".....Unions may not matter much in American workplaces anymore but unions represent the main political obstacle to just about every kind of reform: School choice. Entitlements. Pensions. Health care.
Even causes that wouldn’t seem union business prompt union opposition. Labor has been the chief obstacle to overhauling California’s notorious Environmental Quality Act—a reform supported by Democrats and environmentalists—because unions like using the law’s excessive paperwork burdens to threaten projects important to employers.
Big labor is behind a New Jersey state senator’s proposal last week for a trillion-dollar federal bailout of state and local government pensions—pensions that most federal taxpayers who would be paying for the bailout can only dream about.
Big labor is behind $15 minimum-wage proposals in major cities—a high-risk experiment for low-skilled workers, who may find themselves without jobs. But it will be a winner for organized labor. Not only will it raise costs for nonunion businesses. In Los Angeles,unions seek their own exemption so they can conspire with employers to substitute untaxed benefits for taxable wages,which strengthens the union’s hold on workers while shifting costs to other taxpayers.
As Miles Kimball,a University of Michigan economist who calls himself a “supply-side liberal,”wrote on his blog a couple of years ago:“Most unions are middle-class organizations that in their political activities are ready and willing to sacrifice the interests of the poor to benefit their members and their leaders.”
Mr. Walker’s revolution was driven by voters in towns and small cities who noticed that government workers had morphed into a privileged class—with the best pay, best benefits, longest vacations,and job security that made them basically unremovable.
Their dues, meanwhile, funded a political class that seemed indifferent to anyone else’s problems. Not always a friendly source,the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel this year credited Mr. Walker with having “shifted the policies of his state more than anyone else in generations.”...........
Aug 26, 2015: Illinois Democrats Try To Silence Gov. Rauner Over Union Talks "Democrats in the Illinois legislature may soon silence Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner by taking way his ability to negotiate with public unions.
SB1229 was introduced in February in response to troubled labor negotiations between Rauner and the Illinois chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). The measure would allow an arbitrator to takeover state labor negotiations if a new agreement is not reached within 30 days.
Some have argued, though, that the bill is a huge giveaway to state unions. According to F. Vincent Vernuccio, labor policy expert at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the measure will put power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats while allowing unions to stonewall deals they don’t like...."
Aug 20, 2015: Former Broward Teachers Union pres. steered illegal contributions to Clinton’s 2008 campaign
"....“It is alleged that after the BTU received the $80,000 payment from the School Board of Broward County, Santeramo authorized payments from the [union’s] Accountability Program account for himself and at least one other employee of the BTU to which they were not entitled,” DOJ said in a press release announcing the indictment.
Those funds were supposed to go toward training programs and leave time for teachers working on “accountability projects,” DOJ said. Instead, Santeramo pocketed tens of thousands of dollars in payments from Broward schools.
As he faces those charges, Santeramo is also awaiting trial in Broward County on 20 criminal counts, including racketeering, grand theft, fraud, money laundering, and charges involving illegal campaign contributions.
The latter involves alleged schemes to illegally direct tens of thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, among other political efforts...."
"Two of the country’s most powerful and politically influential labor unions are backing President Obama in the recent court challenge to his 2014 executive action on illegal immigration, saying they support the president’s effort because "undocumented workers" need more workplace protection and their participation helps the U.S. economy.
The AFL-CIO and the National Education Association on Monday each filed so-called amicus briefs in a federal appeals court case in which Texas and 26 other states are challenges the president’s 2014 memorandum on illegal immigration.
The memorandum essentially expands work authorization and delayed-deportation programs for illegal immigrants. And it provides similar opportunities for the parents of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents.
The AFL-CIO’s 36-page brief essentially argues that Texas lacks the so-called “legal standing” to challenge the memorandum and that the administration didn’t violate procedural requirements in issuing the order.
However, the union also makes very clear its interest in the outcome of the proceedings.
“First, through existing collective bargaining relationships, AFL-CIO affiliates represent many undocumented workers in workplaces throughout the country,” according to the brief by the AFL-CIO, the country’s bigger union collective, with 56 unions representing roughly 12 million workers and retired workers....
A coalition of groups including the Service Employees International Union, the second-largest public service union and a big supporter of Democratic political candidates and organizations, filed an amicus brief in the original case.....
In other words, they’ve become very Naziesque. A tyrannical bunch of bastards.
"The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has become a lightning rod for controversy under President Obama, with its aggressive actions fueling sustained warfare between business and labor."
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
It is important to note that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate intrastate labor. This is evidenced by a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices who clarified that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate intrastate commerce.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
And even if the states had delegated such powers to the feds, it remains that the Founding States had made the first numbered clauses in the Constitution, Sections 1-3 of Article I, evidently a good place to hide these clauses from Congress, to clarify that all federal legislative powers are vested in the elected members of Congress, not in the executive or judicial branches, or in non-elected federal bureaucrats like those running the NLRB.
So Congress has a constitutional monopoly on federal legislative powers whether it wants it or not. And by delegating federal legislative powers to NLRB, powers that Congress doesn’t have in the first place, corrupt Congress has blatantly ignored Sections 1-3 mentioned above.
The basic reason that the NLRB exists imo, is because the corrupt Senate failed to protect the states as the Founding States had intended for the Senate to do, the Senate doing so by not killing vote-winning bills which stole unique, 10th Amendment-protected state power to regulate labor.
The ill-conceived 17th Amendment needs to disappear, and corrupt senators and Constitution-ignoring federal bureaucrats like those running the unconstitutonal NLRB along with it.
Is there ANY Marxist front organization that HASN’T asserted its ‘power’ under Obama?
I see a new rallying point in a future Trump speech.