Look Around HR

The New York Times had this story on their blog yesterday about the details on how unions plan to spend dues on political candidates for the election season. The article focused specifically on the two-million member Service Employees International Union (or the SEIU). The amount they are planning on spending- $85 million.

For those who are interested:

The union’s secretary-treasurer Anna Burger said the S.E.I.U. would devote money and staff to Colorado, North Carolina and Virginia. The union’s strategy appears to dovetail with the Obama campaign’s plans to compete in those states, all three of which President Bush won in 2004.

At a strategy briefing last week, campaign manager David Plouffe said “we think we’re in a very strong position” in North Carolina and Virginia and he indicated Mr. Obama would not be ceding the mountain West to Senator John McCain either. Mr. Obama chose the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs as the venue to talk up his national service agenda on Wednesday.

While 100% of employee dues will go to Democrat Barack Obama, nearly 2 out of 5 union members will vote for John McCain (if trends from the 2004 presidential election hold true). And, if you live in a forced unionism state, you have no say in the matter.

Could you imagine not being able to fire someone who has had five DWI’s in the past seven years? Could you imagine holding a discipline hearing (to determine if you could fire a bad employee) in a jail cell?

Many lawsuits arise out of a failure on the part of HR or management to properly document bad behavior. When the firing comes, the court is left with one side versus the other and no real documentation to justify the termination. Even in an “at-will” situation, improper terminations can cost the company big time.

In any class or seminar related to firing, they would remind you to document, document, and document. However, even the best documentation cannot save many principals and school districts when it comes to firing bad teachers.

For proof, check out this story about the stranglehold teacher unions have on many school districts and what some teachers can get away with.

From the Washington Post:

Few people know better than school superintendent Allan Gerstenlauer that disciplining a tenured teacher can be a long and expensive process.

An English teacher in his Long Island district remains on the payroll, earning an annual salary of $113,559, even after pleading guilty earlier this month to drunken driving charges- her fifth DWI arrest in seven years.

The teacher will remain on paid leave at least until a disciplinary hearing in August, and it will be up to an impartial arbitrator to decide whether she needs to be fired as she faces a likely prison sentence.

“It is very frustrating that the process takes so long,” Gerstenlauer conceded.

The case illustrates a nagging problem in school districts in New York and elsewhere around the country: firing bad teachers. It is also part of the ongoing debate over education reform and the role tenure plays in the process.

The story goes on to detail that the cost of any average termination in New York City is $250,000.

The most ridiculous comment in the article came courtesy of the president of the New York State Teachers Union: “Tenure provides the right to due process. It is consistent with the American way; a person is innocent until proven guilty.”

I would assume a fifth DWI is enough due process. I would assume pleading guilty is due process. But not according to the teacher’s union.

The Center for Union Facts was quoted in the Post article, and they have a lot of good information on their website and I encourage you to check it out.

Yesterday, the AFL-CIO voted to officially endorse Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. I say official because the union supports Democrats more than 99 percent of the time. But, now that the union made the official endorsement, their campaigning will begin en masse.

The union has pledged to spend more than $50 million on behalf of the Illinois Senator. Other labor groups will add millions more.

And the issue they are most concerned with is the Employee Free Choice Act. Read more about the legislation if you haven’t heard about it yet.

I usually don’t republish entire articles on my blog, but think this essay from the Heritage Foundation about the Employee Free Choice Act is spot on.

Written by James Sherk:

Giving Employees Free Choice in the Workplace

Workplace relations and the economy have changed substantially since the 1930s, but federal labor law has not evolved with these changes. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) still reflects a top-down, adversarial view of management–labor relations that is foreign to many workers today.

Private-sector union membership has fallen over the past generation as many workers have concluded that traditional unions do not meet their needs. In response, the labor movement is pushing the Employee Free Choice Act. Instead of taking away workers’ right to vote on joining a union by secret ballot, Congress should restore employers’ and employees’ right to explore innovative labor–management relations. Most workers want a voice in their workplace even if they do not want a traditional union.

Employee involvement (EI) programs enable workers to participate cooperatively in workplace decisions, but the NLRA prohibition on creating “company unions” is so broad that it bans any EI programs that give workers a real voice. The Act forces workers to choose between a traditional union and no formal representation at all.

Read the entire essay here.

I read this story on HREOnline.com earlier this week detailing a new law that makes it easier for former employees to collect unemployment benefits. Most people in the States are use to being able to challenge unemployment claims if a former employee quits or is terminated for good reason. In France, not so much…

Apparently this legislation is supported by the country’s Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy, and protested by the French Socialist Party. This is part of Sarkozy’s proposed overhaul of the French employment laws, which include generous protections for the workers but making it easier to hire and fire.

France is dominated by labor unions that have held the country back for years, made it less competitive on the international scene, and left their economy staggering at best for some time. Unemployment currently stands at over 7 percent.

I recently wrote about a bill in Iowa that attempted to undermine the right-to-work status of the state. You can read more about the bill here.

After a few weeks, the governor (a Democrat) decided to veto the bill in what was a major blow to labor. Iowa legislature control had recently flipped from Republican to Democrat making passage of this bill likely, until Gov. Culver decided to veto it.

You can read more on the veto here.

When campaigning last year, Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee (or whatever the word is for the person who is probably going to win the nomination but it’s not offical yet) made this statement about the Employee Free Choice Act:

“We will pass the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s not a matter of ‘if’; it’s a matter of ‘when.’ We may have to wait for the next president to sign it, but we will get this thing done.”

So far Republicans have been able to block passage of the card check legislation, and currently have one key tool- the presidential veto. However, uccess or failure of this bill in the future will ultimately be dependant upon the Senate.

The Democratic House has already passed the bill, and with expected gains in the lower chamber in November, they should have no problem passing it next year. Assuming (and this is a big assumption), the Dems win the White House, the fate of this bill will lie in the Senate. The current split is 51D and 49R. It requires 60 votes to break a filibuster. During the 2007 vote on this bill, one Republican (Arlen Specter) supported it and no Democrats opposed it. This means Dems would have to pick up 8 seats to break a Republican filibuster. That may not be impossible, but is very unlikely even in today’s political climate.

The fact that Obama supports this should not be too surprising. The Democrats allegiance to labor is greater than any other tie to special interest groups (for either Rs or Ds).

John Lott, a senior research scientist at Univ. of Maryland, has a good column at FoxNews online breaking down Obama’s views on labor and the EFCA:

Obama claims that strengthening unions is good because unions will “lift up the middle-class in this country once more.” But protecting teachers unions from competition comes at the expense of students. Protecting workers from trade competition comes at the expense of customers and even other workers (e.g., if you protect steel workers from competition, the prices of American-made cars rise relative to foreign-made ones).

Unionization virtually always raises some workers’ salaries at the expense of other workers. If unions insist on increasing worker pay by threatening strikes that shut down companies, firms reduce the number of workers they hire. Some workers gain higher wages, but only at the expense of causing other workers to lose their jobs. Possibly this last point explains why unions want to scrape secret ballots.

It is hard to believe that Obama and Democrats really think that eliminating secret ballots is a good idea. Surely, they are not going to start proposing we start getting rid of secret ballots all together and let voters simply sign cards? But their desire to impose unionization, whether workers really want it, is overriding their common sense. Their proposal will make the country and most workers poorer.

Read the entire column here. It is a good one.

The Heritage Foundation blog has this story about a California city, which recently declared bankruptcy, becoming the largest city to do so.

The Vallejo City Council voted May 6 to become the largest city to ever declare bankruptcy in California. The cause of Vallejo’s demise? Contracts with fire and police unions account for 74% of the city’s $80 million budget. Why did the city sign such ridiculous contracts? Because public sector unions are a controlling force in the Democratic Party and Democrats dominate Vallejo’s government. So when it came time for the city to negotiate salaries with its unions, the Democrats were represented and the unions were represented, but the city’s taxpayers were not.

This is interesting because the Senate recently voted to expand collective bargaining rights to all police officers, firefighters, and first responders. I talked about this pending legislation last week following a Wall Street Journal op-ed publicizing the scary bill.

The president’s administration has recommended a veto, but there is currently enough support in the both houses to override the veto. If it becomes law, city managers and administrators will have their hands full and the unfortunate situation of Vallejo may be seen across the country.

The Wall Street Journal published this column yesterday titled “The Union Police.” In it they describe a law national Democrats are trying to pass through Congress. No, not the Employee Free Choice Act, but it is another attempt by Democrats to increase Union power (and their power as a result).

From the WSJ:

Under current law, every state has the ability to set policies that govern its public workforce…Democrats want to change this for the entire country. A bill that passed the House last year would make the top officials at local unions the exclusive bargaining agents for public safety officers in every town or city with more than 5,000 people. They would also have the authority to bargain for everything- pay, benefits and work rules. The goal is to give labor the whip hand with local governments, and further coerce nonunion members to join the dues-paying ranks.

The Journal also adds that similar legislation has failed at the state level every time it has been brought up, and it may possibly violate the Constitution as it gives states any powers not specifically given to the federal government.

You probably will not hear a lot about this but the reality of this is it may become law. It passed the House with a veto proof 314-97 margin last year, and has 11 Republican co-sponsors in the Senate (to go along with the unanimous Democrat support) that may break any filibuster attempt.

The Las Vegas Sun has an excellent article detailing the Employee Free Choice Act. I encourage you to read the whole thing, but what caught my attention was some of the scary statistics from localities that already have card-check legislation.

From the Las Vegas Sun:

To illustrate card check’s cascading effect, Sonneborn pointed to Illinois.

The state passed mandatory card check in 2003. As a result, union density soared, she said. The International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150, for instance, doubled its number of bargaining units in four years, Sonneborn said.

In Las Vegas, the Culinary Union has tripled its membership over the past 20 years primarily through negotiating voluntary card check agreements with casino companies. The union added 10,000 members from 2002 to 2005 alone- and will add another 6,000 when MGM Mirage’s CityCenter opens in 2009.

In Canada, the effect also has been striking. Thirty-two percent of the country’s workers belong to a union, a density not seen in the United States since the American labor movement’s pinnacle in 1955. Only 12 percent of American workers today belong to a union. Labor benefits from mandatory card check laws in some Canadian provinces. Alberta sports the lowest union density of those places- a whopping 24 percent.

If Congress enacts similar legislation, expect to see Canada like unionization throughout the U.S.

Iowa Governor Chet Culver, a Democrat, is said to be contemplating vetoing a controversial labor backed bill that would force unionism on public employees. Iowa, as shown in this graph, is a Right-to-Work state. However, a simple repeal by the Democratic majority could do away with that status, as it is not a constitutionally protected right. This is what the majority hopes to do; just under a different name.

Here is a good rundown of the legislation and the controversy surrounding it from Linda Miller of the Quad City Times:

The bill, with the amendment, adds several mandatory bargaining items to the teacher quality law and eliminates some provisions that provided a balance between management and labor. The changes significantly tilt the playing field in favor of labor. The Des Moines Register reported on 3-20-08 that “school boards would lose much of their authority to determine a number of issues, including scheduling, class size and early retirement benefits for staff…”

None however were as controversial as the House Democrats attempt to sneak through the wildly controversial “Fair Share” provision. “Fair Share” is not fair. It is forced unionism. The House Democrats plan allowed forced unionism, which is currently illegal, to be placed onto the bargaining table by public employee unions. Forced unionism legislation like “Fair Share” forces non-union public employees - like teachers- to pay union dues. The only way for public employees to avoid paying union dues is to quit their jobs. The effect of any forced unionism legislation is the same as a direct repeal of the Right to Work law.

More…

The rest of the House Democrat’s plan stripped school board members, city council members and county supervisors of their ability to control the level of property tax increases. That ability is forfeited to an unnamed and unelected adjudicator. The reason is because property taxes makeup the vast majority of local government revenue and pay for nearly all of any employee contract. If the costs for that contract increase, so do property taxes.

And she finishes with this point…

With public employee unions able to bargain for that list of items, what use is there for managers, principals or superintendents anymore?

The specific language of the bill forces school districts and local governments to pay for whatever the eventual employment agreement is between labor and management. The language also states that if there is an impasse, an adjudicator decides between the two positions. Which means that if the adjudicator makes a decision on class size that forces a school district to hire more teachers or build new classrooms to meet the bargained class size number, the school district must levy property taxes to cover those increased costs.

Please read her entire post as it provides the best explanation of this scary legislation that I can find anywhere. I am not going to get into the games that Democrats and Republicans have been playing with this (I’ll leave that for the politicos). I will just say this is an attempt to undermine the right-to-work status of Iowa, and that is a dangerous thing. This will be bad for employers, it will be bad for employees that will be forced into unionism, and bad for every taxpayer that will see tax increases.

Last week, the bill was officially sent to Culver’s desk, and here is what he had to say on this subject:

Culver on Thursday sent a message to reporters saying that after more than 30 meetings with managers, union members, lawmakers and the public, he realized there’s no way to rewrite the bill in a way that would satisfy all parties.

“Through these meetings and communications, we have attempted to reach consensus among the many stakeholders who would be affected by this legislation,” Culver said in the statement. “Unfortunately, it has become clear that it is not possible to amend or revise this bill in a way that reflects a genuine consensus.”

Let’s hope the governor vetoes it, and we will keep you updated.

I have reported on the attempt by national Democrats and labor unions to pass the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act.” The Senate killed it last week, and it is dead for the remainder of this Congress.

Similar attempts to pass the card-check bill have been going on at the state level as well. The most notable legislation occurred in Hawaii. The state House and Senate passed a bill, but the governor recently vetoed it.

From the Pacific Business News:

Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (a Republican) vetoed a bill Monday that would replace secret ballot elections for union representation with a simple petition.

The so-called “card-check” bill would replace a current law that requires an election by secret ballot when workers attempt to organize.

House Bill 2974 requires that union organizers only need to gather signatures from a majority of employees that favor forming a union.

The legislation is modeled after the Employee Free Choice Act, currently under consideration by the U.S. Congress.

I have read that the Democrats have a veto-proof majority in Hawaii, and every Democrat supported this measure so it may become law after all. We might want to remind Hawaiians of this poll showing overwhelming opposition to the card-check legislation.