by Ivan Osorio
September 04, 2009 @ 6:32 pm
In a new poll, Gallup finds public support for organized labor at its lowest level since it began taking the survey.
Gallup finds organized labor taking a significant image hit in the past year. While 66% of Americans continue to believe unions are beneficial to their own members, a slight majority now say unions hurt the nation’s economy. More broadly, fewer than half of Americans — 48%, an all-time low — approve of labor unions, down from 59% a year ago.
These results…
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by Ivan Osorio
June 15, 2009 @ 5:06 pm
Detroit can astound even the most seasoned political cynic, and now it’s done it again. As the Detroit Free Press reports, the trustees of the city’s two public employee pension funds have been enjoying perks that even some CEOs would envy, apparently on the pensioners’ dime.
The trustees who oversee Detroit’s two public pensions, their lawyers and staff spent $380,000 over the past year circling the globe to attend conferences — often traveling in packs, with virtually no limitation on where…
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by Hans Bader
June 05, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
A federal appeals court has refused to block the Administration’s illegal auto bailout, which rips off taxpayers and pension funds to enrich the UAW union. The pension funds that challenged the bailout will now appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The bailout violates the federal TARP statute by diverting financial-system bailout funds to a takeover of the auto industry. And the government’s reorganization plan for Chrysler violates federal bankruptcy laws by ripping off lenders to give the company to the UAW union.
As I noted earlier, the Indiana…
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by Ivan Osorio
May 29, 2009 @ 2:01 pm
The AFL-CIO has obscured its poor financial condition through “creative accounting,” says Machinists union President Tom Buffenbarger, reports Associated Press.
Tom Buffenbarger, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, said in a report that the labor federation obscured its financial difficulties heading into last year’s presidential election campaign, in which it backed Democrat Barack Obama. Net assets of the 11 million-member AFL-CIO declined to a negative $2.3 million as of June 30, 2008, from a $66 million surplus…
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by Hans Bader
May 22, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
The federal government poured billions of dollars into Chrysler, which then went bankrupt and merged with Fiat. But Chrysler may never revive, thanks to absurdly generous compensation for the company’s union employees. The Obama Administration has refused to cut union wages substantially, though it had no compunction about ripping off the pension funds and other lenders who loaned money to Chrysler to try to keep it afloat. Even union members seem surprised by how little they were asked to sacrifice.
Moderate Democrat Mickey Kaus, who reluctantly…
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by Hans Bader
May 21, 2009 @ 2:56 pm
Obama accused critics of his decision to give control of Chrysler to the United Auto Workers Union of being “speculators.” But it turns out that many of them are pension funds representing the interests of retirees, who are being fleeced to enrich the politically better-connected UAW.
“Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock revealed this week that his state’s police and teacher pension funds have lost millions of dollars in the Chrysler ‘restructuring.’ Indiana’s State Police Fund and Major Moves Construction Fund, which finances roads…
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