Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind

by Mallory Factor

  2 Carl F. Horowitz, Union Corruption in America: Still a Growth Industry, (Springfield, Va.: National Institute for Labor Relations Research, 2004), http://www.nilrr.org/files/Horowitz.pdf, accessed January 2012.

  3 “FBI investigating former SEIU leader Andy Stern,” CBS News, September 28, 2010, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/28/national/main6907828.shtml, accessed January 2012; Kris Maher and Evan Perez, “SEIU Probed Over Consulting Pacts,” Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2010.

  4 “About the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,” FiscalCommission.gov, http://www.fiscalcommission.gov/about; “Andrew L. Stern,” Columbia Business School Directory, http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/cbs-directory/detail/7515985/Andrew+Stern.

  5 See In the Matter of the Construction & General Laborers’ District Council of Chicago & Vicinity Laborers’ International Union of North America Independent Hearing Officer, Docket No. 97-30T, February 7, 1998, Order and Memorandum, http://www.ipsn.org/laborers/chicago_district_council/t97-30.htm, accessed May 2012. John O’Brien, “Corruption Charges Spur Union Council’s Takeover,” Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1998, http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-02-11/news/9802110221_1_mob-influence-union-hearing-officer-international-union, accessed January 2012.

  6 105 Cong. Rec. 1,727 (1959) (statement of James P. Mitchell, Secretary of Labor, Feb. 4, 1959, before Subcommittee on Labor, Senate Committee on Labor & Public Welfare).

  7 “Fighting Union Corruption: The Landrum-Griffin Act,” McGraw-HillAnswers.com, http://www.mcgraw-hillanswers.com/fighting-union-corruption-landrum-griffin-act, accessed January 2012. See also “Union Members Bill of Rights,” UnionFacts.com, http://www.unionfacts.com/crime-and-corruption/union-members-bill-of-rights/.

  8 “Disclosure and Deterrence,” UnionFacts.com, http://www.unionfacts.com/crime-and-corruption/disclosure-and-deterrence/, accessed February 2012.

  9 “Death by 23,000 Cuts and the Failure of Self-Governance,” UnionFacts.com, http://www.unionfacts.com/crime-and-corruption/death-by-23000-cuts-and-the-failure-of-self-governance/, accessed February 2012.

  10 James B. Jacobs and Dimitri D. Portnoi, “Combating Organized Crime with Union Democracy: A Case Study of the Election Reform in United States v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters,” Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review 42, no. 2 (Winter 2009), pp. 335–425, http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/llr/vol42/iss2/2, accessed February 2012.

  11 Steven Greenhouse, “Behind Turmoil For Teamsters, Rush for Cash,” New York Times, September 21, 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/21/us/behind-turmoil-for-teamsters-rush-for-cash.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm, accessed February 2012.

  12 Ibid.

  13 United States v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 998 F.Supp. 759 (S.D.N.Y. 1997); http://www.leagle.com/xmlResult.aspx?page=7&xmldoc=19971747988FSupp759_11679.xml&docbase=CSLWAR2-1986-2006&SizeDisp=7, accessed May 2012, affirmed, 156 F.3rd 354 (Second Cir. 1998); Decision of Kenneth Conboy to Disqualify IBT President Ron Carey, (S.D.N.Y. 1997), http://www.ipsn.org/teamsters/carey_decision.htm, accessed May 2012; Steven Greenhouse, “An Overseer Bars Teamster Leader from Re-election,” New York Times, November 15, 1997, http://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/18/us/an-overseer-bars-teamster-leader-from-re-election.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm, accessed February 2012.

  14 Decision of Teamsters Election Officer Kenneth Conboy to Disqualify Int’l Brotherhood of Teamsters President Ron Carey, p. 11.

  15 Brody Mullins and Kris Maher, “Obama Says Teamsters Need Less Oversight,” Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120994756511766395.html, accessed May 2012.

  16 “How to Get an Honest Union Election,” Association for Union Democracy, September 2004, http://www.uniondemocracy.org/Legal/honestel.htm, accessed January 2012.

  17 Steven Greenhouse, “Ex-officials of City Union Convicted of Rigging Vote,” New York Times, July 26, 2000, http://www.nytimes.com/2000/07/26/nyregion/ex-officials-of-city-union-convicted-of-rigging-vote.html?ref=albertadiop, accessed May 2012;

  Ken Boehm, “The Scandals of AFSCME District Council 37,” part 1, Labor Watch, Capital Research Center, September 2002, pp. 1–7.

  18 Steven Greenhouse, “Trustee Ends his Oversight of District 37; Chief Chosen,” New York Times, February 27, 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/27/nyregion/trustee-ends-his-oversight-of-district-37-chief-chosen.html, accessed May 2012.

  19 Kevin Killeen, “Possible Fraud Invalidates St. Louis Police Union Election,” CBS St. Louis, September 30, 2011, http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2011/09/30/possible-fraud-invalidates-st-louis-police-union-election/, accessed January 2012.

  20 “Second Election Yields Same Winner for St. Louis Police Officers Association Presidency,” St. Louis Today, October 26, 2011, http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/article_64c9e9ec-0018-11e1-9a70-0019bb30f31a.html, accessed January 2012.

  21 “As Workers Celebrate May Day, Union Officials Attempt to Steal Internal Leadership Election,” Occupy UCI! May 1, 2011, http://occupyuci.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/as-workers-celebrate-may-day-union-officials-attempt-to-steal-internal-leadership-election/, accessed January 2012. See also “Elected Officers,” uaw2865.org, http://www.uaw2865.org/?page_id=82, accessed January 2012.

  22 U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), “Civil Enforcement Actions 2011,” http://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/civil_actions_2011.htm, accessed January 2012.

  23 Anna Phillips, “Teachers Union Elections: Who Votes and Who Cares,” GothamSchools, March 25, 2010, http://gothamschools.org/2010/03/25/teachers-union-elections-who-votes-and-who-cares/, accessed January 2012.

  24 Anna Phillips, “As Ballots Come In, a Look at the Teachers Union Elections,” GothamSchools, March 25, 2010, http://gothamschools.org/2010/03/25/as-ballots-come-in-a-look-at-the-teachers-union-elections/, accessed January 2012.

  25 Elaine L. Chao, “Obama Tries to Stop Union Disclosure,” Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124157604375290453.html, accessed January 2012.

  26 A monthly report of certain union embezzlement cases can be found at LaborUnionReport.com, http://www.laborunionreport.com/portal/tag/union-embezzlement/, accessed April 2012.

  27 Russ Buettner, “Union’s Money Fueled Lavish Lifestyle, Prosecutors Say,” New York Times, January 4, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/nyregion/04sandhog.html?pagewanted=all, accessed February 2012.

  28 Carl Horowitz, “Benefits Manager for NYC Sandhogs Pleads Guilty,” National Legal and Policy Center, November 4, 2011, http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/11/04/benefits-manager-nyc-sandhogs-union-pleads-guilty, accessed February 2012.

  29 “Your Rights & FAQ,” UnionFacts.com, http://www.unionfacts.com/article/union-member-resources/your-rights-faq/, accessed January 2012.

  30 Ibid. See also “What rights are guaranteed to me as a union member under the Bill of Rights for members of labor organizations?” Frequently Asked Questions, U.S. Department of Labor, Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS), http://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/LMRDAQandA.htm, accessed February 2012. According to the Department of Labor, the Landrum-Griffin’s “Bill of Rights guarantees members a voice in setting the union’s rates of dues, fees, and assessments.” The Act covers all unions that represent some private sector workers. The Civil Service Reform Act provides a similar bill of rights for federal employees. However, unions representing only state, county, and municipal workers are not bound by this law, and their members are not protected by a bill of rights. Individual states could change this by passing their own state-level laws based on Landrum-Griffin that would not only provide for a bill of rights for union members but would also require financial disclosure for state and municipal workers unions, not currently required under federal law.

  31 Representative Darrell Issa, “Follow the Money: ACORN, SEIU and their Political Allies,” U.S. House of Representatives, 111th Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, February 18, 2010, Appendices, http://oversight.house.gov/w
p-content/uploads/2012/02/20100218followthemoneyacornseiuandtheirpoliticalallies.pdf, accessed January 2012.

  32 The Issa report quoted SEIU insiders, who explained, “Wade Rathke was a Board Member of SEIU. Madeleine Talbott and her husband Keith Kelleher served on the boards of both SEIU and ACORN. Zach Polett is the chief of political operations at ACORN. The ACORN Office in St. Louis, Missouri is owned by SEIU 880 and ACORN Housing. Jeff Ordower, the Missouri head organizer for ACORN, works in the SEIU building in St. Louis. Ordower, who works at the SEIU offices, is the field operations director for ACORN.” Ibid., pp. 23–24.

  33 Adam Schaeffer, “NEA Dues and ACORN,” Cato @ Liberty (blog), September 15, 2009, http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/nea-dues-and-acorn/, accessed March 2012.

  34 “AFSCME Official Admits to Embezzling $180,000 Intended for ACORN Affiliate,” LaborUnionReport (blog), RedState, June 26, 2010, http://www.redstate.com/laborunionreport/2010/06/26/afscme-official-admits-embezzling-180000-intended-for-acorn-affiliate/, accessed March 2012.

  35 “Obama and Acorn,” Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122394051071230749.html, accessed March 2012.

  36 John Fund, “An Acorn Whistle-Blower Testifies in Court,” Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122533169940482893.html, accessed April 2012.

  37 Issa, “Follow the Money.”

  38 Ibid., p. 4.

  39 Ibid.

  40 John Fund, Stealing Elections (New York: Encounter Books, 2008), p. 60.

  41 “Reid Blocks ACORN Probe,” editorial, Las Vegas-Review Journal, September 25, 2009 http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/reid-blocks-acorn-probe-61438132.html, accessed January 2012.

  42 Ibid.

  43 Matthew Vadum, “ACORN Fined Maximum in Nevada Vote Fraud Scheme,” American Spectator, August 10, 2011, http://spectator.org/blog/2011/08/10/acorn-fined-maximum-in-nevada, accessed January 2012.

  44 Ibid.

  45 “Reid Blocks ACORN Probe.”

  46 Matthew Vadum, “New ACORN Groups Join SEIU’s Economic Terrorism Campaign,” American Spectator, July 25, 2011, http://spectator.org/blog/2011/07/25/breaking-new-acorn-groups-join, accessed February 2012.

  47 “What is Union Democracy?” Association for Union Democracy, http://www.uniondemocracy.org/Home/whatitis.htm, accessed February 2012.

  48 James Sherk, “Labor Department Rolls Back Transparency for Unions,” The Foundry (blog), Heritage Foundation, October 31, 2011, http://blog.heritage.org/2011/10/31/labor-department-rolls-back-transparency-for-unions/, accessed February 2012.

  49 Ibid.

  50 Chao, “Obama Tries to Stop Union Disclosure.”

  Chapter 8. Shadowboss Battle Plan

  1 Care workers who are paid by their clients out of funds from government subsidy programs have been unionized, but so have care workers in some states like Washington and New York who are regular care providers under state law but who are not paid out of government subsidies. Getting Organized: Unionizing Home-Based Child Care Providers—2010 Update (Washington, D.C.: National Women’s Law Center, 2010), p. 9, http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/gettingorganizedupdate2010.pdf.

  2 Bradford Plumer, “Love’s Labor Lost,” New Republic, April 23, 2008, http://www.tnr.com/article/environment-energy/labors-love-lost, accessed January 2012.

  3 Ibid.

  4 Matthew Kaminisky, “Let’s Share the Wealth: Weekend Interview with Andy Stern,” Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122852244367484311.html, accessed January 2012.

  5 Steve Early, “Wither Change to Win?” October 10, 2011, In These Times, http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/12074/whither_change_to_win/, accessed January 2012. Early coined the term “Ivy League Amigos” in his book The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor (New York: Haymarket Books, 2011).

  6 Plumer, “Love’s Labor Lost.”

  7 Ibid.

  8 For an interesting discussion of the AFL-CIO anti-raiding policy and current skirmishes, see Steve Early, “The Situational Ethics of Union ‘Raiding,’ ” Talking Union (blog), September 19, 2009, http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/the-situational-ethics-of-union-%E2%80%98raiding%E2%80%99/, accessed March 2012.

  9 “About Us”, Change to Win, http://www.changetowin.org/about, accessed January 2012.

  10 An advocacy group that favors unionization of home child-care providers explains that these workers are “not in traditional employer-employee relationships.” The report explains that “home-based providers are not covered by existing labor laws, and unions have had to advocate for new laws to organize these providers.” “Home-Based Child Care Providers Finding Strength in Unions,” press release, National Women’s Law Center, March 6, 2007, http://www.nwlc.org/press-release/home-based-child-care-providers-finding-strength-unions, accessed January 2012.

  11 Jonathan Walters, “Solidarity Forgotten,” Governing the States and Localities, June 2006, http://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/Solidarity-Forgotten.html, accessed January 2012.

  12 “Building a Union of Family Child Care and FFN Providers,” webinar presentation, National Women’s Law Center, http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/Oct4WebinarPresentation.pdf, accessed January 2012.

  13 Getting Organized: Unionizing Home-Based Child Care Providers—2010 Update.

  14 Organizing the unorganizable has brought the SEIU and other unions enormous, record-setting increases in membership. In 1999, the SEIU won the right to represent 74,000 home-care workers in California. This was the largest increase in membership won in a single election since 1941. When it brought 49,000 home child-care providers in Illinois into the union in 2005, this represented the second largest membership election since 1941. Peggie R. Smith, “The Publicization of Home-Based Care Work in State Labor Law,” Minnesota Law Review 92, no. 5 (May 2008), pp. 1390–1423.

  15 See Harris v. Quinn, No. 10-3835 (7th Cir. September 1, 2011), http://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca7/10-3835/10-3835-2011-09-01-opinion-2011-09-01.html, accessed April 2012. The counsel for the plaintiffs is William Messenger, a staff attorney for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

  16 Robert Fitch, Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America’s Promise (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2006), p. 307.

  17 Executive Order 2003-08.

  18 In Executive Order 2003-08, Governor Blagojevich set up a legal mechanism that would allow state officials to bargain with the union as if the state were the employer of the personal assistants. This same executive order stated that personal assistants “are not state employees,” and that the disabled people who participate in the Rehabilitation Program “control their hiring, in-home supervision, and termination,” but the order permitted them to be unionized anyway.

  19 William Messenger, attorney for the plaintiffs in Harris v. Quinn, interview with the authors, October 7, 2010.

  20 Andy Stern, A Country That Works: Getting America Back on Track, paperback ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), p. 93.

  21 As is true generally when unions are given collective bargaining power over a group of workers in a bargaining unit, the workers did not have to actually join the union. But they were required to either join the union and pay dues, or decline to join the union but pay similar agency fees, as a condition of their employment.

  22 The Rush Limbaugh Show, Premiere Radio Networks, November 11, 2011.

  23 Plaintiffs’ brief in Harris v. Quinn. Trevor Burrus, “When Your Representatives Choose Representatives For You,” Cato @ Liberty (blog), February 29, 2012, http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/when-your-representatives-choose-representatives-for-you/, accessed May 2012.

  24 As of March 2012, mandatory union representation and mandatory dues or fees for child-and/or health-care providers are currently authorized or imposed by the state executive in eleven states: California, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, a
nd Washington. Two right-to-work states, Iowa and Kansas, authorized mandatory representation but did not force providers to pay union dues or fees. Additionally, several counties in Minnesota also have unionized care providers, for a total of fourteen states that have forced unionization of care providers.

  25 Fitch, Solidarity for Sale, pp. 310–311. In 1998, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, acting at SEIU lobbyists’ behest, voted to create a so-called Personal Assistance Services Council (PASC). This was one of those public authorities set up to be the employer of record for the personal assistants and to provide the local union with an identifiable bargaining partner.

  26 Michael White, “L.A. Health Workers Vote on Unions,” Associated Press, February 26, 1999.

  27 Ed White, “Michigan Child-Care Workers Suing to Break Free of UAW Union,” Washington Post, November 11, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/13/AR2010091300088.html, accessed April 2012.

  28 Ibid.

  29 Varney and Company, Fox Business Network, September 20, 2010.

  30 Ibid.

  31 The settlement with the state of Michigan ensures that the state cannot force home-care workers to financially support a union as a condition of receiving state assistance. “Homecare Providers Win Settlement with State to Permanently Stop Childcare Unionization Scheme,” press release, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, http://www.nrtw.org/en/press/2011/05/homecare-providers-win-settlement-st.

  32 Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein, “Organizing Homecare: Low Wage Workers in the Welfare State,” Politics and Society 34, no. 1 (March 2006), p. 83.

  33 Smith, “The Publicization of Home-Based Care Work in State Labor Law.”

  34 In her testimony to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Sally Coomer explained how she was forced into a union in Washington State for being a Medicaid care provider to her disabled daughter Becky. Pursuant to an SEIU-supported initiative, she is now her daughter’s employee. She explained that while her daughter is considered her employer, “the Governor of the State of Washington is deemed the employer for bargaining purposes only”—in other words, she and other care providers are treated as “government employees” so that they can be forcibly unionized, but they aren’t given any of the benefits of government employment. Finally, she noted that not only did care providers have to pay union dues, but the new system meant that the parent providers “were no longer able to contribute to the social security system per IRS tax law…”