Didn't Take Long: Unions Sue SC Gov Nikki Haley For What She MIGHT Do

Newly sworn-in South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley has not been in office even a week, and she is already getting sued by Big Labor:

Little more than a week after taking the oath of office, Gov. Nikki Haley has been sued by a trade union and the AFL-CIO, for saying the state would try to keep unions out of a new Boeing plant being built in North Charleston, next to Charleston International Airport.

The federal complaint from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and the South Carolina branch of the AFL-CIO was inspired by remarks Haley made in December when she nominated Catherine Templeton, a Charleston attorney, to head the state's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation.

Haley, a onetime protégé of scandal-plagued former Gov. Mark Sanford, played up Templeton's union-fighting background as an attorney with the Ogletree Deakins law firm and said she would help protect the state from unionization efforts, particularly at Boeing…..

In its 16-page complaint, the union accuses Haley and Templeton of pursuing an anti-union policy by "unlawfully utilizing 'increased regulatory scrutiny' of union activity and threats to immediately activate the 'punitive machinery' of state government against unions and against employees who wish to join or who advocate in favor of unions."

The union's Southern Territory Vice President Bob Martinez said in a statement: "Gov. Haley placed her hand on a Bible and swore to defend the Constitution of the United States. But her stated intention is to actively oppose workers in South Carolina who wish to exercise their legal right to join a union. There is nothing in the governor's oath of office that gives her the right to choose which laws to enforce and which to ignore."

Martinez continued: "By tasking Templeton to lead the fight against union organizing in South Carolina, and specifically against the IAM at the Boeing facility in North Charleston, Gov. Haley is requesting a state official to violate the very law she is charged with enforcing."

The union asks the court to order Haley and Templeton to remain neutral in matters concerning union activities.

But the new governor appears unbowed. Speaking with reporters after the complaint was filed, Haley said, "There's no secret I don't like the unions and that we are a right-to-work state.

"I will do everything I can to defend the fact we are a right-to-work state. We are pro-business by nature. I want us to continue to be pro-business. If they don't like what I said, I'm sorry, that's how I feel."

Granted, I’m not an expert on South Carolina law, but I’m hard pressed to find anything that Haley has actually done to warrant a civil suit. She hasn’t been in office long enough to do anything meaningful to hurt unions. All that she has done is spoken out against unions, expressed a desire to limit their influence, and hired a lawyer to look into the issue.

None of the above is grounds for a lawsuit. She has the first amendment right to say whatever she wants, and as governor, she has the right to hire anyone that she wants. Basically, she’s being sued for what she MIGHT do not what she has done, and they can’t do that. This lawsuit is way premature and should be promptly thrown out of court by the judge.

Arkansas: Bill Clinton Threw Unions Under the Bus While Campaigning For Lincoln

Welcome to the Twilight Zone:

Witness, if you will, Unions seem to have lost favor with some of the more high-profile Democrats. Bill Clinton even threw the unions under the bus in a stump speech for Blanche Lincoln that Lincoln turned into a campaign ad:

Here is an article from the Washington Post, it says “Some national unions made a decision a few months ago, that they wanted to make Senator Blanche Lincoln the quote “poster child” for what happens when a Democrat crosses them. This is about using you and manipulating your votes. If you want to be Arkansas’s advocate, vote for somebody who will fight for you. Vote for Blanche Lincoln.

According to Politico, this isn't just a case of a moderate Democrat trying to get elected in a red-state in a very Republican-friendly political climate. Democrats, such as Andrew Cuomo from New York, have joined in on the dog-pile of the unpopularity of the labor machine.

I believe that this started brewing ever since the near-collapse of the car industry in Detroit. Polls after the bailout of Detroit showed that almost around half of Americans blamed the unions, a close second to the corporate executives of the flailing companies. Many people have begun to see the unions for what they truly are: a parasite on that is slowly sapping the vitality out of our economy.

Transparency Takes Another Hit Under the Obama Administration: Officials Softens Union Transparency

So much for the most transparent administration ever:

That news comes courtesy of federal disclosure forms that unions file each year with the Department of Labor. The Bush Administration toughened the enforcement of those disclosure rules, but under pressure from unions the Obama Labor shop is slashing funding for such enforcement. Without such disclosure, workers wouldn't be able to see how their union chiefs are managing their mandatory dues money.

They are obviously trying to cover up for their little buddies in the unions. It looks like all of money the unions gave to the Obama campaign is starting to really pay off. After all, Obama and the Democrats don't want to bite the hand that feeds their campaign war chest.

Finally, Real Reason Why Unions Want Card Check: They're Broke After Election Contributions to Democrats

There is so much in this story that I didn't know where to start. I guess we'll start at the beginning because the first sentence really says it all:

'We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama," declared Andy Stern last month, and the president of the Service Employees International Union wasn't exaggerating. The SEIU and AFL-CIO have been spending so much on politics that they're going deeply into debt.

Why would they spend so much making sure that Democrats are elected that they are basically mortgaging their futures?

They want card check legislation passed. If it want enacted into law, it would free up unions to openly intimidate reluctant workers into signing up with them because there would no longer be a secret ballot. Unions would know exactly who doesn't want to join, and then, they could make them an offer that they couldn't refuse. Once signed up, they would be forced to pay dues to the unions. With more money, they would get more power to influence this country.

How bad is it for the unions?

Alarm is coming even from inside the AFL-CIO -- specifically, from Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, who sits on the AFL-CIO's finance committee. Bloomberg News reports that he is circulating a report claiming the AFL-CIO engaged in "creative accounting" to conceal financial difficulties heading into last year's Presidential election. As recently as 2000, the union consortium of 8.5 million members had a $45 million surplus. By June of last year it had $90.6 million in liabilities, or $2.3 million more than its $88.3 million in assets. "If we are not careful, insolvency may be right around the corner," Mr. Buffenbarger warned.

The unions did put their very existence on the line without expecting payback. First, Obama gave the UAW a significant amount of ownership in GM. Now, they want card check to be able expand their rolls and by extension their bank accounts through the dues received from the new coerced signees.

California: "Pink Friday" Protests State's "Poor Job of Planning."

Mar 14, 5:34 AM EDT
Calif. teachers see red over mass pink slips
By LISA LEFF Associated Press Writer

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- In a spring rite that has become as predictable as cherry blossoms in the nation's capital, public school employees throughout California warned of wrenching classroom cuts as local officials faced a deadline for issuing layoff notices to educators.

The state Department of Education estimates that preliminary pink slips will have been handed to 26,500 teachers by the Sunday cutoff - two-and-a-half times as many as were issued last year. Another 15,000 bus drivers, janitors, secretaries and administrators also were expected to receive the written warnings, said Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell.

Because of the state's less-than-rosy economic outlook, California's 1,000 K-12 school districts have been instructed to absorb more than $8 billion in funding cuts over the next year. To draw attention to the situation, teachers and parents wore pink clothes and waved pink protest signs for a day California's largest teachers' union dubbed "Pink Friday."

Rosemarie Ochoa, a fifth-grade teacher who's in her third year with the San Lorenzo Unified School District, said she was pulled out of class Monday by a district official bearing a pink slip.

"I smiled at her because I knew what she was there for," said Ochoa, 28, who was among 76 of the district's 640 teachers who got a notice this week. "Then I had to go back to my students and retain my composure."

But in another annual ritual, many, if not most, of the early layoff notices could end up being withdrawn by June, especially if the state can devote some of its federal stimulus money to education, officials said.

Six years ago, for example, all but 3,000 of the 20,000 teacher pink slips that went out statewide were rescinded.

O'Connell, who donned a pink tie for an appearance at Gianola's school Friday, allowed that tens of thousands of teachers were unlikely to be let go, but said that with so huge a budget gap to fill, schools would probably increase class sizes, reduce library hours and lose counselors.

Ochoa said officials in San Lorenzo, a working class suburb 15 miles east of San Francisco, told her that some of the cuts probably would be permanent as the district planned to increase primary grade class sizes to save money.

Another unknown is whether the state's financial picture will worsen in the months ahead. If voters do not approve the spending package that will be the subject of a special election in May, schools would have to cut even more deeply and be unable to avert mass layoffs, he said.

"The cuts we are experiencing in public education are debilitating. These cuts have real consequences for real students," he said.

O'Connell, a Democrat who is considering a run for governor next year, said the dispiriting cycle would continue until state officials find a long-term and reliable way to pay for schools.

W. Norton Grubb, the director of a principal training program at the University of California, Berkeley and the author of "The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity," agrees that years of uncertainty take their toll on schools even when layoffs do not come to pass.

"What is happening in these schools when the pink slips go out is everything stops, everyone is discouraged, everyone is busy worrying whether the money will come through, and all the efforts to get schools going basically grinds to a halt and remains ground to a halt for the rest of the spring," Grubb said. "A state that has these kind of crises year after year is really doing a poor job of planning."

Teachers, students and parents at Alhambra High School, located in the eastern Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra, were familiar with the Pink Friday routine from previous years. Some parents dropping off their children at school had pink paper taped to their car windows or honked to show their support for the 40 teachers who stood outside in pink wigs, bows and T-shirts.

Justin Li, a 17-year-old senior, photographed the protest for the school paper. The effects of the budget cuts have been noticeable, he said.

"We are seeing teachers being laid off year after year and we want to do something, because all the good teachers are leaving and more and more classes are being cut," Li said. "Teachers work too hard to lose their jobs."

The Alhambra district has seen a $6-million budget cut this school year and 38 teachers have received layoff notices, said Rosalyn Collier, vice president of the Alhambra Teachers Association.

"The cuts have left no wiggle room in the master schedule for the fall. Every class will be at 36 students and no less," said Kathleen Tar, an English teacher for 33 years. "So, if we have honors classes that do not meet 36, those classes will go away."

This week was the third time Steve Chambers, 47, a 5th-grade teacher at Allen At Steinbeck K-8 School in San Jose, has gotten a pink slip, but this is the first time that he has been truly worried. The economy is so bad everywhere, he has little confidence he would be able to get a teaching job elsewhere.

"It's irritating, the fact that I am an eight-year veteran and I could be out of a job for a year," said Chambers, who brought his class to listen to O'Connell's remarks.

Besides Chambers, Principal Nico Flores gave pink slips to four other teachers, one of his vice principals and a counselor. Flores said San Jose is better off than many school districts because it had a spending freeze and large reserve fund in place, but the topsy-turvy budget situation for schools makes him nervous.

"It's like crying wolf, crying wolf, and then suddenly the wolf is really coming and no one is listening," he said.

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My Thoughts

"A state that has these kind of crises year after year is really doing a poor job of planning."

Democrats and the unions have run California into the ground. They need to be protesting in from of the Democrats', the Governator's, and union offices.

Californians unite. You need to take their state back.