Cross-posted on LaborUnionReport.

An EFCA Update: The Latest Rumor…

We have not been hearing much about the job-destroying and hallucinogenically-named Employee Free Choice Act. However, given last Tuesday’s Democratic drubbing at the polls in NJ and VA, we know that unions and their allies on the Hill are getting a bit antsy (read desperate) to try to get their agenda passed before the mid-term elections in 2010.

On EFCA, as it’s been stalled in the Senate, rumor has it that there will be an attempt to do something…anything…after the first of the year.

While “anything” may be a watered-down version (i.e., “quickie elections,” baseball-style arbitration, equal-access, and punitive fines), or it could be the EFCA in its original form, the real reason unions and their cohorts are going to try for something after the first of the year is to see who’s with them and who’s against them. This way, with the help of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) and his help in developing labor’s ‘hit list,’ they’ll know who to target in the mid-terms.

Now, this might sound a bit like ‘extortion’ to laypeople (like us). But no one should dare call it ‘extortion.’ For ‘extortion’ really has no place in politics…And, stating the truth would be about as absurd in today’s political environs as laypeople calling political threats from union bosses ‘extortion.’

Labor Shorts #6: Exposing Union Bosses, One Skid Mark at a Time…

• Proud Propagandists: SEIU Leaked Memo Exposes Union Propaganda Techniques Used For Union Bailout Bill
• Angry in Arizona. As a strike deadline nears, UFCW-represented grocery workers in Arizona are upset with their union and picketed the UFCW offices in Phoenix…BUT…
• Grocery workers in Colorado want to strike. However, UFCW bosses quibble on constitutional language as member claims union is “playing games with our lives.”
• The SoCal Slaughter. In Washington, UFCW bosses’ bad memories of the 2004 SoCal strike that went kaput are causing some angst over granting a strike sanction.
• Tough Times for the UFCW Staff as one UFCW Local Threatens its Own Staff Union With Layoffs!
• Black and blue and purple too! With two alleged beatings over the last few months, we take a look at The SEIU and its Purple Pattern of Persuasion
• Don’t Mock Them! It may be hard to take unions seriously when one sees American Airlines’ flight attendants mocking a strike. [LMAO!]
• No Tips Today… Workers at the San Francisco’s Palace Hotel walked off the job this morning, taking to the streets with picket signs, drums and whistles.
• Bugging Becker… Eminent scholar Richard Epstein takes on NLRB nominee and SEIU radical Craig Becker, as well as the overly (and overtly) politicized National Labor Relations Board.
• What a MESS! The Teamsters are threatening to walk out on the mess hall at West Point, possibly leaving 4,000 cadets with nothing to eat.
• Dis-United Unions… The ongoing slug-fest between the union (formerly) known as UNITE-HERE and the SEIU-backed Workers United continues as laundry worker Carmen Padron says: “They should be organizing workers who don’t have a union, not harassing us.” [More here…]
• More Machinists to Lose Jobs as Hawker Beechcraft announces the closure of its Salina, Kansas plant–one of the two locations where the Machinists waged a bitter (and fatal) strike last year. The strike resulted in one fatality.
• A Disastrous Divorce or a Swimmingly Sweet Note? It all depends on one’s point of view of how good the now-locked out musicians of Broadway’s “Tony N’ Tina’s Wedding” played.
• The Last of the Mohicans? YRC bankruptcy may only be a matter of time as the last major Teamster trucking company continues to get creative in trying to save itself. If this latest effort fails, YRC’s bankruptcy may be imminent and the company will join a long, long list of failed Teamster trucking companies.
• Topping 34,000. In the last day or so, the total number of site visits to 1-888-NO-UNION.COM have topped 34,000. This is all through word of mouth, as the site (as a free resource for employees and their employers) grows in popularity.

The Coming Apocalypse? Nationalized Health Care…or Not.

Okay. So “apocalypse” may be a bit of a stretch (*see footnote).

However, despite being declared DOA in the Senate (and whether you like it or not), Nancy Pelosi and her minions passed a 1,990 page monster of a bill under the cover of darkness on Saturday night.

“There’s no doubt that this is the most liberal health care bill that’s ever going to be passed by the Congress,” said a senior Democratic aide who helped ram it through the House. “Everything after this is likely to be weaker.”

While union bosses, like CWA’s Larry Cohen gloat on the House’s passage of PelosiCare, others are not so keen on the idea of a government-run, nationalized health care debacle.

“If this health care bill becomes law, America, life as you have known it, freedom as you have exercised it and privacy as you have enjoyed it will cease to be,” says Judge Andrew Napolitano of the nearly 2,000 page freedom-ending monstrosity of a bill.

You can download all 1,990 pages here and sink into a recliner for a few hours, or you can view a partial breakdown of the bill on WSJ here.

And, if you’re into that “holding-your-representatives-accountable” thing, you can see how your representatives voted here.

• Footnote: A few of our readers rebel at our staunch promotion of individual liberty so, on occasion, we like to throw a bit of hyperbolic bluster their way to gauge their reactions. [Bro-hugs, dudes!]

Readers, that is our take on all that which is important on the union front.

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We hope that you have a productive and prosperous week.

Best wishes.

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