Kevin Hall, Examiner.com

Richard Trumpka and other Union Leaders are close to Obama

Unions spent a fortune helping Barack Obama get elected.  He owes them.  Now, they want their payoff.  Union leaders remind Obama of his debt to them on weekly basis.  The most frequent visitor to the Obama White House is Andy Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union.  Stern visited the White House 22 different times during his first nine months in office.   Richard Trumka, the new president of the AFL-CIO, has already visited at least eight times.

These men wield great power over the U.S. President.  They tell him what they need, and he delivers.  “We’re going to make sure that in every policy, every decision, we don’t lose sight of the folks that brought us to the dance,” Vice President Joe Biden told the AFL-CIO Executive Committee in March.  That promise has held true.

The $787 billion stimulus bill, which has failed miserably at stimulating the economy, was a union payoff. Obama issued an executive order tied to the bill that “strongly encourages” hiring union labor for all government contracts.  The bill also demands all construction contracts pay union wages.  Obama told us Porkulus would create jobs and keep unemployment below 8%.  It did not.  It rewarded unions, which make up only 12.5% of the workforce.

Other union payoffs include the auto company bailouts and cutting the D.C. school voucher program.  The United Steelworkers union demanded he impose a tariff of Chinese tire imports.  He complied.  The result?  Higher prices for U.S. consumers during terrible economic times.  The rest of the country be damned, as long as the unions are happy.

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By Don Loos, Big Government

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is defiant and combative

On Friday, 20 November 2009, The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation (Foundation) decided enough was enough and filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court demanding that they compel the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to comply with the Foundation’s April 6th Freedom of information Act (FOIA) request.
The Foundation’s FOIA requested:

Records from communications and recorded events where specified Obama appointees and Big Labor official were present
Lists of lawsuits involving the Department of Labor and Deborah Greenfield within the past eight years.

List of any gifts received by Solis in the past 5 years from Big Labor or its officials

Specifically provide in detail (a) notes, (b) agreements, (c) communications, and (d) agendas related to the regulations related to the labor union and officer disclosure rules

Copies of phone logs

Copies of any notes or documents related to any enforcement of any labor laws and any outside groups such as labor unions, American Rights at Work, or ACORN

Obama’s Labor Department Ignores His Transparency Guidance
Remember January 21, 2009, when President Barack Obama proclaimed the new era of more open and transparent government began? This U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy memorandum is a good reminder:

On his first full day in office, January 21, 2009, President Obama issued a memorandum to the heads of all departments and agencies on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The President directed that FOIA “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails.” Moreover, the President instructed agencies that information should not be withheld merely because “public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.”

Agencies were directed to respond to requests “promptly and in a spirit of cooperation.”

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by Alex Sundby, CBS News

One day after announcing the resignation of his adviser on green jobs, President Obama will introduce his senior adviser on manufacturing.

CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller reports that Ron Bloom has traveled with Mr. Obama for his introduction at a manufacturing-friendly audience — the AFL-CIO’s annual Labor Day picnic in Cincinnati.

Bloom isn’t a stranger to unions, and this won’t be his first position in Washington. Knoller reports that Bloom will continue to serve as a senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s Auto Industry Task Force. Previously, Bloom served as a legal adviser to the president of the United Steelworkers Union.

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The most subservient and dependable constituency for the Democratic party and Barack Obama has been the unions that represent government workers such as American Federation of Government Employees (AFL-CIO).

Richard Trumpka Leader of AFL-CIO

Now Obama has repaid their worship by declaring a national emergency for the sole purpose of holding their pay down. Their unwavering support has been repaid with the back of his hand.

Full coverage is in today’s Wall Street Journal:

President Barack Obama blocked large pay raises slated for tens of thousands of federal employees Monday, overriding statutory formulas to hold pay increases to 2% in 2010.

Invoking the “national emergency” declared after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the president said in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that under pay formulas set in 1990, federal employees with pay levels set according to comparable local wages are set for average pay increases of 18.9%.

White House officials say the declaration was routine. Ever since Congress passed the Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act in 1990, presidents have been invoking the emergency clause to hold down pay increases due under the formula that mandates wages comparable to local pay levels.

That has created a yawning gulf. If Mr. Obama did nothing, the comparability formula would dictate a 16.5% pay increase, on top of the 2.4% cost of living increase.

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By JON HILSENRATH, Wall Street Journal

New Top Man for New York Fed, Denis Hughes

The Federal Reserve chose a labor leader to succeed a former Goldman Sachs executive as the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of New York’s private-sector board of directors.

Denis Hughes, president of the New York state branch of the AFL-CIO, had been serving as acting chairman of the New York Fed board since May, when Stephen Friedman stepped down from the position.

Mr. Friedman, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. chairman and adviser to President George W. Bush, had faced questions about his purchases of Goldman stock while serving on the New York Fed’s board.

The Fed decision formalizes Mr. Hughes’s role as chairman through the end of 2009. The Fed board in Washington will announce in November or December who will serve as chairman in 2010. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger was named deputy chairman, a position that Mr. Hughes previously held. Mr. Bollinger has been a New York Fed director since January 2007.

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By John Feehery, The Hill

Obama knows the Teamsters aren't corrupt he hangs with them

For those who expected that the Democrats would transform themselves into the most ethical group of politicians in history, I have got some news for you. Not gonna happen!

Further evidence of this fact came when the Labor Department moved to get rid of a regulation that was aimed at rooting out financial corruption of Big Labor.

The new Labor Department decided that there was no need to keep an eye on the unions, because, let’s face it, there is no corruption there. No, can’t find any corruption in the labor movement. Nothing to see here. Let’s just move on.

I am sure that the decision of the Obama administration had nothing to do with labor’s momentous efforts to buy the election for the Democrats, from money that came from millions of workers who can ill afford to give political contribution to politicians, but are forced to by their Big Labor bosses.