Ever heard of the American Center for International Labor Solidarity?

Well, the ACILS is a cover from the AFL-CIO. Same group. Different name.

See, Congress can funnel money to the AFL-CIO through this front group and no one can attack the AFL-CIO because who the heck has ever heard of ACILS.

Well, the AFL-CIO is now endorsing health care deform despite the excise tax in the legislation that creates a HUGE tax burden on workers. In fact, the Machinists Union is wholly opposed to the health benefits tax. Tom Buffenbarger, the Machinists’ union leader, is flat out at war over this provision and lots of union leaders are wondering why the heck the AFL-CIO decided to line up behind legislation that taxes union workers.

“For decades, IAM members exchanged substantial wage increases for the best possible health insurance,” said IAM President Tom Buffenbarger. “Now, in a bizarre turn of events, their insurance premiums will be subject to a forty percent excise tax if the Senate version of health care reform becomes law. Democratic leaders have the power to stop this travesty and I urge them to do so, quickly and completely.”

Well, guess what? This leads us back to the American Center for International Labor Solidarity. Here is the ACILS’s 2009 annual report.

If you look on page 29, you will find that Congress funneled $28,475,408.00 to the AFL-CIO through the ACILS for the year in 2008. And I suspect if you dig around you are going to find that the AFL-CIO now stands to get more money.

In other words, the AFL-CIO’s leadership is getting federal money in exchange for supporting a health care proposal that will screw its workers.

Labor Shorts: Exposing Union Bosses One Skid Mark at a Time…

The latest (and largest) pile of labor news from around the country, given to you in short form from LaborUnionReport.com:

• Cat may become Obamacare road kill… Heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar said Thursday that the health care legislation being considered by Congress would increase its health care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone. [The sucking sound that will be heard will be more UAW jobs.]
• Moonbeam Brown urges unions to “attack”… In California’s gubernatorial race, former governor and current Attorney General, as well as gubernatorial candidate Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown urged union honchos to “attack” for him during his campaign for the governor’s mansion.
• Union Intransigence May Doom Amnesty Immigration Reform…Unions don’t want a guest worker program. Businesses do.  Compromise may be impossible despite the administration’s efforts to do a deal by November
• SEIU boss Andy Stern sends Glenn Beck a purple package…It’s doubtful that Fox superstar Glenn Beck and his on-air nemesis SEIU’s Andy Stern will become bosom buddies following Stern’s attempts at détente.
• Firefighters’ Union ‘Sticks it’ to City of Portland…The City of Portland and the Firefighters union are ‘going to war’ over the union’s desire to have the city continue paying a con artist’s disability payments.
• Communications Workers are cranky at Christie’s Cuts…Public workers marched all across New Jersey yesterday at newly-elected governor Chris Christie’s attempt to address a huge-budget gap left to him by his predecessor, Democrat John Corzine.
• $18 billion for jobs bill not enough, says lefty laborites…Trying to figure out how to add more to the already overwhelming federal debt, lefty bloggers at In These Times note that the $18 billion jobs bill that the House sent to President Obama isn’t enough to “create or save” the 11 million jobs needed to return to pre-recession unemployment levels.
• Hungry unionists protesting for jobs… Approximately 600 Seattle/King County Building and Construction Trades Council members protested for jobs on Wednesday while 35 unemployed steelworkers protested being unemployed for more that a year in Northern Ohio.
• Shameful…Why are family members who are taking care of their own children being forced to be in a union? [Read more at our blog here.]
• Those Unfriendly Skies:
• The Teamsters to add to worldwide turbulence by vowing to mobilize support for a possible strike of British Airways flight attendants, while Germany’s Ver.di pledged its support as well.
• Air France flight attendants may also be disembarking for a four-day strike on March 28th.
• Back in the U.S. of A...
• United Airlines’ pilots were joined by pilots of five other airlines on the picket line to protest an outsourcing deal between UAL and Ireland’s Aer Lingus.
• American Airlines’ flight attendants are the second union at the Texas-based carrier to ask the National Mediation Board for a release in order to begin the countdown to strike.
• Blanche Lincoln Bites Back at Unions. Following the abandonment of Arkansas Democrat Senator Blanche Lincoln by her former union friends, the outgoing Senator put out a surpisingly in-your-union-face ad.
• Teamsters and Tea Party Activists: Kindred Spirits? Both groups don’t like taxes that costs jobs but somehow we think the similarities may end there even though the Teamster fight against Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter’s proposed soda tax sounds surprisingly like something one would hear at a Tea Party rally.
• Vale Inco CEO strikes back at striking steelworkers’ union…After enduring an eight-month strike by the United Steelworkers, Vale Inco CEO Tito Martins posted a letter on the company’s website accusing the USW of engaging in a “a global campaign of misinformation, racism, intolerance and xenophobia” while being content to “keep its members on strike so long as it supports the USW strike in Ontario.”
• Labor’s Back Door… A business owner explains how media hype over the ‘failure’ of labor’s agenda is more hyperbole than reality as union bosses are still getting their sweetheart deals in mutated form.
• UPS: The Tonya Harding of Cargo Shipping…? By trying to “level the playing field” by hitting its competitor in the proverbial knees with a Teamster-made baseball bat, UPS is disingeniously still trying to saddle rival FedEx with the Teamsters by fighting in Congress to put RLA-covered FedEx under the National Labor Relations Act. [For more on the Brown Bailout, go here and video here.]
• Speaking of Bailouts…Are unions the primary beneficiary of President Obama’s “Green Jobs” economy?  It certainly appears so, but you can read this and decide for yourself.
• Eee Gads! A Soccer Strike Looms… Soccer fans the world over (not really) may be put in limbo if negotiations fail this weekend between Major League Soccer players and team owners and the players strike next week.  Here’s an update. [Zzzz!]

That’s a wrap for LaborUnionReport.com’s Labor Shorts and End of Week Report.

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

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

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

Cross-posted.

The union astroturfers went to Washington on Tuesday in their purple shirts, their red shirts and their brown yellow shirts. They were out in full force to make “citizens’ arrests” of attendees at an insurance industry conference.  

The timing appears to have been prearranged with the White House as unions and their front group HCAN coordinated their protest with President Obama’s demonization of the insurance industry as he makes his “final push” for the nationalization of America’s health care with a bill that Nancy Pelosi is urging passage of before anyone can see it.

HuffPo’s John Cavanagh (one of the leading astroturfers) explains why he decided to breaking the law this way:

That dozens of leaders would risk arrest in confronting the corporations that stand squarely in the way of fundamental change represents a new moment for our social movements. There is a growing realization that giant health care, fossil fuel and financial firms will stop at nothing to block fundamental change.

According to the New York Times’ blog, today’s scene sounded more like a circus, complete with clowns from across the liberal and socialist progressive spectrum like Howard Dean, the AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka, and the Queen of Labor herself, SEIU’s Anna Burger.

The bodies, pastel-colored stencils in the asphalt representing the estimated 45,000 people who die each year without health insurance, had eulogies describing how “big insurance” killed them. Inside the hotel, the industry lobby America’s Health Insurance Plans, was holding a legislative conference.

Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont and Richard Trumka, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. labor federation, appeared in front of the dense crowd, which filled 22nd Street between New Hampshire Avenue and M Street.

The demonstrators, many of whom came from as far as New York and North Carolina, wrapped the entrance to the hotel in crime-scene tape, demanded that insurers get out of the way of health care legislation and called for passage that would include a government-run insurance option.

Reportedly, there are 32 rules that you must know in order to survive zombie attacks.

Right now, union zombies are mustering their money and their forces to make sure that Harry Reid stays in Washington to keep feeding them.

Nevada, home of Senate majority leader Harry Reid, is one of six states deemed by the union zombies at the AFL-CIO to be “firewall” states.

What is a “firewall” state?  It is a state “where a large number of Democratic officeholders—governors, senators, congressmen—are endangered, and where there are numerous union members.”

Right now, Harry Reid is one of those “endangered” officeholders, with polls showing him trailing his two likely GOP challengers by double digits.

However, November is a long way off and, like any horror movie, the bad guys never go easy.

And, Harry Reid says he can rise from the dead.

Despite his underdog status, Sen. Harry Reid declared Monday he’s confident he’ll win re-election, and he welcomed independent candidates — who could splinter the vote and spoil any GOP effort to retire the most powerful senator in the most watched race in the nation.

So, without further ado, here are 17 of the 32 Rules to Survive Zombie Attacks*:

1. Know the zombies:  Unions are a multi-billion dollar special interest to whom Harry Reid is beholden.
2. Name the zombies:  Make sure the public knows that unions are not “working families” (see #1; expose union fat cats, if necessary)
3. Expose the zombies:  Make sure the public knows how much money the zombies are funneling to Harry Reid’s campaign.
4. Explain the zombies’ goals: Higher taxes, forced unionization and a loss of liberty (see nationalization of healthcare).
5. All politics are local: The unemployment rate in Las Vegas’ is 13.8%; overall, Nevada’s unemployment is 13% [How's that stimulus working out for ya?]
6. Obamacare will raise taxes “on the middle class”
7. Higher taxes = lower investment = less jobs
8. Use the zombies’ weapons against them (see Saul Alinsky)
9. Laugh at the zombies’ attacks, then…
10. Punch back twice as hard (whenever the zombies air an ad, air two counter ads)
11. Ridicule.
12. Hold Harry accountable to his campaign promises and remind voters of his gaffes.
13. Be creative.
14. Use the media.
15. Protest every Harry Reid fundraiser and event
16. Every time an out of state zombie comes to campaign for Harry, be there (with pickets)…
17. Make sure video cameras are in hand and batteries are charged**

* In the spirit of free and open participation, we are leaving the remaining 15 of the 32 Rules for Surviving a Zombie Attack open for comments and suggestions (please leave numbered comments below) and we will update this post accordingly.

** Video cameras are necessary to ward off unwarranted zombie attacks (see Kenneth Gladney) or, at least, to preserve evidence.

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

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

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

Photo Credit: Hryck

If you live in California, New York, Illinois, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania, you may want to read this, then turn on your TIVO and bolt your door.

Here’s why: Your state has become a “must-hold” state for the bosses at the AFL-CIO, which means you will be inundated with ads, home visits, robocalls, and ‘fly-ins’ from all sorts of Democrat dignitaries (likely to include the Big Guy himself).

The Executive Council of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), who are meeting in Florida this week, have decided to spend even more of their members’ money than they did in 2008 on the upcoming mid-term elections.

The AFL-CIO plans to roll out its biggest political campaign ever, surpassing the $53 million spent in 2008 to help elect President Barack Obama, to try to avert a repeat of the 1994 midterm election when Democrats lost a majority in Congress.

In its political campaign, the AFL-CIO is focusing its efforts on a “firewall” of six states with key congressional elections and where union voters make up a relatively high proportion of the electorate: California, New York, Illinois, Nevada, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

On Tuesday, the AFL-CIO said it would endorse Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who announced Monday he would challenge Sen. Blanche Lincoln. That will include millions of dollars in financial backing and thousands of members knocking on doors to get voters to polls. The Communications Workers of America, the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees have pledged $1 million each to support Mr. Halter. [Emphasis added.]

Read the rest here.

While we’re on the topic of “Bye Bye Blanche,” in what can only be viewed as “institutionalized thuggery,” the AFL-CIO has decided to make an example out of Blanche Lincoln:

AFL-CIO leaders said Tuesday their decision to oppose Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln’s re-election bid should send a powerful message to other Democrats who fall out of step with unions.

Officials at the nation’s largest labor federation call the move part of a more aggressive posture to make sure labor’s support is not taken for granted.

“The time has come to draw a line in the sand,” said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “Regardless of your party affiliation, if you’re not with us, you are against us.”

As the AFL-CIO Executive Council meets in Orlando this week, the Workforce Fairness Institute put this great video out.

For more on the job-destroying and hallucinogenically-named Employee Free FORCED Choice Act, go here.
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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

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

Cross-posted.

Vowing to spend one-quarter of a million dollars less than last year’s AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting, the leaders of the 57-union federation are meeting this week for their annual winter meeting at the Buena Vista Palace Hotel in Orlando, Florida.

Earlier this afternoon, Vice President Joe Biden met with the union leaders and, according to the Wall Street Journal, was “muted, and even defensive at times.”

Nevertheless, Biden paid homage to an otherwise disappointed group of labor bosses who have little to show for putting Biden and his boss, Barack Obama, in the White House.

“I know it doesn’t seem like it, but we’ve come a long way in 12 months,” Biden told several hundred union officials. “In terms of the NLRB, we’re going to get it done. In the fight for EFCA, we’ve got to sit down and figure out where we go from here…. I think we’re going to get it done.”

[snip]

“I think they owe some answers this time,” said Thomas Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists. “There’s always something that crops up and gets in the way of labor’s agenda.”

BusinessWeek says that union bosses are “reeling” from the losses they’ve suffered under Obama and the Democrats.

“The labor movement is at a crossroads, and it has to rethink its political strategy,” said Amy Dean, a former labor official who is co-author of “A New New Deal,” a book about reshaping the labor movement. “The conversations that we are having at our kitchen tables and our living rooms that express our disappointment with this administration are very similar to the conversations that we had under the Bush administration.”

[snip]

“We’re demoralized,” said Robert Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. “We’re not happy about anything.”

Struggling to cope with their lack of progress, several are laying the blame at the feet of the GOP:

“I think that everyone is frustrated literally, but it’s important to understand who we have to be frustrated with,” said United Steelworkers president Leo Gerard.

Gerard said unions are angry about Republican tactics they view as obstructionist and a few conservative Senate Democrats who are making it tough for Obama to push through his agenda. Gerard said that Democrats may not count on the usual support they expect from union members in this fall’s elections.

“If we don’t have clear progress and clear attempts at progress, we’re going to have a hard time motivating our folks,” he said.

And, Ms. Dean, a former AFL-CIO organizer says “unions made the mistake of waiting for an agenda ‘and as a result, got rolled.’”
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“I bring reason to your ears, and, in language as plain as ABC, hold up truth to your eyes.” Thomas Paine, December 23, 1776

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

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

Cross-posted.

Following the near-certain death of the union bosses’ hallucinogenically-named (and growingly unpopular)Employee Free Choice Act, the Democrats in the Senate are looking to throw their union cronies a bone by getting SEIU and AFL-CIO attorney Craig Becker seated to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) quickly, perhaps as soon as this week.

As the rules and the policies set forth through the NLRB affect nearly every private-sector workplace (except airlines and railroads), the persons who serve as NLRB members, regardless of their backgrounds, should be able to decide on cases with an open mind and issue decisions that are balanced, based on the law.

The problem with Becker, according to many, is not that he’s merely a union radical (there are already enough of those to populate a big city—say Washington, DC or Detroit?).  The problem with Becker is that he is a union extremist and, by all accounts, appears to be opposed to individual rights for employees and their employers.

According to the worker advocacy group the National Right to Work Foundation, Becker:

• Supports “home visits,” in which union goons repeatedly harass workers at home until they sign union authorization cards (see here for an example of this intimidating practice)
• Advocates letting government arbiters impose contracts on workers and employers on workers, without even allowing the workers to vote on the contract (a practice which even Far Left icon George McGovern opposes)
• Believes employers should be absolutely prohibited from sharing any truthful and noncoercive information with employees about the effects of unionization
• Illogically and radically compares union certification elections to US Congressional elections, stating that the only question decided in such elections should be which union gets monopoly control over workers, not whether they wish to remain independent and union free. [Emphasis added.]

Katie Packer, executive director of the Workforce Fairness Institute, delves further into Mr. Becker’s “threat to freedom“:

Currently, Becker serves as Associate General Counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO).

Most Americans have probably never heard of Mr. Becker and he may be a perfectly nice human being, but his views on the absolute and autocratic power labor should wield over small businesses is enough to make one shudder.

Becker has written that, “employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees’ election of representatives.” Simply stated, Becker believes small businesses should have no say whatsoever over their own future, while union bosses have complete control.

In Craig Becker’s perfect world, every worker in America would be in a union, whether they choose to be there or not.

[snip]

As a member of the board, Becker would have significant authority to enact the SEIU and AFL-CIO’s agenda by fiat meaning the executive branch would do via administrative action what they have been unable to get enacted through elected representatives in the legislature who are directly accountable to voters.

And there should be absolutely no doubt what Big Labor’s agenda is… the forced unionization of small businesses so that billions in additional dollars from union member dues can flow into their coffers and they can continue to play kingmaker funneling massive amounts of money to the politicians who do their bidding.

Craig Becker’s nomination is a threat to freedom and must not be allowed to go forward. The Senate will hold a hearing on Becker’s nomination this coming week. [Emphasis added.]

There are those who fight for freedom and there are those who fight to end freedom.

Unfortunately, Mr. Becker seems to fall in the latter of the two groups.

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“Collectivism holds that the individual has no rights, that his life and work belong to the group . . . and that the group may sacrifice him at its own whim to its own interests. The only way to implement a doctrine of that kind is by means of brute force—and statism has always been the political corollary of collectivism.” Ayn Rand.

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

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

Cross-posted.

By attempting to drive further to the Left, unions may be creating a worse nightmare for the mid-terms than they’ve already caused themselves.

From The Raw Story:

Union leaders in the AFL-CIO are considering supporting challengers to centrist Democrats in this year’s mid-term elections.

Disappointed with Blue Dogs who helped foil the unions’ hoped-for agenda in President Obama’s first year, leaders of unions such as the United Steelworkers and AFSCME are considering supporting more union-friendly and more progressive candidates for the 2010 mid-term elections.

According to James A. Barnes in the National Journal, AFL-CIO members brought up the names of three Democratic senators some among them would like to see defeated: Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, and Joe Lieberman, the Connecticut independent who caucuses with the Democrats and who is credited — or faulted — with scuttling the public option in the Senate.

Of those three, only Lincoln is up for re-election in 2010.

If the unions go ahead with the idea, they would mirror in the Democratic Party what appears to be happening with the Tea Party movement and the Republican Party. Members of the Tea Party movement are mobilizing to support like-minded candidates in the GOP primaries, in an attempt to force the Republican Party further to the right. [Emphasis added.]

No mention of Evan Bayh, or Diane Feinstein, or their (faux?) opposition to the Employee Free FORCED Act.

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

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

h/t: Bret Jacobson.

Cross-posted.

Perhaps the WSJ’s article should have stated “Majority of Union Households Voted for Brown“ because no matter how union bosses try to spin it…

A poll conducted on behalf of the AFL-CIO found that 49% of Massachusetts union households supported Mr. Brown in Tuesday’s voting, while 46% supported Democrat Martha Coakley. The poll conducted by Hart Research Associates surveyed 810 voters.

[snip]

Karen Ackerman, the AFL-CIO’s political action director, said the results of the Massachusetts poll indicate “what we call a working-class revolt” in which voters were responding to the fact that no one was addressing their needs or interests. But she played down the greater support union household members had for Mr. Brown. [Emphasis added.]

Downplay or delude, it’s all the same.

Delusion:  de⋅lu⋅sion [di-loo-zhuhn] –noun

1. an act or instance of deluding.

2. the state of being deluded.

3. a false belief or opinion: delusions of grandeur.

4. Psychiatry. a fixed false belief that is resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact: a paranoid delusion.

To repeat: A majority of union households voted for Brown.

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

Follow LaborUnionReport on Twitter.

Cross-posted.