NILRR Labor Day 2013 Clips
Big labor’s federal union violence exemption has cost workers their lives
The Daily Caller Online, August 30, 2013 Many Americans believe that union violence is a thing from a long-ago era in labor relations. Sadly, on Labor Day 2013, they would be wrong.
Even now, union officials and their cohorts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania are executing a prolonged campaign of intimidation, harassment, and even violence against construction firms and their workers who refuse to toe the union line.
My View: It’s ‘Labor’ Day, not ‘Union’ Day
Journal Standard.com, August 31, 2013
Labor Day is about celebrating workers, not union bosses. But as union bosses rush for face time to show they “stand with workers,†what is often forgotten on Labor Day is why 93 percent of private-sector workers have chosen not to stand with a union — bringing union membership to a historical low.
Pennsylvania is Ripe for Right to Work Law
Pittsburgh Tribune, Triblive.com, August 31, 2013
Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a Springfield, Va., organization that combats compulsory unionism abuses. Mix spoke to the Trib about the state of unions in America today.
Q: Do you think unions are losing strength as more states switch to right-to-work?
Number of the Week: Unionization Rates on the Decline
Wall Street Journal Online, August 31, 2013
Unions have a lot of ground to make up. In 1983, the first year for which comprehensive national data are available, 20% of American wage and salary workers were union members. That figure has fallen nearly every year since, hitting an all-time low of 11.3% last year. There were 14.4 million union members in the U.S. last year, 3.4 million fewer than in 1983, even as the total workforce has grown by 3.9 million. (Another 1.6 million workers are covered by union contracts but aren’t union members; in all, 12.5% of workers were represented by unions in 2012.)
Forced Union Fees For Grievances Aren’t Remotely Fair
National Institute for Labor Relations Research, September 1, 2013
One aspect of union bosses’ monopoly-bargaining power as established by the NLRA that I haven’t emphasized up to now is the privilege to get grievance resolutions tossed out if they are somehow not in conformity with the union contract.
Right to work: Boost to economic growth or path to lower wages?
Journal Standard.com, August 31, 2013
Still, he points to a study by the National Institute for Labor Relations, which used statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau, the U.S. Patent & Research Office and the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
That study says right-to-work states had 26 percent growth in real personal income between 1995 and 2005, compared with 19 percent for non-right-to-work states; and a 12.9 increase in nonfarm private sector jobs, compared with 6 percent.
Union bosses fail working people they claim to help
SunTimes Online, August 30, 2013
Labor Day is supposed to be about the worker. Then why is it that in Illinois it is all about the bosses?
Workers should have the freedom to join a union or not based on their own best judgment. Illinois can give workers this choice by adopting Right-to-Work legislation. This would give workers the power to hold union bosses accountable for what they do, and it would free workers from forced union dues that pay for an organization that often works counter to their own interests.
Business, Labor Officials Point Fingers Ahead of Labor Day
Wall Street Journal Online, August 31, 2013
In the run-up to Labor Day, organized labor’s top official, Richard Trumka, blamed some employers for some of unions’ declining membership numbers, while the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s labor guru, Randy Johnson, blamed unions for offering a product most workers don’t want.
At the Labor Department, Labor Secretary Tom Perez called for a common agenda “to unleash the economy’s full potential†and “secure a better bargain for the middle class and expand opportunities for everyone.â€
Workers deserve right to choose
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, August 31, 2013
Who could fault someone for not wanting to give the Teamsters a cut of his earnings? In the past three years, the Department of Labor has charged or convicted over a dozen Teamsters’ officers of corruption. A government monitor accused the union’s president, Jimmy Hoffa, of trying to bribe election opponents with Teamster funds. Hoffa himself makes more than $300,000 a year.
Labor Day 2013: Michigan’s right-to-work transformation experiences twists in the road
mlive.com, September 2, 2013
Months after Michigan’s new right-to-work law kicked in, state employees could soon become the largest single block of workers impacted by the statute.
Labor Day 2013 certainly is a time to celebrate.
Workers across Michigan finally have the freedom to choose whether they want to pay dues or fees to a union as a condition of employment.
National Review Online, September 2, 2013
There isn’t much good to say about Labor Day, except maybe that it could be worse — it could be on May 1, which would make it a full-on Communist holiday instead of a merely crypto-Communist one. For that we can thank Grover Cleveland, the last pretty-good Democrat (seriously: gold standard, anti-tariff, vetoed twice as many bills as all of his predecessors combined — Rand Paul is a fan), who pushed for the creation of a labor festival in September as cultural competition to the international workers’ celebration in May, sort of the reverse of the strategy of the early Church fathers’ choosing the dates of heathen festivals for the new Christian holidays.Labor Day now exists primarily as an occasion for Democrats to demand an increase in the minimum wage and for Republicans to respond clumsily to that challenge, caught by surprise year after year after year. One day — say, the next time the Democrats control both Congress and the presidency — the Republicans really ought to let them have their way on that and go them one better, a minimum wage of $25 an hour or so. Then every day will be like Labor Day — we’ll be grilling our own hamburgers, because that will be the only way to get them.