While American Workers Suffer, Union Leaders (and their staffs) Enrich Themselves

As another 496,000 workers lost their jobs last week, Veronique de Rugy has a great post over at Big Government explaining how those that work in the "labor union industry" (i.e., union bosses and their staffs) are faring much better than both all private and financial-sector employees...and even union members themselves.

Based on this data , I am thinking that the good life starts the day one gets a job as an employee of your local Labor Union and in fact those overpaid financial sector people might want to change jobs!

This table, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows the changes in the wages in three sectors: the private sector, the Labor Union industry and the financial industry. According to the BLS, the Labor Union industry “comprises establishments primarily engaged in promoting the interests of organized labor and union employees.” That’s basically all the guys who work in a Union...

[snip]

As one can see clearly here since the beginning of the recession, private sector employees have seen their wages grown by 3.3 percent (roughly the rate of inflation.) The financial sector employees have been slightly better off with wages growing at a 4.1 percent rate.

Meanwhile, wages in the labor unions have continued to increase. And not by 5 percent or 7 percent but by over 24.9 percent!!!

Read more here...

Given the amount of layoffs and concessions being negotiated by unions (on behalf of union members) all over the country, one would think that union bosses might show some restraint when rewarding themselves and their staffs...

...One would think.

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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

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Just When Union Bosses Thought Things Couldn't Get Any Worse: New poll finds unions losing Americans' support...

After a dismal 2009 and an even worse beginning to 2010, union bosses were dealt another blow today when a Pew poll was released showing that union favoribility ratings have plummeted since 2007.

Favorable views of labor unions have plummeted since 2007, amid growing public skepticism about unions’ purpose and power. Currently, 41% say they have a favorable opinion of labor unions while about as many (42%) express an unfavorable opinion. In January 2007, a clear majority (58%) had a favorable view of unions while just 31% had an unfavorable impression.

[snip]

In recent years, positive attitudes about labor unions have declined significantly across most demographic groups. The largest change has come among those 65 and older. Currently 29% of this group says they have a favorable opinion of unions, down 31 points from 60% in 2007. Notably, those younger than 30 are the only age group in which a majority (53%) expresses a favorable view of unions; even so, far more young people (66%) expressed a positive opinion two years ago.

While this trend is consistent with last year's Gallup poll finding that a majority of Americans disapproved of unions, it also seems to be a continuation of more bad news for union bosses after a year of bad news.

Shortly after President Obama's inauguration, union bosses were confident that their agenda would be immediately enacted.  However, after 13 months, their number one legislative goal, the job-destroying and hallucinogenically-named Employee Free Choice Act, is all but dead; their number two issue, the nationalization of America's health care, has become a lightening rod; and, almost as bad, their own members, as well as the American public are turning on them. 

Despite all of this, with the 2010 mid-term elections looming right around the corner, the worst may yet be coming for union bosses.
 
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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776


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For more news and views on today’s unions, go to LaborUnionReport.com.

Photo credit: Anomalous4

Absence of Erroneously-Named Employee Free Choice Act Has Some Union Bosses Getting Antsy

Union bosses have the federal government all sewn up. They've got a lock on the White House, they've got a lock on the Senate, as well as the House of Representatives. So, what's the problem?

Immediately following the election, the President-Elect appointed the AFL-CIO's Ellen Moran to be White House Communications Director (she has since moved on to the census-controlling Commerce Department), SEIU's Patrick Gaspard to be White House Director of Political Affairs, SEIU's Anna Burger and AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka to his "Economic Recovery Advisory Board," and SEIU's Dennis Rivera is currently running the White House's war on health care. On the day of Barack Obama's inauguration, the newly-annointed President appointed hard-core union radical Wilma Liebman to the Chairmanship of the National Labor Relations Board. Since then, the Administration has appointed dozens (or more) of hard core unionists to various posts in the government and given union bosses some key wins early on like the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and union-only Project Labor Agreements. [For a broader list of union wishes fulfilled go here.]

So, why are union bosses getting antsy and feeling that they're being shoved to the side?

Perhaps it is because the unions' hand-picked president is not performing to their expectations?

As the Boston Globe reports this morning:

[L]abor’s agenda has been pushed down on the priority list by the very lawmakers they helped elect, leaving some union backers frustrated.

Labor is eager to win passage of a “card check’’ bill, a measure that would make it easier for workers to form unions, but the White House and Congress took up a Wall Street bailout plan first.

In the health care debate, labor is seeking to avoid a tax on expensive health care benefits. But President Obama, who slammed the idea during the campaign, this summer indicated he might be open to such an idea.
....

“It’s beyond belief to me,’’ said Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. While Obama and Congress inherited “a big mess’’ from Bush, Haynes said, “there aren’t any excuses anymore. If you can’t deliver health care, and you can’t deliver jobs, and if you can’t deliver [card check legislation], and you can’t figure out how to take care of the working people of this great city and country, you don’t deserve to stay in office.’’

The poor economy and the attention demanded by such issues as health care, Afghanistan, climate change, and the pending closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison have put labor unions’ concerns far down on the list in Washington, analysts and lawmakers say.

Many labor union leaders say they still have faith that Obama will push for their legislative wish list, especially the so-called card check bill to allow workers to organize unions without a secret ballot, once he gets a health care bill signed. And while unions are anxious about provisions in the health care bill that might affect union members, leaders say the larger goal of getting closer to universal health care is most important. [Emphasis added.]

When union bosses pushed their guy into the Oval Office, like a Tsunami from the Left, many had assumed that he would flood the American landscape with labor's wish list. While he has in part, some some of the biggest ticket items on labor's laundry list have been stalled.

Following the most expensive union campaign in history, despite the other "inherited" issues, the union agenda was also held back by some moderate Democrats, as well as the absence of Al Franken then, later, Ted Kennedy and, now, Robert Byrd.

Nevertheless, unions seem to be getting cranky that their man in the White House may let their agenda slip through the cracks before 2010 and, once the mid-terms get into full swing, the union agenda may get passed over entirely

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BAD NEWS FOR UNION BOSSES: This Labor Day, the Majority of Americans Think You SUCK!

Bad news this Labor Day weekend, according to a Gallup poll release on Friday, for the first time ever the majority of Americans disapprove of unions.

While many (particularly union bosses) may view this as a surprise, it should not be that shocking.

Since 2006, when unions won the election mid-term elections for Democrats, unions have been exerting greater influence on the Democratic Party. This has manifested itself in the Leftward push of the party itself, turning the Democrats into, for the first time in America, a de facto Labor Party.

While many Americans were naive to this underground revolution on the Left, union bosses continued to flex their political muscles through 2008, culminating in November's Obama victory.

Since the 2008 Obama victory, the proverbial "sleeping giant" of America is starting to slowly wake up to the union bosses' game, having seen:

• A Bailout of the Auto Industry at taxpayer expense, rewarding the United Auto Workers, the union that helped decimate the auto industry.
• An attempt to nationalize health care by the administration, but led by unions
• Astro-turfing at town hall meetings where union thugs take their aggression out on concerned citizens and, in at least one case, allegedly beat up a man
• The incoming president of the AFL-CIO openly threatening politicians that it's the union way or else...
• A union-back bill that has been hallucinogenically named the Employee Free Choice Act which 1) removes workers' right to a secret-ballot election if a majority are tricked into signing union "authorizations" and 2) allows a federal government-appointed arbitrator to dictate workers' wages and benefits.

These, among other reasons (all union bosses' own doing), appear to be taking their toll on the public's perception of today's unions. This has led AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka to recently say: "We haven't branded ourselves."

Mr. Trumka fails to realize that no amount of 'branding' will erase the fact that today's unions are nothing like the unions of the past. Today's unions are controlled from the top-down by bosses who have embraced a socialist world view and have aided in the demise of thousands of companies and millions of jobs.

We'll have to wait and see next year's poll numbers to see if Americans continue waking up to today's union bosses and their shenanigans.

DAYS FIVE, SIX, SEVEN & EIGHT...WHERE IS THE MEDIA ON THE HARKIN HIT LIST STORY?

It has been four days since our last update on the Harkin Hit List, and still nothing in the media about Senator Tom Harkin's (D-Iowa) threat to help his union bosses to develop a 2010 Hit List of his fellow Senators.

Apparently, the union bosses have either silenced the media, or the reporters just don't care that a senior member of the United States Senate is being used by a special interest group to develop a hit list of his fellow senators for the 2010 midterm elections.

DAY THREE: Mainstream Media MIA on Harkin's Hit List

It is Day Three of our watching and waiting for the mainstream media to pick up on Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and his threat to help Big Labor develop their 2010 Hit List of Senators against the delusionally-dubbed Employee Free Choice Act.

Apparently, not even the Democrats who are not in favor of the job-destroying legislation have have picked up on the fact that one of their own is helpiing put them on union bosses' hit list.

Perhaps tomorrow...?