Reuters – New claims for jobless benefits hit a two-month low last week, hinting at some stability in the labor market, while the contraction in factory activity in the Mid-Atlantic region slowed in September.
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Jobless claims at two-month low
(Reuters)
-By Warner Todd Huston So imagine that you are working out of your home or the home of a friend. Say you are helping care for your own developmentally disabled relative or that of another. You are working for a family, not a company, and you are not employed by the state. Then one day you get a letter in the mail that says you have been forced by the state to join a union and henceforth you will be paying dues by having some of your salary removed by the state and given to the union. Does this sound like you are living and working in America? It is if you are a home healthcare worker in the State of Michigan. Because of a special deal made behind the scenes between Mich. Gov. Jennifer Granholm and two unions, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Michigan’s 40,000 in-home healthcare workers were unionized by a shady “vote” of less than 20% of these workers in 2006 via a mail-in ballot that most workers had no idea even existed. The forced unionization has been in and out of courts since 2006 and now it is about to go back in again as a group of in-home healthcare workers is suing the state for driving them into a union against their will. The suit has been filed earlier this year by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation on behalf of these workers. The suit challenges a scheme created by Granholm, Michigan Department of Human Services (DHS) officials, and a union front group called “Child Care Providers Together Michigan” (CCPTM) to designate home-care providers who accept state assistance as “state employees” and foist CCPTM union political “representation” on them. CCPTM is an operation run by the United Autoworker (UAW) and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSME) unions. Under Granholm’s direction, DHS officials created the “Michigan Home Based Child Care Council” to provide the union bosses with an entity to deal with as the “management” of the home child-care providers. Even though only 15 percent of the 40,000 day-care providers voted in the union certification election, the CCPTM union hierarchy was granted monopoly bargaining privileges and political representation of all the home-care providers. This lawsuit is wending its way through Michigan’s court system still and bears watching because if Granholm’s backroom deal with Big Labor is thrown out this could easily effect similar situations in 16 other states.
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Michigan Home Healthcare Workers Sue State Over Forced Unionization
-By Warner Todd Huston The New York Times gave a glowing review of Ana Burger’s career as a most divisive member of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). But how could one be less arrogant and pushy than would seem natural for a union that set out to fashion itself an “international” union? Burger, 59, was supposed to be the heir apparent to former President Andy Stern, himself a petulant and arrogant figure. But it was not to be. When Stern stepped down from heading the SEIU, Burger was passed over for another by the membership. And now she is retiring from her 14-year-long position as secretary-treasurer of the SEIU after 38 years in Big Labor. Apparently, though, Burger retires “frustrated,” as the Times has it. She leaves as the power of Big Labor seems to be on the wane. Fewer unions, fewer members, and fewer political supporters seem to be the immediate future of Big Labor. Right now Big Labor has an entirely outsized influence on Washington because it has a president that has bought and paid for by Big Labor. But this won’t last forever and there are fewer and fewer politicians of lesser status these days willing to be as loudly vocal in support of Big Labor as past pols once were. This is all good for the country, of course. But we aren’t safe from the destructive activities of unions quite yet. A great fight between grasping, anti-democratic, and fiscally disastrous public employees unions still looms ahead. We need to destroy these unions, utterly eliminate them and at the heart of the dark side stands Burger’s still powerful SEIU. If we do our jobs well, Burger will get more “frustrated” still and in the near future, too! So, off you go into retirement, Anna Burger. Let us hope that the sort of power you wielded is also as “frustrated” in the future and you are feeling now.
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SEIUs Anna Burger to Retire
-By Warner Todd Huston The Washington Examiner asks a few substantive questions about unions this Labor Day weekend. Why do they seem to have such an outsized power when their dues paying members are fewer than ever, when they work in fewer industries than ever, and when they have such money troubles? Ah, but the answer is what we all know. They have a president in Washington that’s bought and paid for. Here are just some of the favors that Obama has given to his patrons in Big Labor as the Examiner notes: » Only 10 days after taking the oath of office, Obama signed three executive orders that, respectively, limited what federal contractors can say to employees during union organizing drives, made it harder to fire incompetent employees of government contractors, and directed federal contractors to insure that employees are aware of their organizing rights. » One week later, Obama signed another executive order that requires federal agencies to use union-favored Project Labor Agreements on large federally funded construction projects. Not only does that mean many state government construction projects must use a PLA, but so must many economic stimulus-funded projects. » Hilda Solis, Obama’s secretary of labor, has nullified disclosure rules issued during the Bush administration that were designed to increase union financial transparency on forms required to be filed with the government under the Landrum-Griffin Labor Management Reporting Disclosure Act of 1959. The disclosure requirements, which were not enforced before Bush, made it possible for union members to see what their officers were doing with their dues. » Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner forced financially troubled General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy, then imposed settlements on the two corporations that granted ownership stakes of 17.5 percent and 55 percent, respectively, to the United Auto Workers Union. Yes, it is no wonder that unions have their lowest approval rate ever.
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Obama’s Favors to Unions
AFP – US President Barack Obama will Friday step up his mid-term election campaign and appeal to voters dismayed by the stuttering economy with his first White House press conference since May.
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Obama to tout economic strategy in press conference
(AFP)
Endangered Ohio Rep. John Boccieri (D) attended President Obama’s speech on the economy in Cleveland on Wednesday. Before Wednesday, it was unclear whether or not the freshman lawmaker would appear at the event with the president. Boccieri represents a district southwest of Cleveland that was represented by longtime GOP Rep. Ralph Regula before his retirement in the 2008 cycle. Other Democrats who are facing tough reelection races, such as Sen. Russ Feingold (Wis.), have declined to appear alongside Obama in recent weeks. Feingold did not attend a Milwaukee Labor Day event at the same time as the president, saying that he had a prior engagement to participate in Labor Day activities in his home town. Boccieri, considered one of the most vulnerable House Democrats in the 2010 field, appeared alongside six Ohio politicians, including his House colleagues Marcia Fudge (D) and Dennis Kucinich (D). Polls have shown Boccieri trailing GOP challenger Jim Renacci. Obama discussed proposals to boost the economy and job creation, including a permanent extension of a research-and-development tax credit.
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Vulnerable Rep. Boccieri attends Obama speech
-By Warner Todd Huston Back in 2007 Andy Stern, the now former President of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), attended a forum sponsored by the NDN Globalization Initiative and during the question and answer period after his remarks he said that he was “totally involved in distorting the political system.” Here the president of one of America’s most powerful unions just said that he feels his job is to purposefully subvert America’s political system. Sadly, this union thug doesn’t care much about the integrity of our political system, eh? It should also be remembered that since Democrats are the handmaiden of Big Labor this, by extension, is the same way that Democrats feel about our American political system. They have no interest in its integrity and will “distort” it whenever they feel like it.. See the full, hour-long video here .
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A Reminder of What Union Leaders Feel About Our Political System
… What could it be? Is there finally something new coming out of DC? Nope. Read on, Macduff: “…on infrastructure.” In a Labor Day speech, President Barack Obama recycles more stimulus spending on roads and the like as a way to jump-start blah blah blah: The president said he was proposing a $50-billion program to jump-start job creation and to rebuild the crumbling infrastructure of the United States. The plan includes the rebuilding of 150,000 miles of road, 4,000 miles of railroad tracks and 150 miles of runways. “I want America to have the best infrastructure in the world,” Obama said. “We used to have the best infrastructure. We can make it happen again.” He is also proposing an “infrastructure bank,” which a statement from the White House said “would leverage private and state and local capital to invest in projects that are most critical to our economic progress.” “This marks an important departure from the federal government's traditional way of spending on infrastructure through earmarks and formula-based grants that are allocated more by geography and politics than demonstrated value,” the statement said. “Instead, the bank will base its investment decisions on clear analytical measures of performance, competing projects against each other to determine which will produce the greatest return for American taxpayers.” Boy, that's a decisive shift in business as usual. There's little doubt, I'm sure, that reluctant private-sector contractors will now loosen their purse strings. The important thing, of course, is that we never ever allow the economy to touch bottom in any given sector because, well, you know, that would just sort of be too depressing for words. Whole thing here . And remember, it's not the size of the stimulus. It's the uncertainty . Bonus link: Just last week, Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website, released its 19th Annual Highway Report. Check out the first line: “We often hear the nation’s infrastructure is crumbling, but state highway conditions are the best they’ve been in 19 years.” A disconnect between DC and those who are actually in the know? Say it ain't so! Check out the whole report .
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Obama: Now is The Time For an “Important Departure From the Federal Government’s Traditional Way of Spending…”
John President Obama tried to go on the offensive today, delivering a hard-hitting campaign speech in Milwaukee. He was accompanied by a couple of Cabinet officers and welcomed several local organized labor officials to the Labor Day event. Senator Herb Kohl, who is not up for re-election this year, was there. But it seems noteworthy that Obama did not note the presence of a single Democratic House or Senate candidate who is on the ballot in November. He mentioned Russ Feingold, who is fighting for his political life, but Feingold regrettably was unable to appear onstage with Obama, as he had to be “in his hometown of Janesville to participate in their Labor Day parade.” We will see many more Democrats dodge platforms with Obama over the next 60 days. That is not the point of this post, however. Obama’s speech was a tough attack on Republicans, including this unscripted bit: OBAMA: That’s been at the heart of what we have been doing over these last 20 months, building our economy on a new foundation, so that our middle class doesn’t just survive this crisis. I want it to thrive. I want it to be stronger than it was before. And — and, over the last two years, that’s meant taking on some powerful interests, some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time. And they’re not always happy with me. (LAUGHTER) OBAMA: They talk about me like a dog. (LAUGHTER) (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) OBAMA: That’s not in my prepared remarks. It’s just — but it’s true. (CHEERING AND APPLAUSE) “They talk about me like a dog”? What does that mean? I ask the question seriously. Given that Obama came out with the observation spontaneously–one of the few moments when he is off-teleprompter–it may hold a clue to his psyche. Obama’s political opponents attack him, just like he attacks them (only generally more truthfully). So where does the “dog” come in? It suggests that Obama sees disagreement with him as somehow illegitimate and dehumanizing. Beyond that, it is opaque to me. Maybe our readers can explain the reference.
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Spaniel? Terrier? St. Bernard?
Nice work, Trumka. The AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka attacked tea party patriots, who stand for responsible limited government, and Republicans today at his Labor Day speech . Maybe Trumka didn’t notice but Obama’s policies have resulted in a 7.5 million jobs deficit . Somebody should clue him in. This partisan hack may be one of the most destructive union leaders in history.
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Labor Day Special… AFL-CIO Prez Trumka Bashes Tea Party Patriots at Obama Rally (Video)