Lawsuit to stop UAW and AFSCME from collecting $1 million a year in dues from MI child care providers will proceed

Peggy Mashke tends to 12 children for 12 hours a day at her home, so she was surprised to get a letter welcoming her to the United Auto Workers union.

"I thought it was a joke," said Mashke, 50, of northern Michigan's Ogemaw County. "I work out of my home. I'm not an auto worker. How can I become a member of the UAW? I didn't get it."

Willing or not, Mashke and 40,000 other at-home providers are members of a labor partnership that represents people across Michigan who watch children from low-income families. Two unions receive 1.15 percent of the state subsidies granted to those providers, or more than $1 million a year.

Mashke has given up about $100 this year, and while she says it's not a huge amount of money, she's among a small group of home-based providers suing in federal court to break free from organized labor.

"It's the principle. It's my constitutional rights," she said.

The plaintiffs claim they were driven into the union and forced to support it financially even though they work at home, are hired by families and are not state employees. In some cases, they are even related to the children in their care.

In 2006, the UAW and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, were formally approved as partners in a union called Child Care Providers Together Michigan. Only 15 percent of the providers cast ballots, but 92 percent were in favor.

The lawsuit, filed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, claims that Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Democrat, and her administration cleared the way for the union in exchange for valuable political support from the UAW and AFSCME.

Michigan is one of at least 16 states where unions are mandatory representatives of personal-care workers, according to National Right to Work.

The state and the unions have defended the arrangement as the legal result of a process that was blessed by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission. They say there is no role for a federal judge to second-guess what has occurred.

Union attorney John West acknowledged it's a "novel approach" to bring home-based workers under the labor umbrella.

"This is really a pretty important issue," West said at a July 13 court hearing. "We have a problem that's been festering for a long time in a lot of states where you have a large group of generally poorly paid, often not-very-well-trained employees.

"To try and resolve this issue and improve the situation, unions in a number of states have put a lot of effort into trying to organize these people, successfully in many instances," he said.

On its website, The UAW says the partnership "gives a much-needed voice and power" to child care providers who have problems dealing with the state's bureaucracy.

"They might not get their check from the state. You wouldn't believe how much that happens," a UAW vice president, Cindy Estrada, told The Associated Press. "Or they don't know they can get an increase in their subsidy if they get more training. ... You wouldn't believe how much an extra 10 dollars a day can help."

And there are providers who say the union has been helpful. Elizabeth Hall, 61, who looks after three children at her home in suburban Detroit, said she was having trouble getting paid by the state but the UAW "cut a lot of corners and got right to the source. I was very elated."

"The UAW is very resourceful," Hall said. "If there's anything you're not aware of, they bring the information to us."

Robert Jonker, a federal judge in Grand Rapids, Mich., has ruled that the seven-month-old lawsuit can proceed, at least in the early stages. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Midland-based think tank that promotes free market capitalism, is suing in state court to stop the union on other grounds.

Mackinac Center lawyer Patrick Wright called it an "underhanded scheme."

"It's an interesting issue," said Gary Chaison, professor of industrial relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

"The idea is for unions like the UAW and AFSCME to have a fertile and expanding area to organize to offset the membership losses because of plant closings — in the case of the UAW — or state and city downsizing in the case of AFSCME," he said.

Steve Rattner: Rahm Emanuel gave UAW the Gettelfinger during talks about a government bailout of GM and Chrysler

Rahm Emanuel, former Democratic congressman and President Obama's chief of staff, gave the UAW the Gettelfinger during the GM and Chrysler rescue debate, according to former auto czar Steve Rattner's new book. This could get messy. Especially because there's more.

Huffington Post says Rattner's book "The Overhaul" will offer some unstinting takes on Obama's inner circle during the time of the bailouts.

Of course, this isn't the first time Emanuel's found himself in hot water over dropping an F-bomb on his political bedmates. But it's also not the only startling quote we've found in Rattner's book.

In addition to Emanuel's expression of the usually never-stated, but readily-shared opinion by many Democratic politicians of the usually Democratic-leaning union, the other early highlights include:

- Emanuel's spout about the UAW came during early debate on whether the administration should even try to rescue GM and Chrysler.

— In his first post-election talk with advisors about GM and Chrysler, Obama asked "Why can't they make a Corolla?"

— Rattner describes Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne as "one of our biggest headaches." He also describes a showdown between Marchionne and UAW President Ron Gettelfinger; when Marchionne lectured about the need for autoworkers to accept a "culture of poverty" instead of a "culture of entitlement," Gettelfinger fired back: "Why don't you come and sit with me and tell a seventy-five-year-old widow that she can't have surgery and that you killed her husband?"

— And Rattner defends his role in "ChoochGate," the scandal that forced him to resign from the Obama administration, despite other reports suggesting there's a lot of life left in the probe.

The revolution must be over: the UAW is selling its $33 million lakeside resort in northern Michigan

Legend has it that during a brutal contract bargaining session, Harry Bennett, Henry Ford's enforcer, attempted to break the tension by passing around snapshots taken during a visit to Maxon Lodge, a gorgeous hideaway in the woods of northern Michigan.

Walter Reuther, architect of the United Auto Workers' rise, looked over the photographs, tossed them on the table and said to Bennett: "Come the revolution, we'll own that place."

It was no idle threat. In 1967, flush with cash from a bulging membership, the UAW purchased the lodge and 1,000 acres on Black Lake.

And, as often happens with revolutionaries, the temptations of power were too strong to resist.

The UAW turned the lodge into a stunning and sprawling $33 million complex, adding another 200 acres and a $6 million golf course rated among the best 100 public courses in the nation.

Although it bills itself as an education center, it is actually a world-class resort, long a favorite spot for the union's leaders to unwind. Reuther, who made the place his personal retreat, died in a plane crash on his way to Black Lake in 1970. His ashes are scattered on the grounds.

But today a "For Sale" sign hangs from the resort, which has required more than $25 million in subsidies from the union's depleted treasury over the past five years. The UAW's membership has fallen to roughly 430,000, from a peak of 1.5 million in 1979.

Things so tough the UAW is selling its retreat

The United Auto Workers is hoping to sell its $33 million lakeside retreat in northern Michigan, long a symbol of the union's success but now a financial liability.

The UAW cited the recession and shrinking membership as reasons it is seeking a buyer for the Walter and May Reuther Family Education Center, located on 1,000 heavily forested acres near Onaway. The union bought the property in 1967.

The center, named for the union's iconic leader, was a jewel in which many UAW members took great pride. It is expected to go on the market yet this month.

The property includes the top-notch Black Lake Golf Club and the ashes of Reuther and his wife, who died along with four others when their small plane crashed en route to the property in 1970.

The center recently became a target of critics who grumbled that the UAW shouldn't keep such a luxury while hundreds of thousands of its members have lost their jobs or taken buyouts or early retirement as the domestic auto industry restructured.

The facility lost an estimated $23 million in the past five years and the UAW was forced to borrow to keep it afloat, according to filings with the U.S. Labor Department.

UAW "a disaster' for southeastern Michigan

"UAW has been a disaster for the people of southeastern Michigan. For decades it has been strangling the Big Three. Its “triumphs” have been pyrrhic victories. Yes, UAW members received fantastic compensation, if they have managed to keep their jobs.

Unfortunately, UAW, more than any other organization, has been responsible for hundreds of thousands of union jobs being vaporized by pricing them out of the market. Now, this parasitic outfit has killed the goose that laid their golden egg.

If the bankruptcy had gone through the usual legal channels, UAW could have been buried alongside the companies that it killed. Instead, Obama made UAW its partner in these two companies by sharing ownership with them."

http://www.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=35236

GM bankruptcy follows "decades of dumb decisions"

"The year was 1998, and the United Auto Workers was striking at two factories in Flint, Mich., that made components critical to every GM assembly plant in the country. The union was defending production quotas that workers could fill in five or six hours, after which they would get overtime pay or just, you know, go home.

Most strikes are forbidden during the life of a labor contract, so to provide legal cover the union started filing grievances. GM lawyers contended the walkouts violated the contract anyway and drafted a lawsuit -- the first by the company against the UAW in more than 60 years. But GM's labor-relations department freaked out because the lawsuit would antagonize the union.

Just think about that. The union had shut down virtually all of GM, costing the company and its shareholders billions of dollars, and yet the company's labor negotiators were afraid of giving offense. After heated internal arguments, the suit was filed and GM seemed on the verge of winning. But the company settled just before the judge ruled.

UAW members marched victoriously through downtown Flint. GM executives who advocated a tougher stand got pushed out of the company.

The picture of a heedless union and a feckless management says a lot about what went wrong at GM. There were many more mistakes, of course -- look-alike cars, lapses in quality, misguided acquisitions, and betting on big SUVs just before gas prices soared. They were all born of a uniquely insular corporate culture."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124389995447074461.html

The UAW owns General Motors; with White House aid, Karl Marx's vision has been realized

My last all-American-made car was a 1976 Dodge Aspen. It ground up its own transmission three times. On one of those occasions we were driving toward grandmother's house, 250 miles away, for Christmas.

About 100 miles from our destination the shifter stopped working while the car was in the third of four gears. Stopping was no longer an option. By carefully adjusting my speed while approaching intersections and building up speed to climb hills I was able to navigate all of the obstacles and finish the trip.

But it was a white-knuckle journey that left me seethng with rage.

Years later, I told the story to an acquaintance who had spent his working career in Detriot auto plants, although he was not an auto worker. He told me that he had watched as line workers ate lunch, tossing their wrappings into gas tanks still lying open on the factory floor.

Later, those line workers would seal the two halves of a gas tank with the trash still inside. My acquaintance thought it was funny.

I no longer cared because I hadn't owned an American-made car for more than 20 years.

Now the perpetrators of the Dodge Aspen and dozens of other instant lemons, through the UAW, own General Motors. Does anyone, other than the United States government, think that's a good thing? Does anyone, other than the government, think that we've forgotten or forgiven the trash that was foisted on us over the years by the auto industry?

It was Honda, Toyota and other Japanese auto makers that forced General Motors and the other American car companies to mend their ways in the manufacturing plants. But that mending came about because the plants were run by managers who answered to executives of corporations engaged in competition for markets.

Who will the UAW answer to? A one-party government that regularly demonstrates contempt for free markets while building a statist system in which government allocates ownership of failed corporations instead of leaving those decisions to the bankruptcy system. That's how General Motors came to be owned by the UAW.

Some of us may shudder at the prospect of White House oversight. Air Force One, after all, just made a $329,000 flyover photo-op that sent New Yorkers scurrying for cover.

But Karl Marx would have nodded with approval, amazed at the eventual success of his 1848 screed that called on workers to overthrow their bosses and take control of the factories.

Even Marx, who thought big, would not have imagined that the White House would be a party to the fulfillment of his Communist Manifesto.