Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress are looking to give U.S. automakers with union employees the inside track on the burgeoning electric vehicle market, triggering vocal opposition from foreign trade partners and Republicans who worry that manufacturers in their home states will be placed at a competitive disadvantage. The $1.85 trillion spending package that Democrats are laboring to pass through Congress includes an array of programs designed to curb global warming and slash U.S. emissions. It includes incentives to hasten the transition to electric vehicles, which represent a small but rapidly growing share of the market....

ON THE WATERFRONT, there’s a longshoreman on the books who washes trucks. He gets paid $465,981 a year. To wash trucks. Fired when his bosses discovered he wasn’t actually showing up when he claimed to be working, he nevertheless regained his job—after an arbitrator concluded it was not unusual in the industry for employees to be paid “without being expected to work all the hours for which they are being paid.” The Port of New York Harbor is the busiest on the East Coast and the third largest in the nation. From the marine terminals in Port Newark and Port...

DETROIT - A former senior ranking United Automobile Workers (UAW) official is accused of taking part in a conspiracy in which she and other union officials accepted a stream of concealed payments and things of value from FCA executives. Nancy A. Johnson, of Macomb Township, allegedly took part in this bribery scheme with FCA executives in the months leading up to the 2015 collective bargaining negotiations, according to the United States Attorney's Office....... Johnson is accused of illegally accepting tens of thousands of dollars worth of designer clothing, golf resort fees, limousine services, lavish meals, luxury accommodations, luggage, and first-class...

Republicans clashed with the Internal Revenue Service's new commissioner Wednesday in a Capitol Hill hearing that featured the unveiling a document indicating that the agency planned as early as 2012 to change its rules in a way that justified singling out tea party groups for special scrutiny. The document, an email from Treasury Department tax policy attorney Ruth Madrigal to a group of IRS officials including the disgraced Lois Lerner. 'Don’t know who in your organizations is keeping tabs on c4s,' Madrigal wrote, quoting an election law blog and referring to the 501(c)(4) tax-exempt groups that were the subject of...

After about an hour, about 20 SEIU protesters arrived on the scene chanting “Boehner, get us back to work” and claiming they were federal employees furloughed because of the shutdown. In the video below these protesters were marching towards the press gaggle and I was asking them to show their federal IDs to prove they were in fact federal workers. No one wore their federal ID and none would provide it to prove their claim. Then, remarkably, a guy carrying a sign passed by wearing a McDonald’s employee shirt, which I noted. I then began asking them how much they...

The Detroit News reported that the State Bureau of Elections began a formal investigation of the Service Employees International Union regarding its financing of a ballot proposal last year. Proposal 4, which would have locked into the state constitution the skimming of millions of dollars each year from the caretakers of disabled people, was defeated by 14 percentage points. Chad Livengood in The News reported: The complaint focuses on a group called Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care and an East Lansing company called Home Care First Inc. Citizens for Affordable Quality Home Care sponsored the ballot proposal. In campaign...

"Comprehensive immigration reform," like virtually any initiative containing the magic word "comprehensive," looks good on the surface. But the details of the comprehensive immigration bill passed by the Senate in June by a 68-32 margin reveal a lot gone wrong underneath. Oblivious to this, top union leaders are gearing up for an all-out blitz this fall to secure passage of similar legislation in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Led by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka (in photo), they are obsessed with providing 11 million or more persons living illegally in this country with amnesty and eventual citizenship, and with enabling millions...

A judge ordered one of Chicago’s most politically powerful labor unions to suspend picketing against 16 funeral homes last week after receiving reports that striking Teamsters had, among other things, disturbed a child’s funeral. SCI Illinois Services, Inc., one of the nation’s largest funeral home chains, asked a district court to intervene after striking funeral directors and drivers with Teamsters Local 727 allegedly harassed grieving families. The funeral home was eventually forced to call the police when picketers allegedly disrupted a child’s funeral with laughter. The officer asked the Teamsters to leave, but protesters returned when he drove away.

IRS employees have a prominent role in Obamacare, but their union wants no part of the law. National Treasury Employees Union officials are urging members to write their congressional representatives in opposition to receiving coverage through President Obama’s health care law. The union leaders are providing members with a form letter to send to the congressmen that says “I am very concerned about legislation that has been introduced by Congressman Dave Camp to push federal employees out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and into the insurance exchanges established under the Affordable Care Act.”

In the fall of 2011 the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC) submitted Freedom of Information requests to the Department of Labor and the Internal Revenue Service following an announcement that the administration was investigating homebuilders in an attempt to bolster union membership at the expense of housing sector jobs. “In a letter [from the Labor Department] cited by The [Wall Street] Journal,” wrote Crain’s Detroit at the time “homebuilders were asked to immediately turn over the names, addresses, Social Security numbers, pay rates and hours worked for all employees over the past two years. The letter from the Labor...

"IT'S A DREAM JOB: Mark Rosenthal, who pulls in $156,000 a year as head of Local 983 of District Council 37, nods off at his desk during one of a series of postlunch naps that have outraged members of the union’s executive board. “He eats lunch when he arrives at work at 2 p.m. Then, like clockwork, he goes to sleep with a cup of soda on the table and the straw in it,” said Marvin Robbins, a union vice president. “Then he wakes up, looks at his watch and says, ‘I have to get out before the traffic gets...

There are few victories sweeter in life than that of young teenagers triumphing over organized mean-spirited adults in positions of seemingly absolute power. This is a story that comes out of my own home town of Gold Beach, Oregon. It pits the high school band, consisting of 15 teenagers ranging in age from 15 to 18, against the powerful local teacher's union that tried to shut the band down because their unpaid volunteer band director, who everybody agreed was doing a good job, did not possess an Oregon teaching credential. http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/duffy141.html

Yesterday I asked in this space, among other questions about the IRS scandal, this: What was the subject of the Obama-Kelley March 31, 2010 meeting? I received the following response to my question from the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) — the union for IRS employees headed by ex-14 year agent Colleen Kelley. The response came from union spokesperson Dina Long. It reads, in its entirety, this: Statement of NTEU On March 31, 2010, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley attended the White House Forum on Workplace Flexibility at the Old Executive Office Building. The forum was attended by approximately 200...

The IRS? It’s about a union: the National Treasury Employees Union. The NTEU. A left-wing union representing 150,000 employees in 31 separate government agencies, including the IRS. A union that not only endorsed President Obama for election and re-election, but a union whose current president, Colleen Kelly, was a 14-year IRS agent and now is both union president and Obama administration appointee (of which more in a moment). It’s about 94% of NTEU union contributions going to Democrats in the Senate and House in 2012 — candidates who campaigned as vociferous opponents of the Tea Party. And the recently released...

Labor is mounting an all-out push to fill the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) as the agency faces the prospect of being sidelined for the rest of President Obama’s second term. Unions of all stripes have told Senate Democrats that they need to move on all five of Obama's nominees to the labor board, even if it takes a controversial change to filibuster rules to make it happen. “Without this, there's nothing [to protect workers],” said Larry Cohen, the president of the Communications Workers of America. (CWA) “It's a floor and now the floor is caving in as well.” The...

The Michigan Capitol Confidential article about a leaked document from the Service Employees International Union on how the union hopes to continue its "dues skim" against home-based caregivers is interesting, but more significant is how the union explains the whole unionization scheme. The crux of the debate is over the unionization of more than 45,000 home-based caregivers. The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, which is representing some of those forced to be in the union, maintains that the skim was illegal because the caregivers are not state employees — they work for private individuals who happen to receive public money. If...

A ‘Second Amendment Rally’ is being held in Albany this Thursday the 28th, and will feature National Rifle Association President David Keene, and various other speakers opposed to new gun legislation passed last month in New York state. The Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act of 2013 currently hails as the single most restrictive assault on Second Amendment rights in the country, and was forced through the legislative process without public review – a tactic that even Governor Cuomo admits was the only way to enact the law. As a counter to the massive Second Amendment support being demonstrated...

Ex-SEIU Local Exec Convicted of Stealing From Low-Income Members Paul Pringle and Hailey Branson-Potts January 28 A onetime rising star in national labor circles who headed California's biggest union local was convicted Monday on federal charges that he stole tens of thousands of dollars from his low-income members. Tyrone Freeman, who represented about 190,000 homecare workers as a leader of the Service Employees International Union, was found guilty on 14 counts after a 10-day trial... Jurors deliberated two and a half days before returning their verdict. The trial followed a nearly four-year investigation triggered by a series of Times reports...

Chicago Teachers Union President: ‘Off With Their Heads!’ By Elizabeth Harrington January 9, 2013 (CNSNews.com) – Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said union opponents “think nothing about killing us” and that “wealth disparity” in America today mirrors the 19th century when labor leaders then used to be “ready to kill,” to chop people’s heads off. “We are at a moment when the wealth disparity in this country is very reminiscent of the robber-baron ages,” Lewis said at the Illinois Labor History Society on Jan. 5. “The labor leaders of that time, though, were ready to kill — just really,...

A group of Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania Quakers has discovered they have no “friends” in the union movement. The gentile folk that are called Friends or Quakers wanted to have a new meetinghouse built and foolishly thought they should engage the cheapest construction company to get the job done. Their problems arose when the word got out that the company they hired used non-union workers. This “insult” enraged the members of several unions that lost out on the work involved. The Friends Community could not afford to build their new meetinghouse if they had to knuckle under and pay union extortionist...