Posted on 09/21/2007 10:41:41 AM PDT by Big Labor Hater
Today’s Birmingham News (http://www.al.com/opinion/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/opinion/119027658977250.xml&coll=2) has an excellent article exposing union officials’ hypocrisy when it comes to “threats” against employees.
In Birmingham, United Auto Workers (UAW) union organizer and Honda employee Sheila Boyd recently complained to local media outlets that a letter sent by Honda executives "is trying to threaten us" and claimed that the letter is "just an intimidation tactic.”
So what does the “intimidating” letter say?
The letter, which the Birmingham paper quotes from extensively, merely points out that Honda has never had to layoff a worker in 30 years, something its competitors in compulsory unionism states can’t say.
Simply pointing out how laughable it is to call that letter “intimidation,” would be enough if union propagandists weren’t using such baseless claims as “evidence” that Congress should pass a law mandating coercive “card check” organizing drives. These types of unsubstantiated claims by union organizers were the exact basis for a 2005 study created for the union-funded and –financed lobbying group, “American Rights at Work."
But more to the point is the hypocrisy of union officials to complain about threats and intimidation, when every day they threaten millions of workers with termination, if they refuse to pay forced union dues (like 16 year old Danielle Cookson).
And the UAW has a particularly dubious history when it comes to actual threats and intimidation against employees:
Responding to actual threats, the National Right to Work Foundation hired round-the-clock private security guards for Thomas Built Bus employee Jeff Ward who was targeted for opposing the UAW’s unionization tactics at his facility. At a Freightliner facility in Gaffney South Carolina UAW militants threatened employee Mike Ivey that “things are gonna get ugly” if he didn’t stop opposing UAW organizers. In another case the UAW was forced to settle a lawsuit filed against it for its role in a violence campaign against workers at a Virginia plant who refused to walk off the job during a union-ordered strike. A lawsuit in that case charged several union militants with civil conspiracy and other counts for making death threats, shooting out windows, sending obscene mail, acts of stalking, theft of property, and harassing workers on the job to coerce them into quitting their jobs. And in a particularly vivid image of UAW intimidation, 55-year old Sucheng Huang was greeted early one morning with a bloody severed cows head on the hood of her car. So it turns out that UAW officials have no problem using intimidation and threats against employees. They just don’t like those employees being given any information that “threatens” the union’s ability to force workers into union ranks.
The fact remains that states that need jobs recruit companies. And guess what, they try and get those plants put where they need the jobs most, i.e. in "poverty pockets*."
Another sadder fact: there are many regions that are desperate for economic development, but they are in states that have a hostile business climate (bureaucracy, high taxes, etc.) Or even sadder: in which the resident population that needs the work is unsuitable for same.
* in re "Povery Pockets," I beg your kind forbearance for the provocative nature of my comments. I shall limit the piquance of my remarks in future.
Ah, the unions. They’ll strike to have someone else hired to do their work while they still get paid. No wonder China does so well.
Sheila should move to Detroit. She’d be happy there.
bump
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