Moe Lane

The Monroe News has reported that the legislation (part of House Bill 4054) just (4:45 PM) passed 58-52 in the state house, and will now go to the State Senate (I’m being told that the Senate will vote on this legislation within five business days).  Governor Rick Snyder (R) has already indicated that he will sign the legislation if it gets to his desk; given that the Michigan Senate has a two-to-one Republican majority, this is likely to occur.  Right-to-work opponents have already showed their disapproval of the measure, to the point where the cops had to use pepper spray to get control of the Michigan State Capitol.  All in all, today’s demonstration is unlikely to be the only response by Big Labor to Michigan’s union reform bill/law, in the same way that water is somewhat wet and the sun’s surface can get a trifle warm sometimes.

More as it happens.

UPDATE: Annnnnd Fox News reports that they’ve just passed a similar bill in the Senate.  Five-day delay before the final version gets passed; I assume that the first labor-induced (I am so dreadfully sorry for that) rioting has been tentatively penciled in for Monday morning.

Moe Lane (“Breaking: Right-to-Work legislation passes Michigan State House.“)

It’s an interesting situation up there in Michigan: as the Detroit News rather sourly notes, the Republicans control the legislature and the governorship, while the extremely-Big Labor-friendly Proposal 2 went down in flames (58/42, not that the Detroit News wanted to mention that statistic).  This opens up the possibility of right-to-work legislation being introduced in either the current or the next state legislative turn; it also opens up the virtual certainty of a Big Labor response that will make the Wisconsin recall meltdown look like… well, I was going to write ‘a petulant, foot-stamping, and ultimately impotent temper tantrum conducted by spoiled brats with no conception of how the world really works,’ except that that was what the Wisconsin recall meltdown really was.  Anyway, it’ll be worse in Michigan.  To the point where things may start actually be set on fire.

But does it matter?  …Maybe not.  Consider the chart below:

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Short version: some California chain selling men’s clothing is calling itself “Unionmade” when it’s not particularly featuring stuff made by unions, and the AFL-CIO is getting shirty about it.  But here’s the point/counterpoint kicker:

“We sell really beautiful well-made products. Products I’ve always liked,” [Unionmade founder Todd] Barket told me. “Our clothing is honest and straightforward. Everything has a reason for being there. Good design. High quality. Not too tricky. Any guy can walk in and understand what we’re presenting. Everything is really understandable.”

[snip]

…only about three to five percent of the items sold at Unionmade are union-made.

Translation: union-made products are pretty much crap quality these days.  I think that the AFL-CIO should probably worry about THAT more.

Moe Lane

The interesting bit in this article on union pushback against the new movie Won’t Back Down is not this one…

In real life, Parents Across America, an advocacy group which has received union funding, has launched a “fight Hollywood” campaign asking members to contact entertainers at all involved with the film or even a summer concert to kick it off. The intent, according to its website, which lists phone numbers and emails of agents and publicists, is to brand the film as a “feel bad, not feel good” movie. On their list: Davis and Gyllenhaal, plus Meryl Streep, Morgan Freeman, Jack Black, the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine and Josh Groban.

…it’s this one: (more…)

(H/T: @davidhauptmann) There’s a saying: If you’re playing poker and you haven’t figured out within the first half-hour who the sucker is, you’re the sucker.  Private sector union leadership is not quite yet at the point of realizing this: their comments and complaints about the White House’s decision to ‘delay’ the Keystone ethical oil pipeline give off the unmistakable aroma of what is really a quite shocking naivete.  Not to mention a darkly humorous naivete, as well: these poor people think that they matter.

But let me rip off the bandage.  Union leadership is going to stay solidly Democratic this election cycle, which means money is going to continue to flow to the Democrats.  That’s all that matters.  Luddite Greenies are significantly more shaky in their support this go-round: that makes them more important to this administration.  That is likewise the end of the story.  And since we already know that Obama’s planning to write off working class white voters, the question now becomes: why is anybody really surprised that this is happening? (more…)

George Will visits the wreckage-strewn battlefield where Wisconsin progressives launched their desperate counter-attack against the forces of reform, and finds a certain grim satisfaction there.  To refresh people’s memories: Wisconsin progressives’ refusal to accept the widespread repudiation of the Democratic party in Wisconsin in 2010 (loss of the state legislature, two Congressional seats lost, progressive icon US Senator Russ Feingold handily if not contemptuously defeated by Ron Johnson, loss of the executive branch) led them to desperate attempts to retroactively rewrite reality to make The Bad Thing never happen.  While they (and their Big Labor manipulators) were able to force Wisconsin Democrats to go along with a hapless (and futile) fight over collective bargaining reform, attempts to create change via popular outrage failed, largely because Wisconsin progressives failed to create any actual permanent outrage outside of their rather narrow sub-demographics*.  Reform measures thus passed, much to the impotent rage of its enemies.

We’ll have George take it from here:

Having failed to prevent enactment of the Walker agenda voters had endorsed, unions and their progressive allies tried to recall six Republican senators. If three had been recalled, Democrats would have controlled the Senate, and other governors and state legislators would have been warned not to challenge unions. Fueled by many millions of dollars from national unions and sympathizers, progressives proved, redundantly, the limited utility of money when backing a bankrupt agenda: Only two Republicans were recalled — one was in a heavily Democratic district, the other is a married man playing house with a young girlfriend. Progressives also failed to defeat a Supreme Court justice.

An especially vociferous progressive group calls itself “We Are Wisconsin.” Evidently not.

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Background on this: the SEIU was forced to cough up a copy of its “Contract Campaign Manual” as part of a court case – and it’s an interesting little document.  The whole thing reads, as F. Vincent Vernuccio notes in the Washington Times, as a step-by-step checklist on how to manipulate… just about everything, really… in the course of forcing favorable negotiation terms.  Mostly because that’s what it actually is.

Lots of people are going to concentrate on passages like this:

Union members sometimes must act in the tradition of Dr. Marin Luther King and Mohatma Gandhi and disobey laws which are used to enforce injustice against working people.

or

It may be a violation of blackmail and extortion laws to threaten management officials with release of ‘dirt’ about them if they don’t settle a contract. But there is no law against union members who are angry at their employer deciding to uncover and publicize factual information about individual managers.

…as they should, frankly.  But looking at the document itself tells you something interesting about SEIU: it apparently hasn’t had an original thought in its collective head since, I don’t know, about 1985 or so*. (more…)

Oh, that awful Scott Walker and his awful union reform law. It’s been devastating; I mean, look at just one school district affected by the Republican-passed law! The Kaukauna School District was already laboring under a $400,000 deficit; now, ‘thanks’ to Scott Walker and the Republican party, they’re now stuck with a $1,500,000 surplus! That means more work for the hiring department! That means that they’re going to have to gut the average class size!  That means that the school district will probably now be able to get away with instituting the hideously unfair program of… merit pay!

Yes, I’m being sarcastic; this is actually great news.  Most of the savings are taking place from teachers facing a slight increase in their contributions to their health care (still well below the average private sector contribution, mind you) and the institution of a modest contribution to their pension funds. They’ve also had their work week bumped up – to forty hours – and they’re up to six out of seven periods teaching a day, instead of five.  Yes, this kind of fiddling was what Big Labor in Wisconsin went to the wall to to prevent.  Well, that and monopoly pricing: (more…)

“We are not supposed to use school email, but… I don’t frankly care.*”

Before we go any further, let’s establish something right now.  As this complaint from the WI GOP shows (see more here), Shelly Moore was well aware that she was not supposed to be using her school account to coordinate and encourage both the Big Labor protests earlier in the year and recall efforts against Wisconsin Senators (particularly since she ended up being the Democratic candidate opposing State Senator Sheila Harsdorf).  This cannot be contested.  Shelly Moore herself admitted as such… in a work email:

Shelly Moore just didn’t care. That’s not a bowdlerization: she said, explicitly, “I don’t frankly care.”  Despite the fact that her activities violate an ethical pledge that Moore signed when she started working as a public school teacher.  Despite the fact that there are good and valid reasons why public sector employees must not give even the appearance of impropriety when it comes to separating out their private and public activities - let alone now, when Moore was in fact acting improperly.  Despite the fact that the state of Wisconsin gave her that email account in order to do her job, which was not “coordinate union- and Democrat-backed protests against the state government – while on the public dime.”  And despite the fact that Shelly Moore is in a position to personally profit quite nicely from all of these activities, given that she’s a candidate for political office now.  Nope.  None of these considerations matter.

Because Shelly Moore just doesn’t care.

Sheila Harsdorf for re-election to Wisconsin State Senate.  Unless, of course, you just don’t care, either.

Moe Lane (crosspost)
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The bad news: she didn’t realize that she was calling members of her own party ‘anti-woman’ before she started screaming The Weekly Standard‘s John McCormack about how people who voted to defund Planned Parenthood are anti-woman!

TWS: But there were eleven [correction: ten] Democrats who voted against funding for Planned Parenthood, so are those eleven Democrats anti-woman?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: No, they’re not, because if you, when I declare someone, when I make a broad statement like that, I look at the balance of somebody’s–where their priorities are, the balance of their record. And so one individual isolated vote here and there does not make you anti-woman.

TWS: So what are the broader votes that make those Democrats who voted on those same issues–on Planned Parenthood on H.R. 3–what makes them not anti-woman?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: I don’t think there are any Democrats.

TWS: Eleven.

Note that Debbie Wasserman Schultz happens to be the Deputy Minority Whip; I was unaware that the position was a sinecure.  Or that it causes traumatic memory loss among those who have been burdened by the job.  Or that the Democrats simply pick lying suckweasels for the position… actually, no: I was already aware of that one. (more…)

The bill in question is HB 1021, and it is designed to get government out of union’s business by: banning automatic dues collection for public sector unions; and requiring union leadership to get permission from individual members before using those dues for partisan politicking.  The bill passed 74-40, despite the rather strenuous objections of Big Labor: a similar bill (SB 830) is making its way through the Florida Senate.  The success of HB 1021 should help with the success of SB 830, which has been fought every step of the way, naturally; the Democratic-Big Labor governmental alliance has zero interest in seeing their profitable feedback cycle disrupted by the ability of mere workers to decide whether they like having their money go to keep one party in office.

Should the bill make it to the state Senate floor, it should pass relatively easily – both branches of the Florida legislature are solidly Republican.  In fact, they were like that before the last legislative elections… and that detail is something that I’d like to highlight, because it’s important.  Given that Florida is in fact a Right-to-Work state already, it may seem surprising that union reform is progressing even further in that state.  Well, there may be a reason for it, and that reason may be Wisconsin: specifically, the puerile, undemocratic, hooliganish, contemptuous, and generally infantile way that Democrats/Big Labor attempted to avoid dealing with the simple notion that elections have consequences.  The Left’s cheerleaders are currently ‘bragging’ – scare quotes because I’m not sure why anybody would be proud of the fact that they’re being vocal defenders of a political party’s deniable corruption slush fund – that their shrill, petulant extended whine against labor union reform in Wisconsin galvanized the Left nationwide.  That may or may not be true, but I can tell you one thing: it definitely galvanized the Right.

And, hey! – We control more state legislatures than you do!

Moe Lane (crosspost)

The Democratic party picked Labor Day weekend for their nominating convention in Charlotte, North Right-to-work Carolina?

Apparently.

Wow.  That’s the funniest damned thing that I’ve seen all day.

(pause)

Oh, well, it’s not like Big Labor doesn’t deserve the contempt shown to it by the Democrats.  I can’t respect people who won’t respect themselves, sorry.

Moe Lane