Free Republic

Peggy Mashke tends to 12 children for 12 hours a day at her home, so she was surprised to get a letter welcoming her to the United Auto Workers union. "I thought it was a joke," said Mashke, 50, of northern Michigan's Ogemaw County. "I work out of my home. I'm not an auto worker. How can I become a member of the UAW? I didn't get it." Willing or not, Mashke and 40,000 other at-home providers are members of a labor partnership that represents people across Michigan who watch children from low-income families. Two unions receive 1.15 percent of...

<p>One of the more important hearings of this Congress will be held today, when House Education and the Workforce Chairman John Boehner airs some of the ugly details of the Ullico scandal. More than just another corporate scam, Ullico is an example of how today's union leadership fails its rank and file.</p>

<p>House Republicans are expected to confront a scandal-plagued former labor leader today in a hearing that will highlight a stock-selling scheme that lawmakers have compared to the collapse of Enron Corp.</p> <p>Robert A. Georgine, former chief executive officer of ULLICO Inc., will be forced to publicly explain for the first time how he and a handful of board members, mostly various union presidents, made roughly $6 million in profit at the expense of other shareholders in the pension fund.</p>