New York State Treasurer calls out unions, state Senate Democrats, and local politicians for the Amazon debacle

The New York State Treasurer has a devastating letter about the responsibility that the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), state Senate Democrats, and local politicians have for the Amazon debacle.

As just about everyone in this state, if not the country, knows by now, Amazon has terminated its plans to bring its second headquarters to New York State. It is a tremendous loss for New Yorkers and I hope that at a minimum, we understand the lessons learned. 

In my 23 years in the State Capitol, three as Budget Director, Amazon was the single greatest economic development opportunity we have had. Amazon chose New York and Virginia after a year-long national competition with 234 cities and states vying for the 25,000-40,000 jobs. For a sense of scale, the next largest economic development project the state has completed was for approximately 1,000 jobs. People have been asking me for the past week what killed the Amazon deal. There were several factors.  

First, some labor unions attempted to exploit Amazon's New York entry. The RWDSU Union was interested in organizing the Whole Foods grocery store workers, a subsidiary owned by Amazon, and they deployed several 'community based organizations' (which RWDSU funds) to oppose the Amazon transaction as negotiation leverage. It backfired. Initially, Whole Foods grocery stores had nothing to do with this transaction. It is a separate company. While Amazon is not a unionized workforce, Amazon had agreed to union construction and service worker jobs that would have provided 11,000 thousand union positions. 

New York State also has the most pro-worker legal protections of any state in the country. Organizing Amazon, or Whole Foods workers, or any company for that matter, is better pursued by allowing them to locate here and then making an effort to unionize the workers, rather than making unionization a bar to entrance. If New York only allows unionized companies to enter, our economy is unsustainable, and if one union becomes the enemy of other unions, the entire union movement - already in decline - is undermined and damaged. 

Second, some Queens politicians catered to minor, but vocal local political forces in opposition to the Amazon government incentives as 'corporate welfare.' Ironically, much of the visible 'local' opposition, which was happy to appear at press conferences and protest at City Council hearings during work hours, were actual organizers paid by one union: RWDSU. (If you are wondering if that is even legal, probably not). Even more ironic is these same elected officials all signed a letter of support for Amazon at the Long Island City location and in support of the application. They were all for it before Twitter convinced them to be against it. 

"While there is always localized opposition, in this case it was taken to a new level. The State Senate transferred decision-making authority to a local Senator, who, after first supporting the Amazon project, is now vociferously opposed to it, and even recommended appointing him to a State panel charged with approving the project's financing. Amazon assumed that the hostile appointment doomed the project. Of course the Governor would never accept a Senate nomination of an opponent to the project and the Governor told that to Amazon directly.  The relevant question for Amazon then became whether the Senate would appoint an alternative who would approve the project.  

As newspapers have reported, Amazon called the Senate Leader and asked if she would appoint an alternative appointee who would support the project.  The Senate would not commit to an alternative appointee supporting Amazon.  That was the death knell.  No rational company, or person for that matter, would assume the Senate would flip flop from appointing a staunch opponent of the project to appointing a supporter of the project.  It defies logic.  However, if that was their plan, Amazon needed a direct representation to that effect from the Senate.  It never came.  Indeed, to this day, the Senate has never said they would appoint a member who would support the project.    Companies assume rational, logical behavior and cannot spend months and millions of dollars on approvals if ultimately the road is a dead end. 

Furthermore, opposing Amazon was not even good politics, as the politicians have learned since Amazon pulled out. They are like the dog that caught the car. They are now desperately and incredibly trying to explain their actions. They cannot. They are trying to justify their flip-flopping on the issue with false accusations that it was a 'backroom deal.' Let's remember that as a condition of the competition, every bid was sealed to prevent governments from altering their bids to be more competitive. Empire State Development supported the numerous local applications in the state who wanted to bid for HQ2, but on the condition that the local elected officials and community supported it, and Long Island City was no exception. 

In working with New York City, we advanced Long Island City's application with the signed support of the area's local elected officials, including State Senator Mike Gianaris and New York City Councilman Jimmy Van Bramer. Both Gianaris and Van Bramer flip-flopped on this position after Long Island City was chosen, distorting the facts of the agreement and mischaracterizing the tax subsidies as 'a cash giveaway.' Now that Amazon has pulled out, local politicians are feeling the backlash from the project's previously silent supporters and are dissembling. Local senators' claims that their phone calls were not returned are particularly offensive, given that the local senator was the first person ESD President and CEO Howard Zemsky met with when we made the HQ2 announcement. I also remained in contact with him about the project as the State Budget Director, and he refused to sit on the community engagement board or even meet with Amazon representatives. Efforts were made to address legitimate concerns, all of which were ignored. . . .

The rest of the letter is available here.

Michigan's Right-to-work law slowly reducing unionization

Between 2013 and 2014, the number of workers represented by unions fell by 25,000, the number of union members fell by 48,000 (an 11% drop).  To put it differently, 96.4% of those covered by unions were previously members and now it is down to 92.7%.  Since the right-to-work law only applies when union contracts have to be renegotiated and most contracts last three years, the drop will continue for at least a while over time.  In addition, as more people leave the union, it will probably reduce the social pressure on others to remain in it.  After four or five years, we will probably have a much better measure of how much additional freedom workers in Michigan have gotten.

Media Matters resisting effort by staff to form union

To say that Media Matters vocally supports unions and union causes would be a bit of an understatement.  

Media Matters for America is apparently resisting an effort by Service Employees International Union Local 500 to unionize its staff. 

Last week, the union filed a representation petition with the National Labor Relations Board, indicating that the nonprofit media watchdog organization rejected an effort by the union to organize MMFA's staff through a Card Check election. . . . .

For some reason I suspect that if a conservative organization rejected such an effort at unionization, it would be something that they would put up more than a few scathing posts on. 

Important oral arguments before Supreme Court tomorrow, decision in Harris V. Quinn could dramatically help disabled and elderly

From The Hill newspaper:

Labor unions see the legal challenge as another attempt to weaken their influence and warn the disabled and elderly could pay a heavy price.  “This is what they are trying to do: weaken the union,” said Flora Johnson, executive chairwoman of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana. “Unions will survive but the people with disabilities and other medical disorders, they might never recover. That is why we are fighting.” The case hinges on a Supreme Court precedent that says government employees who work at union workplaces must pay fees for collective bargaining representation, but not for the union’s political activity. 

If the justices rule that home care workers in Illinois are independent contractors rather than state employees, that could allow workers to opt of union representation and cut back on unions' sway. . . .

It is actually pretty amazing that unions are seriously claiming that they are helping out the customers of their services.  Unions raise wages and generally lower quality.  They raise wages by restricting the number of people in the profession.  Quality declines as unionized workers are very difficult to fire.

So how do you think the disabled and the elderly would like lower costs and increased quality for the services that they need?

University of California at Berkeley math instructor dares to cross union picket line to teach class

From Inside Education:

What could make a professor more popular than calling off class to support a social movement? At the University of California at Berkeley, an instructor has seen his email message to students about not canceling class go viral -- with largely positive reactions and some criticism as well. 

Alexander Coward, a lecturer in mathematics, emailed his freshman calculus class last week to confirm that class would not be canceled -- despite a union protest that drew the support of many professors and graduate student instructors who did call off class. 

"Whatever the alleged injustices are that are being protested about tomorrow, it is clear that you are not responsible for those things, whatever they are, and I do not think you should be denied an education because of someone else’s fight that you are not responsible for,” he wrote in the email. 

Members of the university’s largest employee union, which represents the university's service, skilled craft and patient care workers, were joined by some faculty members, students and staff in protesting what they consider to be unsafe staffing levels at the University of California’s hospitals and campuses’ health care clinics, said Todd Stenhouse, a spokesman for the union, AFSCME 3299. . . .

There should be a split between public and private sector unions. Is it finally coming to the surface?

Unions such as the International Longshore and Warehouse Union have recently left the public sector union dominated AFL-CIO.  Even the AFL-CIO is acknowledging that Obamacare is forcing employers to change full-time jobs to part-time ones.  Bigger government and higher taxes might help public sector unions, but it will help put private sector unions out of business.  From the WSJ:

"One of the tectonic shifts in politics right now is the separation between some fiscal conservative Democrats and public-sector unions," says Pete Peterson, executive director of the Davenport Institute at Pepperdine University. Mr. Peterson points to battles in California cities between Democratic mayors and public labor groups over government budgets and worker benefits. . . .

Even the head of the AFL-CIO claims that Obamacare is forcing employers to cut back workers to just 29.5 hours of work

RICHARD TRUMKA, PRESIDENT AFL-CIO: The Affordable Care Act does need some modifications to it, because as it does right now, what's happening is, you have employers that the law says if you pay your, if your employees work 30 hours or more a week, you've got to give them healthcare. So they're restructuring their workforce to give workers 29 and a half hours so they don't have to provide them healthcare. They’re also doing some taxing to nonprofit plans to pay for for-profit plans.

It is surprising to see Trumka speak out against the current law.  Possibly the AFL-CIO is risking other unions leaving just as the International Longshore and Warehouse Union has parted ways with the AFL-CIO.

Unions are finally acknowledging Obama broke his promise that “nothing in this plan will require you to change your coverage or your doctor"

Are unions really that dumb that they couldn't realize that Obama had clearly broken his promise earlier that “nothing in this plan will require you to change your coverage or your doctor"?  Some one needs to ask the unions why they didn't realize this problem until now?  Did they think that the Obama wasn't serious about what he wanted?  Or that Democrats would radically rewrite the law?  From The Hill newspaper:

Labor unions are breaking with President Obama on ObamaCare.
Months after the president’s reelection, a variety of unions are publicly balking at how the administration plans to implement the landmark law. They warn that unless there are changes, the results could be catastrophic.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) — a 1.3 million-member labor group that twice endorsed Obama for president — is very worried about how the reform law will affect its members’ healthcare plans. Last month, the president of the United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers released a statement calling “for repeal or complete reform of the Affordable Care Act.”
UNITE HERE, a prominent hotel workers’ union, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are also pushing for changes.
In a new op-ed published in The Hill, UFCW President Joe Hansen homed in on the president’s speech at the 2009 AFL-CIO convention. Obama at the time said union members could keep their insurance under the law, but Hansen writes “that the president’s statement to labor in 2009 is simply not true for millions of workers.” . . .

Another place to cut government spending: Obama Labor Department spending millions to help establish unions worldwide

Why should our government be funding union activity in the US let alone the rest of the world?  From Fox News:

. . . The bureau for the past several years has purportedly made numerous awards -- worth millions of dollars -- to the United Nations, the Solidarity Center and other similar groups, “whose stated objective is to help establish labor unions in foreign countries," the senators said. 

They also said the bureau recently awarded a Colombian labor organization $1.5 million to help workers improve their collective bargaining rights and $2.2 million to the Solidarity Center, an AFL-CIO organization, to strengthen unions in Haiti and Peru. 

In addition, the bureau purportedly awarded a $1.5 million grant to an international development company in 2011 to assist labor unions in Vietnam engage in collective bargaining, the lawmakers said.  . . .

CNN's bias in interviews on Michigan's right-to-work debate?

The discussion below between a CNN host and Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa occurs about about 4:50 into the video.  At 25 seconds into the interview Hoffa uses inflammatory where he talks about a "Civil War," but the host doesn't call him on that.

Hoffa: . . . That said that places like Oklahoma with right-to-work would thrive.  When Oklahoma became right to work  If anything the wages went down in Oklahoma. 

CNN Host: Yah. 

Hoffa:  So it really doesn't work and that is just a spin from big business. 

CNN Host: No, no, I am just saying the fear.

Why would a CNN host have to agree so emphatically with Hoffa that right-to-work's benefits are just the spin of big business? In case the bias isn't obvious, here is an interview that CNN had with a supporter for right-to-work.



UPDATE: More on union threats:

"Just know one thing, Rick Snyder: You sign that bill, you won't get no rest.  We'll meet you on Geddes Road. We'll be at your daughter's soccer game. We'll visit you at your church. We'll be at your office."

Union forces Chrysler to rehire workers who fired for drinking on the job

From Fox News:

“While the company does not agree with the ultimate decision of the arbitrator, we respect the grievance procedure process as outlined in the collective bargaining  agreement and our relationship with the (United Auto Workers union),” the company said, according to MyFoxDetroit. “Unfortunately, the company was put in a very difficult position because of the way the story was investigated and ultimately revealed to the public. These employees from Jefferson North have been off work for more than two years. The time has come to put this situation behind us and resume our focus on building quality products that will firmly establish Chrysler Group's position in the marketplace."
The employees work at the Jefferson North Assembly Plant, which builds Jeep Cherokees.

Another interesting union story is available here.

Disgruntled union workers put their fight against Cablevision over the fight against cancer at a Times Square protest last night.
About 50 members of the Communications Workers of America Local 1109 disrupted a benefit for cancer research at the Hard Rock Cafe, carrying signs and blaring music as attendees streamed in.
Cablevision CEO James Dolan, whose rock band performed at the event, told The Post that the workers’ actions are “despicable.”
“They think being disruptive for their personal gain is more important than beating pancreatic cancer,” he said. “Their values are twisted. I’m surprised at the depth of their lowness. Everyone who deals with them should take note. It’s shameful.”
The benefit was expected to raise $1.75 million for the Lustgarten Foundation, which funds pancreatic-cancer research. . . . 

Right-to-work and job growth

Info on right-to-work states is available here.  Red State has put together job growth in states available here.  They could have been more complete showing the change for all states and not just 28.  Indiana just became a RTW state.

Unqualified public school teachers cheated on tests to get teaching jobs

It would be interesting to see if the teachers who cheated to get these jobs did as well career wise as those who didn't.  How could 60 some teachers being admitted over a 15 year period of time effect only  hundreds of students?  Surely, the number must be in the many thousands.  Take a high school teacher.  Even if the person only had three classes with 20 each per semester, that would come to a minimum of 120 students per year.  Just 10 high school teachers for only one year would be over 1,200 students.  Without trying very hard it seems as if you would easily be in the 5-digit range.  From Fox News:

. . . For 15 years, teachers in three Southern states paid Clarence Mumford Sr. -- himself a longtime educator -- to send someone else to take the tests in their place, authorities said. Each time, Mumford received a fee of between $1,500 and $3,000 to send one of his test ringers with fake identification to the Praxis exam. In return, his customers got a passing grade and began their careers as cheaters, according to federal prosecutors in Memphis. 

Authorities say the scheme affected hundreds -- if not thousands -- of public school students who ended up being taught by unqualified instructors.  

Mumford faces more than 60 fraud and conspiracy charges that claim he created fake driver's licenses with the information of a teacher or an aspiring teacher and attached the photograph of a test-taker.  . . . 

The hired-test takers went to testing centers, showed the proctor the fake license, and passed the certification exam, prosecutors say. Then, the aspiring teacher used the test score to secure a job with a public school district, the indictment alleges. . . .

Union political victories this November

From Fox News:

Aside from Obama’s re-election, there were few big victories for organized labor this year. 

Labor spent big to retain the governor’s mansion for Democrats in New Hampshire, thereby preventing the New England state from becoming the first in the region to ban compulsory union membership, as most southern states already do. 

In Michigan, unions got a split decision. While they succeeded in a ballot initiative to reverse a new law giving bankrupt cities that power to curb collective bargaining powers, the union-backed initiative to make collective bargaining part of the state constitution fell flat. 

By far the most important state issue for unions was Proposition 38 in California, where unions and Democratic allies spent an estimated $75 million to block a law that would have ended the practice where dues deducted from worker paychecks, including government workers, could be given to politicians and political causes. . . .

From the Detroit Free Press:

A calculated gamble by Michigan unions to enshrine collective bargaining rights in the state constitution ended Tuesday in a resounding defeat.  Voters rejected Proposal 2 about 60%-40%, based on results from Free Press/WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) indicator precincts.
It was a bad night for organized labor, which also saw the defeat of Proposal 4, the home health care initiative backed by the Service Employees International Union.   

The outcome of a third union-backed effort, Proposal 1, which would repeal the state's toughened emergency manager law, was too close to call late Tuesday. But the repeal effort was ahead slightly, based on indicator precincts.   

Unions and their supporters put about $35 million into the three ballot initiatives, based on the most recent financial filings with the Michigan Secretary of State. In turn, business-backed groups spent more than $30 million in opposition. . . .

Note: Proposal 1 did pass.

While Governor Snyder’s desired outcome was almost identical to reality, he lost on the proposal he believed most important to the future of Michigan. 

Proposal 1 asked if the Michigan public wanted to retain Public Act 4 of 2011. The law has also been termed “The Emergency Managers Law”, a piece of legislation that would appoint someone from the state to correct the financial disaster in Detroit municipalities, including schools. The appointed officer would have the power to dissolve existing collective bargaining agreements, alter pension agreements, and sell public assets in attempts to save three major Michigan cities from going bankrupt: Detroit, River Rouge, and Inkster. . . .  

The results have left union workers in the Detroit area feeling victorious. Yet, with this latest rejection to repair the financially deprived areas in Michigan, many others are left wondering what will save Detroit.

Unions are awfully short sighted on this.  If a city is bankrupt, these contracts will be dissolved in any case.

New York Times hypocrisy on unions?: Do as I say, not as I do

Chicago Folds on Teachers' Union demand on tying pay to evaluations

This is very disappointing.  The pay increases seem like a secondary issue to making sure that public school teachers have the right incentives.  The media reports on whether the pay increases will be 4% a year or the agreed to 3%, 2%, 2%, and 3%.  From the LA Times:

In one of the central disagreements of Emanuel’s proposed reforms, the union says it preserved so-called “step and lane” pay increases for teachers, in which teachers receive raises for each year of service. The district had hoped to tie teacher compensation to student scores on standardized tests; the union says only 30% of teachers’ evaluations will come from student test scores, the minimum under Illinois state law. . . .

In other words,  the unions gave up nothing.  The minimum agreement was what the union had to agree to under state law.

Will the media ever note that about 40% of public school teachers in Chicago send their kids to private schools?  Probably not.

UPDATE: A slightly different notion of what is in the contract is available from the Associated Press:

Emanuel, who did not personally negotiate the deal but monitored the talks through aides, has pushed hard for a contract that includes ratcheting up the percentage of evaluations based on student performance, to 35 percent within four years. The union contends that is unfair because it does not take into account outside factors that affect student performance such as poverty, violence and homelessness. . . .

Is this all that Chicago was asking for?  To go from 30 to 35% over four years?  I suppose that I thought that more was being asked for.

UPDATE: The increase in work time is trivial and still leaves Chicago teachers the best paid, least worked teachers around.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel did win a longer school day—to seven hours from five hours and 45 minutes. But the city had already agreed to a union demand to hire 500 additional new teachers to help fill the longer school day, and the average teacher will work a mere 15-20 minutes more per day.

UPDATE: From NRO

Emanuel got rolled by the CTU. Their “concessions” are laughable: Student achievement now accounts for 30 percent of teacher evaluations, but the State of Illinois already requires 25 percent. Teachers will receive raises of 3 percent, 2 percent, and 2 percent over the next three years, on top of automatic step-and-lane pay hikes that are already set in stone. And the school day will be longer, but teachers won’t be teaching any more hours; the city is required to hire hundreds more teachers to fill out the longer school days. All told, the deal will cost Chicago hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming years. This is a resounding defeat for Rahm Emanuel and the education reform movement. . . .

Obama remains silent on Public School teachers strike in Chicago

Obama refuses to oppose teacher union in Chicago.  Teachers strongly opposed evaluating teacher quality, but Obama couldn't even make a public statement disagreeing with that position.

Democrats in Sacramento killing a bill making it easier to fire public school teachers who are sexual predators

This is a horrible situation where even when a public school teacher gets caught doing unbelievable acts the teacher gets paid to simply quit his job. While on net positive, there are problems with this CNN story, particularly its emphasis on campaign finance.  It almost seems like they did this story because of the campaign finance angle.  But rather than the donations altering how these politicians voted, it might simply be that the unions gave money to those politicians who agreed with them.  Rather than focusing so heavily on how teachers' union donations killed the bill, they should have focused just on the real story: how a majority of Democrats in the state legislature along with public teacher unions supported killing the bill.  How the unions got the legislators to go along is mere speculation (speculation that I think is wrong).  But CNN managed to turn a bad story for teacher unions into a call for what liberals want: campaign finance regulation.

Here is a related discussion about public school teachers in NYC.  From the WSJ:

. . . In the last five years in New York City, 97 tenured teachers or school employees have been charged by the Department of Education with sexual misconduct. Among the charges substantiated by the city's special commissioner of investigation—that is, found to have sufficient merit that an arbitrator's full examination was justified—in the 2011-12 school year:
• An assistant principal at a Brooklyn high school made explicit sexual remarks to three different girls, including asking one of them if she would perform oral sex on him.
• A teacher in Queens had a sexual relationship with a 13-year old girl and sent her inappropriate messages through email and Facebook.
If this kind of behavior were happening in any adult workplace in America, there would be zero tolerance. Yet our public school children are defenseless.
Here's why. Under current New York law, an accusation is first vetted by an independent investigator. (In New York City, that's the special commissioner of investigation; elsewhere in the state, it can be an independent law firm or the local school superintendent.) Then the case goes before an employment arbitrator. The local teachers union and school district together choose the arbitrators, who in turn are paid up to $1,400 per day. And therein lies the problem.
For many arbitrators, their livelihood depends on pleasing the unions (whether the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, or other local unions). And the unions—believing that they are helping the cause of teachers by being weak on sexual predators—prefer suspensions and fines, and not dismissal, for teachers charged with inappropriate sexual conduct. The effects of this policy are mounting. . . .

Massive political expenditures by Public Teacher Unions

My own guess is that education vouchers would not only vastly improve the quality of education (improving it the most for those who are stuck in the worst schools, namely where the poor, minorities live), but it would also reduce unionization of teachers and reduce the political pressure that helps hurt the quality of education for those at the bottom of the economic ladder. This discussion explains why you would be missing much of the public unions' political activity if you only looked at their donations to politicians. From the WSJ:

What do the American Ireland Fund, the Rev. Al Sharpton and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network have in common?

All have received some of the more than $330 million that America's two largest teachers unions spent in the past five years on outside causes, political campaigns, lobbying and issue education.

The contributions—totaling more than $200 million from the National Education Association and more than $130 million from the American Federation of Teachers—were disclosed in annual reports that unions file with the Labor Department detailing their spending on political activities and advocacy work, as well as separate political-action-committee filings. . . .

Members' dues underwrite much of the unions' "political activities," but not donations to candidates, parties and PACs. Those are funded by voluntary contributions. The NEA, the largest teachers union, with about 3.2 million members, also has a super PAC, which can raise unlimited funds. That super PAC had more than $3 million in cash on hand the end of June. . . .

The lack of reality by the "Occupy Wall Street" movement

Here is a question: if this is an accurate view of the world, why is it that the US has the highest corporate income tax rate in the world?  Why do we have a rate that is about 5 percentage points higher than the next highest country?