Tag Archives: Labor Policy

News

Obama restricts government contracts over 25M to unionized labor

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From Erick Erickson at Red State. (H/T IHateTheMedia via ECM)

Excerpt:

Barack Obama and his administration are about to significantly drive up the costs of federal building construction. This is an astonishing reach. The Office of Management and Budget has directed that any federal construction over $25 million benefit unions.

The order would make all federal construction projects 10-20% more expensive by requiring all contractors to either use union workers or apply inefficient union apprenticeship and work rules to their employees. Contractors would also be required to make contributions to union pension funds and other union programs that non-union workers will never benefit from.

This will hugely drive up the cost of construction of federal buildings and line the pockets of unions without even having union workers involved in the projects. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that only 15.6% of private construction workers in America belong to unions. In other words, 8 out of 10 construction workers in America will be legally denied the right to work on federal building projects.

Now you say to me, “Wintery! What’s wrong with unions?”

And I refer you to this article from the extremely leftist NYT. (H/T Sweetness and Light via ECM)

Excerpt:

No one got the chance to say goodbye to Café des Artistes, the storied New York City restaurant that served up Old World fare under the gaze of the painted nubile nudes that perkily graced its walls.

The restaurant had closed on Aug. 9 for a month-long vacation and was to reopen Sept. 14. But on Friday, facing steady losses and a union lawsuit, its owners made what they described as a wrenching decision to close the landmark cafe on West 67th Street for good.

“It’s a very sad day for us,” said Jenifer Lang, whose husband, George Lang, has owned the restaurant since 1975. “It’s a death in the family.”

It was also the death of an intrinsic part of old New York. Countless couples got engaged in the glow of the restaurant’s dim, romantic lighting…

Mrs. Lang, 58, said that the restaurant’s business had been hurt by the economic crash but that its problems ran deeper. Café des Artistes was unionized, and she said the restaurant paid about $250,000 a year to cover its employees’ health and pension benefits, an amount she said the restaurant struggled to cover. Mrs. Lang also said the couple, whose home is half a block from the restaurant, put in $2 million of their own money to keep it running over the last 10 years.

“It makes it difficult to run a restaurant most of the time,” Mrs. Lang said of the union benefits. “When the economy is down, it makes it impossible.”

The final straw, Mrs. Lang said, was a lawsuit recently filed against the restaurant by the union demanding past benefit assessments.

Bill Granfield, president of Local 100 of Unite Here, the union representing the cafe’s 50-odd employees, said the restaurant had fallen behind on its payments for medical insurance and welfare funds, forcing the union to demand payment in court. He also said workers in 2003 took a pay cut and agreed to switch to a cheaper medical plan to ease the restaurant’s financial pressures…

Unions kill jobs by raising the price of labor with no compensating rise in worker productivity. When you raise the price of labor, businesses die. When businesses die, unemployment goes up. That’s the way the world works.

News

Obama’s plan to eliminate the right of workers not to join unions

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According to John Boehner’s blog, Obama wants to pass a piece of legislation called the “Employee Free Choice Act”. EFCA would deny employees the choice to not surrender a significant portion of their wages to left-wing unions, for use in left-wing political activism, (e.g. – redefining traditional marriage in California).

The post by Kevin on Boehner’s blog explains:

Yesterday, President Obama promised union bosses that “We will pass the Employee Free Choice Act,” referring to the mis-named official title of the bill popularly known as “card check.”  Unions came within a few votes of passing “card check” last Congress – and after giving $450 million to the Democratic Party this past election cycle, union bosses are cashing in on their investment by demanding the swift passage of the anti-worker “card check” bill.

Kevin also links to this must-see 6-minute video, produced by the pro-business Chamber of Commerce:

EFCA would cost American jobs because some companies would simply shut down work sites that use expensive unionized labor, rather than pay the additional costs for the same amount of production. They would just ship their plants and jobs overseas. A short policy paper from American Enterprise Institute is cited by Kevin makes the point:

Card check should be seen for what it is: an attempt to rebuild the private-sector union movement by making it dramatically easier for unions to organize American workers.  Adding card check to the already heavy burden of U.S. labor and employment law that companies face today will cost the U.S. economy additional jobs.

Allison Kasic of the Independent Women’s Forum released this short research paper on EFCA last week. I think it is ironic that the party that loudly advocates for “making every vote count” and the right to “privacy” would pass a law that hurts voting rights and privacy rights. Allison explains:

Since Congress enacted the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1935, most workplaces have organized through secret ballot elections monitored by the National Labor Relations Board. Once organizers have collected signatures from at least 30 percent of workers expressing the desire to unionize, the union submits the information to the company and requests recognition.  Companies can choose to recognize the union based solely on this card check, but more regularly request an election.

The privacy of the secret ballot system protects workers from strong-arm tactics by either the unions or the company in question before and after a vote.  All of that would change under the EFCA. Elections would no longer be necessary.  Instead, a union would be recognized once a majority of workers publicly signed a card supporting unionization.  In fact, once a majority of cards have been signed, holding an election would be illegal.

The Heritage Foundation has a slew of papers on EFCA here, including this recent short research paper by James Sherk, which has a lot more detail on EFCA.