Freedom Line Blog

Lost in all of the media hyperventilation about the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision yesterday (where the left is truly embarrassing itself over an extremely narrowly tailored decision) is the equally good news that came out of the case of Harris v. Quinn, which challenged Illinois’ requirement that home care workers had to contribute dues to the SEIU even if they didn’t want to join (an arrangement that was set up through a back room deal with now-imprisoned former Governor Rod Blagojevich). From The Hill:

The Supreme Court on Monday chipped away at the power of organized labor by ruling that some state workers cannot be forced to pay union fees.

In a 5-4 decision, the justices struck down a requirement that home care workers in Illinois contribute to a branch of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), even if they choose not to join.

“A state may not force every person who benefits from this [union’s] efforts to make payments to the [union],” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority’s decision.

It’s always the same story with big labor: their supposed benevolence relies on coercion. If people don’t want to join the union, by what right should they still be forced to pay them? And if the unions think the lack of dues leaves them vulnerable to free riding, then why not limit the terms of collective bargaining only to those workers who are actual members? The answer, of course, is that labor negotiates deals far better than they could receive in a competitive market, leading them to attempt to lock out anyone who might be willing to work for a lesser rate.

Expect to see the same outcome in Illinois that you did in Wisconsin when workers there got out from the unions’ thumbs: dues payers rushing for the exits. If big labor wants a viable future, they’ll have to start standing on their own two feet. The days when they can live off of others are quickly coming to a close.

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

Barack Obama has consistently failed to gain political traction with unseemly attacks against everyone from former President Bush to Fox News to John Boehner’s tan.  So Obama redirected his aim using illogical and baseless attacks against business groups whom he accuses of attempting to “sway elections” through sinister election spending.”  David Axelrod, Obama’s top political guru, has labeled election spending a “threat to our democracy,” and when pressed to identify a shred of evidence supporting Obama’s allegation of illegal foreign campaign spending benefiting Republican candidates could only reply, “do you have any evidence that it’s not?”

So which group has actually spent the most to influence this year’s Congressional elections?  The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), a 1.6 million member union of public employees.  According to The Wall Street Journal, AFSCME has now spent $87.5 million, which outdistances the demonized Chamber of Commerce by a cool $12.5 million.  Of the top five spenders, in fact, three of them are big labor unions (the other two being the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and National Education Association (NEA)).

One would hope for more ethical behavior from a President who based his entire 2008 campaign on bringing “change” to our toxic political discourse.  What will be his campaign theme in 2012?  Instead of “hope and change,” he’s building a legacy of “hypocrisy and impropriety.”

As CFIF Vice President of Legal and Public Affairs Tim Lee explained in this week’s Freedom Minute, the largest American labor unions are promising to spend a combined $150 million of their members’ dues money to preserve Democratic control of Congress.

To put that into perspective, here’s a partial list of what President Obama did for unions after receiving $60.7 million from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in the 2008 cycle:

»  Only 10 days after taking the oath of office, Obama signed three executive orders that, respectively, limited what federal contractors can say to employees during union organizing drives, made it harder to fire incompetent employees of government contractors, and directed federal contractors to insure that employees are aware of their organizing rights.

»  One week later, Obama signed another executive order that requires federal agencies to use union-favored Project Labor Agreements on large federally funded construction projects. Not only does that mean many state government construction projects must use a PLA, but so must many economic stimulus-funded projects.

»  Hilda Solis, Obama’s secretary of labor, has nullified disclosure rules issued during the Bush administration that were designed to increase union financial transparency on forms required to be filed with the government under the Landrum-Griffin Labor Management Reporting Disclosure Act of 1959. The disclosure requirements, which were not enforced before Bush, made it possible for union members to see what their officers were doing with their dues.

If Democrats do somehow hang on to power after this year’s midterms, expect at least double the payback for the unions’ doubled investment.

H/T: Washington Examiner

If union representatives treat each other thuggishly, just imagine how they’d behave outside the homes of skeptical employees under card-check legislation.  Consider the words of Dolores Huerta, United Farm Workers co-founder, as reported in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal commentary entitled “California’s Union Shakedown”:

Dolores Huerta, a co-founder of United Farm Workers and a historic labor figure in California, published an ‘open letter’ to [SEIU leader Mary Kay] Henry on the Huffington Post that accuses the SEIU of intimidating Kaiser workers.  Saying that she visited four Kaiser hospitals to talk to workers about the NUHW, Ms. Huerta wrote that at each, ‘SEIU staff surrounded them and began chanting and yelling insults, refusing to let workers talk.’  Ms. Huerta called on the SEIU to put ‘an end to a mistaken campaign of aggression.'”

Under the so-called Employee Free Choice Act – which remains on the legislative wish list of Big Labor, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama – union campaign reps would have access to employees at their homes, supermarkets and elsewhere.  If union agents treated Ms. Huerta, one of their own, that way, just imagine how thuggish they might behave at the home addresses of reluctant employees.  Yet another illustration of the need to maintain the democratic secret ballot during union elections, rather than allow union leaders to eliminate it via card-check.

We’ve all heard the horror stories and seen the cringe-inducing statistics about public employee pensions and the unions that make them insolvent.  Now, organized labor provides yet another example of just how bad its leaders are at managing other people’s money; this time, their own members’ dues.

Because Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) did not support a public option in ObamaCare, the dons of American labor decided to make an example out of her to other left-of-center Democrats.  Their hate totaled $10 million of union members’ dues spent to defeat her in the Arkansas Democratic primary.  And they lost.

True to form, they are lashing out.  In fact, the political director of the SEIU issued a warning to other Lincoln-type Democrats:

“We’ll see if Blanche Lincoln is made a better senator for having to answer to working Arkansans over these past few weeks. And if you are [Democrats] Larry Kissell (N.C.-08) or Zack Space (Ohio-18) or Mike McMahon (N.Y.-13) or Michael Arcuri (N.Y.-24) or another candidate who stopped advocating for the needs of working families once elected, the labor movement is going to be at the side of those voters who demand change,” said SEIU national political director Jon Youngdahl.

These people are crazy.  But then again, you’re an American taxpayer so you probably already knew that.

H/T: Politico

All politically/financially/culturally destructive things must end, and so it is that the chief of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU), Andy Stern, will be stepping down soon.  Ostensibly, it’s because he helped shepherd comprehensive health care “reform” into law, one of his key legislative goals.  But as the New York Times points out, he didn’t achieve passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (aka “card check”), which eliminates the secret ballot in unionization elections.  Hard to believe that after 14 years at the helm, Captain Ahab Stern is jumping ship before landing the biggest prize for organized labor.  Could it be he’s being groomed for bigger things than a radical, labor version of a community organizer?

Here’s yet another reason to flay Andy Stern’s leadership of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).  One of the biggest motivators behind the union’s support for Obamacare is the belief that requiring an individual mandate to buy insurance will create more health care jobs ripe for unionization.  Just in time, too, because SEIU is apparently incapable of adequately funding its own pension plans.

What’s the connection? The SEIU needs more new dues-paying members to pay for the retirement of current members if it is to rescue its pension plans from subpar performance. It’s a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff proud. With many of its members employed in health care, the union believes – not illogically – that if more Americans have health insurance, the demand for health care will expand and so will employment in the health sector.

Who says the Democrats aren’t focusing on job creation?

Today, congressional Republicans put up their six members to sit on President Barack Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.  They are Representatives Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Jeb Hensarling of Texas, and Dave Camp of Michigan, along with Senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, and Mike Crapo of Idaho.  Hopefully, their combined focus on cutting spending will off-set fellow panelist and SEIU chief Andy Stern’s insatiable appetite for more tax dollars funneled to public employee unions.  Bring on C-SPAN!

If there are any camels’ backs at the breaking point, here’s a public employee union-sponsored straw.   As if daring the mainstream media to challenge his meritless assertions of bipartisanship, President Obama named SEIU leader and fellow Saul Alinsky disciple, Andy Stern, to his “Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.”

That’s right; the panel of experts tasked with finding ways to reduce the federal deficit will count among its ranks a man who agitates for expanding both the membership and compensation of government employees.  He also has tight connections with ACORN and organized intimidation campaigns against Tea Party activists.  Asking Stern to find ways to save taxpayer money is like putting a fox in charge of the bed check in a hen house: it makes sense if you don’t think about it.

Darrell Issa (R-CA), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, today issued an explosive new report on ACORN and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), charging, among other things, a “criminal conspiracy.”

The entire report may be read here.

Over on National Review, Stephen Spruiell gives an in-depth look at how the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is helping President Barack Obama remake America into a much more liberal place, one piece of legislation at a time. The excerpts below offer a powerful wake-up call to anyone thinking that the stimulus bill, health care reform, and card-check are anything other than massive redistributions of wealth.

On getting a union-friendly stimulus bill:

The stimulus bill was a top priority for SEIU because it contained massive bailouts for state governments and Medicaid. As mentioned above, states such as California, New York, and New Jersey have expanded their social-welfare systems beyond what they can afford, in response to pressures from SEIU and other public-sector unions. At the same time, their progressive income-tax structures have made them especially vulnerable to boom-and-bust cycles. When the credit bubble burst, these states were looking at massive deficits, layoffs, furloughs, and budget cuts. The stimulus bill included a $50 billion slush fund for state governments and $90 billion in Medicaid expansions, helping the states avoid a necessary round of belt-tightening and tax reform.”

A bit surprisingly, California came in for particularly rough treatment:

The most illustrative example of SEIU’s clout during this process came when the Obama administration threatened to withhold stimulus funds from the state of California if it went ahead with a planned reduction in payments to home health-care workers. The administration set up a conference call with state officials to discuss whether the cuts violated the terms of the stimulus, and state officials were surprised to learn that the administration had invited SEIU representatives to join the call. “This was really atypical and outside any norm I am familiar with,” California secretary of health and human services Kim Belshe told the Los Angeles Times. The administration backed down from the threat, but only after the story had leaked and caused significant blowback.”

On getting a union-friendly health care reform bill:

SEIU has poured millions into a group called Health Care for America Now, which has dispatched envoys to deliver portable pavilions, professionally printed placards, and uniform attire at almost every major health-care protest this year. Dennis Rivera sent hundreds of union activists to meetings this summer in an attempt to counteract opposition to the Democrats’ bill. “We’re running this campaign like this was a presidential campaign, and our candidate is health-care reform,” Rivera told the New York Times. Why does SEIU care so much about health-care reform? The subsidies and mandates in Democrats’ legislation would drive up demand for health-care services, meaning more revenue for hospitals, more health-care workers, and more members for SEIU.

The creation of a government-run insurance plan is an especially important priority for the SEIU. “The nexus between government and private industry would give SEIU a toehold to organize more workers,” explains J. Justin Wilson, managing director of the Center for Union Facts. Once the public option is in place, SEIU can pressure the bureaucracy to implement union-friendly policies. For example, the public option “might only reimburse hospitals that are unionized or have a neutrality position toward unions,” Wilson says.

And finally, supporting card-check legislation:

As important as the Democrats’ health-care plan is to SEIU, the union’s top priority remains the Employee Free Choice Act, otherwise known as the card-check bill. Under SEIU’s preferred version of the bill, employers would have to recognize a union once a majority of its employees had signed petition cards. This process would allow union organizers to identify holdouts and pressure them into signing up. The bill would also require business owners to allow union organizers to hold meetings with employees on the business’s property, while forbidding the owners to hold mandatory meetings to discuss unionization.

Finally, the bill includes a binding-arbitration provision that would allow the NLRB to impose a union contract on a business if negotiations with its union broke down. SEIU loves this provision, because Obama just named one of its lawyers, Craig Becker, to the NLRB. Businesses negotiating with the SEIU would have two choices: accept SEIU’s demands voluntarily or have the SEIU-friendly NLRB accept them for you.”

You can read the entire article here.