their negotiations with American: mechanics and aircraft stock clerks represented by  the Transport Workers Union both ratified new accords this week. 

But if American’s pilots are unable to cooperate with their own labor leadership, colleagues and management to accept generous but realistic contract terms, they could effectively send their employer, or perhaps the entire airline industry, the way of the auto industry.

The difference this time being, the taxpayers won’t be there to bail them out.

June 21st, 2012 at 1:30 pm
Podcast: Big Labor’s Antics Continue
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From breaking state budgets to disrupting private airline industry reorganization, CFIF’s Timothy Lee discusses the latest antics of big labor unions.

Listen to the interview here.

April 12th, 2012 at 1:40 pm
As California Bleeds Money and Citizens, Unions Call for Higher Taxes
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California, as has become universally known in recent years, has become a fiscal and political basket case. Take a look at the state as it stands in the spring of 2012: it has a $9.2 billion budget deficit, approximately half a trillion dollars in unfunded public pension liabilities, and a business environment ranked worst in the nation by Chief Executive magazine (in 2010, the periodical referred to the state as “the Venezuela of North America”).

Part of the problem, of course, is the liberal-labor union coalition that dominates Golden State politics, in which the most nefarious force is the California Teachers Association, the hulking union that overwhelmingly outspends any other special interest in the state. Now, in the midst of this economic crisis, the CTA is getting behind Governor Jerry Brown’s proposal to increase state sales and income taxes, a move that would only hasten the state’s decline.

I tackle the issue in my new column for City Journal California. From the coda:

CTA officials contend that Brown’s proposal—an extra quarter of a cent added to the sales tax and up to three extra percentage points on the state income tax, depending on income levels—represents only a modest increase, a cost that the Golden State’s economy can easily absorb. But the margin of the increases is less significant than the final rates they will produce. If Brown’s package passes, California would have both the highest state sales tax in the nation and the highest top income-tax rate. That will only continue to drive economic activity out of the state, a trend that recent IRS data shows cost California $27 billion in tax revenue from 1999 to 2009.

The lesson should be clear: the kind of punitive taxation that Brown’s initiative promotes is precisely what depletes the tax base necessary to finance California’s public schools and pay the salaries of CTA members. Raise rates and you only dim the prospects for public education further.

In a 2009 piece for National Affairs, I noted that, “from 2004 to 2007 more people left California for Texas and Oklahoma than came west from those states to escape the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.” Yet in the intervening years California’s political class has done nothing to improve conditions for those who might be tempted to leave the beauty and cultural dynamism of the Golden State behind for more economically palatable environs. One wonders exactly what natural disaster they’ll have to approximate before the lesson sinks in.

March 26th, 2012 at 1:39 pm
Meet Your Next Secretary of Education
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If the next Republican president has a brain in his head — and if the federal Department of Education must remain (it sadly seems as if we’re beyond a day when cabinet departments can disappear, their very existence now functioning as prima facie evidence of their worth) — he’ll pick Michelle Rhee to be his Secretary of Education.

Rhee spent three years as the chancellor of Washington D.C.’s public schools — one of the nation’s worst (and most expensive) educational systems — before resigning in the fall of 2010 with the election of a new mayor. During that time, Rhee was a game-changer, firing nearly 250 under-performing teachers in one blow, closing down failing schools, and devising an extraordinarily clever workaround for tenure reform.

These days, Rhee is running an education non-profit and living in Sacramento, where her husband, former NBA star Kevin Johnson, is the mayor. In an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle over the weekend, she demonstrated why — in addition to her impressive record — she has the chops to be the next Secretary of Education; Because she not only has a strong grasp on first principles, but an artful way of presenting them:

Q: You are archenemy No. 1, according to the teachers unions. Do you see a way to work with them rather than wage war with them?

Rhee: First of all, we definitely did not wage war on the union. In fact, the union has very little to do with what we’re focused on really at all.

What we are focused on is a pro-kid agenda. And if we have to fight the existing district bureaucracy, state legislators, teachers, whoever is standing in the way of kids getting the education they deserve and trying to protect the status quo, and maintain the way things are, we’re going to be willing to fight against any of those.

I believe that the teachers unions are doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. They were designed to be professional organizations that protect the rights and privileges and pay of their members. … The problem is that we don’t have an organized national interest group with the same heft as the teachers union that’s advocating on behalf of children.

This, it seems to me, is a remarkably sober response to the ever-expanding influence of teacher unions on education policy: I will not decry you, I will simply defeat you. Game on, Madame Secretary.

November 21st, 2011 at 8:30 pm
Michigan Union Siphoning Money Away from the Handicapped
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As if we needed further proof of union venality, get a load of this stomach-turning story out of the Wolverine State:

Remember this the next time you hear Big Labor claim to be standing up for the little guy.

h/t BreitbartTV

November 1st, 2011 at 5:33 pm
Pelosi: Make Your Plant Union or Shut it Down
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sat for an interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo last week on the state of the economy. Based on her remarks here, we can conclude that — as dismal as the current downturn is — it would only be worse if the Sage of San Francisco and her ilk were still running the lower chamber:

h/t: Hot Air

August 26th, 2011 at 8:50 am
Video: Big Labor Takes a Holiday … from Reality
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In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses how everyday American workers are being used as political pawns to advance the job-killing agenda of big labor unions.  

August 17th, 2011 at 5:37 pm
Citizens Can Stop Obama’s Big Labor Giveaway
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Ever since the health care debate permanently damaged President Obama’s credibility with the American people, his administration has avoided major legislative confrontations. Instead, the White House has pursued many of its most controversial initiatives through the administrative process, hoping that Americans won’t notice major changes crafted through esoteric rule changes. Now’s your chance to prove the president wrong.

As the Daily Caller reports, the National Labor Relations Board is proposing a rule change that would dramatically shorten the period of time between when union organizers file a petition and when an actual unionization vote is held. The policy, intended to make it harder for management to counter union initiatives, would shorten the period from around six weeks down to 7 to 10 days. 

The Caller characterized one former board member as saying “the Board appears to be rushing to finalize its new policy before more Americans can flood the government with disagreeable comments.” But that looks to be a losing endeavor. The public comment period, which began on June 22, has already resulted in more than 17,000 comments, most of them negative.

There’s still time to stop the NLRB’s anti-business onslaught. The comment period remains open through Monday, August 22. If you’re interested in making your voice heard, you can comment here. The job you save could be your own.

June 23rd, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Illegals Get to Stay if They are Pro-Union

A hat tip to Michelle Malkin’s indispensable web site for this jaw-dropping report. It turns out that the Obama administration is encouraging the national immigration service to exercise “prosecutorial discretion” in order NOT to deport illegal aliens if, among other reasons, they are involved in a fight for union privileges.

To avoid deterring individuals from reporting crimes and from pursuing actions to protect their civil rights, ICE officers, special agents, and attorneys are reminded to exercise all appropriate discretion on a case-by-case basis when making detention and enforcement decisions in the case of victims of crime, witnesses to crime, and individuals pursuing legitimate civil rights complaints. Particular attention should be paid to:…. individuals engaging in a protected activity related to civil or other rights (for example, union organizing or complaining to authorities about employment discrimination or housing conditions)….

Holy Union Thuggery, Batman!!!  Since when is “union organizing” a “right” for somebody who isn’t even a citizen or legal resident of the United States?!?  Break our laws by violating our borders, stay here illegally, and start agitating for union representation against your employer, and suddenly you are untouchable! You’re now a protected class of lawbreaker. Nice deal, eh? What’s next — forgiveness in American courts for all breaking-and-entering offenses as long as the violator is in favor of card check?

Words fail. This administration now is managing to combine two of its pernicious initiatives, amnesty and feathering the nests of union bosses, in one fell swoop. Unionizing is now equated with a civil right; lawlessness is now a “discretionary” concept. This should be all over the front pages of all the big papers; it should lead the nightly newscasts; it should be the subject of congressional hearings — and it should get people fired, because it is an abomination.

March 18th, 2011 at 10:32 am
Gallup Survey: Unions Reduce Workplace Wellbeing
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Apparently, whatever jobs labor unions don’t drive overseas or eliminate entirely are made worse by them.

According to a just-released Gallup survey, “U.S. Union Workers Score Lower on Work Enforcement Index.”  On a variety of measures, from the sense of employee/supervisor partnership to overall trust, unionized workplaces simply maintain substantially lower levels of workplace wellbeing.  Ultimately, as the Gallup report states, unionized workplaces impact the factors that “in turn have well-documented associations to various desirable business outcomes, including customer engagement, turnover, absenteeism, and productivity.”

As critical standoffs between taxpayers and intransigent labor bosses in Wisconsin and across the nation continue, this new Gallup survey sheds some important information on the matter.

March 18th, 2011 at 8:56 am
Podcast: New Study – State Labor and Employment Practices, and Their Impact on Economic Growth
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Glenn Spencer, Executive Director of the Workforce Freedom Initiative at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, discusses his organization’s recent 50-state study highlighting labor and employment regulatory regimes and their impact on economic growth.

Listen to the interview here.

February 22nd, 2011 at 12:06 am
Further Proof that Paul Krugman is Unstable
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From today’s iteration of the inimitable (thank God) Dr. Krugman’s column in the New York Times:

… what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy.

If this is what makes it to print, one wonders what function it is exactly that Dr. Krugman’s ‘editor’ serves. The Grey Lady is on life support.