The Human Touch Revealing All that is Real
Author: Government Unions Big Winners in 2012 Election
Publisher's note: The author of this political post Dan Way, who is a contributor to the Carolina Journal, John Hood Publisher.
Forbes columnist Factor says second Obama term will try to undermine right-to-work protections
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. Government employee unions largely were responsible for the re-election of President Obama, and will seek payback through weaker right-to-work laws and approval of collective bargaining rights for 21 million health care workers under Obamacare, union critic Mallory Factor says.
Although North Carolina is a right-to-work state where collective bargaining with government employees is illegal, Factor, author of the book ShadowBosses and one of the nation's most outspoken critics of public worker unions, said vigilance is essential.
"The unions have representatives in every congressional district" in the country working to undermine existing laws, Factor said Sunday at a journalism conference of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity. "North Carolina is still one of the free states and nobody likes that in the union movement."
Unions can't attack collective bargaining prohibitions at the state government level in North Carolina "because it's too obvious. They're working on the local elections, the school boards. You can't believe all the stuff they're trying to get done, and they're doing it," Factor said.
"You have to be vigilant, or you will have problems," especially in education, he said. "That is where they want to have the strongest foothold, because, remember, the teachers unions alone have over $2 billion [in dues] to do mischief with," Factor said.
Steven Greenhut, vice president of journalism for the Franklin Center and author of Plunder! How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation, agreed with Factor's assessment, especially about education.
Although North Carolina teacher associations do not have collective bargaining rights, they already serve much like unions, Greenhut said. And, according to state Treasurer Janet Cowell, North Carolina's unfunded pension liability for government workers, even without unionization, is about $30 billion.
Nationally, government workers are five times more likely than private sector workers to be in a union, Factor said. And they are doubling down on spending, activism, and electioneering to build a "monumental effort" in support of their aims of building larger bases in government representation.
Factor, also a columnist for Forbes, said in 2011 less than 7 percent of private sector workers but 41 percent of government workers were unionized. The Postal Service alone has 477,000 unionized workers, 2.5 times the 219,000 union members in the entire U.S. auto industry.
Government unions represent almost every type of government worker today, Factor said.
"The unions almost singlehandedly won the election for President Obama, and there's a real danger with this imbalance that the unions now have the political infrastructure to secure a permanent majority" for the Democratic Party, Factor said.
Ever-growing government employee unions and the "shadow bosses" who pull the strings in the background drive big government spending, overregulation, and statism, Factor said. He gave 10 reasons union expansion among government employees is ill-advised:
1) Union costs threaten to bankrupt federal, state, and local economies, and corrupt the political process in directly challenging our system of free elections, Factor said.
Unions collect more than $14 billion a year in dues that can be documented. "I think it's more like $20 billion, I just can't document it," Factor said. Unions claim only about 20-30 percent of dues is used on member representation
A lot of the balance goes to lobby for unending benefits from government, Factor said.
"Government employees like to say they get to elect their own bosses" who will put into effect salary schedules and work rules amenable to union demands, Factor said.
Money flows from unions to politicians and back to unions "in a never-ending cycle of greed and corruption," he said.
"If elected officials cross the unions, the unions will throw them right out of office. Unions reward their friends and punish their enemies very effectively," Factor said.
2) Unions place exorbitant demands on government, and high-cost government contracts make life more burdensome for taxpayers, he said.
Government employees make more money, work fewer hours, and have greater retirement and job security than private sector employees, Factor said. Nearly 500,000 federal government employees make more than $100,000 a year,excluding benefits, and receive 10 weeks of vacation.
3) Government unions are private organizations yet they get special benefits and treatment from government.
"Government employee unions get their business directly from the government," Factor said. The more employees they represent, the more dues they get.
"Government unions don't work for the public good and never have. It's not their business," Factor said. Their goal is to procure the sweetest deals for their members.
4) Obama has given government employee unions more access to the White House and "more kickbacks" than any other president in history, Factor said. He's unionized hundreds of thousands of government workers and reduced scrutiny of their finances.
"He is truly our first union label president," Factor said.
5) "Government unions get huge subsidies from taxpayers," including time not spent doing their jobs, Factor said.
"It's called official time," totals 23 million man-hours, and costs taxpayers more than $1 billion yearly, Factor said, citing the federal Office of Personnel Management.
"No one knows for sure" what official time includes, Factor said, because Obama reduced federal reporting requirements. It can include political lobbying.
6) Teachers unions are holding back K-12 education "and they're making our students less competitive," according to Factor. Dues from teachers are $2 billion per year "and this is mostly from the forced dues states."
"The teachers unions spend millions of dollars to quash school choice initiatives" and homeschooling because education reform threatens their control of students and supportive instruction about secularism, unionism, and socialism, Factor said.
7) "Government unions are bankrupting our states," Factor said. States with the longest and strongest unions also are those with the worst budgets, and unions perhaps are the major contributing factor to state and local budget deficits, he said.
"They're crowding out other spending in state and local budgets," Factor said. Of the 10 states with the highest per capita spending, all are unionized and none are right-to-work states.
"Taxpayers are fleeing the heavily unionized states," Factor said. Right-to-work states gained eight to nine new congressional representatives following each of the last three congressional reapportionments, he said.
8) Government unions were great supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Factor said.
"But it's the union bosses who are the true 1 percent," he said. Union bosses make on average more than 10 times the average union worker's salary.
9) The Service Employees International Union worked with the 2008 Obama transition team on a legislative agenda that eventually would unionize health care workers if Obamacare became law, Factor said. Today, fewer than 10 percent of health care workers are unionized.
"When Obamacare fully kicks in there will be 21 million health care workers" flowing into unions, Factor said. "For every million workers, that's $1 billion in dues."
10) To continue expanding, unions curry political favors to get state governments to categorize some self-employed workers as government employees, who can then be unionized. In forced unionization states, some recipients of government services are being coerced to pay union dues for receiving government benefits, Factor said.
That model can be used to unionize any group that receives government benefits, Factor warned, including Medicaid, Medicare, veterans, and Social Security. The Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees union already is promoting retirement unions under which retirees would be forced to pay AFSCME to lobby for higher retirement benefits, Factor said.
On the election front, unions are dominant forces made more powerful by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, Factor said.
"In key battleground states, the unions overloaded the political landscape with volunteers, many of whom were actually paid for their efforts," Factor said.
And the unions already are demanding payback from Obama.
High on the agenda are eliminating card-check legislation that would do away with secret ballots in union elections, organizing healthcare workers under Obamacare, and ending outsourcing of government jobs in order to hire more government employees who can be unionized.
Unions also are targeting the provision of the federal Taft-Hartley Act that gave North Carolina and 22 other states right-to-work status.
Go Back
Forbes columnist Factor says second Obama term will try to undermine right-to-work protections
AMELIA ISLAND, Fla. Government employee unions largely were responsible for the re-election of President Obama, and will seek payback through weaker right-to-work laws and approval of collective bargaining rights for 21 million health care workers under Obamacare, union critic Mallory Factor says.
Although North Carolina is a right-to-work state where collective bargaining with government employees is illegal, Factor, author of the book ShadowBosses and one of the nation's most outspoken critics of public worker unions, said vigilance is essential.
"The unions have representatives in every congressional district" in the country working to undermine existing laws, Factor said Sunday at a journalism conference of the Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity. "North Carolina is still one of the free states and nobody likes that in the union movement."
Unions can't attack collective bargaining prohibitions at the state government level in North Carolina "because it's too obvious. They're working on the local elections, the school boards. You can't believe all the stuff they're trying to get done, and they're doing it," Factor said.
"You have to be vigilant, or you will have problems," especially in education, he said. "That is where they want to have the strongest foothold, because, remember, the teachers unions alone have over $2 billion [in dues] to do mischief with," Factor said.
Steven Greenhut, vice president of journalism for the Franklin Center and author of Plunder! How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation, agreed with Factor's assessment, especially about education.
Although North Carolina teacher associations do not have collective bargaining rights, they already serve much like unions, Greenhut said. And, according to state Treasurer Janet Cowell, North Carolina's unfunded pension liability for government workers, even without unionization, is about $30 billion.
Nationally, government workers are five times more likely than private sector workers to be in a union, Factor said. And they are doubling down on spending, activism, and electioneering to build a "monumental effort" in support of their aims of building larger bases in government representation.
Factor, also a columnist for Forbes, said in 2011 less than 7 percent of private sector workers but 41 percent of government workers were unionized. The Postal Service alone has 477,000 unionized workers, 2.5 times the 219,000 union members in the entire U.S. auto industry.
Government unions represent almost every type of government worker today, Factor said.
"The unions almost singlehandedly won the election for President Obama, and there's a real danger with this imbalance that the unions now have the political infrastructure to secure a permanent majority" for the Democratic Party, Factor said.
Ever-growing government employee unions and the "shadow bosses" who pull the strings in the background drive big government spending, overregulation, and statism, Factor said. He gave 10 reasons union expansion among government employees is ill-advised:
1) Union costs threaten to bankrupt federal, state, and local economies, and corrupt the political process in directly challenging our system of free elections, Factor said.
Unions collect more than $14 billion a year in dues that can be documented. "I think it's more like $20 billion, I just can't document it," Factor said. Unions claim only about 20-30 percent of dues is used on member representation
A lot of the balance goes to lobby for unending benefits from government, Factor said.
"Government employees like to say they get to elect their own bosses" who will put into effect salary schedules and work rules amenable to union demands, Factor said.
Money flows from unions to politicians and back to unions "in a never-ending cycle of greed and corruption," he said.
"If elected officials cross the unions, the unions will throw them right out of office. Unions reward their friends and punish their enemies very effectively," Factor said.
2) Unions place exorbitant demands on government, and high-cost government contracts make life more burdensome for taxpayers, he said.
Government employees make more money, work fewer hours, and have greater retirement and job security than private sector employees, Factor said. Nearly 500,000 federal government employees make more than $100,000 a year,excluding benefits, and receive 10 weeks of vacation.
3) Government unions are private organizations yet they get special benefits and treatment from government.
"Government employee unions get their business directly from the government," Factor said. The more employees they represent, the more dues they get.
"Government unions don't work for the public good and never have. It's not their business," Factor said. Their goal is to procure the sweetest deals for their members.
4) Obama has given government employee unions more access to the White House and "more kickbacks" than any other president in history, Factor said. He's unionized hundreds of thousands of government workers and reduced scrutiny of their finances.
"He is truly our first union label president," Factor said.
5) "Government unions get huge subsidies from taxpayers," including time not spent doing their jobs, Factor said.
"It's called official time," totals 23 million man-hours, and costs taxpayers more than $1 billion yearly, Factor said, citing the federal Office of Personnel Management.
"No one knows for sure" what official time includes, Factor said, because Obama reduced federal reporting requirements. It can include political lobbying.
6) Teachers unions are holding back K-12 education "and they're making our students less competitive," according to Factor. Dues from teachers are $2 billion per year "and this is mostly from the forced dues states."
"The teachers unions spend millions of dollars to quash school choice initiatives" and homeschooling because education reform threatens their control of students and supportive instruction about secularism, unionism, and socialism, Factor said.
7) "Government unions are bankrupting our states," Factor said. States with the longest and strongest unions also are those with the worst budgets, and unions perhaps are the major contributing factor to state and local budget deficits, he said.
"They're crowding out other spending in state and local budgets," Factor said. Of the 10 states with the highest per capita spending, all are unionized and none are right-to-work states.
"Taxpayers are fleeing the heavily unionized states," Factor said. Right-to-work states gained eight to nine new congressional representatives following each of the last three congressional reapportionments, he said.
8) Government unions were great supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Factor said.
"But it's the union bosses who are the true 1 percent," he said. Union bosses make on average more than 10 times the average union worker's salary.
9) The Service Employees International Union worked with the 2008 Obama transition team on a legislative agenda that eventually would unionize health care workers if Obamacare became law, Factor said. Today, fewer than 10 percent of health care workers are unionized.
"When Obamacare fully kicks in there will be 21 million health care workers" flowing into unions, Factor said. "For every million workers, that's $1 billion in dues."
10) To continue expanding, unions curry political favors to get state governments to categorize some self-employed workers as government employees, who can then be unionized. In forced unionization states, some recipients of government services are being coerced to pay union dues for receiving government benefits, Factor said.
That model can be used to unionize any group that receives government benefits, Factor warned, including Medicaid, Medicare, veterans, and Social Security. The Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees union already is promoting retirement unions under which retirees would be forced to pay AFSCME to lobby for higher retirement benefits, Factor said.
On the election front, unions are dominant forces made more powerful by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, Factor said.
"In key battleground states, the unions overloaded the political landscape with volunteers, many of whom were actually paid for their efforts," Factor said.
And the unions already are demanding payback from Obama.
High on the agenda are eliminating card-check legislation that would do away with secret ballots in union elections, organizing healthcare workers under Obamacare, and ending outsourcing of government jobs in order to hire more government employees who can be unionized.
Unions also are targeting the provision of the federal Taft-Hartley Act that gave North Carolina and 22 other states right-to-work status.
| The FTC Witch Hunt Against Google and Entrepreneurial Success | Outlying Politics, The Region, Neighboring Counties | Flashback: Give What Back to Whom? |
Home
Contact
About
Service Rates
Privacy Policy
Follow on Facebook
Subscribe to Newsletters
Rss Feed
Keywords
Eastern NC Now & ENC NOW © Copyright 1998-2024 All Rights Reserved.
