Category Archives: Unions

Leftist conference of unions, students, legislators and leftist community groups: How we will disrupt capital and create economic uncertainty. How we can create a new financial crisis, bring down the stock market….

Editor’s Note – This was a post from just a few months ago and is a little reminder that the “Occupy” protest going on in New York right now was planned in a galaxy not so far away by the same usual suspects.

UPDATE – ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Organizer Is Marketing Analyst Whose LinkedIn Lists Work For Investment Bankers – LINK

Occupy Wall Street ‘Stands In Solidarity’ With Obama Front Group Funded by the Wealthy Financiers and Bankers They are Protesting – LINK

[Editor’s Note – and if these partially misguided protesters get their way the Democrats will pass a tax increase law that will not benefit the students, it will benefit the super rich because, as is the case with all of these “soak the rich” efforts, they either chase wealth out of the country and/or exceptions for those who are politically connected get included in the tax code and it will not be the GE’s and Google’s who pay, it will be the small and medium-sized competition who will get soaked.]

Steve Lerner SEIU

UPDATE Steven Lerner, the man in the video overtly plotting a new economic crisis, has visited the White House four times as well as the Treasury Department.

Watch this video:

Longer tape of this conversation:

Transcript and full article at Business Insider:

CAUGHT ON TAPE: Former SEIU Official Reveals Secret Plan To Destroy JP Morgan, Crash The Stock Market, And Redistribute Wealth In America

A former official of one of the country’s most-powerful unions, SEIU, has a secret plan to “destabilize” the country.

The plan is designed to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market, and weaken Wall Street’s grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government.

The former SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, spoke in a closed session at a Pace University forum last weekend.

UPDATE I – Glenn Beck: This is a clear case of economic terrorism – LINK.

UPDATE II – SEIU sued under RICO statute (Via The Blaze):

Cockroaches, bugs, mold, and flies. These are just some of the props and rumors allegedly employed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) against the American unit of French catering company Sodexo. And the company’s had enough.

Fed up with tactics that include intimidation, extortion, and yes, sabotage that apparently includes plastic cockroaches, Sodexo filed a lawsuit against the SEIU last week under the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.

“We work constructively with unions every day but the SEIU has crossed the line by breaking the law,” Robert Stern, general counsel for Sodexo USA, said in a statement. “We will not tolerate the SEIU’s tactics any longer.”

SEIU has been fighting to represent 80,000 hourly Sodexo employees, which is above and beyond the 180,000 hourly employees who are already union members. The union regularly stages protests against the company to make its point, like this one last fall on the campus of George Mason University. The video alleges SEIU bused in protesters, who can be heard chanting, among other things, “As long as it takes, whatever it takes, we’ll be in your face!”

Sodexo’s complaint, filed in federal court in Alexandria, VA, alleges acts of SEIU blackmail, vandalism, trespass, harassment, and lobbying law violations designed to steer business away from, and harm, the company.

And just what exactly might those acts look like? Sodexo gives the details:

The complaint alleges that the SEIU, in face to face meetings, threatened Sodexo USA’s executives that it would harm Sodexo USA’s business unless they gave in to the union, and then carried out its threats through egregious behavior, including:

  • throwing plastic roaches onto food being served by Sodexo USA at a high profile event;
  • scaring hospital patients by insinuating that Sodexo USA food contained bugs, rat droppings, mold and flies;
  • lying to interfere with Sodexo USA business and sneaking into elementary schools to avoid security;
  • violating lobbying laws to steer business away from Sodexo USA, even at the risk of costing Sodexo USA employees their jobs; and
  • harassing Sodexo USA employees by threatening to accuse them of wrongdoing.

The complaint, filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, seeks an injunction against the SEIU and its locals and executives, as well as monetary damages to be determined by the court.

UPDATE III – Member of Congress to Attorney General Eric Holder – LINK.

Dana Perino: Interesting How Obama Says Things That Are So Quickly Proven False

Obama takes credit for global oil production going up, but this is in spite of him not because of him. domestic Oil production is down 13% since he was elected, he has instituted an illegal offshore drilling ban which he is in contempt of court for. Thousands have lost their jobs. But look at what Obama says below.

Obama knows he can tell the fattest whoppers imaginable and the elite media will cover for him. Luckily we have blogs, talk radio and a Fox News willing to tell both sides.

Via Gateway Pundit:

President Obama told the American public on Friday:

So any notion that my administration has shut down oil production might make for a good political sound bite, but it doesn’t match up with reality. We are encouraging offshore exploration and production.

It was a horrible lie.
The American Petroleum Institute responded to the president:

The Obama administration continues to delay or defer action on developing our domestic resources of oil and natural gas at every turn.

“The trend is alarming. The administration has postponed lease sales in offshore areas. It has cancelled lease sales in onshore federal lands. It has extended permitting timelines for current leases and added unnecessary regulatory burdens. It has chosen inaction on essential energy projects that would create jobs, drive economic growth, and boost federal revenues.

“The administration is well on its way toward creating higher gasoline prices for Americans.

“To get more oil and gas, we need more access. Placing more government lands and waters off-limits and forcing companies to focus on areas that may show little promise even if already under lease will not solve our energy challenges.

Dana Perino is right.
It is frightening that the Obama Administration is so willing to openly lie to the American public.

Gov. Chris Christie To Public Sector Union Worker: We Can’t Afford To Pay Ninety Percent Of Your Health Care Anymore

Rush Limbaugh comments as well. This is a must see.

“The top 1% of income payers pay 41% of all state income tax. We already have the highest taxes in America and the neighbor who lives next door to you who works in the private sector, is already paying much more for his health care than you are for yours and they are paying the taxes to pay for yours on top of it.”

Governor Christie didn’t even mention that public sector employees tend to make much more than those in the private sector as well. The simple truth is that government employees have been well shielded from the pain of this recession. They have been promised pay and benefits by Democrats who left office years ago that government just cant afford.

AFL-CIO Union Chief: The Best Way To Create Jobs is to Raise Taxes

This is from the same man who said that government should take over all private business, who speaks in front of communist revolutionary groups, and has a long history of violence. Trumka talks to the White House every day and visits twice a week – LINK.

Rich "Union Thug" Trumka

Yahoo News:

What’s the best way to get Americans back to work?

Raise taxes, according to AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. Specifically, he wants to raise the federal gas tax as a means to fund infrastructure spending. “We need a dedicated source of revenue to create infrastructure in this country,” he tells Aaron Task in the accompanying clip.

“We need to create jobs. The best way to do that is through infrastructure development.” Simply maintaining the existing infrastructure in this country will cost $2.2 trillion over five years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. That doesn’t include Obama’s objective of high-speed rails and green energy projects.

Oh yes, we can tax ourselves into prosperity, and we can spend trillions on more stimulus packages most of the money goes to government unions to make this man even more wealthy. This line of “reasoning” from those who call small business owners greedy.

Michelle Rhee: Some schools got their funding doubled and scores still went down…

For those of you who do not know Michelle Rhee, she is one of the stars from the hit film “Waiting for Superman”. The film is a brilliant documentary about people who made a difference or who tried to make a difference in public schools. Rhee was the Washington D.C. Schools Chancellor. While she was able to make positive changes, the key aspects of her reform plan were stopped by the teachers union who is desperate to maintain the failing status quo [if you think that what I just said is even a MILD exaggeration please consider this your personal invitation to demonstrate otherwise in the comments below – Editor].

NewsReal: Seven Child Molesters Protected by Teacher’s Unions

NewsReal:

How many times have you heard that public school teachers are sorely underpaid, under-appreciated public servants with hearts of gold who love your kids more than you do? There is a myth out there that every person who enters into the sacred field of education has the heart of a servant, a love of children and no desire for personal gain or satisfaction. And certainly, there are teachers that fit that description (I’ve had a few myself.)

But I’ve also had teachers who should never have been allowed within fifty feet of children. A 2004 study by Hofstra University scholar Charol Shakeshaft on the sexual misconduct of public school teachers is a shocking wake-up call that was widely ignored by the public union-friendly press. And even worse, the public teachers unions protected many of the offending teachers and allowed them to quietly transfer to other schools where they victimized more children. “Examples include touching breasts or genitals of students; oral, anal, and vaginal penetration; showing students pictures of a sexual nature; and sexually-related conversations, jokes, or questions directed at students.”

Everyone agrees that the sex scandal in the Catholic Church is a tragedy of immense proportions and the media has done a good job at uncovering the network of cover-ups and lies that harmed children irreparably. But what would you say if I told you that the public school system, which is about the same size as the Catholic Church in America with a school in every parish, has more sexual abuse cases in ten years than the Catholic Church has had in fifty? The mishandling of sex offenders in the public school system has cost hundreds of millions of dollars in legal fees to the taxpayers and unmeasurable damage to the victims. The following are among the worst offenders in the public school system.

Follow this LINK for the details.

NYC Communists: We Prefer to be Called Progressives

Of course they do.

[By the way the reason the media report is so glowing is because RT = Russia Today – Editor]

The first “great” progressive thinker is Walter Lippmann. He is the founder of modern American journalism and advisor to President’s Wilson and FDR. He wrote this:

Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives, and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion must by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come. They believe in what Mr. Stuart Chase accurately describes as “the overhead planning and control of economic activity.” This is the dogma which all the prevailing dogmas presuppose. This is the mold in which are cast the thought and action of the epoch. No other approach to the regulation of human affairs is seriously considered, or is even conceived as possible. The recently enfranchised masses and the leaders of thought who supply their ideas are almost completely under the spell of this dogma. Only a handful here and there, groups without influence, isolated and disregarded thinkers, continue to challenge it. For the premises of authoritarian collectivism have become the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms, not only of all the revolutionary regimes, but of nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive.

So universal is the dominion of this dogma over the minds of contemporary men that no one is taken seriously as a statesman or a theorist who does not come forward with proposals to magnify the power of public officials and to extend and multiply their intervention in human affairs. Unless he is authoritarian and collectivist, he is a mossback, a reactionary, at best an amiable eccentric swimming hopelessly against the tide. It is a strong tide.

The first great thinker of the “progressive movement” openly states that progressivism and American liberalism are simply flavors of communism designed to control men and the economy by ever increasing the role of the state in our lives. This is not extremism folks, or fear mongering, it is simply the objective truth by their own words.

The Blaze:

AFL-CIO LEADER ACCEPTS COMMUNIST PARTY AWARD: ‘I STAND WITH THEM’

Those who doubt the connection between the communist party and the unions need only to read accounts of a recent awards ceremony to see how both groups view each other.

On Sunday, December 5, the Communist Party USA gave awards to a pair of labor leaders and a former state legislator and assistant attorney general.* Among the recipients was Connecticut AFL-CIO head John Olsen, who not only gladly accepted the award, but garnered “loud applause” when he said he stands with CPUSA.

CPUSA’s webzine People’s World reports Olsen was given the award at the Voices for Jobs, Equality & Peace – People’s World Amistad Awards Concert celebrating the 90th anniversary of the CPUSA.

“James Hillhouse High School auditorium was filled with the fabulous jazz sounds of Jeff Fuller & Friends, labor songs by Bill Collins of the Rabble Rousers, and poetry by Baub Bidon and Ken Brown,” the article describes the event. But besides offering a mental picture, it also gives a glimpse of Olsen’s acceptance speech, in which he says he will stand with the Communist Party:

“Anyone who stands with me for workers’ rights, I stand with them,” said John Olsen to loud applause as he acknowledged the Communist Party and took a strong stand against fear mongering and baiting, including the anti-socialist baiting of President Barack Obama.

The article goes on to praise the union for its work, and explains how important the union is in fighting for CPUSA causes:

The AFL CIO and local unions are now developing their legislative agendas.  For the first time in 22 years, a Democratic governor was elected in Connecticut.  It is widely recognized that union members made the difference in voter turnout.

Related – AFL-CIO Head Calls For Government Takeover of All Business

F. A. Hayek – How Union Overreach Causes Unemployment

Indeed when the price of labor is artificially increased beyond the value of that labor several things happen:

1 – Since there is only so much of the percentage available from variable costs for labor therefore union over reach causes there to be less employees.

Think about it. How often do you stand in line at Kroger when they obviously have a shortage of cashiers? So the result is not management vs. employee, it becomes employee vs. employee; which employee will get whacked because there is only so much available for labor?

2 – At first this causes companies to be more efficient, but eventually that efficiency comes at the cost of labor. For example: have you noticed that self checkout machines came first at union grocery stores?  The stores will increase technology to eliminate positions.

Ford Motor Company has a new high tech plant that can make five cars on a single production line. Since union rules do not allow workers to use that technology and make so many different lies Ford has made these new plants in Canada, Mexico and Brazil.

3 – When is the last time you went to a gas station and got service by a young apprentice? Why do you think that is?

Dr. Walter Williams: Unions discriminate against black Americans, minimum wage impacts black teen unemployment. Regulations make licencing so expensive they keep minorities out.

When I was growing up, gas was 70 cents a gallon and when you went to get gas, a young person who was apprenticing at the service center attached to most every gas station would come out, pump your gas, check your tires and fluids, wipers etc. That young person was apprenticing under an experienced mechanic and learning valuable skills.

Those days are gone. Now gas is $4.00 and you pump it yourself. Service? Forget it, you will be lucky if the clerk speaks English. The minimum wage, labor regulations, and government regulations have brought such apprenticeships to a screeching halt.

Government Motors Sponsors Chinese Communist Propaganda Film.

Washington Times:

In late 2010, General Motors agreed to sponsor a propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP made film titled (translated to English) “The Birth of a Party” or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party” is set to premiere all over the Communist nation on June 15 reported China AutoWeb last September. The auto website adds:

“According to an announcement posted on Shanghai GM’s official web site yesterday, whose title reads “joining hands with China Film Group, Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party…”

The report goes further:

“As the CCP marries totalitarianism with capitalism and fools the people with entertainment, only the “politically correct” or stupid–or those who pretend to be so–can get rich. And GM seems to know this very well. While Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volvo have all rushed to please China’s rich and powerful through physical enlargement (offering models of extended wheelbases), Cadillac gratifies the party orally, singing praises through a film.”

According to the above report, the film will discuss events that led up to the formation of the CCP following the 1917 Russian Revolution. When the movie first went into production GM signed up Cadillac as the “chief business partner” with the Communist Party, stating: “Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party.”

Wow, how much suffering has the Chinese Communist Party caused, how many of it’s own has it murdered, how many dissidents jailed, how many Christians persecuted?

I have an older Chevy Caprice and an older Chevy Blazer and I have been satisfied with those vehicles so I am happy to keep fixing them up.  My family bought a Chevy Trailblazer but it started falling apart right after the warranty expired.

The bailout was bad, the way they stripped Republican dealership owners of their businesses was bad, the commercial that painted a false picture about the bailout money being returned was really bad;  no one likes being lied to.  I am now beyond the last straw. I do not see how I could ever buy another GM vehicle again in good conscience.

Obama’s Assault on South Carolina Jobs

Of course this is aside from his assault in Gulf Coast jobs with the illegal offshore drilling ban, the assault on Alaska jobs with the revocation of Shell’s oil rights, the assault on West Virginia jobs with the completely arbitrary revocation of mining permits, the assault on Nevada jobs with the political closing of the Yucca Mountain nuclear facility.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley responds on this blatant show of corruption from the Obama Administration.

[Editor’s note – The Democrats used every sex smear in the book trying to defeat this governor in the last election.]

More details from Newt Gingrich in Human Events:

Suspicious Timing

In October 2009, Boeing decided to open a new production facility in North Charleston, SC to meet the growing demand for its 787 Dreamliner airplane.

The decision came after months of negotiations with the machinists union leadership at Boeing’s main production hub in Puget Sound, WA.  Since 1995, there have been five work stoppages in the Puget Sound plant. The most recent strike, in 2008, lasted 58 days and cost the company $1.8 billion.

Still, Boeing negotiated in good faith with the union leadership for the Puget Sound facility to try and find a way to open the new factory there.  In exchange, Boeing wanted a ten year moratorium on strikes so the additional capacity upon which the company was about to spend billions of dollars would be a sound investment.

Boeing and the union were unable to reach an agreement so the company looked elsewhere.  They eventually settled on South Carolina, which is one of the twenty two “right-to-work” states in our country where workers cannot be forced to join a union.

The complaint filed last month by the NLRB on behalf of the machinists union alleges that Boeing located the new facility away from Puget Sound in retaliation for the 2008 strike, which is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act.  It makes this accusation despite the months Boeing spent negotiating with the union to try and reach a deal to open the new facility in Puget Sound, and despite the fact that there is a clear legal precedent that allows companies to consider the impact of future strikes when deciding where to open new facilities.

It is the timing of NLRB’s complaint, in fact, which seems retaliatory in nature, not Boeing’s business decision.

The complaint comes a full seventeen months after Boeing announced the location of the new facility and thirteen months after the union leadership first asked NLRB to look into the issue.
Boeing has already begun construction of the new facility, hiring over 1000 people in South Carolina and investing $1 billion. This complaint puts all those jobs created and all that money invested at risk.

Unelected, Unconfirmed Bureaucrats Running Wild

This action by the NLRB is even more disturbing when you consider that it is being led by Lafe Solomon, the acting General Counsel for NLRB, who still needs to be approved by the Senate.  He only holds his position because of a recess appointment by President Obama.

The president also used a recess appointment to place Craig Becker on the NLRB after Becker was rejected by a Democratic Senate in 2010.

As a recent Daily Caller article discovered, Becker’s past writings reveal a disturbing socialist bent that bear directly on the Boeing complaint.

Becker has previously written that the federal government should control and constrain the freedom of companies to direct their capital and resources as they please in order to rig labor negotiations in favor of unions.   Becker has also written that the NLRB possesses the power to impose card-check policies on the nation without an act of Congress.

An Assault on the Right to Work

It is clear that President Obama is packing the NLRB board with left wing ideologues as a payoff to his union boss allies, so that the fix is in with regard to this case and others like it.

The move is consistent with an ongoing pattern in the Obama administration, in which they use the apparatus of big government to reward their allies and punish their opponents.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was exactly right when he characterized the complaint as “one of the worst examples of unelected bureaucrats doing the bidding of special interest groups that I’ve ever seen.”

If the NLRB is successful in overturning Boeing’s perfectly rational business decision, it puts tens of millions of future jobs in all 22 right-to-work states in jeopardy.  It would make it effectively impossible for U.S. companies to open new facilities in right-to-work states if they are currently located in one that allows forced unionization.

Global Competition Is a Fact, Not a Theory

The Left simply cannot come to grips with the intensity of global economic competition and the demands it places on U.S. economic policies.

This blindness to reality was on display in the reaction to a recent USA Today article showing that Americans paid less taxes in 2009 than any time since the 1950s.  The article has been used by the Left in recent days as a counter to the conservative case that tax increases would be devastating to any economic recovery, possibly driving us back into recession.

Their argument shows the Left is completely missing the point.  In the new global economy, America is not competing against itself from 1990, 1970 or 1950.

We are competing against Germany, which today has only a 15% federal corporate income tax (and recently hit a 19-year low in its unemployment rate), compared to a 35% corporate tax rate in the U.S., the highest of any central government in the industrialized world.

We are competing against Singapore, which has a capital gains tax of zero, compared to a potential 35% capital gains tax in the United States.

We are competing against Switzerland, which caps the federal personal income tax rate at 11.5%.

We are competing against Canada, which just last week reelected an incumbent Conservative government that has pledged to cut the corporate tax to 15% and lower the personal income tax for families – all while planning to balance its entire budget by 2015.

Consider the case of the New York Stock Exchange.  This icon of American free markets is now owned by a Dutch holding company.

That $10.2 billion takeover was driven by simple economic reality. As Walter Gavin, Vice President of Emerson, explains, the Netherlands has a tax code which makes it more profitable for the NYSE to be owned by a Dutch company than by an American one.  In fact, according to Gavin, the United States lost almost forty companies to Amsterdam in 2010 alone thanks to their more business friendly environment.

This brings us back to President Obama and his union allies’ assault on South Carolina jobs and all twenty two right-to-work states in America.

If the NRLB’s complaint is successful, U.S. companies will simply increase their flight of capital and new facilities to places outside the United States.  In the midst of a struggling economy, it will make it harder for businesses to operate in America, not easier.

The union bosses and their political allies in the White House aren’t going to save union jobs by attacking right-to-work states.  They’ll simply prevent new jobs from being created here in America.

More HERE.