Free Republic

James P. Hoffa is now saying that if Obama pulls the "public option" out of his healthcare bill, it is not a deal killer as far as union support is concerned. Hoffa said that he was only interested in what was "doable" and that they need to "get something done… and declare a victory." Now let's take a look at these quotes from Mr. Hoffa, shall we? What does it mean if we aren't seeing obliged union support without integrity for Obama's healthcare coming from Hoffa's Teamsters? Hoffa is saying that he doesn't care at all what healthcare "reform" will...

Any hope of a high-speed bankruptcy by General Motors faces a serious obstacle: a judge — not the Obama administration, not G.M. management and not the company’s creditors — would reign in court. A bankruptcy judge would be required by law to listen to unions, whose members fear for their jobs, benefits and pensions. And the judge would have to pay attention to creditors, including bondholders frustrated by how much they stand to lose if G.M. is broken up into “good” and “bad” companies as the administration is planning. Even a judge sympathetic to the administration — and the administration...

James P. Hoffa tried his hand at some spin against opponents of the Orwellian named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) last week, denying that a secret ballot is a basic tenet of democracy. "Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy," Hoffa is quoted as saying in a Teamsters press release. How does he justify this idiotic claim? Because, you see, the Soviet Union had a secret ballot "but those weren't democratic," Hoffa reminds us. A facile comparison, for sure. So, Hoffa thinks that eliminating a worker's right to a safe and fair election is perfectly in...

Teamsters President Blasts False Claims About Secret Ballots Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa today praised House and Senate sponsors of the Employee Free Choice Act. The bill would give workers the choice of forming a union through majority sign-up or a National Labor Relations Board election. It would make it easier for workers to form a union. “In these dire economic times, I can’t think of a better way to restore stability to middle-class families than to strengthen unions,” Hoffa said. “History shows that the economy does well when unions are strong.” Hoffa blasted the hostile, multimillion-dollar campaign to defeat...

House and Senate Democrats will introduce a bill to ease rules on labor union elections as soon as Tuesday, thrusting Congress into one of the biggest battles ever between business and labor and putting moderates in the hot seat as no other piece of legislation has this year. On Monday, investment guru Warren Buffett announced on CNBC that he is opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act, which would allow unions to bypass the secret ballot and require only signatures on a petition to organize a company’s work force. “I think the secret ballot is pretty important in this country,”...

WASHINGTON -- Key Senate Democrats are wavering in their support of legislation that would give more power to labor unions, dealing a setback to labor's top priority as businesses warn of the damage the bill would cause. A woman wears a model house on her head during a rally in Washington to support the "Employee Free Choice Act." The battle over the "Employee Free Choice Act" -- expected to be introduced Tuesday -- is seen as a power struggle among labor unions and businesses, as well as a test of whether moderate Democrats and Republicans will push back on Democratic...

Capitol Hill Republicans threw the first legislative punch in the fight over union law on Wednesday, February 25. But Democrats could land a haymaker of their own later with a bill that is much more likely to obtain congressional approval. Members of the House and Senate GOP introduced a bill that would mandate secret-ballot elections to form a union. The measure is meant to counter a bill Democrats could debut any day that would make it easier for employees to organize. Called the Employee Free Choice Act, the Democratic bill would force companies to recognize unions when a majority of...

First, Obama's fellow Daley machine hack, Rod Blagojevich, tried to sell Obama's Senate seat. Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, discussed the future of the Senate seat with Blagojevich. Obama has since "cleared himself" of any wrongdoing. Then, Obama's advisor, Caroline Kennedy, tried to steal a Senate seat in New York, citing royal prerogative. Now, Obama's Commerce Secretary nominee, Bill Richardson, has withdrawn his nomination, amid speculation that he will be indicted for corruption. All this, and Obama hasn't even been sworn in!

President-elect Barack Obama's transition office said in a report released Tuesday that its staff had no inappropriate communications with the office of Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is at the center of a corruption probe. The five-page report identified incoming White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as the only aide who had direct contact with Mr. Blagojevich. Mr. Emanuel "had one or two" telephone conversations with the governor between Nov. 6 and Nov. 8 to discuss his own resignation from the U.S. House as well as potential nominees to fill the Illinois Senate seat being vacated by Mr....

Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. has been dropping dimes on his state's disgraced governor and other corrupt local pols for years, a spokesman said Tuesday. Jackson, a longtime congressman and son of the famed civil rights activist, has been pulled into the controversy surrounding Gov. Rod Blagojevich's alleged attempt to auction Barack Obama's now-vacant U.S. Senate seat. A Jackson spokesman, Kenneth Edmonds, said the congressman had spoken to the feds about Blagojevich and others. He wouldn't provide details, but Chicago's WLS-TV reported the congressman told investigators Blagojevich refused to make Jackson's wife director of the state lottery because Jackson would...

Facing 30 years in prison on corruption charges, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is assembling the best defense team money can buy. The question is, whose money? There has been speculation that Blagojevich will use his expansive campaign war chest, $3.6 million at last count, to pay for his defense. Can he really do that? To paraphrase a fellow Chicagoan: Yes he can! Possibly. State law does not prevent the Democratic governor from tapping his campaign committee's funds to pay legal bills, even though he stands accused of illegally soliciting and obtaining some of the funds in exchange for official actions....

Editorial Analysis: Beside figuring out how he’ll weasel out of his recent arrest – and probable conviction – for trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s senate seat to the highest bidder, I wonder if the disgraced governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is contemplating the fates of Lee Harvey Oswald, Alexander Litvinenko, Vince Foster, Jim McDougal and Ron Brown – all of whom were summarily disposed of to keep them from talking. Oswald, we know, was shot by Jack Ruby, a smalltime Dallas nightclub owner with suspected ties to the Mafia. The death effectively cemented the government’s case against the odd...

Barack Obama had begun thinking about his Senate successor even before the presidential election, and dispatched Rahm Emanuel days after the vote to contact aides of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to begin talking up Mr. Obama's preferred candidates, associates of Mr. Emanuel said this weekend. Mr. Emanuel, a congressman from Chicago, had been approached about being Mr. Obama's White House chief of staff the week before the election, though he hadn't yet officially decided to take the post. Nonetheless, the issue of Mr. Obama's Senate replacement was sensitive enough that senior Obama aides wanted to keep the matter within the...

CHICAGO (AP) - A federal judge in Chicago has ordered Governor Rod Blagojevich released on his own recognizance after the Democrat was hit with federal corruption charges. The governor was arrested at his home Tuesday on charges he conspired to sell or trade President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. U.S. District Judge Nan Nolan said "Good afternoon, governor" in greeting Blagojevich at the afternoon bond hearing. The governor was wearing sweat pants, gym shoes and an athletic shirt. He was released on a signature bond that specifies that he'll forfeit $4,500 bond if he doesn't appear...

I doubt too many people around Barack Obama would have any criticisms for US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald or offer any defenses of Illinois politics now. In 2005, however, Obama’s chief political adviser did both in the pages of the Chicago Tribune. While Fitzgerald probed the endemic corruption in the Land of Lincoln, David Axelrod scolded him for criminalizing the normal trading of interests in Chicago-style politics: Patrick Fitzgerald’s charges against Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich have drawn a chorus of shock and outrage. But Barack Obama’s message man David Axelrod once staked out a much more nuanced position on Fitzgerald’s anti-corruption...

Organized labor helped elect Barack Obama and now eagerly awaits his promised support for its top priority—a bill that would make it easier to set up union locals. The Employee Free Choice Act would allow unions to create local bargaining units without winning the vote of a majority of workers in a secret ballot. The local unit would be certified if a majority of workers endorsed it by signing an authorization card handed out by union organizers. Fair enough? Not really. The so-called card-check bill would not protect workers and it would not be "free choice." It would strip away...

Regarding Dr. John David's commentary, "Make it Easier to Unionize Workplace": Labor unions certainly have their place in a contemporary American economy, but not at the expense of employee free choice and economic security. Indeed, the Employee Free Choice Act would severely erode the freedom enjoyed by employees for nearly 75 years to make a private, fully-informed decision about whether or not they want a union to represent them. Too often, the losing party in a union election - the company or the union - blames its loss on the opposing party's "coercive and underhanded" tactics. In reality though, the...

Alright so this auto bailout bill is in a holding pattern. But just remember that it doesn't mean it is dead. So here are some facts that should keep you seething ... The Big Three currently pay 85% of union benefits to UAW members ... who aren't even working. Yep. Remember how I told you about the Job Banks for union workers? If a union worker is employed at a plant that closes, the auto makers still pay 85% of their union benefits. Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, says that his company must reduce operating costs ... but his...

“You just sit and you worry,” said Pat Weber, a construction administrator in Fennville who was laid off more than a year ago. “In the last year, I’ve put in for more than 100 jobs. I stopped counting after 110. It’s just so defeating.” All around Fennville and its neighbors here in southwest Michigan, front lawns are peppered with for-sale signs and merchants complain about slow days. But while this remains a beautiful place with none of the obvious blight of Detroit on the other side of the state, residents say the hardship beneath the surface is very real. It...

The New Plan? Cripple Honda! Save Detroit with Card Check! Eliminating the secret ballot and making it easier to organize U.S. Honda and Toyota workers (and imposing contract terms via binding arbitration) would "level the playing field," says Dem. Congressman Tim Ryan. ... Then when Honda and Toyota responded by importing more cars from abroad, we could have import quotas! Eventually the whole automotive sector could be planned by Congress in conjunction with existing business and labor interest groups. Red State has seen the future and it is corporatist. ...12:21 P.M.

Unions are to blame for the Big Three automakers’ problems, according to a television ad meant to stoke public opposition to organized labor’s number one legislative priority. “Steel, auto, airlines. What do these industries all have in common?” asks the ad sponsored by the business-backed Employee Freedom Action Committee, which was active in several hotly contested Senate races this year. “Hundreds of thousands of lost jobs and union bosses that helped put them out of business.” The advertisement urges people to fight the Employee Free Choice Act, which unions hope will be taken up quickly by the Democratic Congress and...

President-elect Barack Obama, who co-sponsored the misleadingly titled Employee Free Choice Act in the Senate in 2007, has vowed that the measure, called “Card Check,” will be the law of the land once he’s in office. Given the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, if Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss loses Georgia’s runoff election on Dec. 2, Card Check probably will become law—and that would be terrible news for Americans who want to keep their jobs. Card Check would do away with the present secret ballot process used by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) when employees vote on whether to...

There is a curiously dated logic in unions insisting that Congress pass the Employee Free Choice Act, which belies the back and forth accusatory rhetoric of intimidation between business and big labor. There are two principal methods for employees to join and command employers to recognize their union's collective bargaining request. First: Company workers can get at least 30 percent of their colleagues to sign petition cards requesting representation, send the cards to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and have them oversee a secret ballot election. Second: If more than half of the workers sign up for representation, a...

Who killed the U.S. auto industry? To hear the media tell it, arrogant corporate chiefs failed to foresee the demand for small, fuel-efficient cars and made gas-guzzling road-hog SUVs no one wanted, while the clever, far-sighted Japanese, Germans and Koreans prepared and built for the future. I dissent. What killed Detroit was Washington, the government of the United States, politicians, journalists and muckrakers who have long harbored a deep animus against the manufacturing class that ran the smokestack industries that won World War II. As far back as the 1950s, an intellectual elite that produces mostly methane had its knives...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Democratic leaders in Congress sidetracked legislation to bail out the auto industry Thursday and demanded the Big Three develop a plan assuring the money would make them economically viable. "Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money," Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a hastily called news conference in the Capitol. She and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Congress would return to work in early December to vote on legislation if General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC produce an acceptable plan. The decision averted a likely defeat of...

House Republican Leader John A. Boehner said Democrats' use of secret ballots to chose its leadership was ironic because the party wants to nix workers' rights to a secret voting in deciding whether to unionize. "The secret ballot election is a cornerstone of our American democracy," Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, said Thursday. "If it is good enough for House Democrats to rely on during today's high-stakes vote, shouldn't it be good enough for millions of American workers across America who value their workplace privacy?" He vowed Republicans would stand firmly against the Democrat's "card-check" legislation - dubbed the Employee Free...

DETROIT, Nov 20 (Reuters) - United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said on Thursday that lawmakers need to take immediate action on a $25 billion bridge loan bill to support the U.S. automakers or one or more could fail. Gettelfinger, who testified on Tuesday and Wednesday to U.S. congressional committees in support of the loans, said he would not comment on a possible compromise bill reached by Democratic and Republican senators until details were known. When told that one detail might be that the automakers would have to provide a strategic plan to get access to the money, Gettelfinger said...

TALEGAON, India: General Motors Corp. opened a second plant in India on Tuesday, boosting its production capacity from 85,000 to 225,000 vehicles a year. The factory is part of GM's aggressive push into emerging markets, which have helped cushion the beleaguered auto giant from falling sales in the developed world. It also furthers the Indian government's ambition to turn the country into a manufacturing hub for small vehicles. "We believe India in three to four years will be a significant source of profit for us," said GM Asia Pacific President Nick Reilly. The first car — a pint-sized red Chevrolet...

The United Auto Workers union called on Congress and the Bush administration to get a loan to U.S. automakers to prevent their collapse before the legislature adjourns Friday. "Congress must not adjourn with the Bush administration in place without an agreement," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger. "If there's no action, we could see the collapse of one or more domestic auto companies by the end of year." Gettelfinger said the cost of not acting would be devastating for the industry's employees and the U.S. economy. "The current recession that we're in would be made much worse," he added, saying states...

The Big Three automakers’ chief executives testified before Congress today, blaming the credit crisis for their downfall. But Richard Wagoner, CEO of General Motors (GM: 2.11, -0.68, -24.37%) did not use the credit crisis as an excuse for the company’s poor profits when he wrote an editorial for the Wall Street Journal in December 2005. In his opinion piece, which came amidst record sales, he blamed not the credit crisis, but a kaleidoscope of other reasons, including “intense” foreign competition, soaring gas prices in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and high benefit costs for the automakers’ downfall. And in his...

WASHINGTON -- A full-court effort by U.S. auto makers to secure federal aid appeared to be on the rocks after the companies failed to convince lawmakers of the urgent need for a rescue. Michigan Rep. Dale Kildee, Chrysler Chairman and CEO Robert Nardelli, GM Chairman and CEO Richard Wagoner, UAW President Ron Gettelfinger and Michigan Rep. Sandy Levin (left to right) prior to a hearing Wednesday on Capitol Hill at which the auto makers made their case for federal assistance. Late Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid backed away from efforts to force a vote this week on a Democratic-backed...

The chances of the US Congress quickly approving a bill to save the "Big Three" car manufacturers are said to be "remote" but one economist warned that their collapse could shave 4pc off America's gross domestic product next year. Democrat Senator Chris Dodd, who chairs the influential Senate banking committee, believes that the chances of Congress approving a new bill this week to advance up to $25bn in lifeline funding to Ford, General Motors and Chrysler are slim. "I'm anxious to see something happen," said Mr Dodd, who on Tuesday heard pleas for the money from the leaders of the...

Barney Frank favors bailing out the Detroit automakers over letting them go into bankruptcy. Chief among his concerns is that bankruptcy might "bust" the unions. You know, those organizations whose contract demands have put Detroit on the brink of extinction. The Massachusetts Dem, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, was interviewed by Maggie Rodriguez on today's Early Show. He appeared alongside Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Al.), ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, who favors letting the automakers reorganize under Chapter 11. View video here.

There’s a big push on in Washington to bail out the Big Three automobile companies. It’s the usual “crisis” scenario where scare headlines predict woe and economic gloom if something isn’t done NOW!But would a bailout of the Big Three actually solve their problems? No. But it would make sure unions which have held these companies hostage to a failing business model don’t get hurt.Consider this: GM also famously spends over $1,600 per vehicle on the healthcare costs of current and retired U.S. workers while Toyota pays about $200 per vehicle. Although GM also pays about another $1,000 per vehicle...

DETROIT: When Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Automobile Workers union, appears this week at congressional hearings to help make the case for the Detroit automakers getting emergency U.S. government aid, he wants lawmakers to know what he believes is at stake. "It wouldn't be just one company failing here," Gettelfinger said in an interview. "It would be all three going down." He might as well add the UAW. The union's membership at General Motors, Ford Motor and Chrysler has been nearly halved to 139,000 workers in the past three years, and it continues to shrink with every new plant...

WASHINGTON: As top Detroit auto executives prepared to make their most intense plea for aid to Congress on Tuesday, General Motors also pleaded Monday for a billion-euro credit guarantee from the German government to help its Opel subsidiary. The request, greeted with some skepticism in Germany - Chancellor Angela Merkel promised a reply by Christmas - demonstrated how what had been building as a Washington drama involving efforts to save the venerable Detroit auto industry was fast becoming a story about how the international industry might be transformed by the spreading financial crisis. Governments around the world, from Tokyo to...

A card-check law would give union bosses an unfair advantage in organizing the workplaceTHE ISSUE: A card-check law would give union bosses an unfair advantage in turning workplaces into union shops. Probably no group celebrated the election of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama as president more than organized labor. For decades, labor unions have watched membership rolls dwindle. In 1983, union members made up 20.1 percent of employed wage and salary workers, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Today, the union membership rate is down to about 12 percent. In Alabama, union membership is even lower, about 9.5 percent. The...

- - Says Taxpayers Demand Real Reforms & Accountability From Washington WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, made the following statement regarding today’s announcement by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid that he will seek Senate passage next week of a $25 billion bailout for the U.S. auto industry. Senator Reid’s support for this latest government bailout comes on the heels of yesterday’s announcement from the Treasury Department that the federal government has a record deficit of $237.2 billion for the first month of the fiscal year. This represents the highest monthly imbalance on record....

JERUSALEM – The enactment of a "single payer" socialist health care system; passing laws to make joining a labor union easier; raising the minimum wage and increasing labor union support – all these are just some of the policies the Community Party USA has mapped out as crucial for Obama to push through during his term of office. Just days after the party's official newspaper lauded the role of labor unions in Obama's election victory, another article in the Communist Party's Political Affairs magazine by leading party member and Rutgers University history professor Norman Markowitz outlined the kind of "change"...

Chapter 11 would better preserve the valuable parts of the company than an ad hoc bailout. General Motors is a once-great company caught in a web of relationships designed for another era. It should not be fed while still caught, because that will leave it trapped until we get tired of feeding it. Then it will die. The only possibility of saving it is to take the risk of cutting it free. In other words, GM should be allowed to go bankrupt. AP Consider the costs of tackling GM's problems with some kind of bailout plan. After 42 years...

The failure of one or more of Detroit’s Big Three automakers would put a huge initial dent in American manufacturing, but in time foreign car companies would pick up the slack by stepping up production in their plants here, many industry experts and economists say. Whether Washington should let that play out — risking hundreds of thousands of jobs — is a central question Congress will weigh this week as it hears testimony from Detroit leaders who are pushing for immediate federal intervention, before the next administration takes over in January. “Barack Obama has made it clear he understands the...

DETROIT -- The president of the United Auto Workers union said the dire financial troubles of the three U.S. auto makers is the result this year's spike in gasoline prices and the meltdown on Wall Street, not missteps by management or high labor costs. "This industry is in a crisis situation not of its own making," Ron Gettelfinger said in an interview Saturday afternoon with The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Gettelfinger also urged Congress to provide financial help to prevent General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. or Chrysler LLC from sliding into bankruptcy protection. Bankruptcy is "the worst possible route...

One of the best reasons why Detroit automakers should not receive a bailout can be found in a General Motors "Jobs Bank" program that, bizarrely, pays employees not to work. A beneficiary of that program was someone named Jerry Mellon, who worked for GM until his division merged with another in 2000 and he was no longer needed. Except for a brief period in 2001, Mellon received his full salary for not working, which reached $64,500 a year by 2006. Include benefits, and the annual cost to GM exceeds $100,000. To earn his pay, Mellon was given the formidable task...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 (UPI) -- U.S. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan said Sunday he would not object to firing executives of U.S. automakers that get proposed federal bailout money. The Democrat said in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" program that senior management at General Motors Corp. (NYSE:GM), Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F) and Chrysler Corp. should consider resigning their posts if it means their respective firms can get federal assistance. Congressional lawmakers are considering $25 billion in emergency loans for the struggling car makers. The Senate reportedly will take up a bailout proposal Monday. "If it was the difference...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Top Republican senators said Sunday they will oppose a Democratic plan to bail out Detroit automakers, calling the U.S. industry a ''dinosaur'' whose ''day of reckoning'' is coming. Their opposition raises serious doubts about whether the plan will pass in this week's postelection session. Democratic leaders want to use $25 billion of the $700 billion financial industry bailout to help General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler LLC. Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Jon Kyl of Arizona said it would be a mistake to use any of the Wall Street rescue money to prop up...

That beeping sound you hear this week is the semi-truck being backed up to the Federal Treasury in Washington. After being filled with taxpayer billions, it's on its way to Detroit. A heaping bailout for the Big Three automakers - currently losing millions every day theyproduce cars no one wants to buy - feels like it's being gift-wrapped for the holidays.But the beeping sound you should be hearing is the heart monitor of the Big Three, slowing downto flatline. General Motors, Chrysler and Ford are such horrific financial wrecks that not even the Jaws of Life - and certainly not...

Even as Detroit's Big Three teeter on collapse, United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger said Saturday that workers will not make any more concessions and that getting the automakers back on their feet means figuring out a way to turn around the slumping economy. "The focus has to be on the economy as a whole as opposed to a UAW contract," Gettelfinger told reporters on a conference call, noting the labor costs now make up 8 percent to 10 percent of the cost of a vehicle. "We have made dramatic, dramatic changes and the UAW was applauded for that," he...

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Even as Detroit's Big Three teeter on collapse, United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger says workers will not make any more concessions and that getting the automakers back on their feet means figuring out a way to turn around the slumping economy.

Labor unions are poised to go after Hispanic workers in states like Arizona and sectors such as services and health care if new union rules are put in place by the Barack Obama administration and Democratic Congress next year. Unions and pro-union Democrats want Congress and Obama to pass card-check legislation. The plan would allow unions to organize in workplaces if they get a majority of workers to sign cards supporting unionization. It would scrap 73-year-old unionization laws that require secret ballots for workers to decide whether they want their work forces represented by a trade union. Card-check legislation is...

I find one of the more amusing although important questions is how will President-elect Barack Obama govern? As a moderate and centrist, or as an extremist, radical and liberal? I can answer such questions with another question: When your whole career and resume shows you are a leftist, an extremist, a radical, a liberal, and a 96 percent pure party line Democrat, are you are likely to be just that no matter what you say in the campaign? Mr. Obama ran far-left to win the primaries and then veered quickly to the center to win the general election. And now...