CEI - Stealth Unionization Campaign Exposed by Free Market Groups

Free Market Policy Organizations Push Back Against Stealth Unionization Campaign

Workers Alerted to Union Shenanigans in Statewide Mailing

Washington, DC, February 6, 2012 – The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is trying to unionize home health care workers in Connecticut by stealth—and Governor Dannel P. Malloy is helping them. In response, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Yankee Institute for Public Policy together this week launched a mail campaign to inform unsuspecting workers about SEIU’s efforts, and help them make an informed decision.

SEIU has already carried out such stealth tactics in other states. Here’s how it works: A pro-union governor issues an executive orders defining any health care workers who serve clients who receive any sort of government assistance as state employees who can be unionized. The union and its allies avoid media and public attention.

The only notice home health care workers receive concerning a union election is a nondescript mailing asking them if they wish to join the union. Under this process, the union only needs to receive a majority of returned cards—not a majority of all workers—to be recognized as those workers’ exclusive bargaining representative.

For example in Michigan, SEIU won representation over 45,000 health care workers with only 20 percent of eligible voters participating. Most of those workers were unaware of the unionization effort and did not sign or return their cards. For SEIU, this was very profitable. Since 2006, it has collected $28 million in compulsory union dues from home care workers in Michigan. Now it wants to replicate that in Connecticut.

Competitive Enterprise Institute labor policy experts offered the following comments.

CEI Policy Analyst Trey Kovacs: “Forced unionization of home health and day care workers shows government at its worst. Across the nation, union political influence has swayed elected officials such as Gov. Malloy to divert tax dollars intended to cover medical expenses for their states’ poor residents to enrich union coffers instead.”

CEI Labor Policy Counsel F. Vincent Vernuccio: “Every worker in the private sector should have the right to join or not join a union. SEIU’s ploy of stealth unionization aimed at denying workers a secret ballot brings its forced unionism agenda to a new low. It shows a union that is more concerned with collecting mandatory dues than with doing what is in the best interest of workers. CEI is privileged to be working with the Yankee Institute to warn home healthcare providers of SEIU’s deplorable tactics.”

CEI and Yankee Public Policy Institute are providing home health care workers in Connecticut a public notice mailing to educate them about SEIU’s stealth unionization campaign and the costs that unionization would impose.

► The mailing can be found on CEI’s Labor Policy website: www.workplacechoice.org.

ALG - Obama's executive orders overstep

Oct. 31, 2011, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement warning that a series of unilateral executive actions by the Obama Administration would sidestep the political process, and thus the consent of the governed:

"These unilateral executive orders, whether on government-backed student loans and mortgages or FDA oversight, are intended to sidestep the consent of the governed, and as a result they overstep the President's constitutional boundaries.  Obama can rhetorically dress this up however he likes, but his actions are not predicated on the consent of the governed, they are fueled by his desire to maintain and expand power.  This is not the rule of law, but the rule of man.

"Obama is just following the playbook of the Center for American Progress, which had argued for the White House to use executive orders and other regulations to advance its agenda after Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives in the November elections.  This is all designed to get around the political process, and has occurred repeatedly under Obama's watch, whether with the EPA's carbon endangerment finding or the unilateral implementation of management-labor forums for the federal civil service."

Attachment:

"Obama to Rule by Decree Over Economy, ALG Responds," Americans for Limited Government, Oct. 13, 2011 at http://getliberty.org/content.asp?pl=10&sl=5&contentid=773 .

"ALG Urges Senate to Restore Separation of Powers by Repealing EPA Endangerment Finding," Americans for Limited Government, June 10, 2010 at http://www.getliberty.org/content.asp?pl=10&sl=5&contentid=470 .

"Unions: Creating A Place At the Table," By Mark Wohlschlegel, Americans for Limited Government Research Foundation, Oct. 20, 2011 at http://blog.getliberty.org/default.asp?Display=3773 .

Obama to Rule by Decree Over Economy, ALG Responds

October 13, 2011, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement blasting the Obama Administration's decision impose its will over the economy in response to its failure to enact a $35 billion states bailout:

"The New York Times is reporting that the Administration, in response to the bi-partisan rejection by the U.S. Senate of its latest economic stimulus bill, will be announcing a series of regulatory actions designed to help the economy.  What is ironic is that Obama's EPA, Department of Interior, Labor Department and National Labor Relations Board, along with his support for ObamaCare and the Financial Services Reform legislation have been prime culprits in crippling an already weak economy.

"If Obama truly wants to get the economy moving in 2012, and save his job, he will roll back the job killing regulations and rulings created under his watch over the past three years and support repeal of ObamaCare.  Unfortunately, that is highly unlikely as it would require taking responsibility for his failures and acknowledging that his Big Government agenda has failed. 

"As Obama begins his rule-by-decree tour around the western United States, it will be important for watchdogs in Congress to ensure that this wild attempt to gain votes doesn't overstep his Constitutional authority."

ALG Blasts White House Executive Order Silencing Dissent

"It is outrageous that Obama is making political contributions a criterion for getting a contract with the federal government.  This is corrupt Chicago-style politics at its worse."—ALG President Bill Wilson.

April 20^th, 2011, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson today condemned a draft executive order by the White House to compel companies to disclose donations to non-profit groups that might make independent expenditures during an election cycle.

The executive order would apply to "[a]ny contributions made to third party entities with the intention or reasonable expectation that parties would use those contributions to make independent expenditures or electioneering communications."

"The White House cannot arbitrarily amend federal contractor requirements without a vote in Congress.  This is an end-run around the constitutional process, with the Obama Administration once again attempting to implement administratively what it cannot achieve legislatively," Wilson declared.

He explained, "In this case, the White House could not get the DISCLOSE Act passed, and so the draft executive order compels federal contractors to publicize donations to third parties that make independent expenditures in election cycles that are otherwise shielded from public scrutiny under federal law."

Wilson added, "It's nothing more than a cynical gag order issued by executive decree with no basis in the duly enacted laws of the land.  As part of the contract-awarding process, the White House wants to know who is giving to whom and will surely make decisions based on that knowledge."

The executive order would apply to any donations in excess of $5,000 in a given year.  Any contractor that donates in excess of the specified minimum to an organization that engages in express advocacy of a candidate would have their names submitted to http://data.gov . 

"These disclosure requirements, as intended and designed, will have a chilling effect on speech, which is why they previously have been found to be unconstitutional," Wilson said, pointing to Supreme Court precedent protecting anonymous donations made to groups that solely make independent expenditures in NAACP v. Alabama (1958). 

Then Justice John Marshall Harlan's majority opinion stated, applying the First Amendment via the Fourteenth to Alabama, "We hold that the immunity from state scrutiny of membership lists which the Association claims on behalf of its members is here so related to the right of the members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in so doing as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment."

"There is no question that individuals' speech is stifled by excessive disclosure requirements on independent expenditures.  The Obama Administration is once again attempting to shame and intimidate certain corporations, groups, and individuals from saying anything about elections.  Free speech is now an executive order away from being abolished," Wilson said.

Wilson concluded, "It is outrageous that Obama is making political contributions a criterion for getting a contract with the federal government.  This is corrupt Chicago-style politics at its worse."

Attachments:

Draft Executive Order, The White House, April 13^th, 2011 at www.getliberty.org/files/DraftExecutiveOrder4-13-11.pdf .

"Disclosure is Overrated", by ALG News Senior Editor Robert Romano, June 21^st, 2010.



CEI Daily - Obama's Executive Order, Unionization, and Mortality Risk

Obama's Executive Order

Obama says his recent executive order will ensure that regulations improve safety without overly hampering free enterprise.

Vice President Wayne Crews and Fellow in Regulatory Studies Ryan Young say the executive order won't actually accomplish much.

"On closer inspection, Obama's reforms are left wanting. The growing federal regulatory burden is hampering economic recovery -- and the executive order will do little to stem its growth. Today, the Code of Federal Regulations is more than 157,000 pages long and growing. More than 4,200 new rules are in the pipeline right now. Of those, 224 are deemed 'economically significant,' which means they cost $100 million or more. While Obama will require agencies to weigh both safety and economic costs in their rulemaking, that's already been the case for years -- ever since President Bill Clinton's similar executive order -- with little to show for it."

Unionization

Harper's magazine publisher Rick MacArthur is contesting the unionization of his staff.

Policy Analyst Ivan Osorio observes that leftists tend to oppose unionizations when the business being unionized is their own.

"MacArthur might elicit some sympathy for his efforts to keep his enterprise from being burdened with the bureaucratization and higher labor costs that unionization usually brings — but not much. That’s because a great deal of Rick MacArthur’s leftist advocacy — of which he has a long history — has been fueled by money that was never intended for the purposes to which he put it to use."

Mortality Risk

The EPA wants to start calling the "value of statistical life" the "value of mortality risk."

Research Associate Brian McGraw notes that the government wants to avoid public indignation over its monetary evaluation of human life; yet the rebranding doesn't change the EPA's statistical analysis.

"I’m not convinced this will have much effect, as any explanation of the statistic will indicate that it still involves the government making decisions as to the cost/benefit ratio of statistical lives saved compared to the monetary cost inflicted upon businesses or individuals. Ideally, the EPA would allow more of these cost/benefit analyses to be considered by individuals (or at least down to state policies), as differences in age, wealth, gender, ethnicity, etc. all have a large effect on the valuation of one’s risk preferences — a top down centralized approach is often too blunt an instrument."