Free Republic

First Amendment? Secret Ballots? Fuggetaboutit! Labor unions have a lot at stake in 2008. The AFL-CIO’s PAC is spending $53M to help elect Barack Obama. More is being spent on behalf of Democratic incumbents and challengers in House and Senate seat races. There is nothing dearer to the hearts of Big Labor than securing the White House and a filibuster-proof Senate majority to help them obtain their number one legislative priority: the Orwellian named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). And Big Labor will stop at nothing, not even the First Amendment, to achieve their aims....

Members of the carpenters union in New York City have ruined any chance that authorities there will take their union out of government oversight by beating unconscious William Davenport, a union dissident running for office in the union. After an August 5 candidates forum, the candidate was beaten by members of the carpenters union audience outside a church. Outside a CHURCH! This thuggery along with continued Mob involvement, indictments and convictions on corruption of union members convinced Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr. not to release the union from government oversight.... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

Vallejo, already in an economic tailspin, has lost about 20 percent of its police force since the city began its slide into bankruptcy. About 25 of its 150 or so sworn officers have retired or left for other cities, afraid their pensions or salaries may be slashed if a federal bankruptcy court allows the city to void its union contracts. "It's a tragic loss for this city," said Vallejo police Lt. Don Hendershot. "We've lost a lot of dedicated, experienced officers. It's very sad seeing these guys go, but I understand why they're leaving." The North Bay city of 117,000...

California's largest union local and a related charity have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to firms owned by the wife and mother-in-law of the labor organization's president, documents and interviews show. The Los Angeles-based union, which represents low-wage caregivers, also spent nearly $300,000 last year on a Four Seasons Resorts golf tournament, a Beverly Hills cigar club, restaurants such as Morton's steakhouse and a consulting contract with the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, records show. In addition, the union paid six figures to a video firm whose principals include a former union employee. And a now-defunct minor...

House Vote on Card-Check.

Michael Shires, professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine scratches the itch of why government is so expensive in California; including local county and municipal governments. Shires argues that it is just not a matter of increased taxes v. cutting services; this is how Democrats and Republicans in the California legislature paint the picture. Rather, revenue declines are only a small part of the problem. While services and their cost actually do not increase, the annual increase of secretly negotiated salary, benefits, and cost-of-living increases benefitting unionized public employees is killing budgets, savings, and family finances statewide.Shires writes: “Most public employees...

We may not be getting effective governance from movie star-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but we can count on a steady diet of grandiose, and usually hollow, political gestures. Who could forget, for instance, the time that Schwarzenegger posed with a gigantic faucet, out of which flowed a red liquid, to dramatize budget deficits? Or the time he denounced the Legislature as "girlie men" for delaying budget action? Having promised and utterly failed to end "crazy deficit spending," Schwarzenegger is resorting once again to cheesy stunts, this time a threat to reduce the salaries of tens of thousands of state employees to...

State workers chanted Thursday outside the Capitol to assail Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's plans to pay 200,000 state employees the federal minimum wage until a budget is signed, providing some of the most compelling budget-related scenes of angry Californians this year. It may have been what the governor wanted all along, even if they shouted his name in disgust. The governor's draft executive order to withhold a portion of state workers' pay, obtained Wednesday by The Bee, has generated public attention for the state's budget situation in a way that months of Schwarzenegger town halls never could. Whether Schwarzenegger's attempt to...

Two years ago, newly elected Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa vowed to put 1,000 more cops on the city's dangerous streets and proposed to raise trash collection fees to provide the money. "Every new dollar residents pay for trash pickup," the mayor promised in a city news release, "will be used to put more officers on the streets." Residential trash collection was boosted from $11 a month to $26. The new fees generated $137 million, but the city hired only about 400 more cops, according to a recent report from City Controller Laura Chick, and they cost about $42 million....

BERKELEY - As they promised, members of a large University of California service workers union went on strike this morning, throwing up picket lines at the Berkeley campus and other UC facilities. The scene was peaceful in Berkeley. Union members carrying signs are handing out leaflets about their dispute with university management; people driving by are honking constantly in support. The union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, represents nearly 20,000 workers, including bus drivers, cooks, custodians, gardeners and parking attendants at the university's 10 campuses and hospitals. The strikers are ignoring a restraining order issued Friday by...

Vallejo, Calif., took the extreme step of filing for bankruptcy to get out of generous obligations to public employees. Other cities and states are watchingThe jig is up. For years, politicians have been playing what amounts to a multi-trillion-dollar shell game with state and local pensions. They've doled out lush retiree benefits to their heavily unionized workforces, knowing that they could shove the cost for those benefits onto future generations of taxpayers. But a recent financial bombshell dropped by a San Francisco suburb shows why that shell game is now starting to unravel in a nasty way. And it's a...

Union members shout demand for 'living wage' at meeting campus meeting - Campus police escorted UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau out of the back of a building Thursday after angry union members took over a meeting, yelling and screaming about living wages.About 350 people showed up to a meeting where Birgeneau was supposed to answer questions from the Berkeley Staff Assembly, a campus group open to all employees.About 90 percent of the protesters wore green shirts, designating their affiliation with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.The union, which represents about 900 campus employees in service and medical...

Sacramento, CA (AP) -- A state appeals court says California can continue sending thousands of inmates to other states to ease prison crowding. The Third District Appellate Court overruled a Sacramento County Superior Court judge's February 2007 decision that the transfers to out-of-state private prisons was illegal. The transfers are a key part of the state's effort to control prison violence. The state is also counting on the transfers to help dissuade a special panel of three federal judges from ordering the early release of tens of thousands of inmates

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom will unveil a record $6.5 billion budget today that includes threatened layoffs of 250 to 350 city workers to help erase a projected $338 million deficit, City Hall sources say. The layoffs, along with the elimination of hundreds of unfilled positions, would be among the most extensive that City Hall has seen in years - affecting everything from the Public Health Department and Human Services to the Recreation and Park Department.Whether workers actually lose their jobs, however, may depend in part on whether Newsom gets what he wants from city employee unions - namely, $29...

VALLEJO, Calif.—The city of Vallejo has filed for bankruptcy protection to deal with a ballooning budget deficit caused soaring employee costs and declining tax revenue. The San Francisco Bay area suburb of about 120,000 residents is the largest California city to declare bankruptcy. Mayor Osby Davis says the city's attorneys filed papers seeking Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in federal court in Sacramento on Friday. The City Council voted to authorize the city manager to file for bankruptcy on May 6 after months of failed negotiations with its public safety unions. Some officials blame the financial crisis on labor contracts they...

Peter Scheer, who heads the California First Amendment Coalition, has a novel idea: End the secrecy surrounding local government labor contract negotiations. You can understand the logic and the urgency behind his idea when you consider the situation in Vallejo. That city is filing for bankruptcy. Why? Local officials approved salary and benefits costs for current employees and retirees that are more than the city can afford. Scheer's point is that California law allows local government officials "to avoid public discussion of the true cost and fiscal impact of the pay deals that they have approved." By the time the...

The Senate has given critical approval to legislation to give all police, firefighters and other first responders the right to collective bargaining. The 69-29 procedural vote proves the bill would survive any possible filibuster attempt. The Senate will vote to send the bill to President Bush later this week. . . . Cabinet secretaries say they will suggest he veto the bill. . . .The bill would guarantee public safety officers the right to join unions and bargain over wages, hours and conditions of employment. It also would ban them from going on strike.

Hoping to prevent a city bankruptcy that would suspend their union contracts, Vallejo's police, firefighters and rank-and-file employees went public Monday with an offer to cut their salaries and give up raises. Capping months of fiscal agonizing, the City Council voted last week to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy following dire predictions by city staff of imminent insolvency. The petition for bankruptcy is expected to be filed sometime this week, said city spokeswoman Joann West. Only one other city in California - Desert Hot Springs (Riverside County) in 2001 - has gone into bankruptcy. Orange County took the same step...

Anyone who enjoys cagey politicking should doff his or her cap to California's Republican legislators. That's because the Reeps have been very impressive lately in maneuvering their Democratic counterparts into a corner in this year's dance over the state budget. As we all know, Republicans make up just 39.1 percent of the Legislature, and have no illusions of increasing that percentage anytime soon. Moreover, they've been a minority for more than a decade. Traditionally, the Reeps have been content to just say no when it comes to the budget. As one of the very few substantive legislative processes in which...

By declaring bankruptcy, Vallejo has thrust itself into the national spotlight as a test case for thousands of floundering cities desperate to unload their extravagant public employee contracts. "There's a wave of this coming across the U.S.," said Sajan George, an adviser to struggling public entities who worked on restructuring Orange County after it declared bankruptcy in 1994. "What happens in Vallejo could definitely set a precedent." Battered by the plummeting housing market and skyrocketing public employee contracts, Vallejo made dubious history Tuesday night by becoming the largest California city to declare bankruptcy. The North Bay city of 117,000 was...

The question you have to ask about the officially bankrupt city of Vallejo, and other California cities with similar financial profiles, is this: Didn't you know something was wrong when you realized you were spending 75 cents of every dollar in the general fund on public safety costs? In a broader sense, how can any city anywhere make a legitimate claim of vibrancy when so many essential social services are shortchanged? It seems we're about to find out in Vallejo, a city with a population of 117,000 whose City Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to file Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection...

Unions should be required to make public more details of their internal finances, the Labor Department said Thursday as it proposed new changes to union disclosure forms. Unions are required every year to file financial disclosure forms with the Labor Department. But federal officials are proposing a more detailed form, and penalizing small unions who get into trouble with the law by banning them from filing a simple form. The proposed changes will be printed on Monday in the federal register. "This proposed rule provides union members with more complete information about union finances and will better protect their legal...

Vallejo has become the first city in California to file for bankruptcy because it didn't have enough money to provide basic services. This is dreadful news for Vallejo - and its citizens - but it's also an ominous report for the rest of us. The city council's unanimous decision Tuesday night, which came after hours of impassioned public comment, represents a failure of Vallejo's police and firefighter unions to understand basic economic realities. The unions - whose members are among the highest-paid in the state - refused to allow the city to cut their pay. Perhaps they didn't believe that...

VALLEJO — With hundreds of concerned residents looking on, the Vallejo City Council voted unanimously late Tuesday to file for bankruptcy, making the city the first of its size to seek protection due to unaffordable labor contracts. The dramatic vote came despite a last-minute appeal by state Sen. Pat Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa, and an aide for Assemblywoman Noreen Evans for the city to avoid bankruptcy. Four council members — Michael Wilson, Tom Bartee, Hermie Sunga and Erin Hannigan — joined Mayor Osby Davis in switching in favor of filing for bankruptcy. In the past they had been part of a...

Vallejo's city manager advised the City Council on Friday to declare bankruptcy next week after weeks of negotiations with police and fire unions failed to turn around the city's economic tailspin. If the council votes Tuesday to file for Chapter 9 protection, the city of 117,000 people would be the largest in California to declare bankruptcy - and the first to do so because of long-term economic woes. City Manager Joseph Tanner made the recommendation after city officials scrambled for two months to fix the budget before the fiscal year ends on June 30, when the city faces a projected...

PORTAGE, IN - Hillary Clinton's campaign has worked hard of late to portray her as the fighter in the race, someone with the determination to see her plans through no matter what the obstacles. In North Carolina yesterday, Gov. Mike Easley raised some eyebrows when he said Clinton was so determined she made "Rocky Balboa look like a pansy." Well, this afternoon, a local labor leader introducing Clinton pushed the envelope further, saying the nation needed a leader "that has testicular fortitude." While defending Bill Clinton's role in the passage of NAFTA, Paul Gipson, president of a steelworkers local, said...

Bay Area longshore workers are planning to gather Thursday to protest the U.S. war in Iraq and Afghanistan, potentially thwarting activity at the region's ports, according to members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. Brandon Taylor, an operations manager for GSC Logistics, a warehousing, distribution and transportation company at the Port of Oakland, said today that the company had known about the protests for a few weeks and is planning to get all containers out of the port today and Wednesday in order to prevent halting production. He said the good news is that it is a slow time...

The ILWU: Back to its Marxist Roots March 12, 2008 At a time when even Russia and China are rejecting their Marxist past, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union still plans on celebrating the birth of communism by taking “May Day” off. These are people, by the way, who earn six-figure incomes, generous benefits, and pensions for putting in fewer hours on the job than their dock-working comrades anywhere in the world. That measure of failed solidarity notwithstanding, the ILWU is also asking the AFL-CIO to join them in the work stoppage. Is it any wonder why many shippers are...

http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com ***** By Jennifer Skalka The AFL-CIO is dropping a tough mailer in PA today noting that while John McCain's war service is admirable, his political views -- on the Bush tax cuts, NAFTA and overtime pay, in particular -- are out of sync with the needs and values of working Americans. "

You're a member of the MSM, and you're a Barack Obama supporter. But I repeat myself. More specifically, you're Chris Matthews. What better way to promote your guy's candidacy than to claim that Republicans would really rather run against Hillary? That's just what the Hardball host did on this afternoon's show. Here's his exchange with the–in my opinion–very impressive Republican strategist Todd Harris, who worked for McCain in 2000, and with Dem strategist Michael Feldman. View video here.

Vallejo will inch closer to financial ruin Tuesday when the City Council lets pass its do-or-die date to avert bankruptcy. City staff members have been unable to come up with a detailed, long-term financial plan because negotiations with the police and fire unions are still ongoing. The city is asking for steep concessions from the unions, whose members are among the highest paid in the Bay Area and whose salaries comprise about 74 percent of the city's budget. "We had hoped to have an agreement by April 22 to give to the council," said Mayor Osby Davis, who has sat...

A deepening divide between two of the nation's largest labor groups – prompted by a maverick California nurses union – has labor leaders worried the rift could "devastate" the movement's election-year priorities. Service Employees International Union, with 1.7 million members, has instructed local chapters across America to withhold funding from state and local labor federations to protest what they call union-poaching activity by the California Nurses Association. The move could cost labor central committees – the backbone of labor's sophisticated political and get-out-the-vote operation – millions of dollars on the eve of June 3 legislative primaries in California and the...

Should government workers be forced to pay for political activities with which they disagree to keep their jobs? That was the fundamental question underlying the case federal court Judge Morrison England decided last week. In a ruling that relied on simple fairness and federal law, Judge England said no. In the case before the court, the Services Employees International Union Local 1000 had imposed a special assessment on state workers it represented to bankroll its "Political Fight-Back Fund." The fund was established in 2005 to finance the union's campaign against Propositions 75 and 76, two measures on the November ballot...

A federal judge has ordered the state's largest public employee union to repay as many as 28,000 non-union state workers who were not given a chance to challenge a 2005 dues increase to fight initiatives backed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Judge Morrison England, in a decision Thursday, ordered Service Employees International Union Local 1000 to send notices to the workers who opted out of union membership. The union must issue refunds, with interest, to those non-union members who object to the special assessment. The rebate would amount to $135 plus interest for a worker who made $4,500 a month in...

Unions Blast Government Effort to Stop Hiring of Illegal Aliens By Susan Jones CNSNews.com Senior Editor March 27, 2008 (CNSNews.com) - The Department of Homeland Security has re-issued a rule that labor unions and some business groups oppose. The "no-match" rule is intended to stop employers from hiring illegal aliens, but critics say it will have unintended consequences. The rule re-issued last week is the same one blocked by a federal district court in San Francisco last October. The Homeland Security Department (DHS) said the newly issued "supplemental" rule addresses all three concerns raised by the court on Oct. 10,...

The president of one of the nation's largest labor unions moved this week toward ousting the leaders of its West Coast affiliate, in a power struggle that could affect hundreds of thousands of California workers and the state's strained health care industry.Andy Stern, president of the Washington-headquartered Service Employees International Union, sent a letter on Monday - obtained by The Chronicle - that alleges misconduct by Sal Rosselli, president of the Oakland-based United Healthcare Workers West, who has been Stern's most vocal critic.Rosselli and other leaders of the union - which has 150,000 members, many of them in the Bay...

Is that building at Colfax Avenue and Bannock Street still Denver City Hall, or have council members formally renamed it Denver Union Hall? If not, the rechristening may not be far off. After all, kowtowing to union interests has gotten so pronounced that one council member objected last week to a proposed contract with a company to manage airport parking for fear that its modest management fee signified a covert plan to cut union staffing. "That raised my eyebrows, and right away I thought that I hope that doesn't come on the backs of the employees," said councilman Paul Lopez.

Legislation to grant collective bargaining rights to grandmas, aunts and other subsidized child-care providers was vetoed Thursday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Senate Bill 867 targeted a pivotal service for low-income parents, with about 90,000 providers assisting 700,000 families at a public cost of more than $3 billion. Schwarzenegger's veto message cited the state's massive budget deficit, which despite recent trims is pegged at $8 billion. "Given California's significant budget challenge, I cannot consider bills that would add significant fiscal pressures to the state's structural budget deficit," he wrote. SB 867, similar to legislation vetoed last year, was sponsored by the...

Hundreds of registered nurses walked off the job at 7 a.m. today to begin a 10-day strike against Bay Area hospitals affiliated with Sutter Health. This is the third such walk-out in less than six months and it will be by far the longest. Similar strikes in October and December lasted two days each. The 10 affected hospitals have hired replacement nurses and will remain open. "We should have this down pat by now," said Jonnie Banks, a spokeswoman for Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley. "It's business as usual," she said. "That includes our trauma center. Our mission here...

Members of the California Public Employees Retirement System Board have a legal responsibility to protect the assets of the $230 billion retirement fund for the benefit of tens of thousands of government employees. Today, the commitment of the board's investment committee to protect the fund will be tested. The committee is being asked to support Assembly Bill 1967. Introduced by Assemblyman Alberto Torrico, D-Newark, the bill would bar CalPERS from investing in private equity funds that are owned or managed in any degree by certain sovereign wealth funds. SWFs are funds that are affiliated with specific countries or federations of...

It's no secret that organized labor has seen a steep erosion of its involvement in the private economy and that it has shifted its emphasis to public employees in California and other states to maintain union membership. There is, however, another wrinkle to labor's struggle to survive as the economy continues to undergo vast structural change – exerting political influence to coalesce independent service workers into public or private employment, thus making unionization more likely. The first large-scale example of this phenomenon in California occurred nearly a decade ago when newly elected Democratic Gov. Gray Davis signed union-sponsored legislation that,...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has twice vetoed legislation to unionize grandmas, but the Democrats in the Legislature seem to think he might now change his mind and sign their latest bill to do just that. He shouldn't. Senate Bill 867, now on the governor's desk, is part of a nationwide plan by organized labor to unite family child care providers into a single entity in each state that would bargain collectively to set rates rather than allowing community standards to prevail. The bill is aimed at the grandmothers, aunts and others who stepped into the breach when the state forced more...

About 100 angry members of California's largest state workers union launched a sidewalk protest against The Bee on Wednesday for posting a searchable database of state employees' salaries on the newspaper's Web site. Shouting slogans and carrying placards in front of the newspaper's building, the members of the 80,000-strong Service Employees International Union Local 1000 criticized The Bee for what they said was a violation of their right to personal privacy. Union leaders met privately with Bee executives and presented petitions with an estimated 3,000 signatures demanding that the paper take down the database, at www.sacbee.com/statepay. Union President Jim Hard...

NASHVILLE — A former Nashville police officer/union organizer has been indicted on federal charges in connection with the break-in and illegal surveillance of a Fraternal Order of Police youth camp. Calvin Edward Hullett was indicted on bribery, misappropriation of union funds and other charges. Hullett, who was arrested last July, also has an aggravated burglary charge pending in state court. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Fraternal Order of Police have been engaged in a bitter battle for the representation of Nashville police and Shelby County deputies. In Nashville, the Teamsters took over representation of the police in 2005...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- The AFL-CIO said Wednesday it will have union protesters follow GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain around the country to demand explanations on his positions on economic and labor issues. The effort is part of a wide-ranging campaign aimed at linking McCain with what union officials call the Bush administration's failed economic policies. In addition to the protests, the nation's largest labor federation also plans to devote part of its record-setting $53.4 million grass-roots mobilization campaign funds to criticizing McCain through workplace leafletting, volunteer door-knocking, telephone calls, e-mail, direct mailings and an anti-McCain Web site, www.mccainrevealed.org. "Everywhere John...

While Vallejo's finances were plunging faster than a roller coaster at the Six Flags amusement park, the city's firefighters were going abalone diving, grilling tri-tip and drinking cocktails on the public's dime, records show.Under their contract, the firefighters union has been allowed since 2003 to charge the city 600 hours a year - at a cost of more than $24,000 annually - for union activities that were approved by the union's chief. The junkets included an annual Seafood Extravaganza at the fairgrounds, a 10-kilometer run ending with a party at the amusement park and a dunk tank at the Waterfront...

Three-day strike set at Contra Costa-owned facilities; union seeks increased benefits from Sutter hospitals - Eleven Bay Area hospitals will be rushing to hire replacement nurses over Easter weekend and beyond as thousands of registered nurses walk off the job. The nurses announced Monday that they will wage a 10-day strike against hospitals affiliated with Sutter Health beginning March 21. That same day, nurses will start a three-day walkout at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, the county-owned hospital in Martinez that is a safety net for the region's poorest residents. That strike will also take nurses off the job at...

Los Angeles (AP) -- The National Labor Relations Board wants a federal judge to order immediate reinstatement of eight newsroom employees fired by the Santa Barbara News-Press. In December, Administrative Law Judge William Kocol ordered the reinstatement with back pay after finding they were fired for union activities. The judge condemned the News-Press for flagrant misconduct . . . The News-Press is owned by Wendy McCaw's Ampersand Publishing LLC.

What Happens When City Hall Goes Bankrupt? by Eric Weiner New York City didn't actually declare bankruptcy in the 1970s, but it came close. When the city appealed to Washington in 1975 for a bailout, President Ford balked, prompting this famous New York Daily News headline. New York Daily News Moments in Municipal Bankruptcy 1975, New York City: The Big Apple teeters on the verge of bankruptcy but is rescued at the last minute, thanks to a loan from the federal government and other measures. 1991, Bridgeport, Conn.: The city, population 140,000, declares bankruptcy after a dispute with the state....

Don't look now, but the Democrats in the California Legislature want to unionize Grandma. Really. A bill pending in the Senate would create a union to organize family members who provide child care for their kin and are paid by the state so that mothers can work outside the home. The measure already has passed in the Assembly. The child care providers – grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings – would pay dues and be represented collectively in negotiations with the state over pay, benefits and working conditions. Child care providers who did not want to join the union would still...