Free Republic

Economic Systems: The former head of the Service Employees International Union says capitalism is on the ash heap of history and sees China as our role model. We have seen his future, however, and it doesn't work. President Obama once reportedly told aides, according to the New York Times, that things would be easier if he were president of China. Presumably he meant there would be no pesky things like a Congress, free elections and a free press to deal with. Former SEIU chief Andy Stern, who may still hold the record for visits to the White House under this...

United Steelworkers international president Leo Gerard has a message to the flea party whiny-whiners still camping out instead of sleeping in their parents' basements -- playtime is over. Just in case the Occupy movement fails -- in other words, when it fails -- Gerard is urging union members to fill that gaping void with "more militancy." "And no wonder people are occupying. We oughta be doing more than occupying parks. We oughta start occupying bridges. We start oughta occupying the banks places themselves."

Writing at RedState, blogger LaborUnionReport highlights this amazing interview with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi from last week, in which she declares that Boeing should be forced by the government to close down its non-union South Carolina plant, although she mercifully adds, “I would hope that they would make it union” to avoid this fate. LaborUnionReport is willing to cut Pelosi a little slack and allow that she might just be an uninformed boob spouting off about something she doesn’t understand at all: In fairness, Pelosi’s advisers may have neglected to tell the former speaker that the South Carolina plant...

Last week, the U.S. House Workforce Committee held a hearing on the Obama Labor Board's recent onslaught of Big Labor power grabs that undermine worker freedom. National Labor Relations Board Chairman and former union lawyer Mark Pearce offered his spin after the hearing, calling the Board's decisions "fair and even-handed." The outrageous complaint against Boeing hardly seems fair to the thousands of South Carolina workers who could be forced out of their jobs all because they can't be required to pay union dues or "fees" as a condition of employment. But don't just take my word for it. At the...

Phoenix taxpayers spend millions of dollars to pay full salary and benefits for city employees to work exclusively for labor unions, a Goldwater Institute investigation found. Collective bargaining agreements with seven labor organizations require the city to pay union officers and provide members with thousands of additional hours to conduct union business instead of doing their government jobs. The total cost to Phoenix taxpayers is about $3.7 million per year, based on payroll records supplied by the city. In all, more than 73,000 hours of annual release time for city workers to conduct union business at taxpayers’ expense are permitted...

Most city workers spend decades in public service to build up modest pensions. But for former labor leader Dennis Gannon, the keys to securing a public pension were one day on the city payroll and some help from the Daley administration. And his city pension is more than modest. It's the highest of any retired union leader: $158,000. That's roughly five times greater than what the typical retired city worker receives. In fact, his pension is so high that it exceeds federal limits and required the city pension fund to file special paperwork with the Internal Revenue Service to give...

Despite President Obama’s repeated claims to change the tone in Washington, the White House has no comment this afternoon on incendiary statements made by a union leader who spoke before the president at today’s Labor Day rally. Warming up the crowd before President Obama’s speech in Detroit this afternoon, Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. warned the largely-union crowd that the Tea Party was waging a “war on workers” and said that, come November, they should “take these sons of bitches out.” “We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see...

Thug. (TPM) — Teamsters union president James Hoffa would say it all again if he could, he told TPM Monday. Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wing Monday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress “sons of bitches” and said union workers are ready to “go to war” with the tea party next year and “take out” Republicans at the ballot box. Hoffa said he’d say the exact same words all over again. “I would because I believe it,” he said. “They’ve declared war on us. We didn’t declare war...

With around 25 employees, John King owns one of the largest non-union electrical contracting businesses in the Toledo, Ohio area. As a non-union contractor, his business happens to be doing well at a time when unions in the construction industry are suffering. This, it seems, has made the usual animosity unions have for him even greater, making him a prime target of union thugs. So much so, that one of them tried to kill him last week at his home. John King didn’t plan on being an enemy of unions. In fact, he says all he’s ever wanted to...

Union thugs are up to their old tricks — sabotage, deceit, intimidation, feces-hurling, you name it — as a labor dispute between the Communications Workers of America and Verizon festers. As usual, the left-wing civility police have gone AWOL. Last week, the company reported destroyed cable lines and theft across several states: ... The CWA has declared “open season” on managers and “scabs,” Syracuse NY-based News Channel 9 reports: ... “It is open season. Follow them safely, but when you get to a location, torture them, torture them with chants and noise. Be so loud that they can’t concentrate and...

On Tuesday’s broadcast I featured the deranged thinking of the communist Left that was displayed in a column from the Communist Party USA’s website written by someone calling himself Gus Hall (although I doubt it was the Gus Hall, since the column was supposedly written in 2001, and Mr. Hall died in 2000). During my visit to the CPUSA website I also noticed another column in the People’s World section that reported union leadership has declared state attempts to get voter identification laws passed are equivalent to Jim Crow tactics. The term “Jim Crow” refers to a system of laws...

Pastor Harris Himes sent me this letter following the shocking verdict in the Gladney beatdown case. Pastor Himes and his wife Sandra witnessed the local SEIU thugs attack Kenneth Gladney outside a Russ Carnahan town hall event in 2009. They were there when the SEIU beat an innocent black man. Harris was obviously upset with the verdict yesterday. After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney spent the night in the hospital after the beating. Yesterday the two SEIU...

From the moment the election was set to determine whether a Target Corp. store would be unionized for the first time, the company got very tough, very fast. The retail giant hired Jackson Lewis, one of the country's fiercest "union avoidance" law firms, to help keep Target's 1,755-store chain union-free. Using blunt language on the motives and effectiveness of the organizing union, the company seized on the uncertainty about pay and hours -- the very issues that sparked the union effort -- to raise doubts in workers' minds. You may be unhappy with working conditions, Target told employees at its...

Enter Nick Berardino, the AFL-CIO’s General Manager of the Orange County Employees Union; the stereotypical “thug” that speaks of his Italian heritage and jokes about showing up at Orange County Republican Party Chairman Scott Baugh’s home’s when upset with him, “and I don’t want to go there to deliver cannoli and a little bit of wine.” Mr. Berardino it seems, not only likes to joke about these physical taunts but apparently likes to “intercept” other people’s email in an effort to know all the covert moves of his opponents. That’s what he told an audience recently - “We have intercepted...

‘Forget About the Law’ Union Bosses & White House Advisors Bob Park & Rich Trumka Admitting They Are Overriding US Law & Sovereignty With The International Labor Movement http://www.theblaze.com/stories/forget-about-the-law-union-bosses-white-house-advisors-bob-park-rich-trumka-admitting-they-are-overriding-us-law-sovereignty-with-the-international-labor-movement/

Sarah Knopp, a Los Angeles teachers union leader (in the Tax the Rich shirt) and Megan Behrent a New York City teacher affiliated with the International Socialist Organization, explain how to push Marxism in the public school classroom. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDeXhmTz_0M&feature=channel_video_title

2011 Boston TEA Party Rally Disrupted by Union Thugs (illegally?) enabled by Boston Police (Parts 1,2,3) Just as the 2011 Boston TEA Party rally was beginning, a group of Public Sector Union thugs marched in, planted themselves directly in front of the podium and blocked the speakers. They chanted offensive slogans on the 3 megaphones they had brought and continued to do so for the entire 2 hours! The Boston Police, also Public Sector Union members, came in and stood in front of them. The police did not ask the disruptors to leave, even after Michael Graham on the bandstand...

<p>This election is important nationally too. If Kloppenburg is elected the Wisconsin mandate by the electorate in 2010 in this state will be negated by the WI Supreme Court and the unions will have won.</p> <p>I live in a hardcore conservative area and discovered today that my Prosser yardsign was mutilated and thrown into one of my plantings.</p>

Big Labor: Having lost its war on economics, the SEIU has declared war on the economy. Literally. One of its top minds was caught vowing to crash the stock market to redistribute wealth. Is this a union or a subversive group? Six years ago, after breaking from the AFL-CIO, the Service Employees International Union was hailed as a new kind of organization, whose dynamic leader Andy Stern would make labor strong again. His union vowed to increase its "political muscle to pressure entrenched politicians who didn't vote in the interests of their members," wrote Matt Bai in his 2007 book,...

CAUGHT ON TAPE: Former SEIU Official Reveals Secret Plan To Destroy JP Morgan, Crash The Stock Market, And Redistribute Wealth In America A former official of one of the country's most-powerful unions, SEIU, has a secret plan to "destabilize" the country. The plan is designed to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market, and weaken Wall Street's grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government. The former SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, spoke in a closed session at a Pace University forum last weekend. The Blaze procured what appears to be...