Free Republic

A state worker is recovering after a bloody brawl at a union hall. He says members of the local SEIU 1000 beat him up and sent him to the hospital all because he wanted to expose alleged corruption within the union. Ken Hamidi is a state worker at the California Franchise Tax Board. Last night he walked into a union hall in Sacramento for an SEIU local 1000 meeting."We had every right to be here, very simple; it wasn't anything private or anything exclusive," said Hamidi. But Hamidi says the union members did not want him there. "Three, four people...

Americans Take a Turn to the Right, Poll Shows John D. McKinnon reports on politics and polls. Among the striking findings in a new Gallup Poll on Americans’ shifting political attitudes is their growing anti-labor feeling. The percentage of Americans saying they would like to see unions have less influence in the country spiked to a record-high 42% in August 2009, compared with 32% a year earlier. That could spell trouble for some of the Obama administration’s policy priorities, including easing union-organizing rules and advancing “green jobs.” It might also complicate the president’s broader ambition to rebuild the economy in...

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka warned Senate Democratic leaders not to include a tax on high-cost healthcare plans in a bill that is expected to reach the floor in coming days. Trumka dismissed the notion that Democratic leaders could placate the powerful union by raising the threshold on plans that would be subject to the tax. Under the Senate Finance Committee’s bill, plans costing more than $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families would be hit with a 40-percent excise tax. “Working families struggling to pay for healthcare should not be required to pay even more in the form of a...

Andy Stern -- SEIU President: "People at the Chamber of Commerce have ruined the country."

Eddie Rodzwicz (don't ask me to pronounce that one) is sure to claim he was railroaded. Like a good union thug he'll likely try to blame everyone else. But whatever Ed claims about the charges filed against him it seems he's run off the rails. It's charges of bribe taking and soliciting bribes being pressed against Rodzwicz we are told. It seems that this union criminal got up a full head of steam and chugged forward toward his troubles by contacting an attorney that was supposed to be taken off the union approved vender list because of the lawyer's ethical...

WASHINGTON — A top labor lobbyist says about 30 unions will run a full-page ad in newspapers Wednesday announcing their opposition to the Senate Finance Committee's health overhaul bill. The ad says that unless the bill brought to the Senate floor makes substantial progress to address the concerns of working men and women, unions will oppose it. The legislative director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, Chuck Loveless, says unions are unhappy that the legislation lacks a publicly run insurance plan and would tax insurers that provide expensive coverage. Sponsors included the AFL-CIO and the Communications...

UNCOVERED VIDEO: OBAMA LEADS SEIU CHANT AFTER VOWING TO ‘PAINT THE NATION PURPLE’ Video at link.

Remember the Chrysler "hedge fund investors" that President Obama berated on national TV? Among these people labeled as "no-goodniks" by the President were organizations such as the the Indiana State Teachers’ Retirement Fund, and the Police retirement fund. The President of the United States was trying to intimidate retired teaches from exercising their rights as primary investors. That's the politics of change, screw a bunch of retired teachers to reward the UAW for helping you get elected. Apparently it was not only retired cops, teachers and other primary investors screwed by the GM/Chrysler Bailout deals (along with the American taxpayer),...

No trucks from Mexico, no new trade agreements, a sweet deal for the United Auto Workers at GM and Chrysler, tariffs on Chinese tires, and now Big Labor has another demand of the Obama Administration: Overturn 75 years of labor policy to sandbag Delta Airlines and unionize transportation workers. Will it get that too? The latest looming political favor features the National Mediation Board, the federal agency established in 1934 under the Railway Labor Act to oversee labor relations in the air and rail industries. A department of the AFL-CIO last month sent a letter demanding that the board tear...

Democratic lawmakers in a handful of states are facing pressure from Republicans to distance themselves from the Service Employees International Union as a result of its ties to Acorn. Republicans in Kansas, Virginia and Illinois in recent weeks have called on union-backed Democrats to return SEIU campaign contributions, citing the close connection between the union and the community organizing group, whose full name is the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

On the heals of a congressional vote to de-fund ACORN, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) is calling on the U.S. Census to sever all ties to Illinois' largest union, the Service Employees International Union, because that union, Kirk says, is too close to ACORN.

The spotlight of scrutiny is shining brightly on ACORN these days and rightly so. Where ACORN’s defenders have the audacity to insist that the employees caught on undercover videotape giving advice to a perceived “pimp” and “prostitute” on how to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and internationally traffic in underage Guatemalan prostitutes were simply “a few bad employees,” anyone with a brain recognizes that the problem is systemic in the organization. But what some are misdiagnosing or not completely understanding is how President Obama could be so nonchalant about the issue in recent interviews. It’s because ACORN – for Mr....

Occasionally, watching the hate speech of MSNBC provides useful information. Last night, the two most influential leaders of the American labor movement clearly laid out their plan to partner with the Democratic Party in foisting the “public option� on the American people. It sounds exactly like the one I outlined two weeks ago, and it may be unstoppable. The new president of the nation’s largest union demonstrated seriousness in his interview. Richard Trumka made his first television appearance as head of the AFL-CIO on The Rachel Maddow Show last night. Maddow introduced Trumka, whom she said had been “named”...

… and will your state government give them the power to do so? Kansas’s Democratic governor has just announced he’s thinking better of his decision to use the state’s resources to help the Service Employees International Union target home care workers as new union members. SEIU — part private sector union and part government union — grows by getting friendly Democratic governments to allow the union to collectively bargain for independent home care workers paid by state agencies. Sure, it’s a bad deal for taxpayers: rates go up and their side of the “negotiating” table is run by a union...

  From Pennsylvania Right-to-Work:Most readers are already aware of a growing scandal involving the pro-forced unionism Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) in New York, Baltimore, Washington, and now, California. For those who missed it, ACORN representatives were caught on camera giving advice to undercover journalists on how to open an illegal brothel, launder its profits, and commit a host of other illegal activities.According to The Washington Examiner, teacher union officials have contributed over 1.3 million dollars (in mostly forced union dues) to ACORN since 2005.We decided to do a little digging into union financial disclosure forms on...

Statement of Andy Stern, President of SEIU WASHINGTON DC--Andy Stern, President of the Service Employees International Union, issued the following statement today regarding recent attempts of right wing extremists to silence working families by attacking progressive individuals and community organizations: "This is a moment of profound change for this country--from kitchen tables to town halls to the floor of the Senate, this nation is engaged in a vigorous and heated debate about how we rebuild our economy, solve our national healthcare crisis and restore the American Dream. "As has always happened when progressive change is in the air, the backlash...

Activist group ACORN started in 1970 to help the poor in Arkansas and quickly went national, growing into a multimillion-dollar conglomerate with a mission so far-flung that schools now bear its name, two radio stations are affiliates and a man it backed is the president. Oh yeah, it's also the unwilling star of a hot Internet video featuring a couple dressed as a hooker and her pimp. SNIP Many Democrats used to advertise their ACORN connections. Now, however, the Democratic-led Senate has voted to cut off its grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Democrat-dominated House...

Remember Elston McCowan? He’s one of the SEIU purple shirted thugs who were arrested for beating a Black conservative for daring to protest Obamacare outside a town hall meeting featuring Democrat Congressman Russ Carnahan. It turns out McCowan actually had the nerve to ask for Workman’s Compensation payments because he is “injured” and unable to “work.” Missouri had the good sense to tell this deadbeat to get lost, but moochers like McCowan don’t discourage easily when something for nothing is at stake. He has applied to the SEIU to pay him, thereby acknowledging he was there and committed this assault...

It isn’t just out of the goodness of their hearts that Big Labor is gearing up to spend millions to help President Obama to jam Obamacare down the throats of the American people. The unions stand to get a big payoff of $10 billion to supplement their failing pension plans. The President of the AFL-CIO recently announced that the union would jump into the healthcare fight to help out “working people.” John Sweeney also said that the healthcare fight is “the next big step in our march to turn around America.” But unions already have their own healthcare plans and...

Like the cavalry, organized labor reportedly plans on swooping in to the rescue of beleaguered lawmakers who are getting shouted down by conservative activists at town-hall meetings during discussions of health-care overhaul legislation. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports that the AFL-CIO is calling on its troops to counter the anti-health care reform hecklers. An excerpt: The nation's largest federation of labor organizations has promised to directly engage with boisterous conservative protesters at Democratic town halls during the August recess. In a memo sent out on Thursday, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney outlined the blueprint for how the union conglomerate would...

Ad Buy Is First Of 2010 Campaign Las Vegas - SEIU announced today that it has begun a new, aggressive television ad campaign in support of Senator Harry Reid's work on behalf of Nevada's working families. He has worked to bring Republicans and Democrats together to fix the economic mess that President Bush and his Wall Street cronies left working families as they rode into the sunset with billions in taxpayer-financed bonuses. Earlier this week, the National Republican Senatorial Committee went up with its first attack ad for Senator Reid's work to build a bipartisan recovery package that not only...

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Big Labor is finding that it might have a bit less of a lock than it thought on its pet legislation, the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Apparently, several southern Democrats -- those that live in right to work states -- as well as some moderates are signaling Senate Majority leader Harry Reid that they are not as interested in entertaining passage of the act as they were when they knew that the GOP was strong enough to filibuster it and when they had a president that stood ready to veto it....

We have to start this posting with some questions to each of you dear readers out there. Do you like your vote to be secret? Free of coercion? Known only to you? Well, so does Obama's new appointment for Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis (D-El Monte, CA). She agrees with you and every other democracy-loving citizen that when it comes to her ballot, she wants it to be a secret one. She's 100% for her own votes remaining secret from prying eyes. Unfortunately, she also wants to take away that same democratic right from every working American faced with unionization....

In a day when their industry is cratering, in large part because of their own actions, the United Auto Workers (UAW) is whining to president to be Barack Obama that "unfair labor rules" need to be retracted once he takes office. The UAW is asking Obama to revisit the conditions that the recent Bailout is dependent upon whereby the union is forced to revisit its practices to look for cutbacks and concessions. In essence, the UAW is trying to convince Obama that the union should not be held accountable for its actions of dragging the US auto makers down the...

A recent AP piece lauded the fact that the envirosocialist movement and American labor unions are at long last beginning to walk hand in hand. At the "climate talks" in Poland, several American union groups sent representatives to announce common cause on going green. The AP report noted that the Sierra Club, a longtime environmentalist group, announced support for the inaptly named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that features the undemocratic card check provision. For example, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club have endorsed the Employee Free Choice Act, a union-backed bill that would protect workers' rights...

A pattern has emerged concerning the expansion of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and that is one of rushed contracts that supposedly "give too much away" to the employers. Of course, I won't comment of the supposed "giving too much away" aspect, but one thing that I will comment on is the propensity of the SEIU to get their contracts by hook or by crook. This plan is of a piece with SEIU President Andy Stern's quest to make the SEIU the biggest union in the nation. His has been a plan to simply glom onto as many new...

Last week, Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers union, threatened to foster riots if the $900 billion bailout didn't get through Congress. “If we have Republicans who oppose us, we are going to take to the streets, we are going to occupy places. We are not going to allow any more of our members’ lives to be destroyed,” he warned in a conference call to journalists over the weekend. A new coalition of union welfare seekers has been formed that goes by the name Campaign for America’s Future (CAF). CAF, made up of more than two dozen labor unions,...

The folks at the Workforce Fairness Institute conducted an interesting and enlightening post election survey that they are now ready to release and it shows that a significant majority of American voters do not support the Democrat's and the Union's Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The anti-democratic policy of card check was particularly disliked by those surveyed. Workforce Fairness Institute Public Opinion Strategies is pleased to present the key findings from a national post-election survey of 800 voters who said they voted on Election Day (November 4, 2008) or voted early. The telephone survey was conducted November 17-19, 2008, and...

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is still going ahead with its plans to perpetrate a hostile takeover of California local California Healthcare Workers union (UHC). Naturally, the local isn't too happy to be forcefully dissolved and integrated into the SEIU national and losing their identity. The UHC folks with their president Sal Rossi in the lead, are staging all sorts of protests and efforts to deny the SEIU its victory. Rossi has been a thorn in SEIU president Andy Stern's side for quite a while now. The SEIU has been trying to mount a massive take over of unions...

In his 34 years working for General Motors, one of Jerry Mellon's toughest assignments came this January. He spent a week in the "rubber room." The room is a windowless old storage shed in Flint, Mich. It is filled with long tables, Mr. Mellon says, and has space for about 400 employees. They must arrive at 6 a.m. each day and stay until 2:30 p.m., with 45 minutes off for lunch. A supervisor roams the aisles, signing people out when they want to use the bathroom. Their job: to do nothing. This is the Jobs Bank, a two-decade-old program in...

As the Washington Post reports, it seems that in these tight economic times, big labor is admitting that it cannot wait until President Barack Obama comes to its aid by signing the Employee Free Choice Act, thereby dooming many American businesses to economic ruin. The Post's story was mostly just re-hash of items we've talked about here on the blog for many a month. But one paragraph stuck a chord. After revealing how undemocratic the union's "card check" ideas are, the Post talked a little bit about what big labor wants to do once Barack wins election... Read the rest...

From time to time here on the blog we like to highlight the convictions, imprisonment and punishment of union thieves. It warms our heart here at the blog to see such criminal union thugs cut down by the law, to see them finally get their just deserts. We only wish that more of them found their proper ends sooner. But, when they are caught we rejoice at the justice done. Today we have what, if we were in an HBO TV series, might have been a member of Tony Soprano's bunch (is New Jersey sick of this allusion yet?) with...

According to Reuters, the United Auto Workers (UAW) has announced that they are spending $3 million on TV, radio and Web ads to promote the election of Barack Obama this month. The ads, which feature UAW members talking about lost health care benefits and the loss of manufacturing jobs, will run on television, radio and Web sites in the key manufacturing states of Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. These union thugs have some gall to claim that increasing benefits is a good idea. Let's take a look and see how unions have already made American car manufacturers uncompetitive with others....

The Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) has issued new reporting procedures for unions to report the details of what are called T-1 Trusts. These new reporting efforts should help bring light to these funds that have heretofore been shielded from transparency allowing unions to use many millions of dollars without accountability from its members or the government. A T-1 Trust fund is a nice bit of accounting sleight of hand that unions have used to fund what they claim is "retraining" of its members. But, millions of dollars end up in these funds and there are no rules to account...

Government workers from Montgomery County, Pennsylvania have been finding unwelcome visitors at the doorsteps since mid-August. Union organizers from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) mysteriously found themselves in possession of the home addresses of every government worker in the county. This is, of course, illegal... yet, magically, the SEIU has the contact info anyway. Naturally, every department head in the county is saying their agency is innocent of leaking the information. But, regardless who which inside operative of the union was helping them, it is not legal for the union to accept such information. The law states that only...

Confessions of a criminal... well, that is what this new memoir should be titled, but it isn't. The Bellingham Herald (Washington State) is reporting on the publication of a new memoir by Joe Miller who was once a lobbyist for various unions and Democratic Party candidates. In it he admits that he broke the law "all the time" in pursuit of legislative/financial wins for the left. In "The Wicked Wine of Democracy," Miller records his 40 years as a lobbyist, starting as a political operative for Henry "Scoop" Jackson in the 1960s, and the tales he gives us shows how...

The L.A. Times has really got it out for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), I have to say. On September 26, the Times published another one of its investigations into the corrupt union activities, this time revealing that SEIU union bigwigs have funneled millions of dollars to little companies owned by family members for "services" being provided the union. The investigation also showed that union chiefs are starting their own side companies only to get millions of dollars in "contracts" from the union. It must be nice to be a chief directing budgets of millions upon millions of dollars...

There has been a pretty vicious fight in Colorado over several Amendments that will appear on the ballots aimed at putting a collar on rampant union violations of worker's rights this year. The unions have imported all sorts of outside groups and money to defeat these worker freedom Amendments. Here is a page from the latest anti-worker rights the unions have sent out. As AnCap of the People's Press colorfully says of these claims... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

The Service Employees International Union's headquarters has paid millions of dollars to consulting firms, political nonprofits and individuals with family ties and other personal connections to some of the labor organization's top officers, records show. One company partly owned by a union director also received more than $1 million in SEIU consulting fees. The nation's fastest-growing union, the SEIU bills itself a standard-setter in the drive to reform and modernize the labor movement. It has adopted a code of ethics that bars officers from directing business to their relatives, although a spokeswoman said no competitive bidding process is required when...

Anyone following the print media will know that newspapers are falling on hard times everywhere in the country. The Internet has damaged newspaper's once dominant position as the source for daily local and national news. In this day when papers are folding everywhere and many more are firing people right and left (well, just "left" because there are few on the right in that business!) one would think that everyone involved with any particular paper would be bending over backwards to help keep the doors open and the printing presses rolling. Well, apparently, unions would rather see everyone lose their...

It's like some sort of spy novel gone bad where the Soviet Agents are somehow the good guys. A grocery store worker and union member that makes over $20 an hour "quits" his job and starts a job in another grocery store making only $10 an hour just so he can cajole his new workplace into joining the union from the inside, pretending to be one of them. In fact, the union "supplements" this activist's pay while he invades the other store to agitate for unions there. At issue is the organizing of the Fresh & Easy grocery chain in...

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) donated nearly $5.5 million to three non-profit, leftist political groups to beat Republican politicians in Florida, Michigan and Ohio this year. AFSCME gave to Campaign Money Watch, Patriot Majority and Patriot Majority Midwest. AFSCME's role, however, was not well known until now. Detractors say that this shadowy financial support violates the spirit of campaign finance reform and open government. Allowing non-profits to raise and spend unlimited union or corporate funds violates the spirit of laws aimed at curbing special interests in elections, said Meredith McGehee of the non-partisan watchdog Campaign...

To head off claims by California Republicans that California State House Democrats are covering up for the fraud involved in a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) spending and influence peddling scandal, it was announced that a criminal investigation is going forward against the union. One wonders just how hard the Democrat controlled House will pursue the matter, though? The Education and Labor Committee's top-ranked Republican, Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), suggested last week that the congressional examination of an SEIU local in Los Angeles had stalled because the union is a key ally of the Democratic Party. The committee...

Unions in America have finally arrived at farce. Yes, they have become a parody of themselves because now we have an example of a union being formed so that it can strike against... its own union. Confused? Don't blame you. From the Associated Press we get this tale of high comedy, this story of brother fighting brother and sister cat fighting with sister: Union employees form their own union, then strike.... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

Responding to Republican charges of foot-dragging, the Democratic chairman of the House labor panel said Tuesday that it is pursuing its inquiry into a spending scandal at the Service Employees International Union but taking care not to interfere with a criminal investigation. The Education and Labor Committee's top-ranked Republican, Rep. Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), suggested last week that the congressional examination of an SEIU local in Los Angeles had stalled because the union is a key ally of the Democratic Party. On Tuesday, the committee chairman, Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), said in a letter to McKeon that the inquiry...

The troubled Service Employee International Union (SEIU) in California is seeing yet another explosion of negative publicity this week as one of its Local chiefs is arrested for possessing child pornography. The Sacramento Bee is reporting Local 1000 District Labor Council 784 Jaime E. Feliciano, 49, was arrested Tuesday, September 9. Authorities on Tuesday arrested the president of a state workers union local on suspicion of possessing child pornography and violating his probation as a sex offender.... Read the rest at Publiusforum.com...

The Compton city attorney's office is investigating a $1-per-lot sale of government land to a housing corporation that failed to receive the tax-exempt status it sought and is associated with a Los Angeles labor union mired in a spending scandal. The housing group was established as a nonprofit in 2004, but never received an Internal Revenue Service exemption and had lost its right to do business in California for not filing its tax returns, The Times disclosed last month. It was founded under the direction of Tyrone Freeman, president of the Service Employees International Union local, whose financial practices are...

The Service Employees International Union announced Thursday that it had placed a senior manager at its biggest California local on leave and that two lower-ranking staffers had lost their jobs, because of allegations that other employees were retaliated against in connection with a widening spending scandal. The Times reported last month that some workers who did not immediately sign a letter of support for the Los Angeles local's president, Tyrone Freeman, who is at the center of the scandal, had their union cellphone service canceled and were transferred to distant jobs. One staffer who balked at signing the letter was...

The more we learn of the management style of President Andy Stern of the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) the more we see that he is an authoritarian as bad as any top-down led corporation that he and his union might criticize. And this newest abuse of office that his protege in California, Tyrone Freeman, has been embroiled in is yet another window into Stern's undemocratic ways. As Freeman was wildly spending union members' dues to float little companies run by his relatives, and as Freeman's associate Rickman Jackson went to a Michigan union to try his own hand at...

The Service Employees International Union's top California officer has taken a leave of absence, and her former boyfriend has been ordered to return tens of thousands of dollars he received from the state council and Los Angeles local that she heads. Annelle Grajeda is the third major SEIU leader to step aside following reports in The Times about the union's financial practices. The SEIU acknowledged Saturday that Grajeda was on leave as president of the L.A. local and the union's state council, and as an executive vice president of the national organization, because of allegations that she was improperly involved...