Unions had their time.  There's one group that should be the country's union now, leaving all others behind.  the ACLU.  Seems to be what the unions want anyway.

Not being a fan of the ACLU....in theory their goal is to uphold the constitution of the United States and protect the rights of ALL peoples, groups, organization, ethnic and religious freedoms. Now, although that is not a bad thing, they do seem to push the envelope at times.

Quoted from bumblethru

Not being a fan of the ACLU....in theory their goal is to uphold the constitution of the United States and protect the rights of ALL peoples, groups, organization, ethnic and religious freedoms. Now, although that is not a bad thing, they do seem to push the envelope at times.

Here's a question though, if they want to "protect the rights of ALL peoples, groups, organizations, ethnic and religions freedoms," then can anybody tell me the last European descended white heterosexual Christian male that the ACLU has represented and give me the results of this "representation?"

They just represent any choice, any time, any day, any one....If it's not against the 'written law' or if there is no law against the action/choice etc...then it is legal......

was it okay drive drunk back in the day??? of course not....the law is for the lawless(idiots).....

We WILL wallpaper ourselves into a corner with all kinds of laws/hate crime laws/thought crime laws etc.....welcome to 1984 and the days of Soma...oops...I mean zoloft/paxil/adderall/lunesta/prozac etc....

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I mean zoloft/paxil/adderall/lunesta/prozac etc....

Okay...there ya go with that 'nursey' talk again!! I guess these are sleeping pill and anit-depressents, huh? See, I get my nursing degree from TV ads!

Quoted from bumblethru

I mean zoloft/paxil/adderall/lunesta/prozac etc....

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Okay...there ya go with that 'nursey' talk again!! I guess these are sleeping pill and anit-depressents, huh? See, I get my nursing degree from TV ads!

These are all mind-altering drugs...and I wish I had some of them at times.  And oh yeah, Lunesta is a sleeping pill, if I remember right.

Well, I'm gonna start needing these pills pretty soon if something isn't done with Susan Savage and Ed Kosiur. I'll need some 'mind altering' drugs for myslef. Or better yet, perhaps Suzie and Eddy should start taking them. Perhaps they'd govern the people more effectively! I mean really, it couldn't hurt! OR maybe they are on these mind altering drugs already!!! Oh God, then there is no hope at all!!!

Well, you have to realize that they've been working on this big sex offendor thing for a long time.  You know what though?  I sat on a grand jury some time ago (can't even remember when it was, to be honest with you), but do you want to know what the biggest thing was we were dealing with?  Sex offendors.....Sorry, wrong answer.

Drugs.  Crack, Cocaine, Opiates, and all the fun stuff.  When Ronald Reagan was in the White House, we supposedly had the "War on Drugs."  Well, from what I saw there, I must really say, there IS one war in history that the US has lost, and it is exactly that "War on Drugs."  Especially in Schenectady County.  I should know, I grew up down the street (4 houses) from a house that was raided (I believe on more than 1 occasion) as a drug house, and after I moved out, my former next door neighbor was busted for dealing down in Schenectady somewhere.  What's the county done lately on THAT front?  From what I hear, the teachers in the schools know about it and who the dealers are, but they are either taking hush money on the side or just know better to keep their mouths shut before something happens.

Sorry, but I can't name the school or teacher for obvious reasons, but I know a teacher who sold pot in the back of his classroom. A parent called the school with their concern. This is what the parent was told...."If you carry this any further, the teacher's union will sue you for defamation of charactor".

Sweet, huh? >

Talk about intimidation, what the parent should have done was to call the police and let them investigate the problem and not even let the school or the teacher involved know until they had enough evidence to make an arrest.

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Unions still flex economic muscle
Labor stays strong in area despite national downturn
BY JAMES SCHLETT Gazette Reporter

Earlier this year, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 294 scored a new bargaining unit.
Consisting of only five members, the unit was not a huge win for the Teamsters. But it was somewhat peculiar, given their profession: Albany County district attorney investigators.
“It’s not an oddity to us. A lot of people think truckers when you say Teamsters,” said Teamsters Business Agent Paul Engel.
   Twenty-five years ago, the investigators would have seemed like atypical Teamsters material. What is an oddity, though, is how the Teamsters and other unions in the Capital Region have evolved and managed to keep their ranks fairly stable while membership numbers have plummeted nationwide.
   “At least for our union, [the environment] has improved over the past 10 or 20 years. Even the last 40 years,” said Arlea Igoe, the treasury-secretary of the Public Employees Federation, which represents 57,000 government workers statewide, including 18,000 in this region.
   In organized labor’s 1950s heyday, one out of three U.S. workers were union members. Now, that national rate is one out of eight, with half of those people being employed in the public sector. In this region, however, union membership this Labor Day is almost on par with what it was in the 1950s, with nearly one out of three workers carrying union cards.
   “We are an anomaly because of the state government having those two unions together with the public schools [union],” Deborah Kelly, a Siena College assistant professor of man- agement, said of the region’s major public sector unions: PEF, the Civil Service Employees Association and New York State United Teachers.
   It is largely because of those three unions — with an aggregate membership of 907,000 — that organized labor around Albany has bucked the national membership slump.
   In 2006, U.S. union membership totaled 12 percent of the work force, or 15.4 million, a drop of 326,000 from the previous year. The union membership rate has been steadily slipping from 20.1 percent in 1983, the earliest year for which comparable data are available, according to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.
   Meanwhile, the Capital Region’s unionized work force grew 23.3 percent since 1986 to 130,671 last year. More than two out of three of those union members — 69.7 percent — work in the public sector, according to statistics compiled by Florida State University in Tallahassee, Fla., and Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.
   “It might be the case for Albany, but not for anywhere else,” said Florida State economics professor David Macpherson.
BUFFALO FADES
   Not long ago, it was a different story. For decades, the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area reigned as upstate New York’s union capital. But since 1986, its membership density has declined from 33.3 percent to 23.2 percent.
   During the 1990s, Albany and Buffalo ran neck and neck with each other to be the state’s most densely unionized metropolitan area. But by 2003, Albany had pulled well ahead of Buffalo, with union membership rates of 31.2 percent and 25.3 percent, respectively, according to the Trinity and Florida State statistics.
   Nevertheless, at 132,252 members as of last year, the Buffalo area’s unionized work force is still 1.2 percent larger than the Capital Region’s.
   Buffalo’s massive manufacturing sector was what made it upstate’s No. 1 union town. But as economic tumult diminished its waterfront commerce, aerospace, electronics and steel industries, organized labor also suffered. Between 1969 and 2003 in the Buffalo area, manufacturing employment dropped from 180,000 to 88,000, according to a 2005 report by Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
   Although the Buffalo area has a significant public sector, it is significantly smaller than the Capital Region’s 107,336-strong government work force. The Albany area has sustained manufacturing losses on a scale similar to those in Buffalo, but its strong trade unions have kept its private sector growing.
SEVERAL FACTORS
   Organized labor’s abnormal robustness in the Capital Region can be attributed to three key factors, union and business leaders say.
   The first two reasons are the most obvious and the ones most lamented by the business lobby.
   First, there are organized labor’s deep roots in New York, a historically strong Democrat state. It is also a state with a legal framework that heavily favors public sector unions, most notably the 1967 Taylor Law, which forbids cuts to salary and benefits for government workers after a contract expires.
   Second, labor’s roots have also long been intertwined with state and local government workers.
   “We already had a head start,” said Mary Sullivan, executive vice president of the CSEA, which has 265,000 members statewide, including 40,000 in the Capital Region.
   The Teamsters, for example, have been active in the Albany area since 1903. At first, the union primarily represented private sector workers. But the Teamsters have increasingly diversified membership ranks by venturing deeper into the public sector.
   Along with representing the Albany County investigators, the union’s membership also includes county sheriff’s department supervisors and correctional workers. Yet the union maintains a private sector base, with its largest employer being United Parcel Service.
   At 2.3 million union members in 2006, California is the only state that surpasses New York in organized labor membership. New York last year had 2 million union members. But the work force in California totaled 14.5 million workers that year, nearly double New York’s 8.1 million, according to the Trinity and Florida State statistics.
   Those strong union membership rolls have led to some sweet paychecks for state and local government workers — an average of $52,129 annually in the Golden State and $51,445 in the Empire State in 2003, according to the Public Policy institute of New York State, a research and education organization affiliated with the Business Council of New York State.
   Those fat paychecks have contributed to the Capital Region’s economic prosperity — often at the expense of other upstate cities without the large public-sector job base.
‘ECONOMIC OASIS’
   “It’s very clear the Capital Region is almost always an economic oasis,” said Business Council spokesman Matthew Maguire.
   Albany has flourished because a significant amount of the tax funds raised to pay state workers are spent in the city and surrounding communities.
   A report by the Public Policy Institute found that New York in 2005 had the nation’s highest per-capita tax burden and the fourth-highest property tax burden. Those burdens have driven many businesses out of the state while dissuading others from entering it, the Business Council maintains.
   The third reason for the strength of organized labor in the region, labor leaders say, is the Capital District Area Labor Federation: the AFL-CIO’s regional arm based in Albany.
   The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations is the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, consisting of 55 national and international organized labor groups.
   The CDALF’s member unions represent a total of 120,000 workers in 11 counties. The federation wields an almost unprecedented amount of clout in terms of mobilizing and organizing workers and political activism. Only a handful of such organizations exist in the country.
   Facing slumping member rolls and economic pressures throughout the 1990s, the AFL-CIO moved to restructure its nationwide network. In select areas, the AFL-CIO placed its free-standing central labor councils under an umbrella group dubbed an area labor federation.
   Because of their independent nature and lack of coordination with each other, the councils had been ineffective at mobilizing and organizing. “It seriously was not working,” said Joe Fox, president of both PEF and CDALF.
   Under its New Alliance initiative, the AFL-CIO initially planned to roll out five New York-area labor federations by consolidating 25 central labor councils. In 2001, New York State AFL-CIO’s new president, Denis Hughes, volunteered Albany to host the nation’s first area labor federation. That move put local unions “on the same page politically” and strategically, Engel said.
   Through the federation, local unions have been able to throw their combined weight behind political candidates. Picketing and other rallying efforts are also more likely to pull large crowds from a spectrum of professions because of CDALF’s mobilization network.
   In 2005, a third of AFL-CIO’s members broke off from the national federation to form the dissident Change to Win, an affiliation of six unions including the Teamsters and Service Employees International Union. But in Albany, the area labor federation managed to keep its ranks largely intact because the local Teamsters and SEIU Local 1199 signed solidarity charters allowing them the remain involved in the CDALF.
   “A structure was established here that was not established elsewhere in the country, and that solidified organized labor,” said Fox.
SOME SETBACKS
   Strong member rolls and solidarity, however, can be deceiving when gauging the strength of organized labor. That point became abundantly clear to hundreds of Finch, Pruyn & Co. union workers, who lost their jobs at the Glens Falls paper mill in 2001 after going on strike over a contract dispute.
   Finch usurped the union by hiring more than 400 replacement workers. The foiled strike marked an instance when “the union gambled and lost” — a lesson area workers will likely not forget easily, said Kelly, the Siena professor.
   Despite the setbacks, Kelly categorized labor unions in the region as being “strong and healthy” — so much so that there isn’t a lot left for them to struggle to attain. Over the past century, unions have successfully pushed a plethora of workplace reforms through Congress and state legislatures, covering everything from safety issues to family medical leave.
   In February, New York unions exerted their political muscle when they secured an integral role in talks to reform the state workers’ compensation system — a longtime sticking issue in Albany.
   The landmark agreement wrought by Gov. Eliot Spitzer pleased unions by increasing benefits for injured workers for the first time in more than a decade. The business community liked the provision that will gradually reduce workers’ compensation employer costs.
   “We saw earlier this year, in a very positive way, an indication of labor’s strength and capabilities,” said Maguire, at the Business Council.
   A day after being elected governor in November, Spitzer convened a meeting with the leaders of the Business Council and AFLCIO to discuss the reform issue.
   That agreement has warmed the once-frosty relations between organized labor and business. Maguire said further progress might be made on other sticky issues in Albany, such as health care and employer liability reforms.
   “Right now, we’re focusing on a glass half full,” he said.
   Organized labor’s progress outside politics has been less swift, especially in terms of organizing. Unions’ repeated failed attempts to organize at Albany Medical Center and Price Chopper call into question workers’ confidence in organized labor and its potential for growth, Kelly said.
   “The companies are fighting the new unions tooth and nail,” said Kelly.
ELLIS CAMPAIGN
   Engel said one of area unions’ chief tasks is now “finding people who aren’t represented.” Many of those workers might be in the service and health care sectors.
   At the CDALF, Fox said hospital workers are severely underrepresented in the Capital Region. Ellis Hospital in Schenectady houses the region’s only unionized hospital work force, consisting of 450 nurses represented by the New York State Nurses Association.
   For the past 18 months, the International Union of Electronic Workers/Communication Workers of America Local 301 has been attempting to expand into Ellis. The Schenectady union, which primarily represents General Electric Co. workers, wants to cover about 500 operating room technicians, housingkeeping staff and X-ray workers.
   “The truth of the matter is we haven’t stopped [organizing at Ellis] yet. It’s a slow process,” said IUE/CWA Local 301 Business Manager Carmen DePoala.
   Labor leaders say unions are needed now more than ever, especially as workers’ access to affordable health care gets squeezed by rising costs. But it remains unclear how much extra funding unions will be able to wring out of businesses for health care.
   Kelly said many employers have not reduced the amount they spend on employee health benefits, though it might seem like they have to workers. It is more a matter of the same level of funding buying less health care.
   “They can try [to increase health benefit spending], but in the end there is only so much money [businesses] can spend on labor,” said Kelly.
   In July, the United Auto Workers started contract talks with Detroit’s Big Three automobile makers, who have increasingly made it clear they are willing to cut workers and benefits to stay competitive globally.
BENEFITS A PRIORITY
   The UAW’s defense of generous health care benefits for active and retired auto workers is playing a pivotal role in the negotiations. Industry experts have said the UAW — the unofficial face of U.S. organized labor — is in for the “toughest contract talks in the union’s history.”
   “People are seeing right now the value of an organization that supports the middle class because right now no one else is supporting the middle class,” said Fox.
   Employers’ growing inclination to target health care benefits and pensions has NYSUT Vice President Maria Neira declaring that New Yorkers are in an “anti-union era.”
   When NYSUT — the state’s largest public union, with 585,000 members — meets with school administrators over teacher contracts, health care benefi ts almost always top the list of proposed cuts.
   However, Neira said NYSUT, which has 22,100 members in this region, has become increasingly more involved in issues beyond salaries and health care benefi ts. Compared to when Neira started teaching elementary school in East Harlem 28 years ago, she said, NYSUT devotes more energy to safety, environmental and professional development issues.
   “Now, union members expect us to go beyond the realm of bread and butter,” Neira said.

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More than two out of three of those union members — 69.7 percent — work in the public sector,

Yup...and we wonder why we are in the economic, pathetic shape we are in today. I know this could never happen, but in my opinion, I wish ALL unions should be banned. They have become a political vehicle that actually carries more political weight than the average taxpaying voter. Ya know, the ones like us who work in the private sectore to pay for these damn public sector, union jobs!

Unions just negotiate payscale and benefits.
Unions do nothing to keep jobs in this country.
The have negotiated businesses right out of the country.

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A bone for unionized construction workers

   Forget about the day off; New York’s unionized construction workers got their real Labor Day present last Tuesday, when Gov. Eliot Spitzer called a halt to the creation of new worker apprentice programs.
   While the move technically applies to all employers in all trades, it will mostly affect those who use non-union workers. Indirectly, though, it will also impact taxpayers who foot the bills for public works projects.
   As a result of the moratorium, non-union employers in the growing number of municipalities with laws requiring state-approved apprentice programs will be unable to bid on public projects — unless they already had an apprentice program in place.
   Such programs have typically been the domain of large, union employers, but when local governments (such as Schenectady’s a few years ago) started imposing the requirement on all contractors, many smaller ones who employed non-union workers began taking the necessary steps to comply.
   The rules imposed by the state Labor Department are quite burdensome, requiring, among other things, that employers administer programs away from their own premises. Still, they were viewed as a cost of doing business with public entities, and according to a statewide consortium of non-union contractors known as the Associated Builders and Contractors, roughly 100 contractors have instituted them in recent years. Now, unless Spitzer’s decree is only temporary, none of their brethren will be able to join in.
   The upshot, of course, will be reduced competition for public contracts; less incentive for qualified contractors to sharpen their pencils and submit cost-conscious bids; and (need we say it?) larger bills for taxpayers. Happy Labor Day.

  
  
    

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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
Spitzer kicks non-union
contractors

   Here’s a beauty.
   Do you remember a few years ago Schenectady and other localities began adopting a rule that in order for contractors to bid on public construction jobs they had to have apprentice programs? And not just apprentice programs, but apprentice programs approved by the state Labor Department, following the union model and based somewhere other than the contractor’s own premises?
   It was a way to make it diffi - cult for non-union contractors to bid on public jobs, and local governments went along with it, authorized to do so by the state, not out of any sense of fairness or any concern with training new workers but simply bowing to union power.
   In response, small non-union contractors endeavored to get their own apprentice programs approved, despite the bureaucratic hurdles, and some of them even succeeded. In fact quite a few succeeded — about 100 statewide, just from the Associated Builders and Contractors, which is a consortium of mostly non-union builders. Which meant that the requirement didn’t entirely have the desired effect. It didn’t entirely drive non-union shops out of public business. Some of them still managed to compete.
   So now Gov. Eliot Spitzer, a Democrat supported by and beholden to labor unions, has just
halted the recognition of new apprentice programs, which means if a contractor wants to bid on a public construction jobs he must still have an apprentice program, but he can no longer get one approved.
   A beautiful catch: You gotta have it, but you can’t get it!
   We are “suspending the development and approval of apprenticeship programs in all trades,” the governor announced the other day. “The addition of new participating employers to existing programs is also being suspended.”
   He made the announcement at a convention of the Long Island Federation of Labor, and though I wasn’t there, I’m sure it went over very well with the union officials.
   “This is the pay-off for all their support throughout the campaign,” said Scott Zylka, political affairs director for Associated Builders and Contractors, and I suppose it is. It certainly has nothing to do with the economic health of New York and nothing to do with fair competition.
   And please note that this amazingly brazen move goes well beyond the bogus Wicks Law reform, which was passed by the Assembly, is supported by the governor, but is stalled in the Senate. That non-reform would require that contractors have apprentice programs in place for three years before being allowed to bid on public works, meaning, it wouldn’t be enough that you jumped all the hurdles and got a union-type program approved by the state. After you got it approved you would still have to wait three years before you could build a school or a library.
   Or even more, because you would have to actually graduate some apprentices, not just have the training program in place, and since some of those programs last five years, you would have to wait that long. So that particular measure would be another way of locking up work for the trade unions, masquerading as reform of something else.
   The unilateral executive action by the governor leapfrogs that pokey little scam and leaves it far behind. Now you can’t get an apprenticeship program approved no matter what. Never mind waiting three years or five years.
   More clearly than anything it gives the lie to the propaganda we endured a few years ago, or at least I endured, when trade-union representatives and subservient local politicians were beating their breasts about the great importance of apprentice training and how vital it was to quality workmanship, economic growth, and the future of mankind.
   Now they don’t want it anymore. All finished. Why? Because non-union contractors were taking them up on it.
   What they do want is what I said they wanted all along: a monopoly on public construction work.
   No, wait! Not just public work after all. This bulletin just in from Long Island: The town of Oyster Bay passed a local law on Tuesday evening extending the apprenticeship requirement to private construction also. Specifically to commercial buildings or collections of commercial buildings totaling 100,000 square feet or more, meaning anything of any consequence in the private sector.
   You can’t do that kind of construction any longer in Oyster Bay unless you have an apprentice program, and of course, thanks to Gov. Spitzer, you can no longer get an apprentice program. You can do the work only if you already have one.
   This local law was pushed by — do you want to guess? — the carpenters’ union, the electrical workers union, the laborers union, the sheetmetal workers’ union.
   So maybe the governor’s suspension of new apprentice programs throughout the state is not the fi nal step. There’s still the Oyster Bay step. And then maybe there could be another step of flat-out prohibiting anyone from engaging in any construction work whatsoever unless a member of one of the trade unions.
   Becky Meinking, chapter president, Associated Builders and Contractors: “Every time in New York I think I’ve seen it all, then I see something new. It makes me wonder where we’re going to be in five years. As a taxpayer I fear for the future of the state.”
   Me too. After all, why do you think our local taxes are so high? Why do you think it costs so much to build schools and libraries and courthouses?
   And here I was, all set to give the governor credit for vetoing another silly and insulting labor-sponsored bill that had been slavishly passed by the Legislature, a bill that would have required licensing of all levels or workers who install fire sprinklers, which was an arcane matter designed to benefit no one but the trade unions.
   But forget that now. He didn’t give them that little gumball, but he gave them the store.