NILRR Weekly News Clips March 07, 2014


 

A black and white image of an eagle with its wings spread.

 

The Really Big Money? Not the Kochs

Wall Street Journal Online, March 6, 2014

It’s an extraordinary thing, in a political age obsessed with campaign money, that nobody scrutinizes the biggest, baddest, “darkest” spenders of all: organized labor. The IRS is muzzling nonprofits; Democrats are “outing” corporate donors; Jane Mayer is probably working on part 89 of her New Yorker series on the “covert” Kochs. Yet the unions glide blissfully, unmolestedly along. This lack of oversight has led to a union world that today acts with a level of campaign-finance impunity that no other political giver—conservative outfits, corporate donors, individuals, trade groups—could even fathom

Texas Rocks Job Creation (Maybe That’s Why Californians Are Moving There)

reason.com, March 7, 2014

Texas, according to a new paper, outstrips the rest of the country when it comes to creating not just jobs, but jobs that pay well.

UAW, VW Colluding to Block Autoworkers from Defending Anti-Union Vote

Washington Free Beacon, March 6, 2014

Glenn Taubman, an attorney with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, said that the company’s unwillingness to support the decision of its employees demonstrates that VW is committed to unionizing the plant.

Kentucky legislators must pass right-to-work law now

Courier-journal.com, March 6, 2014

Frankly, there is no effective, intellectually honest argument against passing a right-to-work law.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Gets Increase In Proposed Budget

National Law Journal Online, March 6, 2014

It will be interesting to see the estimated representation case filings for FY 2016 in the next proposed budget if the NLRB’s proposed “quickie†election rule becomes final and effective this year.

How to Phonebank When Members Screen Their Calls

Labor Notes Online, March 06, 2014

Enter Clare Shropshire, a rank-and-file pipefitter from Oregon. A featured speaker in the “Running for Union Office†workshop at the 2012 Labor Notes Conference, Shropshire explained that she matched all contacts in her campaign database with the person who knew them and had collected their phone numbers. Her phonebanking rule: no one gets a call unless they are called by someone they know.

This chart proves that unions can’t offer job security anymore

qz.com, March 6, 2014

A few weeks ago, the auto-assembly workers at the Chattooga Volkswagen plant also voted against joining the UAW.  That even autoworkers are rejecting the union designed for them speaks volumes about the problem with unions today, and the problem my department once had with the UAW: there is no economic incentive to join

States Give Criminal Exemptions to Union Goons  

National Review Online, March 6, 2014

Labor organizers and union enforcers are exempt from important criminal laws in some of the country’s largest states. California, Illinois, and Wisconsin are among the states that allow union members to stalk, harass, and threaten victims — so long as they are putatively doing “legitimate†union business.

AFL-CIO-Backed Study Shows Minimum-Wage Earners, Along With Almost Everybody Else, Are Better Off in Right to Work States

nilrr.org, March 3, 2014

When they are making propagandistic economic arguments against Right to Work laws and legislation, AFL-CIO union officials nd their allies routinely pretend either that there is no difference whatsoever between the aggregate cost of living for states with such statutes on the books and states that lack them,  or that any difference is minimal.

Right-to-work champion to announce run for Dingell’s seat

Detroit News Online, March 3, 2013

Bowman, a conservative UAW worker who successfully fought to outlaw paying union dues as a condition of employment, said Saturday he wants to succeed U.S. Rep. John Dingell, the Dearborn Democrat who decried the right-to-work legislation as “poison†for labor-management relations.

SEIU looks to blackmail state hospitals via ballot measure

U-T San Diego, March 2, 2014

The idea that hospitals are obscenely profitable and need such microscopic bureaucratic oversight/harassment is dubious enough. But the goal of the SEIU isn’t really to help patients. Instead, as union officials acknowledge, it’s to encourage — read, blackmail — hospitals into accepting conditions that strongly boost SEIU chances of adding to the 90,000 members it already has at California hospitals.

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