http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php/site/index/ en dave@creativeacceleration.com Copyright 2012 2012-05-12T17:41:12+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/facing_seiu_picket_planned_parenthood_cancels_fundraiser_read_more/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/facing_seiu_picket_planned_parenthood_cancels_fundraiser_read_more/#When:17:41:12Z By Caroline May 05/11/2012 Trouble in liberal paradise. It seems that the Planned Parenthood of the Columbia Willamette (PPCW) in Portland, Ore. and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are in the midst of a little labor spat — but then nothing is little when it comes to either of these groups. Last August, employees at the PPCW voted in favor of unionizing with the SEIU Local 49 in a National Labor Relations Board Election. The pair have been trying to work out a contract since November to no avail. Due to frustrations with the slow contract process, the SEIU made plans to picket PPCW’s annual fundraising dinner scheduled for May 12 — a move that reportedly caused Oregon Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber to cancel his plans to attend the event, the Willamette Weekly reported. “The governor will not cross the picket line and has canceled his appearance,” Kitzhaber spokesman Tim Raphael told Willamette Weekly.  The pressure caused PPCW to cancel the entire $250-per-plate event on Wednesday. “It is with great disappointment that I write to let you know that we have decided to cancel our upcoming Spring Gala next Saturday, May 12,” David Greenberg, president and CEO of PPCW wrote in an email to supporters, obtained by Willamette Weekly. “The decision by SEIU to picket our event has put many of our supporters into the untenable position of having to choose between two organizations, and two progressive causes, both of which they support,” Greenberg wrote, explaining that the organization wishes to respect their supporters’ allegiances to both groups. The SEIU also rallied in front of a PPCW conference in late March. “We’re here today because we’ve been bargaining since November 1, 2011,” explained Skye Frome, a registered nurse, at the time. ”And while we’ve made some progress, we have yet to see our most serious concerns addressed in any meaningful way. We’re here to show management that we’re serious about reaching a fair contract.” In an ironic twist, the SEIU’s international executive vice president, Kirk Adams, is married to Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Neither group responded to The Daily Caller’s request for comment. 2012-05-12T17:41:12+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/appeals_court_blocks_govt_rule_on_union_posters_read_more/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/appeals_court_blocks_govt_rule_on_union_posters_read_more/#When:19:16:13Z Assoc Press - April 17, 2012 WASHINGTON –  A federal appeals court on Tuesday temporarily blocked the National Labor Relations Board from making millions of businesses put up posters informing workers of their right to form a union. The rule requiring most private employers to display the posters was supposed to take effect on April 30, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that can’t happen until legal questions are resolved. The temporary injunction followed a federal judge’s ruling in South Carolina last week that the labor board exceeded congressional authority when it approved the poster requirement in 2011. A federal judge in Washington had previously found the NLRB rule acceptable, but limited how the agency could enforce it. Business groups have complained the posters are an unfair government effort to promote union organizing. The labor board contends the posters help workers more clearly understand their rights and protections under federal labor law. National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons called the appeals court’s injunction “a positive step in overturning this harmful rule.” “The ‘posting requirement’ is an unprecedented attempt by the board to assert power and authority it does not possess,” Timmons said. NLRB spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The NLRB rule requires more than 6 million businesses to post an 11-by-17-inch notice in a prominent location explaining the right of workers to join a union and bargain collectively to improve wages and working conditions. The posters also explain that workers have a right not to join a union and that it is illegal for union officials to coerce employees into unionizing. Similar government posters explaining federal anti-discrimination laws and workplace safety rules are already fixtures in company break rooms. But U.S. District Judge David Norton, in his ruling last Friday in South Carolina, said federal laws specifically allow government agencies to require the display of those posters at work sites. By contrast, Norton said, the National Labor Relations Act contains no such language. NLRB attorneys argued the board has the authority to require posters even without specific congressional approval.   2012-04-17T19:16:13+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/httpthehill.combusiness-a-lobbying221467-judge-rules-against-nlrb-unio/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/httpthehill.combusiness-a-lobbying221467-judge-rules-against-nlrb-unio/#When:23:11:13Z By Kevin Bogardus - 04/13/12 A federal judge ruled Friday that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) exceeded its authority when it required employers to post notices explaining workers’ rights to form a union. U.S. District Judge David Norton said in his ruling that Congress didn’t authorize the labor board to issue the poster rule. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the South Carolina Chamber of Commerce had challenged the NLRB regulation in federal court in September last year. In his ruling, the federal judge said the agency lacked the legal authority to issue the notice and thus the rule was not lawful. “Based on the statutory scheme, legislative history, history of evolving congressional regulation in the area, and a consideration of other federal labor statutes, the court finds that Congress did not intend to impose a notice-posting obligation on employers, nor did it explicitly or implicitly delegate authority to the Board to regulate employers in this manner,” Norton said. Norton also said the NLRB was flexing its new “rulemaking muscles.” The labor board’s critics have often said that the agency has become overly aggressive during the Obama administration. “The Board also went seventy-five years without promulgating a notice-posting rule, but it has now decided to flex its newly-discovered rulemaking muscles,” Norton said. Norton’s ruling contradicts another decision by a federal court last month. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the NLRB was within its legal authority to issue the poster rule. NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce has said the notice rule will help workers to know their rights and protections under labor law. The Chamber celebrated Norton’s ruling against the regulation. “The court noted that nothing in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) ‘even mentions the issue of notice posting’ (emphasis added) — much less compels or even permits the NLRB to issue such a rule. The decision is an important reminder that federal agencies can’t ignore the law in order to further partisan agendas,” said Randy Johnson, the Chamber’s senior vice president for labor, immigration and employee benefits, in a blog post. A NLRB spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to 2012-04-16T23:11:13+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/brinker_international_announces_favorable_reaction_to_california_supreme_co/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/brinker_international_announces_favorable_reaction_to_california_supreme_co/#When:17:47:37Z DALLAS, April 12, 2012—/PRNewswire/—Brinker International announced today that the California Supreme Court has issued an opinion in Brinker Restaurant Corp. et al v. The Superior Court for the State of California for the County of San Diego. The decision resolves the legal standards to be applied to California meal period and rest break class actions. “Brinker is very pleased with the California Supreme Court’s ruling,” said Roger Thomson, executive vice president and general counsel of Brinker International. “We’re glad to finally have resolution on the proper legal standards for meal period and rest breaks in our California restaurants. At Brinker, we pride ourselves on creating a positive work environment for our team members. Policies, including those for meal period and rest breaks, are and will continue to be, reflective of that commitment.” “The California Supreme Court effectively truncates the Hohnbaum class action lawsuit and allows Brinker and our team members to focus on what we do best – providing food, service and warm hospitality to more than 1 million guests a day,” added Thomson. “Today the California Supreme Court defined key aspects of California’s meal and rest period laws – especially, that employers need not force their employees to take meal periods they would prefer to skip,” said Rex Heinke, Partner at Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld and Brinker’s lead attorney before the California Supreme Court. “The Court’s definitive resolution of these critical issues offers clear and much-needed guidance not only to Brinker and their team members, but to hundreds of thousands of employers and employees statewide,” said Heinke. “It has been a pleasure to represent Brinker in this historic case, and we are delighted with the California Supreme Court’s decision, which will benefit all California employers and employees.”   2012-04-13T17:47:37+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/is_obamas_10k_plate_fundraiser_a_union_buster_read_more/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/is_obamas_10k_plate_fundraiser_a_union_buster_read_more/#When:15:52:19Z The Palm Beach Post has a good look at Hansel Emory Tookes II, the Palm Beach Gardens host of a $10,000-a-plate luncheon President Obama. Says the Post: He is the son of Hansel E. “Tootie” Tookes, an educator and well-loved athletic administrator at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee… Born in 1948, Tookes received his bachelor’s degree in physics from Florida State University in 1969 and a master’s degree in aeronautical systems from the University of West Florida in 1971. He was a lieutenant commander in the Navy, a pilot for seven years, and later a pilot for United Airlines. His career in industry began in 1980 at United Technologies. Then there’s this line about his time at Pratt & Whitney: he was president of the large-engine group. While at Pratt, he presided over the dismantling of a union-organizing effort, but he also was described as a personable manager.   Huh. So the Democrats’ top leader appears to be taking money from a guy who profited from preventing what union organizers say is the right of people to advocate for a better life and a living wage. But it’s not like Obama has sidled up to unions at every chance. The Democrats convention will be held in Charlotte, N.C., a city with not a single union hotel. And labor wasn’t pleased about that last year. But then last month, Obama spoke to the United Auto Workers and sounded like a union organizer, of sorts, when he bashed Republicans. “Since when are hard-wokring men and women… a special interest?” Obama asked. “Since when is the idea that we look out for one another a bad thing? My friend Ted Kenedy used to say, ‘What is it about working men and women they find so offensive?’” Perhaps he’ll ask the same thing of Tookes over his $10,000 lunch Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/04/is-obamas-10kplate-fundraiser-a-union-buster.html#storylink=cpy   2012-04-10T15:52:19+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/httpwww.tennessean.comarticle20120402BUSINESS03304020005UAW-wants-V/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/httpwww.tennessean.comarticle20120402BUSINESS03304020005UAW-wants-V/#When:19:30:01Z Labor group starts passing out signature cards as first step By G. Chambers Williams III - April 2, 2012 The United Auto Workers union has begun passing out cards to employees of the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga to determine whether there is enough support to hold a union representation election. But the cards are not the official instruments the union would have to collect from at least 30 percent of the plant’s hourly workers to force a union vote, said Gary Casteel, director of the UAW’s District 8, which includes Tennessee. “We have not started an official organizing campaign,” he said, refuting some national media reports. “What got some people up in arms is that we passed out some cards, but they were never about setting up an election,” Casteel said. “The cards were just gauging the level of support.” That characterization was confirmed by Volkswagen spokesman Guenther Scherelis at the plant, which has about 2,700 workers employed directly by the German automaker to build the midsize Passat sedan. “We heard that they had distributed those cards, but it is an initiative of the union and not something that Volkswagen is involved in,” Scherelis said. Some employees said they had seen the cards or were aware of the union’s interest in organizing the plant, but there seems to be no clear consensus on whether there would be enough support to force a union election, much less on whether the UAW could win that vote if it occurred. While it takes only 30 percent of the workforce to sign cards requesting a union vote — which would then have to be held by secret ballot within 40 days — the UAW has said it would want to see a much higher percentage than that before calling for a vote. In recent years, unions generally want at least 75 percent of a workforce to sign cards before a vote is scheduled. The success rate for union referendums drops significantly when lower percentages of workers sign ballot cards, according to statistics of the National Labor Relations Board, which conducts such votes. Pay disparity exists Volkswagen’s hourly pay begins at about $14 and can range to nearly $20 an hour. New workers at UAW facilities such as the General Motors plant in Spring Hill begin at about $17 an hour, and experienced workers make about $29, plus benefits. At the VW plant, older workers are more supportive of the union than younger employees are. Some younger workers fear they could lose some of their current benefits if the union negotiates a contract with Volkswagen. One of those benefits is a popular vehicle leasing plan through which workers can get a new Volkswagen or Audi vehicle every six months and finance it via payroll deductions. Volkswagen announced in July 2008 that it would spend more than $1 billion to build the Chattanooga plant, which began building the new American-only version of the Passat midsize sedan in April 2011. Sales have been so robust that Volkswagen announced March 22 that it would begin hiring an additional 800 workers and open a third shift to meet consumer demand. UAW President Bob King has said the union’s goal is to organize at least one of the South’s foreign auto plants within the next couple of years, with hopes of expanding to others if the first union drive is successful. Industry experts say the UAW’s survival is at stake, as its membership has dropped to only 390,000 nationwide from 1.5 million in 1979. Volkswagen, based in Wolfsburg, Germany, has 62 production facilities worldwide, and Chattanooga is the only one that isn’t unionized. If Volkswagen workers go union, it would be a first among the foreign-based automakers that have built operations in the South, starting with Nissan in Smyrna in 1983. Other nonunion, foreign-owned plants are operated by Japanese automakers Nissan in Mississippi; Toyota in Kentucky, Alabama, Texas and Mississippi; and Honda in Alabama; German automakers Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and BMW in South Carolina; and South Korea’s Hyundai and Kia in Alabama and Georgia. The UAW failed in two efforts at organizing Nissan’s Smyrna facility in 1989 and 2001. Unionization drives also have failed at other plants, including the Mercedes-Benz factory near Tuscaloosa, Ala. 2012-04-04T19:30:01+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/fresh_easy_busted_for_union_busting_read_more/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/fresh_easy_busted_for_union_busting_read_more/#When:17:47:58Z By; Dave Rice March 28, 2012 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Inc., the U.S. arm of British grocery giant Tesco, itself the second most-profitable worldwide retailer behind Wal-Mart, has lost in a petition for review of a disciplinary order handed down by the National Labor Relations Board. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. has upheld the ruling of the Labor Relations Board pertaining to actions taken against an employee at a store in the San Diego suburb of Spring Valley. The Board held that Fresh & Easy was guilty of three separate violations of labor law against an employee during a union organizing drive at the store in 2008. Store management twice warned a pro-union employee that she was not allowed to discuss unionization with other employees on the work floor, despite her protestation that “if employees can talk about the San Diego Chargers’ games or about their kids, then they can talk about the Union.” This constituted an unlawful restriction on the employee by barring her from talking to her coworkers about organizing. A supervisor then told the employee, who’d received a warning during work, that “if I had a manager that didn’t like me, I would take my check and walk out.” He further advised her twice that if she were to quit, she would likely be eligible for unemployment benefits, also an unlawful act. Third, supervisors imposed a disciplinary improvement plan and ordered the worker not to disclose it or discuss its terms with her coworkers. This was also ruled by the Board to be an illegal denial of her right to discuss working conditions with her colleagues. “We conclude that the Board’s decision that Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Inc. unlawfully encouraged an employee to quit in response to protected activity and promulgated two unlawful oral rules, one prohibiting an employee from discussing disciplinary matters during working hours and the other prohibiting employees from discussing union matters during working hours, is supported by substantial evidence and is not arbitrary,” reads a portion of the court’s final ruling, which denied the appeal by Fresh & Easy. Despite parent Tesco’s overall profitability, the Fresh & Easy move into the United States’ West Coast market coincided with the global economic downturn and has yet to bear fruit. The company is hoping to show a profit from its U.S. operations for the first time in 2012 or 2013.   2012-03-28T17:47:58+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/trumka_calls_on_pa._unions_to_support_obama_read_more/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/trumka_calls_on_pa._unions_to_support_obama_read_more/#When:22:07:48Z By Jane M. Von Bergen Mar. 27, 2012 While acknowledging the “ups and downs we’ve had over the past three years,” the national head of the U.S. labor movement called on Pennsylvania union members Tuesday to mobilize to keep President Obama in office. “President Obama stands on our side,” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka told hundreds of AFL-CIO union delegates gathered in Philadelphia at the start of the Pennsylvania Federation of the AFL-CIO’s three-day convention. Much of the convention will be union administrative business, heavily underscored with politics. But on Thursday, the AFL-CIO will also unveil a new effort to connect start-up companies with union workers before sending delegates to attend a noon rally in support of a drive to unionize 3,000 security guards working in Philadelphia’s office towers and major institutions including the University of Pennsylvania. Trumka, who worked as a coal miner in Western Pennsylvania and earned his law degree at Villanova University, expressed disappointment that Obama’s pledge to work for a law that would make it easier for unions to organize never came to fruition. But he mentioned it almost in passing, while crediting Obama with creating or saving 3.6 million jobs during the recession. He also praised the president for expanding access to health care and tightening up the banking industry. Union members, he said, need to push back against politicians who are “less interested in doing the right thing than they are in doing the far-right thing” and against right-wing donors who are making a “blatant bid to buy our democracy. It’s pretty ugly and it’s very corrupt.” Trumka urged the convention’s attendees, who represent the leaders of unions around the state, to register at least 20 percent of their unregistered members and to commit to a full-court two-week intensive push prior to the November election. Pennsylvania “is a must-win state for President Obama on his path to the White House,” said Christopher Borick, director of Muhlenberg College’s Institute of Public Opinion in Allentown. The Republicans can lose Pennsylvania, he said, and still win the White House, but the Democrats need Pennsylvania and unions are key to that party’s success. “They provide the structure and the personnel” for get-out-the-vote efforts, he said. Pennsylvania has the fourth largest number of union members, 779,000, according to the U.S. Labor Department and with 14. 6 percent of its workers belonging to unions, it ranks above the national average of 11.4 percent for union membership. U.S Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), facing re-election, will speak on Wednesday and Patrick Gaspard, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, will address the group on Thursday. Earlier in the day Thursday, delegates will turn their attention away from politics to hear about organizing new industries from Mark Kamlet, provost at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University and Jane Oates, assistant secretary of the U.S. Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration.   2012-03-27T22:07:48+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/httpnlpc.orgstories20120312seiu-controlled-nonprofit-network-grows/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/httpnlpc.orgstories20120312seiu-controlled-nonprofit-network-grows/#When:01:28:33Z By Carl Horowitz 03/12/2012 ‘Occupy Wall Street’ and similar protests around the nation were only the beginning. The Service Employees International Union, as much as anyone, is making sure of it. The SEIU these past several months has been playing a crucial behind-the-scenes role in transforming these rallies into the raw material for a new generation of activists. Through varied front groups, the union is taking its fight against banks, energy companies and other corporations to a new level, making sure reluctant elected officials feel their wrath. These nonprofit organizations, typically operating under monikers such as “good jobs” and “a fair economy,” may seem spontaneous and benign. Yet they are union stage-managed. And as their leaders become more sophisticated and networked, unions may wind up a good deal more effective in their drive to place the U.S. economy under public control. Union Corruption Update last October discussed at length [2] how organized labor has been the driving force behind the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement and its manifold offshoots in the U.S. and Europe. To the naked eye, the takeovers of public space were part political protests, part upbeat communal gatherings. Far from being centrally-managed, supporters insisted, the occupiers, especially the young adults, were idealistic populists who found their voice, and in the process, were helping the rest of us find our own. The wealthy, now redubbed the “1 percent,” too long had been lording everyone else - “the 99 percent.” Those days were numbered, declared the demonstrators. What started on September 17 in Lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park not far from the World Trade Center reconstruction site now was emerging as Ground Zero for a peaceful worldwide revolution against capitalist excess. The Democratic Party, in the pockets of Big Business almost as much as the Republicans, were too compromised to represent the opposition. The real party of opposition could be found in the streets. So went the story. Yet aside from the demonstrators’ appalling lack of grasp of policy issues and basic finance, their 24/7 campouts were not quite as spontaneous as they looked. Political movements by nature require a tight network of leaders in order to press claims and win concessions. As successful business management requires organization, so does successful opposition to it. No doubt the occupiers were having fun. But some of them also were forging ties with seasoned activists on the Left to develop a long-range political program. Labor organizations were ideally positioned to provide moral and logistical support. And quite a few did. [2] In Chicago, Boston and Orange County (Calif.), for example, area affiliates of the AFL-CIO organized protests. In New York City, the national leadership of the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Communications Workers of America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) each voiced support for Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. So did the New York State United Teachers, another AFL-CIO affiliate. The encampments of last fall that stood as symbols of mass resistance have been dismantled. In most cases, demonstrators/campers, facing cold weather and growing weary of moral theater, left on their own accord. In other cases, such as Washington, D.C., Oakland and Portland (Oregon), not to mention Ground Zero at Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, they didn’t. Authorities belatedly removed makeshift shelters, arresting those who refused to leave. Resistance at times got ugly. In Oakland, California about 400 protestors were arrested [3] during a late-January riot in conjunction with a march on City Hall that resulted in massive vandalism to the building. With or without a rerun, however, there is a more significant story. More than simply make headlines, the occupations provided the cause of progressivism with fresh cadres of organizers and leaders. Various demonstrators have recognized a career opportunity. Some one day may become national activists of the first rank. It’s happened before. In October 1969, for instance, a young radical activist, Wade Rathke, underwent a baptism of fire when he was arrested for leading a violent demonstration at a local welfare office in Springfield, Massachusetts. The following year, on assignment for the National Welfare Rights Organization, he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas to set up what would become the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, for which he served as chief organizer until 2008. From such battlefields, union and political leaders are born. Organized labor, with decades of experience in political activism, is taking the most committed of the ‘Occupy’ radicals under their wings. One union in particular, the Service Employees International Union, has emerged as a leader. The SEIU, as National Legal and Policy Center has noted more than once, for the past few decades has been a major voice for radicalism, both in the context of labor relations and Democratic Party politics. During the Eighties, Wade Rathke established SEIU Local 100 to represent service employees in Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas; the union and ACORN (now disbanded) were barely distinguishable. And in the middle of that decade, the union created its “Justice for Janitors” campaign, which over the ensuing years has inflicted its highly disruptive style [4] upon cities across the nation. One of the chief architects of Justice for Janitors, Stephen Lerner, remains a major SEIU organizer and political strategist. He was a crucial, and shadowy, figure in last fall’s urban occupations, especially in Chicago. A half-year earlier, Lerner was caught on tape speaking to a New York audience, describing the rudiments of a program to undermine the U.S. economy. Union leadership has been fully supportive of the Occupy Wall Street movement. SEIU President Mary Kay Henry, the successor to the equally radical Andrew Stern, last October called the protestors an “incredible inspiration [5]” for highlighting social and economic injustice. “We have been talking about the increasing inequality in this country for a long time,” she said. “I think what’s wonderful about the Occupy movement is that they captured this with…‘We are the 99 percent.’ I feel like what we are doing is echoing a very smart thing that the occupiers began with.” She would amplify this endorsement in a guest editorial [6] for the October 8-9, 2011 weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal: The Occupy Wall Street actions are a potent example of what is happening across our country as the anger and frustration of ordinary Americans builds. While the media and pundits obsess over what the Occupy Wall Street protestors want, the protestors have already succeeded in shaking our conscience as a nation and forcing a national conversation about everything that is wrong with our economy… The anger of the American people has been brewing for quite some time, and now that it’s boiled over there’s no bottling it up. The importance of Occupy Wall Street can’t be measured by any set of demands. What’s more important to understand are the values that unite the protestors and their authentic understanding of what has gone wrong in our economy. Her union, which has more than two million members and an annual budget of more than $200 million, is partnering with many of the occupiers. Reporter Richard Pollock, in separate articles for the March 5 [7] and March 8 [8] editions of The Daily Caller, investigated how the SEIU setting up a national network of nonprofit groups to work in concert with “Occupy” groups to pressure businesses and elected officials. These operations, designed to create the illusion of mass public support, advance the interests of the SEIU without being open about it. It is thus more than a tad hypocritical that such people are the first to demand more transparency from the financial industry. The local groups look spontaneous, traveling under names with an appeal to average citizens who merely want to make a positive difference in their communities. Examples: “Good Jobs, Great Houston”; “Good Jobs, Better Baltimore”; “One Pittsburgh”; “Fight for Philly”; and “Minnesotans for a Fair Economy.” Nobody could be “against” good jobs - that’s why they are such useful fronts. Pollock cited a Seattle group, “Working Washington” as an example. This group is registered with the State of Washington as a corporation, with one Secky Fascione as its agent. Fascione’s LinkedIn profile lists her as an “Organizing Coordinator at SEIU.” Then there is cited the case of the Los Angeles-based “Good Jobs LA.” Its legal name is “Good Jobs, Safe Communities LA.” The California state registry lists its address as the same as the SEIU’s state headquarters. A Washington, D.C.-area group, Our DC [9], takes this disingenuous mode of behavior to an extreme. Incorporation papers reveal its legal address to be not in the District of Columbia, as its name suggests, but in suburban Gaithersburg, Md. Its address is the same as SEIU Local 500. And its website, while not providing the names of directors or officers, does provide the street address of SEIU national headquarters. Pollock went ahead and obtained documents pertaining to the group’s April 2011 incorporation, discovering that its three-member board of David Rodich, Valarie Long and Beth Myers were anything but amateurs. Rodich and Myers are well-compensated salaried employees of SEIU Local 500; Rodich, in fact, serves as executive director. Long, meanwhile, is executive vice president of the Service Employees and formerly had headed the New York City-based SEIU 32BJ, which represents more than 120,000 janitors, doormen, security guards and other building service workers along the East Coast. The executive director for Our DC, Kendall Fells, is also an SEIU employee. The dots have a way of connecting. Website registrations provide further evidence of SEIU sleight of hand. Many domain names for group websites originally were registered through an anonymous proxy service. Yet it is hardly a coincidence, notes website integrity consultant RobTex.com, that their Internet Protocol (IP) addresses link back to the main SEIU Web server. The principal IP location of the server reveals nearly 70 domains representing union and allied advocacy groups. All sites corresponding to city-specific SEIU front groups are on the server; many of them use similar designs and an identical template. Another strong clue that these nonprofits are Service Employees hobby horses is how they obtained their legal status. These groups tend to incorporate under Section 501(c)(4) of the IRS tax code. That is, they don’t pay taxes, but donations to them are not tax-deductible. It helps to hire a trusted name in labor law to handle the paperwork. The Washington, D.C. law firm of Trister, Ross, Schadler & Gold [10] so far has been the preferred legal shop. The firm has set up groups in Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia and elsewhere. Principal partner Michael Trister is a longtime labor lawyer; nearly a decade and a half ago he wrote a federal election law manual for union lawyers. He’s listed in Our DC’s papers as one of three incorporators, with the two others being employees of the firm. A co-principal, Laurence Gold, submitted an amicus brief last October on behalf of SEIU Local 32BJ in a case pertaining to New York State’s campaign finance law. The SEIU also coordinates activities of its front organizations with those of “Occupy” groups where it counts most of all - on the ground level where the action is. Last October, members of the SEIU-sponsored nonprofit group One Pittsburgh joined forced with members of Occupy Pittsburgh outside the home office of Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa. Though touted as an anti-Wall Street event, the rally morphed into a protest against the senator’s recent “no” vote on President Obama’s (not passed) American Jobs Act stimulus proposal. The two groups “go hand-in-hand” admitted Corey Buckner, a member of One Pittsburgh. The following month, Good Jobs LA and Occupy LA demonstrated together outside various branches of Bank of America. And on two occasions last December, some 30 “Our DC” protestors descended on the legislative office of Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, part of organized labor’s “Take Back the Capital” campaign and timed to coincide with an Occupy DC rally. On the weekend following the initial visit to McConnell’s office, members of Our DC and Occupy DC marched together in an “Occupy K Street” rally. Even the rhetoric can be identical. The website of SEIU-sponsored Fight for Philly put it this way a few months ago: “Join thousands of 99-percenters who are coming to Washington, D.C. December 5-9 to take back the Capitol from corporate control.” Take a guess where the expression, “99-percenters,” originated. Hint: Think of the people who came up with “the 1 percent.” All this leads to the conclusion that that the newly-formed nonprofit anti-business groups and the ‘Occupy’ groups are playing for the same team, the Service Employees International Union. Richard Pollock and The Daily Caller should be commended for first-rate investigative reporting. But there is an issue here beyond the ACORN-style deception. It is the institutional integrity of organized labor generally. For what we have is a major union pursuing its goals by hiding behind “grass-roots” nonprofit organizations. One highly plausible explanation for this is that 501(c)(4) nonprofit income is tax-exempt, whereas union income is taxable. Another is that the union can recruit foot soldiers cheaply without having to organize workplaces or negotiate contracts. Many of these soldiers, with growing sophistication and experience, may well become union organizers or allied progressive activists. It isn’t just the SEIU that plays this game. The website for One Pittsburgh, for example, lists locals of the United Food & Commercial Workers and the Ironworkers as “coalition partners.” And this past February the United Auto Workers listed itself as one participant among many in a “99 percent spring” campaign, even though all Web documents came from an unprotected portion of a UAW server. Launching and running ad hoc nonprofit groups to minimize one’s political footprints isn’t a practice limited to unions. Corporations certainly have plenty of experience at this. But that doesn’t mean unions should be exempt from scrutiny. Even if undermining corporate self-governance were somehow a noble goal, organized labor, if nothing else, should be transparent about it proceeds in realizing that goal. Links: [1] http://nlpc.org/bios/carl-horowitz [2] http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/10/13/unions-play-major-role-occupy-wall-street-protests [3] http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/30/local/la-me-occupy-oakland-20120130 [4] http://www.amazon.com/TRAFFIC-DISRUPTION-CAMPAIGN-JUSTICE-JANITORS/dp/1240433085 [5] http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/187765-unions-back-occupy-wall-street-movement [6] http://www.seiu.org/2011/10/mary-kay-henry-on-importance-of-occupy-wall-street-in-wsj-piece.php [7] http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/05/secretive-nationwide-network-gives-seiu-new-organizing-muscle/ [8] http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/08/secretive-seiu-network-partners-with-occupy-movement-raises-hell/ [9] http://thisisourdc.org/ [10] http://www.tristerross.com/ [11] http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/09/20/union-support-obama-democrats-eroding [12] http://nlpc.org/stories/2011/04/18/ex-seiu-official-caught-tape-revealing-economic-destabilization-plan [13] http://nlpc.org/stories/2010/03/23/acorn-formally-disbands-may-reform-under-new-name [14] http://nlpc.org/stories/2010/05/10/mary-kay-henry-elected-new-seiu-president [15] http://nlpc.org/stories/2010/04/26/stern-leave-seiu-leaves-troubled-legacy-despite-membership-rise [16] http://nlpc.org/category/keywords/afl-cio [17] http://nlpc.org/category/people/mary-kay-henry [18] http://nlpc.org/category/people/michael-trister [19] http://nlpc.org/category/keywords/occupy-wall-street [20] http://nlpc.org/category/people/richard-pollock [21] http://nlpc.org/category/keywords/service-employees-international-union-seiu [22] http://nlpc.org/category/project-name/union-corruption-update [23] http://nlpc.org/category/people/wade-rathke 2012-03-13T01:28:33+00:00 http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/nlrbs_top_lawyer_still_feels_fallout_from_boeing_union_case_read_more/ http://www.cruzandassociates.com/index.php?/site/nlrbs_top_lawyer_still_feels_fallout_from_boeing_union_case_read_more/#When:16:42:39Z Thanks to the controversial case, Lafe Solomon, whom President Obama named the NLRB’s acting general counsel in June 2010, has given up any hope of being confirmed by the Senate for the permanent title. “Companies can make rational economic decisions that can be in violation of the National Labor Relations Act,” according to Lafe Solomon. By Kyung M. Song February 19, 2012 WASHINGTON — Last year, just before the National Labor Relations Board accused Boeing of illegally punishing strike-prone Puget Sound-area Machinists by building a new 787 assembly plant in South Carolina, that state’s senior senator privately warned the agency’s top lawyer of “nasty, very very nasty” consequences if he didn’t yank the complaint. Otherwise, Sen. Lindsey Graham pledged, he would go “full guns ablazing,” according to notes taken at the time by Lafe Solomon, the NLRB’s acting general counsel. Nine days later, in April 2011, Solomon greenlighted the unfair-labor practice case against Boeing. Graham — along with many of his fellow conservatives — was furious. Republicans in South Carolina and in Congress accused Solomon of colluding with the Machinists union and the White House to undermine employers’ rights. Mitt Romney slammed the NLRB as a “rogue agency.” Solomon was compelled to testify in a congressional hearing in North Carolina under threat of subpoena. He was called a job killer and faced a thinly veiled specter of disbarment after he balked at turning over documents to House Republican investigators. Solomon, a genial Arkansas native, found himself in the center of a maelstrom he did not entirely expect and which continues to dog his agency even now — more than two months after Boeing and the Machinists forged new labor peace with a four-year contract extension. Solomon had anticipated that the case against Boeing might be explosive, particularly given the NLRB’s proposed remedy that the jetliner work be ordered back to Washington state from North Charleston, S.C. Still, the resulting political furor caught him off guard. “I never could have imagined the fallout,” he said recently in one of his first extended interviews on the topic. Hearing Graham’s warning “is not the same thing as experiencing it.” Overnight, Solomon came to personify Republicans’ assertions that the NLRB was a pro-union activist agency. Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, subpoenaed thousands of internal NLRB emails and documents related to the Boeing case as part of his panel’s investigation. In December, Solomon dropped the Boeing complaint after the Machinists ratified their new contract. The accord includes wage and pension increases and $5,000 signing bonuses, and guarantees final assembly of the upcoming 737 MAX in Renton. Yet Issa is pushing on. Solomon, whom President Obama named NLRB’s acting general counsel in June 2010, has given up any hope of being confirmed by the Senate for the permanent title. (He can remain as acting counsel until a permanent appointee is confirmed by the Senate.) Solomon wonders if any future appointees to the board could muster a filibuster-proof 60 votes. And he worries that NLRB’s budget could fall victim to political enmity. Agency veteran Solomon, 62, is a career NLRB attorney. With an economics degree from Brown University, he joined the agency in 1972 as a field examiner in Seattle. That was just after the Boeing Bust of 1971. Solomon paid a little more than $100 a month for a furnished one-bedroom apartment in Madison Park. “With a fireplace and a balcony, right on Lake Washington,” Solomon recalled. As he roved the five-state Seattle region to check workers’ claims of wrongful termination and discrimination — many linked to mining and manufacturing jobs — Solomon became convinced a power imbalance sometimes exists between employees and employers. “You’d go to Kalispell, Montana, say, and check into a motel. People would start knocking on your door and say they heard the labor board was in town,” he said. That stint pushed Solomon into law school at Tulane University; he wanted to prosecute, not just investigate, unfair labor practices. He arrived at NLRB’s Washington, D.C., headquarters in fall 1976. The independent federal agency is responsible for ensuring workers’ right to unionize and to engage in strikes and other protected activities. It also protects employers from unfair boycotts or picketing. The NLRB’s general counsel operates independently of the agency’s five-member board, which is appointed by the president. The general counsel files charges, which are heard by an administrative-law judge. The judge’s ruling can be appealed to the board. The board’s decisions can set precedents in enforcing the National Labor Relations Act. In March 2010, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers District 751 filed a complaint with the NLRB alleging that Boeing built its second 787 jetliner assembly line in South Carolina to get back at the union for past strikes and to discourage future ones. The union’s seventh and most recent strike ended after 57 days in November 2008. The NLRB’s Seattle regional office found merit in the union’s claims and recommended filing a complaint. Among the evidence cited was a videotaped newspaper interview by Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Jim Albaugh, who said the overriding factor behind the move was not high wages or poor business climate, but “work stoppage, you know, every three years.” In fall 2010, Solomon took the unusual step of calling Boeing and Machinists officials to Washington, D.C., so he could hear their arguments. Solomon said he did so because of the “enormity” of the stakes. Boeing had spent $750 million to build the North Charleston plant, an investment the company and its supporters feared could be undone by the complaint. Solomon said he tried for three months to broker a settlement before filing the complaint, but failed. Boeing denied each and every allegation. It argued economic factors and geographic diversity largely steered the relocation. It also said Machinists in Everett had suffered no job losses because the second 787 final-assembly line never existed there, and thus could not have been moved or transferred, as the NLRB alleged. Companies can legitimately move or close operations as they see fit. But it’s illegal to do so in retaliation for past strikes or to avert future ones. “Companies can make rational economic decisions that can be in violation of the National Labor Relations Act,” Solomon said. Partisan flash point Solomon’s decision roiled an agency already caught in political cross hairs. Threats by GOP senators to block appointees had kept President Obama from filling vacancies on the NLRB board. Until January, the last time the board was at a full five members was August 2010. Ross Eisenbrey, vice president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning Washington, D.C., think tank, said some NLRB board members as well as previous general counsels have been highly political. But Eisenbrey said Solomon has been less partisan than most. The NLRB gave its critics further ammunition when internal agency emails revealed staff members mocking the Boeing case. The emails, obtained by a conservative watchdog group under the Freedom of Information Act, included this note from Solomon to the outgoing chairwoman of the board: “You go to geneva and I get a job with airbus. We screwed up the us economy and now we can tackle Europe.” Solomon defended the exchanges as natural gallows humor from professionals who felt unjustly under siege. “All those emails are post (Boeing) complaint,” he said. “I don’t think it shows bias.” Still, Solomon said one good thing rose from the public attacks. “Many people for the first time know that there is a National Labor Relations Act, and that we do protect workers,” Solomon said. 2012-02-27T16:42:39+00:00