We've been saying for years that unions and trial lawyers run the state of Illinois, along with union-funded politicians powered by union dues.  In retrospect, it's surprising that a pro-right to work Republican came so close to winning Illinois' governorship in 2012.  While union power is being balanced in Illinois' neighoring states like Wisconsin and Indiana, union power is being reasserted at the place where it all exploded 125 years ago.  

Illinois-based Rebel Pundit was on hand in May to document Chicago's celebration of the 1886 Haymarket Riot.  His videos document SEIU and other labor unions' close ties to a radical anti-American agenda during the two-day celebration of a workers' rights riot that ended with a pipe bomb killing eight policemen.

"The enemies of the working people are on attack in state houses all over America ..." Terence O'Sullivan, president of Laborers' International Union of America preached to union workers in Forest Park Illinois on May 1st.  

Meeting at a cemetery where union activists from the Chicago area have been buried over the years, a list of the union leaders, "some who were Communists, anarchists and unaffiliated progressives..." was made available to "be used in the classrooms."

According to a new Rasmussen report, 48 percent of those surveyed back Walker while 38 percent on unions' side. A near-majority believe that teachers, police officers and fire fighters should not be allowed to strike.

Even more striking, a Clarus Poll finds 64 percent of those surveyed believe that government employees should not be able to join labor unions.

My guess is that the longer that the teachers abandon their classrooms to demonstrate at Wisconsin's state capital in Madison and the longer that Democratic senators continue their self-imposed exile in Illinois to stymie Walker's Budget Repair bill, the higher those numbers will climb.

Here is something most people don’t know. When the Plastics Show or any big machinery show leaves Chicago; the very workers who Daley blames for the loss of the show, will be flown in by the show producer to work in the other venue. You might ask yourself, “If they bring labor from Chicago and have to provide them with room and board and mileage wouldn’t that make it more expensive for labor in the new venue?” Yes it would. Then why is labor being blamed?

First of all, it’s easy. Everyone can tell you a horror story about having to pay multiple hundreds of dollars to pay an electrician to just plug in an electrical plug. Do you know why that is by the way? The Electricians at McCormick place work for McPier. That means they work for the city and state not for the show producers. In 1967 McCormick place burnt down. The official report put the blame on faulty wiring. It was found that most of the electrical wiring for the booths did not follow electrical safety standards. The report brought changes to the Chicago Municipal Code based on the lessons learned from the McCormick Place Fire. That’s why only electricians are allowed to do the wiring at the hall and why it is the toughest standard to meet in the world.

I wanted to give some background so people could see that the building trades in Chicago are not the reason the shows are leaving. As a matter of fact the labor here is the best at putting huge shows in faster and with less damage and injury than anywhere else in the world. That’s why the Riggers and Carpenters and others will follow the show to the new venue.

Why then are the shows leaving? It’s the cost alright. It’s not the cost of labor it’s the cost of Chicago! It’s the cost of hotel rooms and food and taxies and parking. Look at the taxes the Mayor has imposed on these areas. It is the Mayor who could help to keep these trade shows here by lowering prices at McCormick place for parking and food.  The taxes on the cost of the booth and services have raised the costs significantly. It is the Democrat way of governing; stick it to the people with the money! That’s what costing Chicago these shows. Why don’t the labor leaders say something then?

The labor leaders have learned to do as they are told and keep their mouths shut. If the Mayor wants to make an example of your union or job the media will fall in line and you’ll be lucky to survive. This same thing happened in 1997; again the Mayor blamed labor for shows leaving and isolated two local unions, the Riggers and the Decorators.

After attacking the locals in the papers for a month Daley went to the General Assembly to void their contracts. The Mayor even hired former Republican Governor Jim Thompsons firm to lobby against the two small locals. It was the locals against all of the resources of the state, all they had to lobby with were their own members. They went to Springfield to lobby for their jobs. The General Assembly under Mike Madigan, a Democrat and “friend of labor” went along with the Mayor.

If that wasn’t enough and to show how much big labor is in the pocket of the Mayor, the AFL-CIO and Chicago Federation of Labor sided with Daley over these two small locals giving cover to the Democrats. The Riggers and Decorators lost the vote in the democratically controlled General Assembly by 36 votes. It was the Republican Senate, run by Pate Phillip that saved the jobs of the Journeyman workers. The very party the unions called anti working man saved the jobs of those trade union members by voting to not overturn the contract by one vote.

None of the other McCormick place or city unions missed the fact that the Mayor had almost wiped out these locals, and even though they won in Springfield the Riggers and Decorators did give the mayor their double time and the smaller work crews he was demanding. Every union at McCormick place has given concessions. The only entity that hasn’t is McPier! As I pointed out before McPier is the State and City and since both are controlled by Democrats that is the Mayor.

He has enclosed McCormick place and made it so it’s almost impossible to leave. Your booth space is miles from parking or taxi drop off areas. Once inside it’s like being at the airport, prices are through the roof, you have to buy everything inside where contracts are pay to play, everyone gets their cut. Everything is over priced and aimed at squeezing every dime out of exhibitors, attendees and now more and more the workers. The bigger McCormick Place gets the more control the city has over the costs and the more expensive it gets. So if we want to keep these shows here in Chicago Mr. Mayor CUT TAXES!

Make it a more exhibitor friendly place again. Cut the hotel, the entertainment and the restaurant taxes and instead of demeaning labor use it to our advantage. Advertise the fact that we have the most highly trained, best skilled, safest tradesmen; who have proven themselves time and time again. Show after show, they have proven that they can bring in and send out the largest shows in weight and area in the world. And that they can do it faster, safer with less damage than anyplace in the world. If you Mr. Mayor do that, these shows and more will come back.

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Jim Leahy is a Third Generation Machinery Mover (Rigger) for Riggers Local 136 and a regular correspondent for the Chicago Daily Observer

image Original McCormick Place, 1960

With productivity growth up an average of 2% annually in the past 30 years, but real (inflation-adjusted) median household income up only 0.3%, many say that the middle-class has been ripped-off.  But Gordon says that correcting a few basic statistical problems eliminates almost all the gap between these figures.

First, in the past generation, the number of people per household has declined, as has the number of hours per worker.  In other words, median household income has not kept pace with actual increases in hourly income on an individual basis.

Second, the 2% growth rate of productivity only refers to the private sector.  With 17% of the workforce in the government, where productivity growth is zero, economy-wide productivity (private plus public sector) has lagged behind.

Third, Gordon shows that the inflation measure the government uses to adjust incomes (the Consumer Price Index) is typically higher than the inflation measure used to adjust output for productivity calculations (the GDP deflator).

Correcting for these factors eliminates 90% of the gap between productivity and middle-class household incomes.

Gordon then goes on to show that, with one important exception, any skewing in the income distribution stopped in the early 1990s, maybe even earlier.  The reason other analysts have missed this is that they assume inflation is the same for every income group.  But inflation for people with lower incomes has been lower than inflation for everyone else.

Call it the Wal-Mart Effect.  There are certain kinds of items that make up a much larger share of the budget for the poor than for the middle class and upscale – clothing, for example.  And prices for these items have not increased as much as overall inflation.  There are also geographic differences.  Inflation has been higher where incomes are higher – that is on the East and West coasts versus the Heartland.  That said, we would not be surprised if the higher inflation we anticipate in the next few years – an inflation that may raise commodity prices relative to service prices – will send this process into reverse.

The exception about inequality, Gordon says, is that even though 99% of earners have stayed in the same economic position relative to each other, the top 1% of earners have increased their incomes relative to the other 99%.

But this is largely the result of more widespread use of performance-based pay systems in Corporate America.  In 1993, the Clinton Administration limited the deductibility of regular paychecks for highly-paid workers.  As a result, stock options became more ubiquitous and total pay rose with the market value of companies.  In other words, government prodding may have led to the situation, not the free market.

Obviously, in a democracy, inequality matters.  When people feel left behind, populism expands and freedom comes under attack.  In that sense, Gordon’s recent paper is important.  Political demagoguery about inequality just had a huge hurdle put in front of it by an academic economist that cannot be argued with on politics alone.

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Brian Wesbury is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer.  YOu can read more from Brian at FT Portfolios

image Death of General Gordon at Khartoum

The thuggery backfired. Bigtime.

The votes were counted today and despite Big Labor’s massive coffers, manpower, and out-of-state propaganda campaign, the unionization effort was an epic fail. Here’s an exclusive look at the breakdown:

SEIU – 293 votes
AFSCME – 220 votes
NO UNION – 1018 votes

Read more at Michelle Malkin

But Mayor Daley apparently has no such qualms, in part because he¹s been in the same boat as Providence Mayor David Cicilline.

Not only is Daley planning to cross a picket line to attend the mayor¹s meeting, but he¹s also sent a message to the White House that it¹s setting a “very bad precedent” by directing Vice President Joe Biden and more than 100 federal officials to stay away

More at the Sun-Times

Lake County United members, veterans of battles for affordable health care and housing, began soliciting support. In July ’07 ’08 they unveiled the plan at a town hall meeting at the Holy Family Catholic Church. About 900 people packed the pews.

The Reverend Melissa Earley took the microphone and cried, “I’m ready for a radical change in education in Waukegan. Are you ready?”

The crowd roared its assent.

Soon after, the Lake County Federation of Teachers cut its ties with Lake County United. A letter to the Waukegan school board from Deborah Phelps, president of the Federation of Teachers unit that represents office workers, leveled charges often made by charter foes.

Read More at the Chicago Reader

ed. note article is very long but well worth reading.

Last year, I wrote on these pages that I was opposed to this bill because it would eliminate secret ballots in union organizing elections. However, the bill has an additional feature that isn’t often mentioned but that is just as troublesome — compulsory arbitration.

This feature would give the government the power to step into labor disputes where employers and labor leaders cannot reach an agreement and compel both sides to accept a contract. Compulsory arbitration is bound to trigger the law of unintended consequences.

Read More at the Wall Street Journal

The unions are snuffing out jobs, denying children a decent education and bludgeoning taxpayers for more than their labors are worth, among other things, all the while justifying their selfishness in obsolete 19th century rhetoric.

In Chicago, their mercenary practices are again denying poverty stricken communities and low-income families of a chance for hundreds of jobs, a decent place to shop and neighborhood revitalization. Chicago’s organized labor cartel, repeating a scenario from a few years back, is gearing up to block a Wal-Mart “superstore” at an abandoned Ryerson Steel plant site in Chatham.

The store, backed by the local alderman, Howard Brookins (21st), is even better than the one that opened (over union objections) almost three years ago on the West Side, one that created 430 jobs, generated more than $13 million in sales taxes and has spawned fresh development nearby, including a drug store, banks, a couple of big box stores and theaters. As a “superstore,” the new South Side Wal-Mart would do as well, if not better. For years, community activists have complained about the way that the major grocery chains had abandoned the inner city; the superstore would bring back access and reasonable pricing for those same neighborhoods. Now, we’re supposed to believe that yesterday’s outrage is no longer a bad thing.

But the labor cartel here puts those benefits behind their its own selfish motives, pretending by some harebrained logic that they are doing the potential Wal-Mart employees a favor by keeping the retailer out of the city. Truth is, they are blocking the Wal-Mart because labor unions dominate other big grocery chains here, and like the despised corporate titans of the 19th century, are fighting to destroy any challenge to their fiefdom.

Mayor Richard M. Daley apparently has given up his fight for this citywide benefit, saying that the project, newly introduced into the City Council, doesn’t have the necessary votes, which is no surprise, considering the number of aldermen who take their directives from organized labor. By the way, Daley also regularly pays obeisance to labor by, for example, giving some city unions unheard-of 10-year contracts to ensure labor peace for his cherished 2016 Olympics.

To put it bluntly, organized labor’s fight for the “common man” is a thing of the past, as evidenced by its determination to strip the ordinary worker of the right to vote in secret for or against union representation. The secret ballot is one of democracy’s most cherished rights, but organized labor has no pretences about supporting that notion. In a recent Chicago Tribune op-ed column, I rebuked the cartel’s demand that a worker’s preference must be stated in the open, exposing him to pressures from all sides. All considerations about which side benefits are secondary, I said, to maintaining this fundamental right.

Organized labor, demonstrating its ability to organize, responded with the usual high-horse, we’re-for-the-common-man bunk in letters to the editor, here, here and here. They said that I, as a former union officer, should be ashamed for coming to the defense of the secret ballot because—dwell for a moment on the twisted logic here—it enables businesses to more easily intimidate workers into rejecting union representation. Yes, as a former union officer, I know of the many ways that ownership and management can intimidate workers, and I know of the historic and present importance of unions. But as a former union officer I also well know how workers can be intimidated by their peers and labor organizers into approving representation.

One letter writer said what businesses fear most from legislation that would squelch the secret ballot is “that a union will be formed under the radar.” If so, what unions fear most is that workers will use their own brains when choosing whether they want union representation.

But nothing says more about the union’s self-aggrandizement at the expense of others than the heavy clout they have applied to deny low-income and minority children the quality education that their parents believe they deserve. I refer, of course, to the Obama administration’s and congressional Democrats’ efforts to shut down Washington D.C.’s school voucher program. Despite the demonstrated success of the program that provides $7,500 vouchers to 1,700 children to attend private schools, Congress—genuflecting to the powerful teachers’ union—voted in March to phase out the program after the 2009-10 school year unless Congress and the D.C. City Council resuscitate it before then.

Education Sec. Arne Duncan, the former Chicago public schools chief who was passed off to the public as a reformer, apparently can’t wait until then to shut it down. According to the Wall Street Journal, he is preventing new scholarships from being awarded and rescinding scholarship offers that already were made to children for the next school year.

During the campaign, President Barack Obama once said that he would keep an open mind about school vouchers, but from him there is no leadership on the need to free black and minority children from the plantation that is Washington D.C. schools. Instead, Obama’s actions reveal where his heart is: his decision to send his own children to private schools. As do 44 percent of senators and 36 percent of congressmen, according to the Heritage Foundation. And yes, Duncan freely admits that his decision about where to live was dictated by where he would send his children to school, which is why he choose to live in Arlington, Va.

This would be funny, if the greed and hypocrisy of it all weren’t so blatant. This no longer is simply a case of John L. Lewis fighting the greedy barons. Organized labor has become more like the businesses they despise; not a public service, but a cartel created to serve their narrow, selfish interests. They, not I, should be ashamed.

Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI) representative Mark McKinnon and former United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Statewide Organizing Director Rian Wathen each began the teleconference with opening statements.

McKinnon spoke first, and reaffirmed the general belief that EFCA is a terrible bill for business and will have a detrimental effect on the creation of jobs. But there is more to dislike in this bill, such as the “even more problematic” federal arbitration section. When labor negotiations break down, as they invariably do, McKinnon told participants that labor’s hand is strengthened. If EFCA is made into law, a federal arbitrator will be appointed–a bureaucrat–it will be this person who makes the call on such issues as workplace conditions, vacation pay, and salaries. Some businesses, McKinnon cautions, “will simply close their doors and shut down” rather than have to deal with this kind of situation.

And as we all know, many businesses are only just getting by during this recession. They hardly need additional obstacles.

“Common sense officeholders,” McKinnon explained about EFCA, “including Democrats that support labor, have said this is a bridge way too far.”

Read More at Marathon Pundit