Free Republic

Almost 55 months after confessing felonious conduct, Teamster money-laundering scandal figure, Jere Nash, has finally been sentenced. U.S. Dist. Judge Thomas P. Griesa (S.D.N.Y., Nixon) sentenced Nash Apr. 9 to a mere two years probation for his role in a series of schemes which lead to the embezzlement of some $885,000 from the Int'l Bhd. of Teamsters' treasury and to $538,100 in illegal campaign contributions to the failed reelection campaign of expelled IBT president Ron Carey. The sentencing appears to have been hush hush: the four N.Y.C. major dailies and the two Washington, D.C., dailies apparently did not cover the...

The Ohio river valley was once a foundation of the American economy, and of the Democratic party. For decades, coal- and steel-producing areas in south-east Ohio and south-west Pennsylvania voted Democrat. Union workers, supporting the party of organized labor, counted on steady and well-paid jobs. But the US coal industry has been unable to survive major shifts in the world economy and steel has been subject to mechanization. In recent years, those steady jobs have disappeared. This has turned the region into ripe territory for Donald Trump. In the Pennsylvania Republican primary, the billionaire won a crushing victory, sweeping the...

The secretary-treasurer of the state’s largest teachers union is one of several top union executives involved in a pension spiking scheme in public school districts. The arrangement increases the union officials' retirement payouts from the state-run school pension system. The officials are all former school employees who left public employment to work for the union full time. Under the spiking arrangement, however, they are still carried on school payrolls — and as a result are still accumulating pension credits with the school retirement system. Rick Trainor was a teacher for 21 years at the Mount Pleasant school district. In 2011...

In March, the United Auto Workers reported that its membership grew 1.3 percent in 2015. This may come as a surprise to some because a substantial number of UAW members work in right-to-work states like Michigan. But the report highlights something worker-freedom supporters — and even some UAW officials — already knew: Right-to-work can be good for unions. Right-to-work laws do nothing to diminish a union’s ability to organize a workplace or a worker’s ability to become a union member and pay dues. A recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that in 2015, unions in what...

Wal-Mart is "hugely profitable," writes the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in a recent commentary, generating "$482 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2016." Here, the writer falsely equates revenue (the money a company takes in before subtracting expenses) and profit (how much a company makes after it pays its costs). It's a common tactic used to shock readers and inflate the perception of a company's finances. Wal-Mart's actual profit, according to SEC filings, was only 3 percent of its total revenue. That works out to roughly $6,400 dollars in profit for each of the company's 2.3 million employees—a profit...

Buying a car or truck built in the USA, by members of the UAW, is a financial contribution to Clinton and other democrat candidates. The United Auto Workers (UAW) financially support ONLY democrat candidates. Do you want YOUR money supporting democrats?

A tentative labor contract for California’s state craft and maintenance workers hikes costs to taxpayers more than any deal bargained by the union in at least 11 years, according to a new report by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. The pact with International Union of Operating Engineers Bargaining Unit 12, adds a total $473 million over four years to the state’s pay and benefits costs, the analyst’s office estimates. The figure includes increased pension, health care and other costs for the roughly 11,000 employees in Bargaining Unit 12 from July 1, 2016 to July 1, 2019. In sum, the analyst...

In an annual ritual that takes place every May, the AFL-CIO releases its “Executive Paywatch” report to publicize what it considers to be the excessive compensation of the CEOs of America’s biggest multinational firms. The nation’s largest labor federation reports this year that the typical CEO running an S & P 500 firm received total compensation of $12.4 million in 2015 while the average rank-and-file worker was paid just $36,875 — a pay gap of 335-to-1. But the AFL-CIO can only get such an inflated pay ratio by applying a series of statistical sleights... ...the AFL-CIO only considers a very...

Like tens of thousands of other Australians, I am a volunteer firefighter - bush fire is a constant threat in Australia, especially during the summer months, and the nation's sheer size and relatively low population means volunteer fire fighters are critical to public safety - the professionals do a fine job in the big cities but on the edges of those cities and out of them, it's the volunteers that are most critical. As a Victorian, I am a volunteer with the CFA - the Country Fire Authority - which has about 60,000 volunteers and about 1,000 professional employed firefighters...

When Shell announced Tuesday it had green-lighted its ethane cracker plant in Beaver County, a high school buddy who has been watching the oil industry for decades emailed me from New York. This move “completely, totally, unbelievably turns conventional wisdom of the past 40 years on its head,” John Kingston, director of Global Market Insights for S&P Global, said. “A petrochemical plant in the U.S., and not in Asia? And one not on the Gulf Coast? C’mon, that’s crazy talk!” The announcement does seem a throwback to an earlier time in Western Pennsylvania. We’re talking 6,000 jobs in building the...

...an economist would say this happens because of inefficiency, and the failure of manufacturing is all part of the “creative destruction” that is an essential engine of capitalism. But what I have seen here in the heartland of the United States is only the destruction; the creation takes place offshore. Making a god of efficiency denigrates the much more important goal of effectiveness. Efficiency (as Peter Drucker writes) is doing the thing right, while effectiveness is doing the right thing. Of course, ideologues firmly believe that effectiveness is purely automatic: Progress is inevitable! But that is not the reality I...

“You don’t have to be honest. I mean we can talk in theory.” –Paul Diamond, Executive Vice President, Yonkers Teacher Federation “I don’t’ care if it’s the phys ed teacher you went to high school with, you don’t fucking tell anybody anything…Because old loose lips sink ships.” — Patricia Puleo, President, Yonkers Teacher Federation “You could. Your parents could have been down there, or your cousin could have been down there, or your brother and they were taken by drug dealers and you literally had to go bail them out and you didn’t know what to do and you lost...

One of Hillary Clinton’s most influential labor supporters has endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single payer healthcare plan. Members from Service Employees International Union, which represents nearly 2 million healthcare and government workers, passed a resolution declaring medical care a human right at its national convention in May. Obamacare, which the SEIU lobbied for and endorsed, failed to address inequality in the healthcare marketplace and insurance systems remain “confusing and inefficient.” The union pledged to work to improve upon Obamacare with the goal of expanding into a government-run system. “The American healthcare system allows the profit motives of providers, pharmaceutical companies,...

Helen Chavez, the widow of civil rights leader Cesar Chavez, died Monday at a Bakersfield, California, hospital with many of her seven surviving children, 31 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren by her side, according to the United Farm Workers. She was 88. Helen Chavez helped her husband launch and sustain what became the first enduring farm workers union in the United States. She used her fierce determination to help change the lives of thousands of farm workers and millions of others who were inspired by La Causa, the UFW said on its Facebook page. "If it wasn't for her, Cesar would...

Imagine if your boss at work could fire you? French union workers can’t fathom it! It’s extremely difficult and time consuming to fire someone in France which basically demands that companies offer employment for life. Such idiotic labor policies cause all kinds of unintended economic problems such as high unemployment, lots of temporary workers, and reduced GDP. Finally some very basic labor reforms are being proposed in France. Naturally, French unions are going crazy by protesting, rioting, and striking. Check this out, from Breitbart.com: As the head of France’s bosses’ federation accused unions of behaving like “terrorists”, the fresh industrial...

PARIS — Fuel shortages, cancelled flights, disrupted trains: France is on strike yet again. The stakes get higher each day. The Euro 2016 soccer championship, which will see hundreds of thousands of visitors traveling to France to root for their national soccer teams, is set to start on June 10. At the same time, Paris is dealing with a constant terrorist threat and now record flooding. From afar, it’s easy to see these latest strikes, prompted by a new government attempt at labor reform, as the exclamation of an over-unionized nation stubbornly holding onto protections and privileges that are hardly...

While teachers at Michigan’s largest school district were living under a wage freeze, and more recently hearing rumors of possible payless paydays, one school employee who is also president of the local teachers union got a huge raise. That district is the insolvent and academically challenged Detroit Public Schools, and the union president is Ivy Bailey of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. Bailey was listed as a teacher in 2013-14 and earned $70,176. Her salary shot up 31 percent to $91,877 in 2014-15. Bailey’s compensation is listed in a state salary database of employees enrolled in the school employee pension...

On Monday, the Illinois legislature passed a bill lowering the amount the city of Chicago has to pay into police and firefighter pensions in 2016. To do this, the legislature overrode a veto from Gov. Bruce Rauner, confirming what we already knew: It's really, really, really, really hard to agree with Rauner about anything at this point. For no one would it be harder than Mayor Rahm Emanuel, once Rauner's buddy in vacationing and wine-sipping. Rahm became basically apoplectic when Rauner vetoed the pension bill on Friday, saying in a variety of press statements that Rauner's veto would trigger a...

Our sources in France are unanimously warning that a major socialist union uprising is building in France and could erupt rapidly. The unions in France are notorious for being the most socialist, highly Marxist, in the entire world. To get their demands, they will go anything. They even kidnapped the head of Goodyear until he yielded to their demands. They act more like Stalinist rebels who ignore laws and it is always just about them. Employers are evil capitalists in their book. This time the uprising is building over proposed labor regulation reform supported by Hollande, who is a socialist...

An American seized in Yemen in a sweep of suspected al-Qaida members had been a laborer at six U.S. nuclear power plants, and authorities are investigating whether he had access to sensitive information or materials that would be useful to terrorists. Sharif Mobley, 26, worked for contractors at plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland from 2002 to 2008, mostly hauling materials and setting up scaffolding, plant officials said. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan said Friday that investigations are under way into which areas Mobley entered. But he noted that areas containing nuclear fuel are tightly controlled, and that...