Archive for category Unions
Unions Cost Taxpayers Money
Posted by Tom in Deficit, Employment, Government Regulation, Unions on March 10, 2010
Representative Steve King from Iowa has a hell of an idea on How to Save $11.4 Billion This Year, posted March 4th in The American Spectator. Repeal the Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act, a subsidy designed to protect American blacks from being barred from construction jobs by mandating “prevailing wages” in public contracts. In practice prevailing wages are inflated union wages. As King points out, “Davis-Bacon wage rates are on average 22% higher than the standard wage rate in an area. Similar Heritage research revealed that, under Davis-Bacon law, the government pays four workers artificially inflated wages the same price it could pay five workers the local market rate.” So Obama’s “stimulus” which requires Davis-Bacon wages either costs the taxpayers a 22% wage subsidy premium or decreases construction employment by 20%!
So you would hope that given the serious deficit and 9+% unemployment, Obama would embrace this practical idea. Alas, you would be wrong. As pointed out editorially in yesterday’s WSJ, the White House is all about, Procuring the Union Agenda. Seems that Joe Biden’s “Middle Class Task Force” is drafting an Executive Order for Obama that would “oblige government procurement agencies to give contracts to “responsible contractors” who pay workers well and offer higher health, pension, sick leave and other benefits. These new mandated labor standards would have to be enforced across a company, not just at the unit bidding for a contract.” It is this new twist that puts the Davis-Bacon Act on steroids!
Unlike the disjunctive, “EITHER inflate taxpayer costs OR decrease employment” of Davis-Bacon, this executive order by expanding Davis-Bacon beyond the bidding unit will “BOTH inflate costs AND decrease employment.” The greatest adverse impact here is on small businesses, formerly the job creation engines of this economy!
So instead of competitive bidding to get the best quality at the best price, we have the Obama administration doing the unions’ bidding. Obama is owned by the unions; at least they own the biggest part of him!
Tom Motherway
NJ’s Chris Christie-”No More Road Down Which To Kick the Can”
Posted by Tom in Economics, Education Facts & Policies, State Finances, Unions on March 6, 2010
Another honest politician telling it like it is, Chris Christie told 200 of New Jersey’s mayors that the old game of tax and spend is over. See Ron Smith’s Baltimore Sun post, A leader opts for painful honesty in the Garden State.
“We have no time left,” said the governor, “We have no room left to borrow. We have no room left to tax. So we merely have time left to do this. We are all reaching the edge of a cliff. And it reminds me a bit of that part of ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ where he had the seminal decision to make. So what did they do? They held hands and jumped off the cliff. We have to hold hands at every level of government, state, county, municipal, school board. We have to hold hands and jump off the bridge.”
“Governor Christie has wasted no time in implementing budget freezes through executive action. No doubt there will be a political firestorm in New Jersey as the pinch is felt by politically powerful entities such as the teachers, police and firefighters unions. Whether he can survive tackling the growing fiscal crisis with actual solutions is the question. He told the mayors to get ready for cuts in state aid in his upcoming budget, which will be presented March 16, but he promised he would give them a hand by implementing pension, benefit and arbitration process reform, something that will be bitterly opposed by the aforementioned unions.”
Ya gotta like this guy. We need a lot more like him–telling it like it it is. Hopefully voters will be smart enough to listen!
Tom Motherway
Tenure, Unions, Administrative Bloat=Public School Education
Posted by Tom in Education Facts & Policies, State Finances, Unions on February 22, 2010
Today’s WSJ editorial, No (Tenured) Teacher Left Behind, addressed the problem of tenure in our public school systems. Tenure, the contractual right not to face employment termination without just cause, has been used in colleges and universities to insure academic freedom. It’s used in the federal judiciary to guarantee judicial independence. It has become a handicap to competent jurisprudence and quality secondary public education.
While academic freedom at the university level can arguably be justified given the variety of disciplines and research orientation, there is no possible justification for tenure at the secondary level. At the university level tenure is earned by research and publication over several initial years of work; if not granted after a stated period it is never granted. At the secondary level public employee teachers are granted tenure as a matter of course, typically after three years. No real qualification is required other than not showing up on a police blotter during those initial years! Public school administrators typically find less than 2% of new teachers unsatisfactory even though students fail to meet basic academic standards year after year and even in LA where the drop out rate is 35% and growing. Finally, “academic freedom” at the primary and secondary levels is an oxymoron!
Tenure as fostered by the teachers unions begets the mediocrity for which unions are generally known. There is no striving for excellence only striving for conformity and strength in numbers. As I have said ad nauseam, public employee unions have no place in our political system; the unholy alliance between union members and politicians will bankrupt our society. This is especially true in education where we are dealing with our most precious resource, our future!
What about Nevada? We spend way in excess of inflation, a 48% increase in Nevada’s education spending from 2006 to 2009! Yet we consistently have test scores lower than the national average. (See the National Center for Education Statistics)
We need a system in which excellent teachers can be retained and financially rewarded. We need a system in which the deadwood, protected by tenure and teachers unions, can be discarded.
So when you hear cries against education cuts please remember that spending has grown dramatically beyond the combination of population growth and inflation over the last several years. Student progress as measured by test scores has not kept pace. So a logical conclusion would be to look for educational barriers elsewhere. I submit that tenure along with teachers unions would be good places to start.
Tom Motherway
Entitlement Generation’s Generation…Our Schools Train Socialists But Not Much Else!
Posted by Tom in Economics, Education Facts & Policies, State Finances, Taxation, Unions on February 12, 2010
Our great grandparents ventured from the old world to settle this new world, risking, sacrificing, and working for a better life. Our grandparents braved grueling covered wagon treks across the plains, deserts, and mountains to stretch the boundaries of this new world while scratching out a better life for their families by sacrificing and hard work even though outcomes were none too certain. Our parents fought in foreign wars to maintain the freedom and livelihood that their families enjoyed in this new world and help establish those freedoms worldwide.
Sadly we, circa babyboom generation, became complacent. Things were handed to us. We expected them. When they weren’t there we got mad. We rebelled against authority. We had “rights.” In short, we were entitled!
Why work? Why pay tuition? Job, what’s that? The state will pay it and if it doesn’t we’ll protest. Our children are entitled to the best education free. They are entitled to reduced class size and private tutoring if need be. We are the entitlement generation.
And what we are and what we have spanned is an embarrassment to our heritage.
This from the Las Vegas Sun: “UNLV students let their voices be heard on proposed education cuts. Organized walkout of classes joined by president, chancellor.” Yes, UNLV President Neal Smatresk, Chancellor Dan Klaich, and Chairman of the Board of Regents Dean Leavitt participated in the protest.
And this today from the Las Vegas Review Journal: “Desert Oasis students walk out of class to protest budget cuts.” Over 400 students walked out to protest state budget cuts to education. Of course, they won’t be punished because they got permission from Principal Emil Wozniak before the walked out!
The leftist educators and their poorly educated students are “entitlees.” They don’t know the meaning of work, sacrifice, or individual responsibility. They are the embodiment of the leftist model. How will they compete in a world where people do understand those virtues?
Sadly, we have been spending our hard earned tax dollars to support the exorbitant costs in terms of salaries, pensions, and general waste of this public unionized system. Economically, it is unsustainable.
Tom Motherway
Who Owns Obama and the Democrats?
Posted by Tom in Democrats, Economics, Energy Facts & Policies, Environment, Individual Freedom, Politics, Unions, Wall Street on January 29, 2010
There are primarily four major political groups that literally own Obama, Reid, Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats: Unions, particularly the public employee unions. Trial lawyers. Environmentalists. And, Wall Street and Business Rent Seekers. The cost of these relationships to the economy and to our freedom is significant but difficult to completely quantify.
Unions. According to the latest figures overall union membership as a percentage of the workforce has held steady with 2008 at 12.4% and 2009 at 12.3%. Within that overall group, however, the private sector unionization declined from 7.6 to 7.2% while the public sector grew from 36.8 to 37.4%. It’s no secret that Obama favored the unions over the bondholders in his nationalization of GM and Chrysler. Nor is it a secret that his most frequent visitor is Andy Stern who will let you know what they spent to get Obama elected! Oh, and about 1 million of the federal work force are union members, 28% of the wage and salary workforce. As to the effects of this, see my post of January 7th Unions and Excessive Government Compensation.
Trial Lawyers. This is that monopoly of “professionals” who are licensed to represent real or pretended injured people for “contingency fees” of 25-50% of the awards obtained in trial or, more likely, settlement. These “injured” plaintiffs can be investors, cancer patients, or “whiplash” victims. Oftentimes the attorneys advertise to let them know they are “injured” or purchase new issue stock to become self fulfilling injured plaintiffs themselves! Recent cases have highlighted the manufactured testimony that these lawyers pay for, the perjury that they suborn. According to a recent post in OpenSecrets.org, during the last decade the trial lawyer given over 90% of their political contributions to the Democrats. In 2009 $2.86 Million to the Democrats and $140 Thousand to Republicans. Is it any wonder that there are no caps on medical malpractice damages in Obamacare? Thus big awards, large insurance premiums and defensive medicine will continue to drive up medical costs. (In the interest of full disclosure, I was once one of these trial lawyers, but as Woodrow Wilson said, “I have repented of it”)
Environmentalists. This is the most difficult economic drag and freedom surrender to estimate. Consider the ethanol debacle both in terms of costs and free market damage where the government pays producers to produce, forces customers to buy and restricts cheaper imports for a process and substance which increases greenhouse gasses! Consider the recent cap and trade bill passed by the House. Or, how about the CO2 we exhale and the EPA’s intention to regulate it as harmful! Has there been a cost-benefit analysis on the solar, wind, insulation state and federal tax and other subsidies or the wasted economic investment as a result thereof? And all of this for a “global warming science” in which the scientists manipulate the data!
Wall Street and Business Rent Seekers. Now we get to the folks we love to hate, the money guys who have long sucked at the Democratic teat. These folks spend the money to get the edge. They love cap and trade because they will become the traders getting the juice of commissions. They love Barney Frank’s push on Fannie and Freddie for more subprime mortgages because they generated fees from packaging and selling them as securities. Some felt “forced” to deal like drug companies, hospitals and insurance companies in the recent Obamacare debacle. Others just sought advantage over honest competition; in economic terms they are simply rent seekers.
These poor seekers of corporate welfare are the easiest to turn on for political reasons, so Obama is turning on them appearing like the populist he isn’t, while still taking their cash. This is truly fun to watch but is of little significance.
As long as the elite Democratic rulers are literally owned by these very special and influential interests, our economy will flounder and our freedoms will diminish.
FOLLOW UP: Media-Educators. At dinner tonight on this penultimate day of January Bill Collins suggested that Hollywood should have been included in the list of “owners.” Sure enough, common knowledge and a cursory internet search reminds us that Democrats dominate “Tinsel Town.” But this is just one segment of the media, the entertainment segment of the Fourth Estate, if you will. So, it seems incumbent to include the MSM (Main Stream Media) like MSNBC, CBS, ABC, CNN. It’s not too obvious that fawning lap dogs like Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann are more than a bit biased. Stretching the “media” definition we can easily include the educational establishment. Hard to find a non-Obama hope-change professor on a college campus today. It would seem fair to say that the Media-Educators should indeed be included in the list of owners of Obama and the Democrats. Their influence aside from environmentalism would seem to be more social than economic. Things like “gay marriage” and “don’t ask, don’t tell” interest them. The cost here is to our intelligence and to the future of our society, thus our freedom. This is hard to measure in economic terms. But it is perhaps more critical to our democracy. The lack of education, intelligence in the electorate, and a free press willing to to its critical, investigative job will if continued doom our future.
Pray that the next generations are smarter than ours and will remedy this sorry state of affairs!
Tom Motherway
Nevada’s Constitutional Standoff-Governor Gibbons is Correct
Posted by Tom in Economics, Education Facts & Policies, Nevada, Politics, Social Security, Unions on January 11, 2010
The spend and spend Democrats in the Nevada Legislature and their SEIU and Teachers Union (NSEA) employers have bristled at Governor Gibbons proposal to put the state back on the track of fiscal responsibility and adopt his educational reform proposal.
To refresh your memory from my January 7th post, the proposal embodied the following:
- Abolish collective bargaining. This has no place in government.
- Abolish the class-size reduction program, a make-work union rule. (There were 70 in my 3rd grade with one teacher!)
- Create a statewide school voucher system.
- Eliminate full-day kindergarten requirement.
- Repeal the prohibition against using student achievement data in teacher evaluations. Another union boondoggle rule!
Sensible, practical proposals for a state facing deficits, unfunded liabilities, and declining revenue this year and next at the very minimum. But the fat cat Democrats howled because their union bosses told them to howl!
So the Governor has asked the legislative leadership to draft bills along those lines for consideration in a special session. The Democratic leadership has refused. The Governor has contemplated a lawsuit against the legislature. Unfortunately this has echos of Guinn v. Legislature. Recall that was another phony, laughable suit filed by RINO Guinn and his then Attorney General Brian Sandoval against the legislature to compel action on the budget. Result: laughable decision derided nationally as reported in the WSJ and finally recanted by the same Supreme Court that issued it!
The Governor has correctly made his point. The Democrats have made theirs and shown who owns them–not the voters but the unions! The remedy for this constitutional standoff is at the ballot box, not in the Supreme Court. Simply, the Court cannot legally, constitutionally compel legislative action. The Democrats will have failed to do their Constitutional duty to consider legislation proposed to correct our fiscal insanity. Then, let the Nevada voters decide if they want the public servants making more money, with better benefits, and higher unfunded pensions that the average voters have. Let the Nevada voters decide if they want the state and local governments to be bankrupt while the fat cat Democrats laugh all the way to the bank.
Unfortunately, Brian Sandoval the Republican candidate opposing Governor Jim Gibbons for the party’s nomination, has shown himself to be the spend and spend RINO he was when he argued the Guinn v. Legislature lawsuit many years ago. He too opposes Governor Guinn’s very good proposals on education reform and fiscal sanity.
Tom Motherway
Kudos to Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons
Posted by Tom in Deficit, Education Facts & Policies, State Finances, Taxation, Unions on January 7, 2010
Finally, a conservative solution to help put fiscal sanity back into the state and improve the quality of education at the same time. Jim Gibbons announced his education plan yesterday with these highlights:
- Abolish collective bargaining. This has no place in governmental service.
- Abolish the class-size reduction program. A make work union rule.
- Create a statewide school voucher program.
- Eliminate full-day kindergarten requirement.
- Repeal the prohibition against using student achievement data in teacher evaluations. Another union boondoggle rule.
Predictably, Democratic candidate Rory Reid who like his father is owned by the unions opposes the suggestions.
Sadly, Brian Sandoval also panned the proposal. Methinks Sandoval is showing his true, liberal colors. Remember, Guinn v. Legislature? Brian like Guinn was a tax and spend RINO then; doesn’t look like he has changed!
Tom Motherway
Unions and Excessive Government Compensation
Posted by Tom in Deficit, Financial Policy, State Finances, Unions on January 7, 2010
Historically unions have helped reformed abusive labor practices in factories, mines, construction sites and sweat shops; they have negotiated a living wage and a livable work week; they have negotiated overtime compensation and reasonable holidays, sick leave and safe working conditions. All this has been accomplished in the 19th century in private industry where job classifications were few and work common among classifications. Their clout derived from membership and the ability to strike. Members realized that their power lay in hanging together. The accepted the mediocrity inherent in group behavior. One member would not try to work too hard to show up another less hungry member.
But there was a common interest shared between management and labor, namely the success of the enterprise; if that failed, both sides failed.
Fast forward to today and an excellent article by Warner Todd Huston in the December 5th Nevada News & Views, Two Americas: One Struggling-One Happy, Unionized, and in Government! He cites a recent Rasmussen poll highlighting the difference in perception between government workers and workers in the real world. He points up the incestuous, unholy alliance between politicians and their union bosses. Witness SEIU president Andy Stern’s 21 visits to Obama in less than a year. He reiterates what we’ve all said before: unionism is antithetical to good government, thus public employee unions should be outlawed.
But why? Unlike the private sector where the success of the enterprise is a common shared interest, public employee unions and their employed politicians have no common shared interest other than mutual survival. By definition mutual survival of career bureaucrats and career politicians is not in the common good.
The cartoon from my December 13th post on abusive compensation lightly describes the situation. More to the point though is an excellent study by Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute on Employee Compensation in State and Local Government. He notes the state deficits and unfunded liabilities and points out that wages and benefits account for fully half of government spending. The differences between government and the private sector dramatically favor government employees in both areas, 34% advantage in wages and 70% in benefits! He charts a major factor for the difference, unionization. Where the differences are the greatest, unions have the greatest representation. He promises another study with more detail on this aspect.
More scary yet, Barack Hussein Obama’s appointment of Erroll Southers to head the Transportation Security Administration. Apparently is being brought in to unionize the TSA. Senator Jim DeMint has blocked the nomination under senatorial privilege. (See WSJ January 4th report.) Given the attempted Christmas aircraft bombing, and that lamebrain Napolitano heads Homeland Security, the last thing we need is a unionized TSA.
But keep in mind, while it may be the last thing we need, it is probably the first thing Barack Hussein Obama needs. With polls looking a bit shaky for him, he needs all the money Andy Stern can fork over. And Andy Stern’s SEIU is the second largest public services union with more than a million government employees contributing dues!
Simply stated, unions have no place in the public sector and should be outlawed.
Tom Motherway
While Complaining About Wall Street Bonuses…..Let’s Remember Some Other Abusive Compensation
Unionized public sector pay and pensions are out of control and increasingly contribute to our fiscal demise.![mime-attachment[1]](http://renohayek.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/mime-attachment1.jpeg "mime-attachment[1]")
According to the 2008 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics while union members accounted for 12.4 percent of wage and salary workers, “the union membership rate for public sector workers (36.8 percent) was substantially higher than the rate for private industry workers (7.6 percent).”
And, USA Today reported in April, (a) public employees earned average benefits worth $13.38 per hour vs. $7.98 per hour for private sector workers, (b) overall average compensation for state and local workers was $39.25 an hour vs. $27.35 for private workers, and (c) a full-time government worker gets benefits worth and average of $27,830 per year, while a private workers average benefits are worth $16,598 per year.
Finally, we’ve all seen reports on the looming time-bomb of unfunded state and local retirement benefits. Greg D’Angelo of The Heritage Foundation reports that those governments have promised but not paid for “roughly $1.5 trillion” in retirement benefits. This coupled with early retirement ages, high percentages of last paid compensation and final year “promotions” exacerbate an already bad situation.
Perhaps, though, the most damnable aspect of public sector unionization is the unholy understanding that the unions campaign for the elected officials who in turn “take care of” the unions come payday. There is no check on this unholy alliance.
Tom Motherway
Labor In Control-Obama v. Calderon, Reagan, Common Sense
Posted by Tom in Education Facts & Policies, Politics, Statism, Unions on October 19, 2009
When I was a kid I was lucky enough to get construction jobs during my summers to pay for college and law school tuition. One requirement was a union card from the laborers and hod carriers local union. The card and dues were a minor drag, a tax, on the ability to earn enough to pay for the schooling. I appreciated the union because the job paid well. There was really no apprentice program as a laborer, no school on how to shovel or wield a pick but there was “union scale” for which a share out of my paycheck for that “scale” seemed a reasonable price.
What I didn’t understand in my early years was the social and economic price exacted for the union control in the industry. Each summer I started and worked hard. Each summer I was told to “slow down, kid, ‘ya don’t wanna work us out of a job….and that’ll hurt you back when you’re my age!”
Unions promote not work productivity but work continuation. Unions promote not uniqueness or excellence, but mediocrity. Sad to say but teacher unions now control our education. Recall Orwell’s Animal Farm, “All of us are equal, some are more equal than others.” The pigs’ leader was Napoleon.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady pens an excellent opinion in the March 19th WSJ. In it she tells how big labor elected Obama and how he has started to repay the debt, Chrysler unions ahead of creditors, steel workers ahead of China our largest creditor. We see his efforts at “card check” unionization and union board membership of GM. All just down payments on the votes to come. Poor kids in DC without vouchers and without education pale in significance to Obama votes!
O’Grady contrasts Obama to Calderon in Mexico who has just ordered the federal police to take over operations of the state-owned electricity monopoly and fire 42,000 union electricians; only 8,000 are needed to do the work! She also recalls Reagan firing the air traffic controllers. Both gutsy moves from principled presidents. No doubt that Calderon has big cajones.
Bottom line here is that we have a dangerous vicious circle taking deep root at the federal level. It has grown at the state level in the public union sphere over the last decades. It will doom us to serfdom in the end. Unions elect politicians, politicians promote unions. Jobs and productivity limiting work rules abound; excellence, innovation, entrepreneurship and individuality suffer. The vicious circle feeds upon itself to ultimately disastrous ends.
So far the state and local results are untenable budget deficits on a universal basis and unfunded pension fund obligations that will drive taxpayers to indentured servitude. The national results will be much worse.
Well we now have a new Napoleon in the White House. We are just starting to suffer for it. God save us.
Tom Motherway