Posted on 11/03/2018 6:39:17 PM PDT by willowsdale
According to the latest available U.S. Commerce Department data, the number of Michiganders employed in the auto and auto parts manufacturing industry is about half what it was at the turn of the millennium.
United Auto Workers (UAW) union bosses, who for decades have wielded their government-granted monopoly-bargaining power to foist counterproductive work rules and inefficient benefit plans on unionized autoworkers and automakers, bear a large part of the responsibility.
Of the roughly 170,000 remaining Michigan auto manufacturing employees, it’s likely that more than 100,000 are subject to UAW officials’ monopoly-bargaining power. In order to keep their jobs, employees must submit to UAW brass’ “exclusive” monopoly representation privileges to deal with employers on matters concerning pay, benefits and work rules.
This is the same UAW union that federal prosecutors have repeatedly identified as a “co-conspirator,” along with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) and a number of crooked union bosses and auto executives, in a years-long scheme to systematically violate federal labor law.
Three former members of the UAW’s FCA negotiating team have already pled guilty to taking part in the looting of millions of dollars from a worker training center funded by FCA.
And according to widely published August news accounts, prosecutors charge that FCA provided more than $9 million in illegal chargebacks to UAW treasuries to cover compensation costs for union staffers over the course of more than eight years. This happened even though corporate executives and top union bosses were well aware that the staffers provided little, if any, work at the training center or for the corporation.
It strains credibility that recently installed UAW President Gary Jones, who was once the international union’s chief accountant and has been a member of the UAW executive board since 2013, could have been unaware of the fact that FCA’s National Training Center was being looted.
Forced unionism is an important and under-reported aspect of the UAW/FCA scandal, in connection with which more indictments are expected.
As a consequence of a handful of special-interest provisions in federal labor law, tens of thousands of employees at auto assembly plants in Illinois, Missouri and Ohio, three states that currently lack Right to Work protections, are forced to pay dues to the tainted UAW. If they refuse, they can be fired.
On the other hand, unionized FCA, General Motors and Ford employees in Right to Work states like Michigan, Texas and Indiana are free to protest alleged union corruption by resigning from the UAW and cutting off dues payments, without risking unemployment.
Unfortunately, if Gretchen Whitmer, the Democrat nominee to be Michigan’s next governor, has her way, Michigan auto workers will soon lose their freedom of choice. In order to keep their jobs, they will have to pay dues or fees to UAW officials who are under FBI investigation.
Whitmer cynically labels a statute that simply protects the individual employee from being fired for refusal to bankroll a union that’s corrupt or ineffectual or takes positions that are antithetical to what the employee believes as “an assault on working people.” She is publicly pledging to repeal Michigan’s nearly six-year-old Right to Work law if she gets the opportunity.
So far, Whitmer hasn’t even tried to explain why employees who suspect union bosses are misappropriating funds should be prevented from fighting back by refusing to pay any union dues or fees.
Thanks largely to the massive “in-kind” electoral support from the forced-dues laden treasuries of national unions, Whitmer is currently ahead in the polls. That’s a shame, because a Whitmer victory would also be a victory for apparently ethically impaired union chiefs like those at the UAW who are now answering to prosecutors or potentially heading to prison.
Every union is corrupt.
From the top down. Its only a matter of scale. The higher up the more opportunities to scam the big money.
Forced unionization is the biggest scam of all.
True. Good luck with keeping out union corruption under Governor Witless Witmer (who is far ahead of the R Schuette.)
My state of Michigan is in trouble.
Gretchen Whitmer, the Democrat nominee to be Michigan’s next governor... hasn’t even tried to explain why employees who suspect union bosses are misappropriating funds should be prevented from fighting back by refusing to pay any union dues or fees.
Good post. Thanks.
Back to the Single State Economic Depression under the Dems, then.
if Dems win MI then back to single state Depression...
And the 1935 LRA was passed while there was a fascist demoncrat in the Whitehouse, demoncrat majorities in both chambers of the Congress, and a clear leftist majority on SCOTUS.
The confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh (and don't those two words go together well?) makes for the first time since the year before the LRA was passed that there was a clear conservative majority on the court.
And I think it's high time that the constitutionality of that law gets challenged.
I know one of them, she worked at my plant until she moved up to Solidarity House......Nancy Adams Johnson......LOL!
She won't get her way if the state house and senate are controlled by the republican party....and that's not likely to change.
Her pretty face is going to hell. The more you understand her agenda the uglier she gets.
I remember Whitmer pushers in media saying a few years ago her “pretty” face would cause her to not be taken seriously. I didn’t agree with their taste.
That “pretty” category was only alleged. I am now joined by many like you who know she has nothing to worry about for being labelled that way.
A minister here mentioned Whitmer supported a bill in the Michigan legislature for so called “partial birth abortion” which means she doesn’t mind the screams of a baby being pulled out and tortured to death over several minutes as it is killed and the baby’s parts readied to be sold for profit. The Dem Gretchen Whitmer’s ugliness does come out from inside.
The Dems like her will have to answer to God someday, the minister said, as we all will.
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