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Is a Worker Revolt Brewing After Michigan Repeals Its Right-to-Work Law?


By: Russ Brown / August 31, 2023

Read more at https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/31/is-worker-revolt-brewing-michigan-repeals-right-work-law/

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Michigan recently repealed its right-to-work law, forcing employees in union workplaces to join unions—benefiting union bosses at the expense of the workers. Pictured: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., who signed the repeal of right-to-work in Michigan, delivers remarks at the SelectUSA Investment Summit on May 4 in National Harbor, Maryland. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

This Labor Day, Michigan union bosses have much to celebrate. Rank-and-file employees? Not as much. Earlier this year, Michigan became a pioneer in regressivity by becoming the first state in 58 years to repeal a right-to-work law, forcing employees in union workplaces to join the unions as a condition of keeping their jobs. The impending change means more control and power in the hands of the unions, literally at the expense of Michigan employees.

THIS IS PURE SOCIALISM. THIS HAS TO BE FOUGHT AND STOPPED!

What does this mean for employees? Well, the money for union dues comes from them. And more money out of employees’ pockets means more money into the campaign coffers of politicians the union bosses support. Michiganders of all stripes churn the butter, but unions butter the bread of one political party. Right-to-work repeal passed both houses of the Legislature by a party-line vote. It was signed into law by a governor from the same party.

Polling showed a large majority of Michiganders opposed the change. Even union members opposed it. Why wouldn’t they? Under the existing right-to-work law, Michigan employees in a unionized shop had the choice of whether to join the union. They had the right to keep their own paycheck intact and not pay union dues as they prioritized their own finances.

They also had the right to withhold their money if they felt a union was engaging in political advocacy that was opposed to their own beliefs. In light of the mission creep besetting many unions, the likelihood of that happening has been increasing. And given the partisan divide in this nation, perhaps half of Michigan employees would reject the unions’ monolithic political spending on one party.

Under right-to-work, Michigan employees also had the right to vote with their paycheck for or against a union based on the quality of its services. As a result, unions had an incentive to provide services their memberships wanted. With repeal, that incentive will, for all practical purposes, disappear.

Think about the absurdity of it: unionized Michiganders will be forced to fork over a portion of their paycheck to a private third party. Except for government sector employees. The U.S. Supreme Court in the Janus v. AFSCME case ruled that all government sector employees do have right-to-work. A double standard?

In short, the repeal stripping Michigan employees of their choice to disassociate with unions is Exhibit A in the case against union legislative influence. Commonsense told you employees would prefer a “my paycheck, my choice” approach, and citizens in general oppose the change. Yet the majority in the Legislature steamrolled these folks.

While the union empire appears to have won, pockets of resistance are about to break out all over the state. The right-to-work law had made it illegal for employees to be forced to pay union dues in order to keep their jobs. Now, with repeal, the best way to avoid union dues will be to remove the union from a job site altogether.

Game on.

Michigan employees affected by this law don’t have to put up with this violation of their freedom of association. They don’t need to pay dues to a forced-membership organization. They don’t have to keep supporting a union’s radical political agendas. They don’t have to watch a portion of their paychecks going to pay for union oligarchies out of state. They certainly don’t need to pay for fancy dinners, cars, vacations, and political junkets and pad the pockets of union bosses.

By tossing out the union altogether, employees can keep their money in their own hands and out of the hands of political machines and their elected attendants.

The Center for Independent Employees, which assists employees seeking to prevent unionization at the workplace or remove an unwanted union, is already hearing rumblings of this revolution through our offices and our ground game in Michigan.

If employees feel they’re not getting much in exchange for their dues, then the union bosses standing over their bank accounts demanding a handout are just bums. It’s time to throw the bums out.

COMMENTARY BY

Russ Brown

Russ Brown is president of the Center for Independent Employees, a nonprofit foundation that provides legal representation and aid to independent employees who are opposed to union oppression in their workplaces. He is also a consultant to The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

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87,000 New IRS Agents Will Join Union That Gives 100% Of PAC Funds to Democrats


BY: VICTORIA MARSHALL | AUGUST 10, 2022

Read more at https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/10/87000-new-irs-agents-will-join-union-that-gives-100-of-pac-funds-to-democrats/

Internal Revenue Service

Democrats just doubled the size of a major Democratic war chest. Yes, remember those 87,000 new IRS agents that will be added to the federal payroll thanks to the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act (a misnomer if there ever was one)? The vast majority of those agents will likely join and pay dues to the IRS’ public sector union, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

Per Americans for Tax Reform, the union gave 100% of its Political Action Committee (PAC) funding to Democrats for the 2022 cycle, including $30,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, $30,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and $30,000 to the DNC Services Corporation, a group dedicated to “coordinating party organizational activities.”

It also gave 98.79% of its federal candidate spending for the 2021-2022 cycle to Democrats, most notably House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). The NTEU specifically prioritized donating to key Democratic battleground races, such as donating $5,000 to Raphael Warnock’s Georgia Senate race and $10,000 to Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.). 

And that’s not all. In 2019, it was reported that IRS employees spent 353,820 hours of taxpayer-funded union time (TFUT) on the job. That means during a normal workday, instead of assisting taxpayers with filing their taxes, IRS agents spent hours working for an entity that spends 100% of its PAC funding on Democrats. This is an organization where if you call them, you have a 1-in-50 chance of reaching an actual human being. Those 353,820 hours could have been used to help taxpayers instead of strengthening a public sector union. 

As Aaron Withe, CEO of Freedom Foundation, put it, taxpayer dollars are being used to “double the size of an agency that has already weaponized itself against those taxpayers it deems its political opponents.”

By doubling the size of the IRS, Democrats are doubling the number of dues the NTEU receives, dues that will be funneled to bankroll Democratic political campaigns. NTEU dues range from $16 to $23 per pay period. If all 87,000 new IRS agents were forced to unionize, the number of dues collected would amount to at least $33,351,168 per year — all ripe for the taking by Democrats. How clever.

Victoria Marshall is a staff writer at The Federalist. Her writing has been featured in the New York Post, National Review, and Townhall. She graduated from Hillsdale College in May 2021 with a major in politics and a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @vemrshll.

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California’s $15 Minimum Wage Ends Apparel Industry Revival


waving flagby Chriss W. Street, 17 Apr 2016, Newport Beach, CA

American Apparel factory (American_Apparel / Flickr / CC / Cropped)

 

The first accomplishment of California’s pioneering $15 minimum wage law is killing the revival of America’s clothing industry.

American Apparel, which provided 10 percent of all apparel manufacturing jobs in Los Angeles, has terminated 500 employees in the last two weeks. Chief Executive Paula Schneider also told the Los Angeles Times that “manufacturing of more complicated pieces, such as jeans, could soon be outsourced to a third-party company.”Tyrant Olagarchy

The company did not tie the announcement directly to California Governor Jerry Brown signing of the nation’s first statewide $15 minimum wage on April 4. But the layoffs started shortly almost immediately after Brown’s action, and were announced on April 14 as labor organizers filled Los Angeles streets with fast-food workers set to strike, supported by unionized home-care and child-care workers.

Lloyd Greif, Chief Executive of Los Angeles investment banking firm Greif & Co. told LA Times, “They’re headed out of Dodge.” He added, “They are going to outsource all garments. It’s only a matter of time.”

At the turn of the 21st Century, Los Angeles County was the “rag trade” capital of America. With 4,000 active apparel-making sites employing almost 90,000 workers, the Los Angeles area was over twice the size of the rag trade in the New York region.

Apparel-making got cut in half over the next decade, as Chinese and Asian imports coming through Los Angeles ports sky-rocketed to $46 billion. The number of local apparel-making sites fell to 2,200 and local industry jobs shriveled to 46,000.

But according to the California Fashion Association, Los Angeles apparel-making was back to growth by 2013 as a “steady inflation rate” in China, driven by higher labor costs, increasingly pushed apparel manufacturing and textile contractors to move to lower wage countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. Coupled with high sea, land, and air shipping costs, the advantage in outsourcing apparel-making versus U.S. manufacturing became much less attractive.

Last year in Los Angeles County, there were 62,774 workers in apparel-making and 10,887 workers in textile manufacturing. Although imports were still substantial, local companies booked revenues of over $18 billion and paid workers $6.4 billion. Average rate of pay for fashion designers was $35-per-hour, and the average pay for apparel and textile workers hit $15-per-hour.

By capturing 36 percent of all U.S. apparel manufacturing, the Los Angeles County fashion ethosphere also supported 3,770 fashion designers, 5,590 cosmetics workers, 6,985 jewelry workers and 5,904 footwear workers.

Cheered by union workers — some chanting in Spanish — at Brown’s Los Angeles signing ceremony for the bill lifting the statewide minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022, the governor all but admitted he was terminating the competitiveness of the Los Angeles rag trade and tanking the growing workforce with the comment, “Economically, minimum wages may not make sense.”Tyrant Olagarchy

Brown rationalized his action’s brutal consequences by stating, “But morally and socially and politically they make every sense, because it binds the community together and makes sure that parents can take care of their kids in a much more satisfactory way.”

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Shocker: Union official admits she let veterans die because doing this instead was so distasteful


waving flagBy LU Staff March 10, 2016

URL of the original posting site: http://libertyunyielding.com/2016/03/10/shocker-union-official-admits-she-let-veterans-die-because-doing-this-instead-was-so-distasteful

Shocker: Union official admits she let veterans die because doing this instead was so distasteful / Credit: Mark Van Scyoc / Shutterstock.com

A former federal employee union president is wracked with guilt because veterans died at a time when she knew about gross misconduct within her Department of Veterans Affairs facility. But she was loath to tell congressional leaders about the problem. Why? Because Congress was led by Republicans, and she is a diehard Democrat.

“If I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved,” Germaine Clarno told a radio interviewer Monday, referring to the Republican leader of a VA subcommittee. Clarno, a social worker at the Hines Veterans Affairs Hospital in Hines, Ill., was president of the union representing doctors at the hospital as the deadly wait-time scandal unfolded.

Dozens of veterans have died in recent years while waiting for appointments with doctors at multiple VA hospitals and care centers around the nation. But VA staffers systematically manipulated records to make it seem like they didn’t have long waits. The problems became so severe by 2013, that as many as 40 patients died at just the Phoenix facility.

The same practices took place at Hines, with the knowledge of its director. Additional problems also plagued Hines, like heart scans getting discarded without being read.

Clarno’s tale of haunting regret is at least the second case of people connected with VA unions admitting they did not speak up about life-and-death issues because the idea of talking to a Republican was too distasteful.Partyof Deceit Spin and Lies

Sen. Mark Kirk (IL) – R was the ranking Republican on the Senate VA Appropriations subcommittee when Clarno finally talked to him in 2013, and wielding the power of the purse, he immediately launched a crusade to expose wrong-doing at Hines.

But in the previous years, Clarno went instead to Democrats who were ill-positioned to do anything, and who indeed, did nothing. Clarno and Lisa Nee, a VA doctor she worked with, described their actions during the interview Monday with Illinois’ WLS-AM radio host John Howell.

HOWELL: Both [Sen. Dick] Durbin and [Rep. Tammy] Duckworth put out a statement last week, as did our junior senator Mark Kirk, who I know has been helpful to you, right doctor?

NEE: Yes. And I didn’t think he would be. He was the last resort.

HOWELL: And usually when a union has to go to Republicans it’s a frosty reception, I suppose.

CLARNO: Exactly. And if I would’ve gone to him two years ago, who knows what kind of lives could’ve been saved.

HOWELL: That’s a really sad aspect of this.

CLARNO: It is.

The women first went to Rep. Danny Davis (IL) – D, a Democrat who represented the district that included Hines, but he was not on any committees with VA oversight authority. “Danny Davis was pretty apathetic not because he didn’t know what was going on but because he felt like their was nothing he could do,” Nee said in the interview.

The two women then went to Rep.Tammy Duckworth (IL) – D, a disabled veteran Democrat who also represents the area and was an official at VA before being elected to Congress. But since she was a new lawmaker without leadership roles on any committees, she did not help. Clarno and Nee said Duckworth wouldn’t even read a report about the situation at Hines.

“It was really upsetting. This isn’t about, you know, whether you have a D or an R at the end of your name. This is about the VA, this is about protecting the men and women who fought for our country,” Clarno said.

Clarno tried to work through Hines managers before going to Congress, and is now tirelessly working every possible avenue to fix problems in the VA. She is still involved with the union, but is no longer president, and says she has experienced harassment from some union members.

A similar situation unfolded in Wisconsin, the site of VA’s Tomah hospital — known as “Candy Land” because its doctors doped up veterans with dangerous combinations of sedatives rather than treating their underlying conditions.

The Tomah VA employees union didn’t take complaints to Sen.Ron Johnson (WI) – R, a Republican, even though he is not only from Wisconsin, but is chairman of the Senate Oversight Committee with jurisdiction over management issues in government agencies.

“We didn’t even talk to Republicans then,” Lin Ellinghuysen, union president and past vice president, told the Wisconsin Watchdog.What did you say 07.jpg

But there is no remorse in Wisconsin. The union is now running ads against Johnson, faulting him for not acting on information he was never given. The public employees union is campaigning forRuss Feingold , a Democrat who preceded Johnson in office and is now running to retake the seat.

The union initially said it told Feingold of problems at the facility via a hand-delivered letter in 2009, when he still occupied the Senate seat. But after the absence of any corrective action by Feingold became a campaign issue, the union retracted its claim, and said it never told him.

Democrat Tammy Baldwin (WI) – D, the state’s other senator, received an investigation report detailing problems at the Tomah facility, but nothing came of it. Baldwin admitted that it was a major failing, and fired the staffer she said was responsible.

Ellinghuysen said the union talked with Democrats about the problems, but she didn’t follow up when they didn’t get results because she is no “courageous Wonder Woman” and “needed a paycheck.”

Ryan Honl, a lifelong Democrat who worked at Tomah, reluctantly went to Johnson’s office, and got a response the next day after being frustrated with a lack of response from Baldwin and another Democrat, Rep.Ron Kind (WI) – D.

Then, after Republicans did the work of proving undeniable mistreatment, the Democratic members belatedly chimed in with expressions of outrage at the mistreatment of vets — just as Durbin and Duckworth did in Illinois — Honl told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The failure of the unions to alert relevant authorities about patient abuse, coupled with political attacks against the few congressmen who actually tried to put a stop to it, astounded Honl to such an extent that he renounced his political party.

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Democrats label lazy welfare recipients as ‘working families’


waving flagBy on May 19, 2015

CALIFORNIA VOTER ALERT
A guide to the 2014 California propositions

Welfare is often unpopular with the voters who fund it through their taxes. So California politicians and academics who support it are now redefining welfare recipients as “workers” even if they do almost no work, and as members of “working families” if they live in the same household as someone who does a tiny bit of work. By doing this, they hope to brand critics of welfare as “anti-worker.”

Fifty-six percent of welfare recipients are in “working families,” according to a misleading recent report by the University of California at Berkeley’s left-wing Center for Labor Research and Education. But the report reached that false conclusion by defining even very lazy people as “workers”: “We define working families as those that have at least one family member who works 27 or more weeks per year and 10 or more hours per week.”

But working just ten hours a week for only about half the weeks in the year doesn’t make you a typical worker, or show industriousness. As Breitbart notes, “If someone is only working ten hours a week, there is probably time to find a second job, rather than rely on government assistance.” The Center that put out this ridiculous “study” is funded not just by taxpayers, but also by government employee unions like AFSCME whose members are hired to administer such welfare programs.Liberalism a mental disorder 2

That slanted “study” coincides with a recent push by California’s governor to expand welfare for so-called “workers” who actually do very little work. The Associated Press reported that Gov. Jerry Brown (D) is

proposing a $380 million earned income tax credit” for “as many as 825,000 families and up to 2 million Californians. “It’s just a straight deliverance of funding to people who are working very hard and are earning very little money, so in that sense I think it does a lot of good things,” Brown said of the tax credit. The average tax credit would be $460 a year with a maximum credit of $2,653 for families with three or more children, to complement the federal tax credit program. It would be available to individuals with incomes of less than $6,580, or up to $13,870 for families with three or more dependents.Picture11

For an individual to have an income of less than $6,580 at the California minimum wage of $9 per hour (and thus qualify for this welfare), he would have to work no more than 731 hours per year, or 14 hours per week. That’s not “working very hard,” Governor Brown. The Associated Press story, which reads like a press release for the governor’s proposed budget, never even questions his strange claim about this being hard work. The AP wrongly calls this huge, record-setting budget “a cautious approach to spending” even though it does nothing about California’s massive unfunded pension problems, and is balanced only due to tax increases that are supposedly temporary but that most California Democrats now want to make permanent, such as those in Proposition 30.Picture7

As the Los Angeles Daily Newspoints out:

In 2013, California’s public-employee pension systems—including those for police, firefighters and teachers—were carrying an estimated aggregate of $198 billion in unfunded liability. That’s 31 times the unfunded liability 10 years earlier.Picture8

Governor Brown has largely turned a blind eye to pension-spiking by CALPERS that will explode California pension costs by billions of dollars, half-heartedly objecting to only one of the “ninety-nine categories used” in its “scheme.”

As profligate and irresponsible as his budget is, it could have been even worse: Jerry Brown is a model of responsibility and common sense compared to California’s money-wasting left-wing legislature and its big-spending Democratic leadership (the state legislature is two-thirds Democrat and only one-third Republican). The AP quotes Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon (D-Los Angeles) demanding yet more “investments” (the trendy euphemism for government spending) and promising that “we can and will do more” to increase such spending.  State legislative leaders have sought to expand Medicaid and other government healthcare programs to cover illegal immigrants at a cost of at least $1.3 billion annually, which Brown has not yet fully endorsed, although his budget does earmark the more modest sum of “$62 million to begin enrolling low-income immigrants in Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid, on the assumption that President Barack Obama will prevail in a court battle over his executive order.”burke

The relabeling of welfare recipients as “workers” even when they do little work echoes the approach of the progressive ideological guru George Lakoff, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who advocates reframing the political debate in deceptive ways. As The Atlantic noted:

Lakoff offers no new policy ideas. Instead he suggests that the Democrats reposition the ones they already have, and spruce up some unpopular terminology while they’re at it. He advocates referring to ‘trial lawyers’ as ‘public-protection attorneys,’ replacing ‘taxes’ with ‘membership fees,’ and generally couching the entire Democratic message in palatable—even deceptive—language in order to simplify large ideas and disguise them behind innocent but powerful-sounding phrases.more evidence

The Associated Press sometimes follows the deceptive Lakoff ideological approach when it comes to government spending, labeling spending on education and social programs as an “investment” even when the money spent will not be recouped later through higher tax revenue, making the reference to “investment” misleading.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Hans Bader

Hans BaderHans Bader is Counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law. Hans also writes for CNS News and has appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.”
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