Michael Moore Named Obesity Czar and Andy Stern Named to Federal National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

Yep, Andy Stern, Member, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform!


Charlie Sheen named to Hollywood Celebrity American Values Insitute

Tigers Woods named to the Dalai Lama's Council on Celebacy

Danika Patrick named to the Right Turn Society

That President Obama is a Howler! Get This!

• Andy Stern, Member, National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform

President Obama said, “For far too long, Washington has avoided the tough choices necessary to solve our fiscal problems. I am proud that these distinguished individuals have agreed to work to build a bipartisan consensus to put America on the path toward fiscal reform and responsibility. I know they’ll take up their work with the sense of integrity and strength of commitment that the American people deserve and America’s future demands.”

Andy Stern named to the Order of Lenin - they still give that one out? Andy'd be the Cat's Nuts with that around his neck. Better that than Andy Stern around our throats and wallets.


Орден Ленина, Orden Lenina

to civilians for outstanding services rendered to the State,
to members of the armed forces for exemplary service,
to those who promoted friendship and cooperation between peoples and in strengthening peace, and
for other meritorious services to the Soviet state and society

Hey, House Nitwits! Andy Stern Has a Way to Blow Your Toes Off! Listen Up!

From Huffington Post - The Hollywood Squares Humor Rag!

Andy Stern -SEIU Marxist-in-Chief gives flat-line intellect House Democrat and Republicans - Steps to Real Health Reform!

Step one: The House should pass the Senate's health insurance reform bill - with an agreement that it will be fixed, fixed right, and fixed right away through a parallel process.

There is no Step Two. Waiting . . .Click my Post Title - no kidding.

One Step-because you follow that one and it is all she wrote!

In Ambulation that is called a Hop - like the stuff in Andy's Pipe!

Skilled Trades in Progressive Cross-hairs: Plumber Mike Hanley Sets Things Straight

Progressives want to see the end of the Skilled Trades, because they believe that all labor should be subsumed by Andy Stern's SEIU.

The Skilled Trades built the vanishing American Standard of Living and the American Middle Class.

Skilled Trades Unions are always targeted by media investigative cadres. There is never an inquiry of the power and corruption within Services Employees Services Union. That has been the case since the Leftist SEIU devoured the old janitors unions back in the 1970's.

Today a Skilled Tradesman, Plumber Michael Hanley, hits back at the broad brush media smears. Well done , Mike!

Plumbers work hard, earn their pay

December 26, 2009
While I agree with critics who say the city plumbing inspector accused of violating codes should be fired, why bring his salary into it?
I am a union plumber and proud of my trade, though I've been laid off for 21 months.

What do critics think is a fair wage?

If I were working now my salary would be similar, though as a private-sector plumber I would not get paid holidays, sick days, vacation, etc.

I am tired of people commenting negatively on our pay and charges for work performed.

I and every other union plumber out there went through five years of apprenticeship, and we work very hard to earn that money, whether that's rodding out sewer systems, plumbing single-family homes or 95-story high-rises. We do the work that you don't want to or don't know how to. It's a skilled trade, and you pay for that skill.

Without qualified plumbers and the plumbing inspectors, everyone's health could be put at risk through improper water connections or sewage disposal.

Instead of complaining how much a plumber makes, next time thank him for providing safe drinking water for you and your family and for getting that razor out of your sewer that you flushed down the toilet so your home isn't backed up with raw sewage.

Michael Hanley, Canaryville

"Did [the bankers] build anything? Create anything? . . ." No, Anna; Janitors Mop, Health Care Workers Empty Bed Pans and You Are Wearing their Dues !

Yesterday the shameless led the wageless by the hundreds against BANKS and got universal press coverage touting protesters in the thousands.

That's nice. SEIU corrals thousands of no skill and low skill workers into their pens with their dues and keep them there for life.

Time was a janitor's job was a pathway to the trades and the middle class. No more. SEIU does prepare people for the future - that is none of their business. Andy Stern and Anna Burger will tell them who and what to believe.

SEIU is ACORN with a better PR firm.

Yesteday, Anna Burger*howled out great hollow hypocrisy at the BANKS - you know - like Tom Joad's faceless; nameless; bloodless enemy in Grapes of Wrath - Metonymy in rhetoric that plays well with synecdoche.

Banks are the villain du jour.: Insurance Companies, Wall-Street Fat Cats; Wal-Mart, Big Oil & etc.


"Did [the bankers] build anything? Create anything? Do anything?" Burger asked the crowd, which repeatedly responded "No!" - Progress Illinois ( SEIU Funded Comic Blog)


Actually banks create wealth - unnaturally. Why the very vaults from whence Anna and Andy scoop dues to jet off to Red China/The Big Ed Schultz Show/Tapas With Chavez/Shakedowns with Jesse Jackson Universal come from Banks.

I would venture to say that very few of the workers in SEIU make enough of a wage to have more than a checking account - if they are lucky enough to have that.

The Cadillac Commies leading SEIU belong under the same microscope slide as ACORN.


*Anna Burger, born in Levittown, Pennsylvania, and daughter of a disabled truck driver and a nurse, began her activist career in 1972 as a Welfare worker. It was there she became involved in her local union. Burger organized a walkout in efforts to create a safer working environment for the office. Burger became more active in her union, and quickly moved through the ranks of the local union. Burger became SEIU local 668's first full-time woman president before moving onto the SEIU International office in Washington, DC, to work as National Director of Field Operations, under former SEIU president John Sweeney. Burger successfully ran Sweeney's campaign for president of the AFL-CIO. She was elected Executive Vice President of SEIU, and Secretary-Treasurer in 2001.

In her tenure at SEIU, Burger has worked with President Andy Stern to create the largest and fastest growing union in North America.[citation needed] While union membership across the country has been continually dropping[citation needed], SEIU is the only union that has continuously grown.[vague] As well, Burger and SEIU are working to create ties with unions in other parts of the world, especially Europe and Asia.

Burger and Stern called for a change in the AFL-CIO's strategies in June 2004. By the summer of 2005, 6 unions (including SEIU) withdrew their membership to the AFL-CIO, and created a new labor coalition, the Change to Win Federation. On September 27, 2005, Burger was elected Chair of the breakaway coalition. As the Chair of Change to Win, Burger became the first woman to lead an American labor coalition.

Burger is married to Earl F. Gohl and they have one daughter. Anna Burger currently lives in Washington, DC with her family.

Public Unions, The Irish, Mayor Daley and Dennis Gannon - When PC Collides with An Empty Wallet

The Andy Stern Doctrine is International Chaos and out of Chaos Comes More Chaos and out of Chaos More Power has helped cause chaos and crisis for families and governments all over the globe. Here in Chicago, Sons of Erin Mayor Richard M. Daley and Dennis Gannon are confronted with the reality of Public Unions and the Skilled Trades Locals are taking Andy Stern's heat. Hundreds of workers will be laid off as negotiations have been twisted by AFSCME and the Teamsters - Andy Stern's pets.

Big Labor is the euphemism that Andy Stern's SEIU dictates America's Media to employ in every article.

Big Labor means SEIU. It means Public Unions - whose membership are paid out of taxes.

Bad Labor is always the Skilled Trades Unions - these men and women invested thousands of their own dollars and countless hours of time to develop the rights that they earned and their unions bargained in good faith to own. They are the backbone of the American Middle Class. Andy Stern and the Boiled Beets Progressives intend to tax the American Middle Clas out of existence.

Andy Stern merely bullies gutless political hacks and news persons to scratch out tax-dollars for his multitudes.

Taxes are paid by members of real unions -Skilled Trades Unions and Industrial Unions.

Andy Stern can not organize Skilled Trades. SEIU depends upon monstrous numbers of unskilled workers and works overtime to bring illegal aliens under the umbrella of Big Labor.

Politicians know numbers - heads, votes and dollars.

California is a budgetary train wreck and Illinois is about to slide off the tracks as well.

The Media ( TV,Radio, Intranet, Print) are largely in Andy Stern's vest pocket along with the leadership of the Democratic Party ( DNC) and far too many Skilled Trades unions.

Play ball with Andy Stern and you lose your bat, your glove, your shoes and your shirt.

Ireland is undergoing a Great Awakening - the land of Big Jim Larkin and James Connolly has long plucked the Harp of Labor and the Workingman. Ireland is waking up to the Andy Stern Doctrine thanks to journalists like Kevin Myers of the Irish Independent.

Public Unions in Ireland are, as they in America, largely comprised of massive numbers of unskilled workers, low skill workers, and immigrant workers. The navvies and the hod-carriers; the sweepers and bar-keepers are Romanians, Poles, Ugandans, Kenyans, Moroccans, Serbs and Croatians: The Irish Congress Trades Unions. Private sector jobs are gone and public sector jobs are bleeding the Celtic Tiger dry.

Here is Kevin Meyers' witty and sharp analysis of Public Unions on the Irish Economy:

It is nine months since economic Armageddon hit this Republic. In that time, about a quarter of a million people in the private sector have lost their jobs. In the public sector, the story has been a little different. Yes, some temporary jobs have gone there, but they were temporary all along.

Just one job went in the public sector. Financial Regulator Patrick Neary was allowed to take early retirement, with a €630,000 pay-off and a pension of €140,000 a year.

Otherwise, the serious jobs are still there: permanent, pensionable and, what do you know, still with rising incomes. Yes, public-sector pay actually increased by around 4pc in the last year. Everyone with jobs in the private sector lost money.

Let me put this slowly, for the politburo of Ictu and Siptu and Fukyu and all those other insane public-service bodies, who have been inhaling too deeply in the public trough. There is no money. Do you get that? There is no shagging money. The notion that you can continue to enjoy your present incomes, with lovely fat pensions to follow, compares with Pyongyang's plans to capture and colonise Arizona.

We are borrowing €30m a day to pay public service wages and pensions. Even a North Korean economist would realise that this is unsustainable. Comrades Begg and O'Connor clearly have not.

I have not yet made up my mind whether this is because they are too stupid or too demented. It really doesn't matter. The result is much the same.

As Alan Ruddock revealed last Sunday, pay in the public sector is 47pc higher than in the private sector -- for those in the shattered, battered latter category who still have jobs, that is. Alan has a strong stomach: he has trawled through Comrade Begg's speeches searching for shiny gobbets of wisdom, which is rather like wading through the late Kim Il-sung's public utterances looking for a Shakespearian sonnet.

Anyway, our intrepid explorer came up with this pearl from Comrade Begg: "Our problem is not the size of our public service, but the collapse of our tax base."

In the entire and voluminous history of trade union brainlessness, has there ever been a remark as devoid of cerebral content as that?

Every single penny in tax-take goes on public service incomes, but that is still not enough; and so we still have to borrow over €200m a week, just to match the public-sector pay bill alone. And worse still is the proposed cure: the terms set for Colm McCarthy's committee to propose economies.

This is well-named as An Bord Snip, for it is limited to making cuts in public services, but none in the number of public servants.

The latter will remain as numerous as ever: they'll just have less work to do.

And, of course, since we all know that these economies will not be nearly enough, the International Monetary Fund will sooner or later move in, bearing glittering scythes. It will sack droves of public servants, cut all pensions, slash judges' pay, and halt all tribunals, and best of all, it will savage TDs' incomes and expenses.

It will do this. This is as certain as the Saharan sun burns. And the reason this will happen is that Fianna Fail -- and that piece of reptile's foreskin otherwise known as the Greens -- would prefer to have some nameless foreigners take the blame for the necessary fiscal surgery than impose it themselves.

In the meantime, terrible and probably irreversible damage will have been done to our economy.

But, of course, neither that, nor even the loss of sovereignty to the IMF, matters much to our political masters.

Provided outsiders are seen to be doing the dirty work, which of course Fianna Fail will protest vehemently at, the gamble is that the party will once again be returned to office in the next election.

That there is neither pride nor dignity -- and least of all, patriotism -- in such a ploy is utterly irrelevant.

For as the heirs of Kim Il-sung or deValera alike will tell you, political power is the purpose. It is all that counts, no matter how ignobly or basely it is achieved.

Norman Thomas' - Blue-Print to Catastrophe

Democrats used to give elites like Norman Thomas the chair in the corner. Remember, at one time Organized Labor and the Democratic Party helped make the American Middle Class and raise the American Standard of Living that was marvel of history.

Boiled Beet Progressives like Roger Baldwin, Jane Addams and Norman Thomas were generally 'praised' but largely ignored and well they should be. They are fit subjects for the salon set - who generally do not work for a living - much less for anyone else; but as far as impacting on American life -they offer bupkis.

Noramn Thomas ran for President of the United States six times and just before his death remarked -" I have not come to burn the American Flag; I have come to cleanse it!"

Really? Nope Norm, Roger, Jane, W.E.B. and their heirs have succeeded in smothering debate, controlling the weak-kitten Media, Academia and Stalinist labor. Acronyms with bags of gelt -ACLU, SEIU, ACORN - have replaced personalities like the old timey radicals.

SEIU's Stalin Andy Stern was able to blackmail WAl-Mart and squeeze a letter out of the corporation that killed main street:

Wal-Mart -- which provides insurance to employees and wants to level the playing field with companies that don't -- on Tuesday delivered a letter to President Obama taking a different stance.

"We are for an employer mandate which is fair and broad in its coverage," said the letter, signed by Wal-Mart Chief Executive Mike Duke. Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, also signed the letter, along with John Podesta, who led President Obama's transition team and is chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning think tank.

The National Retail Federation, the industry's main lobby, said it was "flabbergasted" by Wal-Mart's move. "We have been one of the foremost opponents to employer mandate," said Neil Trautwein, vice president with the Washington-based trade group. "We are surprised and disappointed by Wal-Mart's choice to embrace an employer mandate in exchange for a promise of cost savings."

Old Norma Thomas came to clean the American Flag - his children, like Andy Stern have come to polish off the American Middle Class.

Andy Stern's Payout of SEIU Dues for Political Clout

We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama — $60.7 million to be exact — and we're proud of it.

Andy Stern SEIU


John Rubery, Illinois' own Marathon Pundit has been monitoring Andy Stern's moving and shaking of dues taken from SEIU members.

Remember SEIU's dues do not go to benefit the membership but to seed Amdy's harvest of more members through political blackmail and intimidation of gutless politicians.

Members of SEIU remain low-skill and no skill workers*.

Unlike the Trades Unions -Real Labor - there is no intention on the part of SEIU to move workers into the American Middle Class. Andy Stern's efforts will eliminate the American Middle Class.

The target of SEIU, it seems to me , is take over of Trades Unions Apprenticeship Control, through the elimination of Bureau of Apprenticeship Programs(BAP), like here in Illinois which determines membership qualifications, examinations and schools, in each State.

Andy wants each State to adopt a State Apprenticeship Council (SAC) which will eliminate drug testing, residency requirements, and standards for skills, as well as control over all Apprenticeship Programs.

The Race Card is the Trump Card. Emil Jones attempted such a move, while President Obama was in the Illinois Senate - it failed. Andy Stern pumped millions into SEIU's effort ensure an Obama Presidency - beholden to Planned Parenthood,ACORN, ACLU and SEIU.

If you are a Union Woman or Man, get over to Marathon Pundit. Get wise to SEIU - the Media is in Andy's vest pocket.


*SEIU is a leftist troika that poses as a labor union. SEIU is run by a Leftist Social Worker whose 1960's radicalism found a profitable and powerful home in a labor union that expands membership numbers, intimidates gutless politicians, and operates the most massive redistribution of wealth scam in America. 1-2-3- that's how you dance to a troika -1. Expand 2.Intimidate 3. Redistribute Wealth!

Taking over the weak and corrupt janitors union in Chicago in the 1970's, Andy Stern and fellow University of Pennsylvania School Social Work colleague Anna Burger help radicalize and consolidate locals of building janitors, bringing thousands of unskilled to low skilled health care industry workers, security guard locals, menial office task workers and others into a political intimidation political action force.

Using a very complicit and lazy news media, Andy Stern deftly crafted a cult of personality unparalleled since Mao. The Purple Gang of hundreds of thousands of low-skill to no skill workers intimidated their way into public service employees and nearly match AFCME in tax-payer salaried workers. If you are somewhat taken aback by my analysis of the threat that I see from SEIU, please do take a look at Andy Stern's frequent trips to Red China and read Newsweeks's glwoing accounts of Stern's agenda to help one of the most oppresive regimes on the planet 'control their workers.' Take a look at Andy Stern's similar control that he exercises over local SEIU 'thought criminals.' Andy gets great PR from the press and the other mediums, but occasionally the real story gets out.

Like this one:

Sal Rosselli had been hardened by nearly three decades of front-line unionism. Time and again he staged insurgent organizing drives and do-or-die strikes, staring down major corporations. Now he blinked away tears as he huddled with supporters in his Oakland headquarters, a sooty-windowed, bunker-like building strewn with leaflets and picket signs, a place suddenly under siege.

Rosselli was describing his latest battle, his toughest ever: a face-off against a comrade in struggle, Andrew Stern, whom many view as the most powerful labor leader in America.

The two are locked in a nasty, often personal fight over how to make the nation's fastest-growing union -- 1.9 million members -- even bigger. Stern, its president, has sought more common ground with employers as a means to unionize entire industries. Rosselli believes building membership first requires getting the best deal for workers already under labor's tent.

"If you stick your head up, if you question what he's doing, you'll get whacked," said Rosselli, 58, head of the second-largest California chapter of Stern's union.

Wiping his eyes, he insisted that Stern, through a trusteeship, is determined to oust him from his elected post as part of a long push to centralize authority.

Stern and his allies in the Service Employees International Union dismiss the allegations and downplay the significance of the rift.

"It's not open warfare, it's a debate," said Pennsylvania union official Thomas De Bruin.

"It's David and Goliath," Rosselli said.


http://theunionnews.blogspot.com/2008/06/seiu-andy-stern-is-issue.html

SEIU was solidly behind John Edwards. Edwards tanked. SEIU is solidly behind Obama.

Anna Burger sits on Obama's Economic Advisory Board. A radical Marxist is telling Obam how to shape America's economic path.

Obama like Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick from whom Obama crafts many of his rhetorical hits in the media, depends upon Andy and SEIU.

Andy Stern is making sure that Race is the pivot point of Obama's Campaign.


Leaders of the AFL-CIO met this week in Chicago to decide how to deploy some 250,000 volunteers and more than $250 million for its grass-roots campaign on behalf of Obama and 500 Democratic candidates vying for other posts.

The fast-growing Service Employees International Union, which has successfully organized lower-wage workers, has $85 million to spend. The AFL-CIO said it has set aside its rivalry with the SEIU and other unions that left to form their own labor federation in 2005.

CONFRONT RACISM

Unions pride themselves on their racial diversity and plan to confront members about any biases they have.

"You go straight at our people and talk about the difference between McCain and Obama and the fact that race could be an issue -- you go straight at it," said Gerald McEntee, head of the AFL-CIO's political committee.

"Once people get in the booth, if they won't vote for a black man ...," he said with a shrug. Continued...



If you do not vote for Obama, You are a racist. Stalinist and simple. That's Andy Stern and all who do his bidding.

American Labor was built upon the principles of the right to work, the right to organize, the right to engage in collective bargaining and the right to strike for wages and benefits. American Labor made the American Standard of Living and the Middle Class. Unions taught the unskilled skills - moved the poor into the middle class. SEIU uses the poor and the unskilled to eliminate the American Middle Class.

The more unskilled and impoverished Americans, the more powerful Andy Stern's SEIU becomes.

Andy Stern's SEIU is for redistribution of wealth, global identification over American values, salaries mandated by legislation and the elimination of the American Middle Class.

Obama swims in Andy Stern's Tank.

http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/search?q=SEIU+-China

Andy Stern's SEIU Murders School Reform and Buys A Lotto!

Here's Andy looking down on his membership! They can Blackmail a Bank, Buy a Lotto and Kill School Reform with their Dues! Now, That's Collectivist Bargaining!

Andy Stern is busier than a dog gifted by nature with a surplus of male reproductive appendages!

1. Stern is out to Destroy Charter Schools and Murder School Reform in Chicago

2. Andy Stern's SEIU is blackmailing Bank of America CEO into backing Card Check Legislation

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/26649c82-2d44-11de-8710-00144feabdc0.html

3. Andy Stern and Ivy League Commies of the SEIU Leadership are Buying the California Lottery

SEIU donates to lottery ballot measure
By Anthony York | 04/17/09 12:00 AM PST

The state’s largest public employee union has given $300,000 to the campaign for Proposition 1C, the lottery modernization measure that would allow the state to borrow up to $5 billion from lottery proceeds.

The money comes as deep divisions swirl among the Service Employees International Union over how to play in the May 19 special election. SEIU’s state council has opposed Proposition 1A, the state spending limit measure, and opened an account earlier this week to launch a formal campaign against 1A.

But SEIU has endorsed Proposition 1C, and a spokesman for Local 1000 said it makes sense for the union to support the measure.

“Our position on Prop 1C is consistent with our position that the state of California could be generating more money out of the lottery if it had a different managerial structure,” said Local 1000 spokesman Jim Zamora.

SEIU’s contribution did not go to the committee controlled by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political team, which is pushing for passage of all of the May 19 measures. Instead, the money went to a committee sponsored by GTECH, a Rhode Island-based company that contracts to supply lottery equipment to the state.

Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the Yes on 1C committee, welcomed news of the contribution. “One thing we all agree on is that if we can generate additional state revenues without tax increases, it makes sense for everyone,” Salazar said.

But the big question remains the extent to which the state council will fund the No on Proposition 1A campaign.

Stay tuned.
« Done

SEIU and CTU Have Been Murdering School Reform!

Andy Stern's Purple Finger prints are all over Marilyn Stewart's CTU work to murder School Reform in Chicago. Stern and radical activist Mike Klonsky are old hands at this stuff. Work within the system and you really get to blow things up!

From Dist 299 -

SEIU Organizing Charter School Teachers
A couple of posts down, Mike Klonsky highlights the fact that some charter schools in other places -- NYC, LA -- have organized teachers, and that it hasn't always been via the teachers local. (I know that substitutes sometimes end up being organized by nonteacher locals, too.) In LA it was SEIU, for example. What I'm wondering is whether SEIU does any better than CTU would do, what folks think about the idea of charters under union agreements, and...well, mostly those two things.

Here is the concern of a Charter teacher on that same site.

I think one issue is whether SEIU would do any better. As someone in a charter school I have no interest in belonging to CTU (and by law, I actually can't).

Unionizing charters will be hard for a number of reasons. Each charter school would have to have their own contract with their teachers, or suddenly every charter school would have to have the same hours, prep periods, class sizes, school years, etc., and then the point of charters being able to decide these things independent of the school district would be lost.

I think you'll also see a lot of resistance from some of the larger national charter school funders, many of whom aren't the most union friendly groups in the world.

I don't see any need for a union at my school right now, I was given a fair review and a chance to negotiate my own contract, and when it comes down to it, I'd rather be the one at the bargaining table. The only people I know who wouldn't are those teachers who don't deserve a raise anyway.

That being said I'm sure there are other charters where teachers probably aren't treated with the same level of respect, and I'm sure if charters start to unionize, they'll be the first to go. Either way, it will be interesting to watch what happens. It would definitely be a blow to the neo-cons.

Posted by: Charlie | July 26, 2007 at 01:45 PM

Not to Neo-Cons, Charlie. To School Reform. You sound like a professional and that is what education needs.

Real Unions in Danger = Stern's SEIU

Andy Stern and Anna Burger are destroying the American Labor Movement - Labor Leaders who have anything to do with these two career Lefty sneaks help them destroy Labor.

Here in Chicago, CTU lead by the oafish Marilyn Stewart want Charter School teachers to turn their backs on the contracts that each one of them signed in good faith and seek cover in Chicago Teachers Union. School Reform means nothing to CTU. Charter teachers who signed to join CTU are breakers of oaths, they want to be treated as professionals and act like whiny fools. The work loads that they contracted to do - agreed to do, for the pay and position with International Charter Schools are now too much of a burden on them.

Quit.

Join CTU and Chicago Public School System and all that goes with that shameful and corrupt, incompetent, lazy and greedy system. I know many heroically dedicated Public School teachers and they too are ashamed and disgusted by the stupidity and cant of CTU leadership and that comes from it.

SEIU needs an unskilled workforce to add greater numbers to its sad and 'going-nowhere' membership.

SEIU need to bring down the trades as well as the Schools.

Here's one of the Stern Gang writing about his covert work to undermine the Carpenters Union.

Labor’s New Deal – Douglas McCarron’s Raw Deal for the UBCJA
By Chris the Abducted Alien
Rated "G" by the Author.
Last edited: Sunday, April 27, 2008
Posted: Sunday, April 20, 2008



The article written by Andy Stern outlines the history of the beginnings of our labor in America starting with Calvin Coolidge who once famously declared, “The chief business of the American people is business.” Coolidge’s heirs today are corporatists who have succeeded in rolling back many elements of the New Deal and the subsequent reforms that helped create a great American middle class.

Franklin D. Roosevelt understood that in addition to government programs, a balanced economy requires strong labor unions. Then, as now, increased unionization created higher wages and benefits for both union members and unorganized workers. As unionization increased, the middle class grew. And as the percentage of workers represented by a union has declined in the past three decades, the disparity of wealth has increased in the corporate world.

We need to take into account the vast changes that have occurred since the New Deal, and we must continually adjust as new changes take place. America still needs strong unions--as well as a government on the side of working people--as part of the solution to rebalance power, provide greater fairness, make work pay and ensure that the dreams of all American children can still come true.1

Let’s fast forward to the present...



The plan by the wealthy leaders in our world, including Bush & Company and the representatives in his current regime, has been to steamroll and eliminate the middle class at warp speed. Let’s see what part the UBCJA under General President Douglas McCarron has had in this plan...


General President McCarron tightened his control of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners at the union’s convention in Las Vegas on August 25, 2005, when delegates voted to give him a third five-year term. The pro-democratic opposition slate, “Restore the Vote” team, did not have a chance...

Since then, he has run our union like it is his personal property. He has given himself dictatorial powers in our Constitution; he has amassed delegates, most of whom are beholden to him for jobs. Just like some of our individual carpenter locals continue to do today to most of our members.
………………………………………………………....................


Note: Articles, sources, and citations are given at the end of my article.
………………………………………………………....................



McCarron basically has been running our carpenters union like a corporation. He even boasts that centralized leadership is more efficient and attractive to employers and would produce more jobs for working carpenters. What he does not tell us is that his plan was to replace us, the professional carpenter with people that the corporate contractor will train to be uneducated and unthinking, just a robot, to service the employer in our trade, kept ignorant to our bargaining agreement, and happy to make less than our current union scale. This person is less likely to give our corporate unions any problems and our Regional Councils can make as many concessions with our bargaining agreements as needed to keep our coffers full at our corporate Regional Councils, thus letting America know we still have strong unions.


The many younger members, and all the new journeyman carpenters who are allowed to buy their union cards when they come along with a newly signed non-union contractor, do not know the carpenters history behind our bargaining agreement and how it came to be. They do not know how the carpenters in the late 1800s and early 1900s fought and died for the rights and wages we have enjoyed up till now...it is the members in all unions that are the ones who make up a good portion of the middle class in America...


I would like to make it very clear right now, that what I am getting ready to talk about does not involve every Regional Council, Executive Officer, or Officer at a local. We have been infiltrated with McCarron representatives at every level. These are men and women who believe and work towards McCarron’s plan and takeover of the UBCJA. Some of our representatives and members are still passionately unaware of the New Global Union plan for our UBCJA by McCarron.


Opposition from union carpenters continues to grow across America for UBCJA General President Douglas McCarron. He has taken the vote away from the rank and file carpenters and given it to himself and transferred that ability to all the Regional Councils left in our UBC. McCarron has even stepped over the border with his bullying in Canada.


Some of the men and women that now run the various Regional Councils across America and Canada are acutely aware of what is really happening but have been placed between a rock and a hard place because of the bullying with threats of losing their jobs and dictatorship policies made by McCarron. But many others are falling in line with the McCarron republican corporate labor union plan.


If we do not stand up and fight, we the rank and file, the working carpenters and our children that come after us are all going to lose...but our union administrators will continue to get their fat salaries and double pensions!


Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and UNITE-HERE are thought of as the reformers of anti-democratic behavior within our various unions. So why did the newly formed federation Change to Win Coalition invite General President McCarron to become part of the seven partner unions?


Andy Stern, who is the president of the SEIU, has always criticized President George W. Bush’s domestic and foreign policies. I wonder how Stern is dealing with McCarron today, knowing that McCarron is Bush’s darling Republican labor leader who gets to ride on Air Force One? McCarron has been meeting with Bush since his election as General President of the UBCJA in 1995...


There is no longer any mention of the UBCJA being part of the Change to Win Coalition in 2008.

The following is a statement by Anna Burger, Chair of Change to Win Coalition:

WASHINGTON DC, May 11, 2007 -- “On behalf of the six million members of Change to Win unions and its Leadership Council, we are disappointed that House Democratic leaders joined with the Bush Administration yesterday to announce a trade deal that is more free than fair.

The agreement does not represent the basis for the type of new U.S. trade policy that this nation desperately needs. Despite improvements in labor and environmental standards, workers remain at risk because the proposal fails to address how to protect U.S. jobs or create new ones. It undermines our prevailing wage and Buy America laws. And it hands foreign firms operating here more privileges over U.S. companies. For working America, that is not a deal.

Quick policy fixes won’t help workers achieve the American Dream in the 21st century– they need a whole new trade model equipped to meet the realities of today’s global economy.

Without significant changes, this agreement opens the door for subsequent harmful trade policies that resemble NAFTA/CAFTA – trade deals that have led to the loss of millions of good jobs at home, a surge in undocumented immigration, the soaring trade deficit, declining wages, and a deterioration of labor standards.

Change to Win stands for fair trade that promotes prosperity at home and abroad so that workers can achieve the American Dream in an era of globalization. Fair trade helps create standards that will stimulate development, protect and create new U.S. jobs, and maintain high wage standards around the globe – the Peru/Panama trade agreement falls far short of this.

It’s time for an alternative approach to this current failed model. We call on Congress to get back to work craft meaningful policies in current and future trade negotiations. We need to ensure that workers, not just corporations and CEOs, fairly share in the benefits of today’s global economy.”

Story by Steven Greenhouse on February 21, 2008 -- Change to Win gets behind Obama. In a conference call this morning, four of the coalition’s unions — the Service Employees International Union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the United Food and Commercial Workers and Unite Here — voted to back Mr. Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination. With their votes, they ensured that unions representing two-thirds of the coalition’s members were backing a candidate, triggering the group’s endorsement.

The three other unions in the coalition — the Laborers, the UBCJA and the United Farm Workers — abstained. The carpenters union had initially endorsed Senator John Edwards, while the farm workers, easily the smallest union in the coalition, have endorsed Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

The Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters had this charade late last year in the Chicago area, actually in Iowa, with the current Presidential primary, and the UBCJA giving $500,000 of our money to an unknown person, Senator John Edwards to run in the primary for President. We had two perfectly good Democratic candidates already running in the primary...why was the UBCJA backing Edwards? Why did our Regional Councils go along with it? Why did none of our members (working carpenters) know about this? And why have we not heard any more about it? McCarron again did this without the permission or vote of the members...


All 50,000 of our members here in the Chicago area received a letter announcing the UBCJA backing John Edwards the same day he, John Edwards, dropped out of the Presidential primary. That was the first time many of the carpenters heard of John Edwards!


Again, carpenters here do not know what our Regional Council was thinking; they are not talking and continue to have meetings in secret and without all members knowing what their plan is. I personally feel this was one of the biggest mistakes our union in Chicago could have done...not allowing the rank and file (working carpenters) in on what has been happening with our Labor union(s). Now, all of the deceit and manipulation that is occurring in the UBC is on our shoulders. Many carpenters here in the Chicago area are continuing to talk about them and are starting to think they are part of McCarron’s Republican plan.


I attended the International Convention in Las Vegas in 2004 and heard Douglas McCarron speak. I have been giving him the benefit of a doubt as to what I heard him say at the convention and have been continually questioning his speech and the statements made by him...was this guy for real? He was talking about opening up diversity to people of color and women in our union so we could help to keep it strong. And then going on to say, also allowing the women who were and are part of this union to organize and now help to work to be part of the century old union. I never thought I would hear something like that from a union guy in my lifetime! It was just too good to be true , I was dumbfounded!


But now, in 2008, my take on this is McCarron is just another carpenter talking out the side of his mouth. “Doublespeak” has been practiced by politicians for decades. It is also now known as the ultimate betrayal by our union administrators who have learned the practice well! In society today nothing has been more widely accepted, used and promoted then the art of “Doublespeak.” McCarron continues to tell the union members what we want to hear, so he and his administration can complete the republican plan. He has been trained to complete this plan well from Bush and Company...as to what has to be done with middle class Americans in order for the Unions to survive in America...


We have seen no labor unity between UBCJA and the other Change to Win Coalition and AFL-CIO affiliate unions in the current race for the presidential primary. All the other unions are either backing Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. This tells me we have a few defectors to democracy in our unions, and one of them is our UBCJA...


The working carpenters here in the Chicago Regional Area are getting ready to get into serious difficulties with concessions being given to contractors with our Bargaining Agreements for several of the counties that are coming up this year 2008. The “Raw Deal” is already happening across America in the Carpenters and other unions. I predict concessions will be given to the employer’s big time this contract year...all in the name of our failing ECONOMY precipitated and planned by Bush and company and advantageously completed by McCarron in the carpenters union and by others in the other unions...


Here is an overview of what is happening in our Carpenters unions and our agreements across America and Canada:


First, millions of Americans are starting to become aware of what the Republicans have been planning over the past two decades. This is to eliminate the middle class by busting the unions to destroy our economy, our education system, and turn all of us against each other over hate for one reason or another, and now by allowing the immigrants to take over jobs in the United States for less pay.


McCarron’s plan has been no different; it has become the Corporate UBCJA. Get the undocumented workers who are mostly already uneducated, who know nothing about our bargaining agreements or our laws and are willing to work for less money than union scale carpenters are making under our current agreements. The immigrant’s loyalty is to the Regional Council and the puppets that run some of the locals. Some of our Regional Councils and locals are assisting the illegal immigrants to get Department of Homeland Security working cards in the United States, even though they are still not registered as legal residents in the United States. And there has been very little talk about the immigrants being dual citizens of both the United States and the other countries (where they were born).


McCarron and his kingdom of Regional Councils have been pandering to the contractors union and non-union (big business) and destroying our current bargaining agreements within our union across America and Canada. The Brotherhood of Carpenters is going to “hell in a hand basket,” and they are selling the rank and file working carpenters down the river...

November 7, 2005 – “UBCJA President McCarron in Washington DC is threatening American-style bully tactics to conduct a hostile takeover of the autonomous BC Carpenters Union.

The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America (UBCJA) sent a letter last Friday to the BC Provincial Council of Carpenters elected President, Len Embree, threatening to impose immediate "supervision" over the independent BC Carpenters Union, its 7000 members, and their union's assets.”

This story by EDMONTON/630 CHED, September 20, 2007 - - The United Brotherhood of Carpenters and the Alberta Building Trades Council have taken out ads warning carpenters they could face criminal charges or civil action if they don't return to work.

Headline News: “Threats of criminal charges for striking workers in Alberta, Canada. Federation Labor laws are being fought by over thousands working carpenters at a rally in Alberta, Canada. The Alberta Labor Code is dead!

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms has dealt a fatal blow to these oppressive Labor Laws and the future for Canadians in Alberta is beginning to have promise.

Saturday, September 22, 2007 the funeral for the Alberta Labor Code will be held at the Alberta Labor Relations Board - 10808 - 99 Avenue at 12 noon and a Funeral parade will head to the Alberta Legislative building where the Alberta Labor Code will be put to rest.

For two days, beginning September 6, Alberta carpenters rallied in front of the Alberta Labor Relations Board to affirm their right to take collective action to defend their interests. On Thursday, September 6 more than 200 carpenters rallied outside the Alberta Labor Relations Board (ALRB) in downtown Edmonton where yet another employer complaint was being heard. On Friday, their numbers grew to more than 600 and the carpenters were joined by members of other unions. They filled the room where the hearings were taking place and closed the entire street in front of the ARLB offices.”


Corruption continues to run rampant in the Chicago and across America and Canada. From what I remember on the history of labor I read...it was the Canadians that started the rank and file working carpenters labor movement. Peter J. McGuire’s movement in 1881 started for the carpenters here in the United States after the Canadians fought and won for their rights in Canada. McGuire’s plan was taken from the Canadians...


Sheet rockers in Baltimore and Vancouver got the raw end of the deal along with Southern California style drywall piece rates in union contracts. The Southern California Nevada Regional Council of Carpenters continue making concessions to the contractors, it has become a way of life out there. It does not seem to bother the Business Representatives that concessions are “okay” and that the fact is the UBC gave up piece work 120 years ago...this drywall clause was clearly a travesty of justice under our current union contracts.


Clearly three-fourths of the members are currently deprived of the right to vote through the manipulation of our locals to keep members away from meetings. And the apathy and lack of education to our bargaining agreements by our members to get involved has not helped. It clearly places a minority in control of our unions.


The piece work clause is still in our By-Laws and Working Rules currently here in the Chicago area...but Immigrant drywaller’s are allowed to get their money by piece work right now. And again, some of our union business agents and organizers look the other way. Similar issues arise with the siders, roofers, and insulators. When carpenters are asked to bring a manual or power tool on the employer’s jobsites and our union allows it. Our union here even allows the transportation of the employer’s tools in the carpenter’s vehicles, and again the business agents and organizers look the other way.


New York also has many concessionary agreements of its own that are now part of its bargaining agreement. Fred Devine, the former administration President for the New York District Council of Carpenters and now convicted felon, started the ball rolling in 1993.


In the 1993 agreements with the associations, Devine gave up double time for overtime, and now all carpenters will only get time and a half for work after seven hours, except on Sundays and legal holidays. The District Council (now called Regional Councils) also agreed to allow contractors to use only apprentices for the unloading and distribution of carpenter materials on jobsites, turning the apprentices into cheap delivery labor and denying journeymen opportunities for overtime.

This story by Gregory A. Butler, carpenter in New York:

“Union carpenters in New York City in 1999 are at a crossroads. For the first time since 1915, we have a District Council leadership that does not have ties to La Costa Nostra, but we are actually worse off than we were under the wise guys.

There is a building boom, and only 1,300 or so brothers and sisters on the list out of 20,000, but there are also about 20,000 non-union brothers and sisters out there in our trade.

Not only are the non represented carpenters doing virtually all the new houses in Staten Island, and all the apartment renovations in Harlem, the South Bronx, South Jamaica, Bedford Stuyvessant and East New York, but much of the storefront work in the Financial District, Midtown, the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side and even high-rises on W 40th Street and that big MTA command center on 54th Street. And, even the sidewalk bridges around a lot of sites are non union, and we owned that work just 4 years ago.

In New York, McCarron’s organizers have been attempting to set up multiple scales, to attract the rat contractors. With the scaffold contractors, Rockledge and Colgate, who used to be union until former District Council President Fred Devine gave them a contract that exempted them from 50/50 hiring from the hall, enabling them to go 100% non union, McCarron's organizers, is rewarding them for going scab.”

Our unions continue to hire people off the street, even though the indentured apprentices and journeyman continue to be without jobs. Unions pay people living in the street and wives or girlfriends of carpenters to walk pickets, instead of asking for volunteers from the carpenters out of work. This brings up another matter...our carpenter trade union in the Chicago jurisdiction still will not appoint woman carpenters as organizers, but continue to allow the wives and girlfriends of carpenters to walk the pickets and pay them. This has been going on forever...now if that is not discrimination I do not know what is?


The council will close down the permit office every once in a while to pacify the other out of work carpenters, but the process continues. This concession was to allow contractors to hire diversity, but it has given these contractors the ability to pay less than scale to these people hired off the street. They know only what their union employer is telling them, they are being manipulated and lied too about what they should receive as union scale and benefits. These people are mostly people of color, women and easily manipulated uneducated white men. Our union does support discrimination by our union contractors. Because the business agents and organizers are to busy getting more jobs for us to work on, but does not have the time to support our rank and file members unless it benefits their plan.


At this point, I also have to include the apprenticeship programs...I am sure this occurs at many of the apprenticeship schools across union America. Bring the new people in by the thousands and let them run wild with no support from our Trustees or our Apprenticeship Administration. If it were not for the marvelous Instructors that work at the schools, the apprentices would get no support at all. This is of course unless they are favorites or in a union family. Fairness is not practiced here either…


Most of the new apprentices are left to fend for themselves. If our apprentice coordinators can find them leads on jobs, and if they can find a union contractor to hire a person of color or a woman, then they might work for a few months. More money goes into our coffers...and that is more money for the Executive and local administrators to provide salary increases and to make their wages secure and some of their double pensions fatter...and unions get stronger.


Some of the people in my union have been stonewalling my efforts to develop an evening class to educate all union carpenters to our Area Agreements, our UBCJA Constitution, and our union member rights for over ten years. Instead they make a video and leave it up to the individual member to watch and understand. Most of the members do not even watch it. Good job guys, keep the plan rolling along...keep doing it your way!


The Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters Apprentice & Training Program has a Labor Management Relations class for first year apprentices. None of the other Instructor’s were ever trained to teach this class…I had to educate myself about the bargaining agreements, By-Laws & Working Rules, and our UBCJA Constitution so I felt comfortable teaching it to the apprentices. Some of the business agents, stewards on job sites, and organizers are still clueless to our area agreements or UBC Constitution.


The comments I have received from the working apprentices in the field are horror stories about what the union contractors are making them do in violation of our contracts…this has been occurring for the past fifteen years and is continuing to get worse. Our business agents and the hundreds of male organizers we pay continue to look the other way.


We are currently bringing in 3000 to 4000 apprentices for training in our program every year, but only 700 to 800 graduate...what does it matter; right? Most of them did work for an hour or more, or maybe a year or two before they disappeared. Our coffers are getting fatter because of these people...


Story from a sister Carpenter in another state:

“We have a local here that I say is about 70% African American. It happens to be a local that is paid a lesser rate because it is a housing local not commercial. Almost ALL of the women and men of color that come in through the pre-apprentice programs are assigned to that local. They don't get the same elective of being assigned to the local in their area like most of the white apprentices. The leadership of that local is 100% white. Go figure. This, in one the largest unionized cities on the east coast. Most members are just glad to be working.”


TEAMSTERS (IBT) - Chicago Local in Turmoil over Officer Elections

“Dissident members of a Chicago Teamsters union have charged the hierarchy with subverting the victory of their candidate for president in elections conducted Oct. 17, amid allegations of corruption linked with mob influence, kick-backs, and underhanded job-shifting schemes against the current hierarchy, led by Robert Walston. Local 743 represents more than 12,000 health care, manufacturing, insurance and university workers in the Chicago area.


An opposition slate led by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) activist Richard Berg was ahead in the ballot count 788 to 781. About 200 ballots -- most from a shop that supported Berg -- remained to be counted when those votes were challenged. Local 743 bosses initially said that they would recognize the votes that had been challenged, but after checking the current tally changed their minds and decided to hold a new election entirely.


Local 743 attorney Bill Widmer said Berg himself asked for the election to be voided because voters had supposedly been disenfranchised. But Berg said the union dismissed numerous other protests he had filed, and than decided to grant one and ordered a new election when his win looked likely.” [Chicago Maroon, 10/28/04: Cleveland Plain Dealer, 10/22/04]


Story by two sister Teamsters from the Chicago area:

“We are in a local on the southern area of Chicago that consists of all women, only the two of us are citizens of the U.S. All the other women are Hispanic and have U.S. Department of Homeland Security working cards. But they are not residents of the U.S. All of the officers in our local are white men who put fear into the women when we have anything to say about our employers not giving us our contracted scale or working more than eight hours and still getting paid the same as an eight hour day. The officers will not give us information as to our bargaining agreement and continue to threaten us with our jobs if we do not shut-up.”


Our Chicago area administration signed an agreement with what is called, Furniture Contractors. The concessions given to this type of contractor allows them to hire twenty apprentices to one journeyman carpenter on every one of their union jobs. Business agents have been placing mostly people of color and women with these contractors. These apprentices have no possibility of becoming journeyman carpenters. These type of contractors do not train people in the carpentry skills needed to gain journeyman status...so, near the end of their four year apprenticeship they only have two options left...start the apprentice program all over again or quit the carpenters union for another type of job.


You see, if they start all over again, they will continue to put money into our corporate Regional Councils coffers for all vested carpenters in our unions and they will again have a steady job for another almost four years at the apprentice rate. Good deal huh?


Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters administration gave up overtime on Saturdays for Residential Carpenters in our area...they raised the union dues fifteen dollars more for first and second year apprentices because they know most will not be in our union after the second year. Journeymen only received a three dollar increase...

In various other unions across America, and in some instances here in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa immigrant workers, people of color, and women are being placed into separate locals to allow the men that run that local to control and manipulate them. These people are not given their By-Laws and Constitution booklets, nor are the officers at those locals educating them to their rights under our bargaining agreement. In some of the more depressed areas of our three state county regions, locals are bullying their members and manipulating them into believing that they will not be able to get a job or ever work as a carpenter again. And again, these are mostly people of color, women or uneducated white men. People of color and women are constantly intimidated into not participating at their local meetings. Some of the apprentices that want to speak up at a meeting are still told to “shut your fucking month and sit down,” when it is a concern that the officers do not want to address. They also allow their members to bully the new members coming in, especially if that new member is a woman.


The immigrants only have employment cards from the Department of Homeland Security to work in the United States, and these people are constantly fearful of doing anything that could have them deported back to their countries. So they work for their union employers, accepting anything given to them. The Regional councils and the business agents again look the other way...


Any time a person of color or a female carpenter fights for their rights under our union contract they are blackballed and not able to work for that contractor again...


In September 2004, Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin reported that Andy Ryan, 19, son of Tom Ryan, Business Representative/Secretary Treasurer out of Carpenter Local 13, was hired as a building inspector even though the city requires all inspectors to have completed a four-year apprenticeship and have two years work experience. The Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters was Mayor Daley’s largest campaign contributor in 2003. After more investigation it was found that another son of a Business Representative was also hired by the Chicago Building Department a year prior. Carpenter Local 13 was credited with being one of the prominent locals to negotiate a bargaining agreement with the City of Chicago, Building Inspection Department a year earlier...


I did not see young Ryan or any of his brothers in the Apprenticeship school until after the corruption charges were filed with the Chicago Building Department…then several of the brothers started in the apprenticeship. I heard one has since been appointed as a Business Representative in our CRCC union.


We have Executive Business Agent/Directors in charge of certain committees in our area; one is the called Mentorship Committee in which the President of a Carpenters Local and also an Executive Business Representative is in charge and has the title of Mentorship Director. There has not been a mentorship committee in this or other locals since the Las Vegas Convention in 2004. Yet I was told that it existed before 2004. It’s a big joke to this guy...if there is or was a mentorship committee in any carpenter local, it was because of the men and women carpenters in those locals made it happen, not because of this so-called Business Representative/Mentorship Director. Word is he received this position because it was the worse committee to be on, and they had to put him somewhere...


What our Unions have done over the past decade is to pander to the Corporations leaving the working carpenters to fend for themselves. As long as the union Corporations pay into the benefits fund, our unions will continue to be a strong hold in America, but this time at the cost to the uneducated workers, the immigrant workers or the uncaring and ignorant uneducated indentured apprentices and journeymen that continue to look the other way...


The same concessions have been happening here in the jurisdictional counties in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa and it is getting worse...and the excuse we, the working carpenters will be given is we are in a recession, and there is nothing that the Regional Council can do...


This same plan has been in effect in other unions across America and Canada as well. Part of the plan is to lower the wages of all union carpenters. The Corporate UBC and the Regional Councils however will continue to get there money to keep the union strong because the corporate contractors continue to pay into the benefits at higher amounts, possibly with the promise of better health care for union workers. Even though wages will be down and immigrants are always willing to work hard and receive lower wages. History repeats itself again...


UBCJA General President Douglas McCarron has been part of the RAT BRIGADE (Corporate Contractors) all along!


McCarron has been in on this plan since his first election in 1995 and started negotiations in 2000 with Bush and the Republican Party, his administrations goals have been to continue making the unions strong at the expense of the working carpenters and undocumented immigrant workers. These unions were once run by the working carpenters, now it is a Labor Union Corporation and the UBC and the Regional Councils have taken control. The union workers' rights under our agreements have been violated continuously over the past decade, and no one in our administration has been supporting the union workers rights. The Equal Rights amendment and all of the other laws are not enforced. It is like they have been put in place by our government and our unions but were written with disappearing ink...they are no more, nor have they really been!


The only right that our unions have been supporting with their millions of dollars a year attorney firms, which we pay for, is for the corporate labor unions, their administrations and contractor corporations’ rights.


We no longer have a voice or vote in our unions, and pretty soon we will no longer have a voice or vote in America! Corruption, deceit, and manipulation are alive and well in our unions…

“We, as carpenters, both union and non-union, have to build a new type of unionism. Our goal is and has always been for a better life and a higher standard of living for EVERY carpenter, White, Black, Latino, Polish, Asian, man or woman. We should not be on the same side with ANY contractor, rat or union. And, we do not have much use for leaders like Doug McCarron.” – Gregory A. Butler, union carpenter Blog

I second that notion...Wake up people, fight back!

................................................................................................................................................................

People really need to educate themselves to what is happening on in our Nation...

READ, THINK...EDUCATE

If you are just a passionately unaware American, please evaluate your thinking as to who is the best candidate to be our leader...the next President of the United States...

SWAY THE OBAMA WAY!

Time for Illinois Labor Leaders - the Real Ones - to get wise and give Andy Stern the tune-up he needs.

Trades Unions! Watch. When CTU Murders Charter Schools, Apprenticeship Programs Will Be Next. SEIU and Andy Stern Want it So!

SEIU wants to Kill School Reform and they have the money and muscle to do it. Killing School Reform, which actually means the advent and genuine success of Charter Schools in America, is a means of killing the Bureau of Apprenticeship Programs in Illinois and other States in favor of a State run Apprentice Program - run by a local politician like James Meeks, as Emil Jones will be at an undisclosed off-shore paradise.

Card check will be the key and Teachers Unions are already thugging it up.

appeasement on vouchers only whets unions appetites for eliminating all meaningful types of choice. With voucher programs facing termination in Washington, D.C., and heavy regulation in Milwaukee, the teachers unions have now set their sights on charter schools. Despite their proclamations about supporting charters, the actions of unions and their allies in state and national politics belie their rhetoric.

In New York, for example, the unions have backed a new budget that effectively cuts $51.5 million from charter-school funding, even as district-school spending can continue to increase thanks to local taxes and stimulus money that the charters lack. New York charters already receive less money per pupil than their district school counterparts; now they will receive even less.

Unions are also seeking to strangle charter schools with red tape. New York already has the "card check" unionization procedure for teachers that replaces secret ballots with public arm-twisting. And the teachers unions appear to have collected enough cards to unionize the teachers at two highly successful charter schools in New York City. If unions force charters to enter into collective bargaining, one can only imagine how those schools will be able to maintain the flexible work rules that allow them to succeed.

Good schools and solid Trades Programs are paths to success. Andy Stern can not and will not have that. SEIU sucks up unskilled and no skilled members, who are not and will not have an opportunity to train and study for a path into the American Middle Class. That was the Old Way - This is Change America, Sweetheart!

In Change America, group think and group wage will be based upon what the Tax-levying bodies in each State ( soviet) dole out to the rank and file.

Andy Stern wants an end to all Trades Apprenticeship Programs - no longer will the Pipefitters, Carpenters, Electricians, Plumbers, Sprinkler-fitters, of Engineers set standards for application to Apprenticeship Programs, nor will they run training schools.

SEIU will determine who does and gets what through each State's James Meeks, or some other Purple Approved Legislator.

Play ball with Andy Stern and you will get a knife in kidneys for your troubles.

SEIU is ACORN with an Advanced Degree ( Social Work @ University of Pennsylvania usually) and they need millions more members to feed the PAC. There are many more spineless politicians to buffalo and millions more children that Andy Stern needs for future harvests of no skill and unskilled members. That harvest is threatened by School Choice - Catholic Schools, Private Schools and especially Charter Schools.

Progress Illinois Andy Stern's graphic novel ( comic book)of propaganda is going flat out to help the oafish Marilyn Stewart's Chicago Teachers Union geld Charter Schools.

The Wall Street journal offers this roadmap:

When charter schools unionize, they become identical to traditional public schools in performance. Unions may say they support charter schools, but they only support charters after they have stripped them of everything that makes charters different from district schools.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan have given speeches promoting charter schools. Despite their talk, charter spending constituted less than one-quarter of 1% of education spending in the stimulus package. And the Obama administration has done union bidding by killing the D.C. voucher program. They did this in the face of solid evidence of academic progress for the voucher students, and despite their stated commitment to do "what works for kids" regardless of ideology.

Vouchers made the world safe for charters by drawing union fire. But now that the unions have the voucher threat under control, charters are in trouble. It's time for reformers to increase pressure on politicians bending to the will of the unions and close the new education gap -- the one between what Mr. Obama and Mr. Duncan say about education and what they do.

Killing School Reform through unionizing Charter Schools is a step to killing Trades Programs. Kill competency and grow fat on millions of locked-in, impoverished and no skill members is the goal of Andy Stern, SEIU, Card Check,and Chicago Teachers Union.

CTU Hellbent on Destroying School Reform - Progressives Help Them!

Progress Illinois is a comic book published by Andy Stern's SEIU -the folks who worked over-time with Rod Blagojevich to replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate after working hand in pocket with Rod Blagojevich for the good part of his two years in office.

SEIU had a starring role in the December 9th Criminal Complaint against Celebrity Survivor Ingenue the disgraced former Governor of Illinois. SEIU is Lefty PAC masquerading as a Labor Union. Members dues go to frightening spineless elected officials and papering the lampposts of Blagoshere with hit pieces on political enemies ( William Daley, Mayor Daley, Mike Madigan, John Shimkus, Mark Kirk, Tom Cross and Jim Durkin) with Progress Illinois staffed by the kids of Old Radicals and Leftists like Angela Caputo who takes another salary of Sun Times News Group - for now.

Progressive and the tax-salaried American Federation of Teachers and their Banana Republic branch -Chicago Teachers Union want to kill school Reform.

Vouchers and Charter Schools are the only hope for the already hopeless Chicago Public Schools.

Catholic Schools outperform Public Schools and save Illinois tax-payers millions of dollars.

Angela Caputo is tasked with doing hit pieces on Charter International and its Educational Management Organization (EMO) Civitas.

Read the 'All Hail the Working class' rhetoric in Ms. Caputo's giggle piece - funny like cancer.

Click my post title for the full nonsense.

Here is the most idiotic paragraph.

Because the staff (and public) is largely kept in the dark about the administration of charter schools, it's hard to know how CICS' books have changed in recent years. What's clear is that the instability at these particular schools had led to an increased rate of teacher turnover, a concern raised by Parents United for Responsible Education (PURE) in a report (PDF) last fall.

Shall we, Chicago taxpayers, demand an open accounting of Marilyn Stewart's Chicago Teachers Union?

The great Labor Force that spent the better part of a year firing and locking a Union Leader -Ted Dallas - out of the Headquarters?

Oh, Let's do !

Start here -

Cashing out sick days is a common practice at the Union, he says, but he says he is charged with doing it “without approval.” He says that because Stewart does not study Union policy and past practice, other staffers have been able to cash out sick days after discussions at meetings, and that the policy of going through the Executive Board has not been followed because Marilyn does not follow rules.


Those amounts contested for Dallas are peanuts, when compared to many of the expenditures by Stewart, Dallas noted. For example, he cited the $850,000 laid out at the May House meeting by John Feldman, American Federation of Teachers CPA, as spent by the Stewart administration in a policy which allowed the officers and staff to cash out “compensatory days” for extra work on weekends during 2006. Feldman said that this plan was to be revenue neutral, but that now the officers know it to have been a mistake.


Dallas says he is also charged with helping Presidential Aide Diana Sheffer cash out her sick days at $63,543.80 when it became evident that President Stewart was on a vendetta to fire all those who disagreed with her policies. Sheffer was fired in December 2007, with security walking her out of the Union offices.


The Dallas “trial” will be conducted by the Union Executive Board — dominated by Stewart loyalists — on June 12th at the Union offices at 4 p.m. Dallas’ supporters are encouraging Union members to attend.


The case against Treasurer Linda Porter is still in limbo. In December, 2007, President Stewart took away all of Porter’s fiduciary responsibilities as Treasurer and gave them to her new Chief of Staff, John Ostenburg. Ostenburg was formerly the editor of the union newspaper. He has never taught in Chicago’s public schools. He is the mayor of Park Forest and a former members of the House of Representatives in Springfield. Ostenburg was one of those Stewart did not fire in August 2004. The first page of the 112-page complaint against CTU vice president Ted Dallas. The complaint was brought to the union's executive board by two union members who should not have had access to all of the internal union financial data that they used against Dallas.

http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=78

SEIU Helped Create the Blago We All Know - Watch Them Now

Progress Illinois, SEIU's Junior Commissar Mikey Mouse Club, is huffing and puffing about more grassroots reform now that Blago has been 86-ed by the State of Illinois.

In our latest feature article, Adam notes that Rod Blagojevich's removal from office could clear the way for some far-reaching -- and much-needed -- campaign finance restrictions in Illinois. On WTTW's Chicago Tonight yesterday, former state comptroller Dawn Clark Netsch echoed that sentiment. She highlighted the "window of opportunity" created by Blagojevich's departure and cited caps on campaign contributions as "essential." Watch it: Netsch's observation that "it can't just be legislators" pushing these sorts of reforms is very important. Grassroots and institutional support is going to be crucial. And to that point, I want to highlight the fact that SEIU Illinois (which sponsors this website) is itself pushing for strict restrictions on campaign contributions, which bodes well for the cause.

Oh Heavens Yes, Gracie! Josh, you are a dilly!


SEIU you will recall was mired deeply in Blago's Honey-Dipping Governorship and SEIU figures in Federal Prosecutor Fitzgerald's Criminal Complaint against the only Governor in Illinois History Impeached and Convicted by the Legislature.

Andy Stern's SEIU will be there, to quote Tom Joad from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath to troll for and make new Blago. Make no mistake.

Here is a lovely compilation of SEIU/Blago Bedroom Eyes from the World Socialist Website -published by International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)them own selves!

In any event, Blagojevich and the SEIU have a lengthy and mutually beneficial relationship. The Wall Street Journal notes that the union “was an early and strong supporter of Mr. Blagojevich, backing him over several other candidates [for Illinois governor] in 2002.” As a condition of its support, the SEIU won a pledge from Blagojevich that once in office he would issue an executive order directing the state government to negotiate a union contract with home health-care workers.


Shortly after taking office, the new Illinois governor signed an order allowing as many as 20,000 such workers to unionize. They were signed up by the SEIU. Blagojevich also appointed Balanoff to the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board, which approves hospital construction projects.


A second executive order, signed in February 2005, allowed collective bargaining for child-care workers. “The day after it received a letter from the governor’s office saying that a union election could be held, SEIU submitted 18,000 cards from workers it had signed up” (Wall Street Journal). The workers involved are highly exploited, suffering from low wages and a lack of benefits.


Officials of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) complained of the “special relationship” the SEIU had with Blagojevich. The latter union was the number one contributor to the governor’s re-election bid in 2006, donating more than $900,000, or some 5 percent of his total campaign fund.


The SEIU also has a close relationship with the president-elect. The union’s political action committee “spent at least $26 million on Mr. Obama’s behalf in the presidential campaign, making it by far the largest single PAC donor in the campaign” (New York Times).


The union, in the words of the Washington Post, has “become an omnipresent force in Democratic politics.”


An SEIU spokeswoman, Michelle Ringuette, defended the contributions. “Many unions make political donations to political candidates,” she told the Times, “in the interest of making sure we have elected officials who represent the interest of working families, men and women who get up and go to work every day.”


Neither Blagojevich nor Obama represent “working families,” although they may posture along those lines. Their policies defend the interests of big business and the corporate-financial aristocracy. The present corruption scandal provides a glimpse into the reality behind the rhetoric of Democratic Party politics: corrupt, well-heeled individuals pursuing their own selfish goals.


Moreover, the SEIU and the rest of the American union bureaucracy do not make use of their members’ dues money in the form of contributions to Democratic candidates to advance workers’ interests, but to safeguard their own incomes and privileges.


Stern and the SEIU have recently made a specialty of reaching contracts with governments and corporations that benefit themselves and the employers, at the expense of union members. (See Backroom deals by US service unions strip workers of rights)


The SEIU broke away from the sclerotic and discredited AFL-CIO promising a new brand of dynamic unionism, with a special emphasis on organizing the unorganized. As the WSWS noted last May: “However, this has nothing to do with defending or improving conditions, but involves colluding with employers to impose union membership on low-paid workers, who are denied the right to vote on union certification and in some cases don’t even realize they are joining a union.”


The union has set itself up as a kind of labor contractor, offering employers “labor peace” in exchange for the right to collect dues.


In its contract with California nursing home chains, reported the San Francisco Weekly, the SEIU agreed that workers would have no input regarding hours, vacations, pay, layoffs, staffing levels or any other matter concerning their jobs. The newspaper reported, “The employers may outsource work performed by union members, and speed up, reassign, or eliminate jobs at will. The employer may eliminate vacations, or any time off, as the employer sees fit.”


The SEIU went on to use this arrangement as a model for other “organizing” efforts in Washington and New Jersey.


At the time of his arrest Blagojevich was reportedly preparing to issue another executive order that would have allowed 1,200 workers who care for the developmentally disabled in Illinois to organize. Spokeswoman Ringuette told the Wall Street Journal that the SEIU “was aware of the executive order but didn’t know what role, if any, the union played in developing it.”

What an SEIU member Says About Andy Stern

Above : A Pair of Real Gold plated Jackasses - MSNBC's Milky Matthews and SEIU's Stalin Wannbe Andy Stern.

Here is a comment by an SEIU rank and file member about this Media Wrapped Maoist - Stern.

As a member of SEIU for 3 decades, the idea that Stern could get a cabinet post appalls me. This is a man who took a democratic, worker-oriented union, seized power, and forgot about the rest of us. We do not even have the means to vote him out of office. He treats current members as nothing more than dues-paying cash cows for his manic organizing efforts. He would rather have a give-back contract than allow a strike that would disrupt his real goals. Employers must love him. The rank and file does not. He will not fight for you after he gets you to sing up. Hell, he doesn’t bother even explaining himself to us. When he split the American Labor Movement by pulling out of the AFL-CIO, we didn’t vote, we never even learned his reasons. His rise to power has always been about Andy, not about America’s workers.

— howdeb

SEIU's Class Warfare Act Hidden In Chicago Media

SEIU is a Marxist Political Action Machine posing as a Labor Union. SEIU affiliates around the country are being smashed by Andy Stern's Stalinist methods. Chicago's news media has been a paid stooge of SEIU for a long, long time.

Progress Illinois is a blog that is funded and operated by SEIU and the usual radical associates (Dr. Quentin Young M.D. And Nicholas Skala & etc.)beloved by the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times as well as the daffy dillies at the TV stations.

Today Keith Kelleher attacks McDonalds Corporation and other corporate entities that might not need a union organized in their works, much less the Marxist Class warriors of SEIU. It is all about power politics with SEIU and nothing about improving the lives of workers - janitors stay janitors; no skill and low skill stay that way. In Today's Progress Illinois offering Kelleher talks about his rough and tumble days organizing the paper hat workers at Burger King and McDonalds as a cautionary tale to excite the imaginary gonads of Chicago's gelding journalists to support The Employee Free Choice Act - which will be the death knell of real Trades Unions.

Kelleher gets all 'chilling' about the McDonald's Thugs - they brought in shrinks, lawyers and threw a party:

As workers started building their union inside the three local franchises, top-level corporate executives watched closely. It quickly became clear that the McDonald’s Corporation would take extreme measures to prevent their low-wage, part-time workforce from coming together to demand better jobs and working conditions.

A few weeks after we began, a team of psychologists rolled in. They quickly went to work, systematically interrogating each employee in a not-so-subtle attempt to intimidate them out of joining the union.

In the weeks that followed, McDonald’s brought in a high-powered corporate law firm that filed motion after motion to delay the union election that would give these McDonald’s workers an opportunity to unite. As the lawyers buried us in depositions, motions, and labor board charges, they were purposely slowing down the election process and buying McDonald’s more time to run an anti-union campaign built on spreading fear and misinformation among its workers. 

One by one, the strongest pro-union voices in the three franchises were either demoted, forced out, or fired.


The coup de grace was a mandatory “party” hosted by McDonald’s a few nights before the scheduled election. It featured an array of celebrities -- everyone from Detroit’s number-one deejay to football star Earl Campbell -- who each explained the evils of uniting in a union. Even a costumed Ronald McDonald was on hand to bust the organizing effort, running a raffle with cash prizes for everyone. 






Brrrrrrrr. Reminds me of the Reuther Brothers getting shot and stomped by the Ford Goons, Keith.

SEIU is in direct conflict with Trades Unions - the unions who made the American Standard of Living and the American Middle Class.

Here is a story of a the disruption of a a Convention of SEIU chapters 'out of favor with Andy Stern.' This did not make the Chicago news and would not.

Leaders of the Service Employees International Union launched what appeared to be a carefully crafted plan on April 12 to disrupt parts of the Labor Notes conference, where contingents from a dissident SEIU local, a new reform caucus within SEIU, and a competing union were in attendance.

On the second day of the conference a number of SEIU staffers—some of whom had registered with false names—interrupted four workshops by heckling and attempting to shout down speakers from the California Nurses Association and its affiliate the National Nurses Organizing Committee.

SEIU and CNA have long been at odds, often in direct competition to represent the same workforce and disagreeing vehemently over single-payer health care legislation, labor-management partnerships, and neutrality agreements that allow a union to recruit members without employer opposition. Their latest skirmish was over health care workers in Ohio (see Labor Notes April 2008).

The largest, most ambitious, and ultimately violent part of the planned disruption occurred later that night at the conference banquet.

“The crowd of SEIU members and staff trying to force their way into the banquet served to confirm and emphasize the need to turn the International away from the path they’re on,” said Joe Iosbaker, a member of SEIU Local 73’s executive board who witnessed the incident. “The thunder and noise about the CNA rallies people around the International in preparation for the internal fight that’s happening [between SEIU reformers and International officials].”

BANQUET INVASION
As the banquet was beginning, 200-300 chanting SEIU members and staffers rushed through a double set of exterior hotel doors. The locked doors were opened from the inside by SEIU staffers attending the conference.

Most of the demonstrators wore the signature SEIU purple T-shirts; some carried signs denouncing the CNA. CNA’s executive director, Rose Ann DeMoro, had been scheduled since November to address the banquet on single-payer health care, although her cancellation had been announced earlier in the day.

About 15 conference volunteers and Labor Notes staff were acting as security at the banquet hall doors. When the chanting protesters entered, waving noisemakers, they and other conference attendees in the foyer of the banquet hall quickly formed a double line in front of the doors, linking arms to block the way.

A number of participants were thrown to the ground by larger SEIUers, some of whom were wearing bandanas around their faces. One protestor broke through the first line and, finding himself trapped between the two lines, flailed wildly.

Protesters continued to try to advance toward the doors, some nonviolently and others more aggressively. Inside the hall, attendees barricaded the doors with chairs to prevent entry.

Former Labor Notes office manager Dianne Feeley, a United Auto Workers retiree from American Axle, was knocked over by one protester and fell, cutting her head. She was treated at an emergency room. Several conference-goers who had their arms linked on the line received minor injuries from blows by protesters attempting to force open the banquet doors.

Hotel security and Dearborn police eventually made their presence felt. After chanting “we’ll be back,” the protesters returned to their six buses, some of which had come from Ohio.

MISLED MEMBERS
Many of the protesters were African-American members drawn from SEIU’s Michigan health care unit, Local 79. David Cohen, an international representative of the United Electrical Workers, asked some of these rank-and-file members milling around the edges of the protest why they had come.

Cohen said one responded, “They told us just to get on the bus.” Cohen added that protesters he talked to were simply told that the conference was a group of “people looking to break their union.”

The mobilization of Black members for the banquet invasion drew an angry response on April 17 from four leaders of the union’s national Black caucus, AFRAM. Two of the leaders are officers in United Healthcare Workers-West, a key local in the SEIU reform movement.

“SEIU members and their children were led into the hotel where violence erupted at the initiation of SEIU staff,” stated the leaders in a letter to their caucus president. “Why weren’t they told the truth about their presence at this conference? “Why were only African Americans and their children invited, with the exception of the SEIU staffers? Why would SEIU create an environment of hostility rather than encourage and participate in the debate over differences?”

The four noted the tragic death of Local 79 member-organizer David Smith, who collapsed outside the hotel.

STORM OF CRITICISM
Shortly after the protestors left, SEIU’s national leadership issued a press release titled, “SEIU Members Stand Up For The Future Of The Labor Movement And The Interests of All Workers.” SEIU Vice President Mary Kay Henry praised the demonstrators. Five subsequent press releases from the union’s leadership gave conflicting accounts of what happened, ultimately blaming conference-goers themselves for the violence.

The action, however, drew criticism of SEIU’s national leadership.

“There is no justification—none—for the violent attack orchestrated by SEIU at the Labor Notes conference,” said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney April 15. As the former president of SEIU, he called on a lesson from the union’s history, stating: “No union should understand the corrosive effect of violence better than SEIU, which was founded by courageous janitors in the face of employer violence in the 1920s and 1930s. I call on the leaders of SEIU to condemn what happened in Detroit.”

Canadian Auto Workers President Buzz Hargrove also called on SEIU President Andy Stern to condemn the attack, in an open letter.

Another letter was circulated by members of the SEIU reform group, SMART, who were present at the conference.

“We believe it was precisely open debate and discussion that were the target of this hostile attack,” it said.

The photos above are from that riot sparked by Andy Stern. That is also rough and tumble Paper Hat Organizer Keith Kelleher. John L. Lewis? Nah.