According to PDC filings, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees dumped just over $1 million into an independent ad buy starting this past Thursday. They did it out of their general fund rather than set up a local political action committee and it's unclear at this point whether they have registered with the PDC as an out-of-state PAC as would seem appropriate.
The ad they're running is not available online to my knowledge, but runs through the expected rigmarole of that Dino Rossi hates the unemployed, minimum wage workers, and kids...especially kids.
And yes, AFSCME is the national union for the state employees locals that are currently negotiating and/or waiting on raises from the Gregoire administration.
UPDATE: headline fixed.
Posted by Eric Earling at October 25, 2008 11:16 AM | Email ThisWell, in the meantime, the best thing to do is vote against whichever candidate the Government Employee Unions support.
Posted by: JMH on October 25, 2008 11:12 AMJuly 1st 2007...
State employees cashing in on their unions' new clout
Link:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003769828_unions01m.html
Government employees should not be allowed to unionize? Guess what? You don't have the muscle to stop them and you never will. Public employees are U.S. citizens, and have the same right of association that you do.
Since you're such a fringe leftist, however, the other side of the coin has absolutely zero interest to your ilk.
Posted by: Hinton on October 25, 2008 01:10 PMYou're about as credible to me as I am to you.
Hinton @ 5:
There have been several recent attempts to decertify public employee unions at the various levels of government. Some of them succeed in small bargaining units.
Most of them, however, fail because the vast majority of public employees appreciate what the union brings them.
In those cases, the majority gets to set the policy. Right now, unfortunately -- but not for long, thankfully -- we have a Republican president. We had our chance to elect a Democrat in 2004 and we fell short. I don't much like it, but I'm not whining that "my rights were violated."
When people are hired into a bargaining unit that has voted to be unionized, their rights are not violated either, any more than mine are because I have to endure a Republican president.
If I don't like it, I can mobilize to vote him out next time around, just as anti-union public employees can decertify if they don't like to be represented by a union.
But nobody's rights are violated. That's just more of your usual lunatic fringe BS. Save it for the other gullible mouth breathers.
Most of them, however, fail because the vast majority of public employees appreciate what the union brings them.
If unions are so beneficial, why do they fail to renegotiate a contract so often? They have 2-3 years and yet always seem to wait until the last minute, or later. For the millions of dollars that union members pay, you would think that they would get the most productive and competent negotiators in the world. But, they always seem to fail by needing a strike or binding arbitration.
We The People should have exclusive control over our government and the people that are in government, not the unions.
When people are hired into a bargaining unit that has voted to be unionized, their rights are not violated either, any more than mine are because I have to endure a Republican president.
This will go away when card check comes to be. They'll never get to vote again.
Posted by: SouthernRoots on October 25, 2008 02:35 PMThis is what I mean by lunatic fringe BS. Unions are there to enforce a contract between employees who they represent, and their employers. What the hell does that have to do with the Second Amendment?
And I guess employers never buy politicians, oh, no. Nonsense like this is why most people are tuning you lot right out.
Ivan, you're a damn fool. We're talking about public employee unions. The politicians are the bosses.
Unions exist to give workers leverage over a company. But that leverage has some inherent limits. For instance, if the union demands too much, the company goes out of business and nobody gets anything, so there are some incentives to be reasonable.
The government is not a company. It doesn't go out of business. The union can demand all it wants.
Besides, unions aren't needed for government work - government employees have a right that employees of private companies usually don't have, namely they get to vote for their bosses. If they think the person running the Department of Whatever is unfair, they can vote for a new Secretary of Whatever. There's no place for unions in government employment.
Posted by: JMH on October 25, 2008 02:57 PMYou Leftists all like the UN, right?
Forced union membership is considered a violation of Article 20 of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, protecting one's right to free association and declaring that "No one may be compelled to belong to an association."
Posted by: AudacityWatch.com on October 25, 2008 05:17 PMEarlier in this thread, you sniveled: "Public employees are U.S. citizens, and have the same right of association that you do."
There is ZERO "right of association" without an EQUAL right to "disassociation." And FORCING someone to join ANYTHING, reminiscent of the Nazi Party (Which was, come to think of it, the National Democratic Socialist Worker's Party, if memory serves) infringes on THEIR rights when it is a condition of employment. But, as you've shown, you don't give a rat's ass about anyone's "rights" but those of your fellow fringers.
If you do not have the right to NOT be a member of a union and have your wages extorted from you with a pipeline to the leftist democrats that unions front for, then any talk of "rights" is the usual crock the fringe-left nut jobs like Comrade ivan trot out whenever the mood suits them.
If ivan gave a damn about rights, (which he clearly doesn't) then he would be equally concerned about the rights of those who do not want to be held hostage by a rule requiring them to join a scumbag union as a condition of employment. (which he clearly doesn't.)
Comrade ivan's kind of "thinking" has resulted in costing the taxpayers of this state unnecessary millions, spent to delay pay raises to those smart enough to avoid working under the forced-labor conditions unions imposed; moronically, the leftist scum that delayed these pay raises cost the taxpayers more money in the cost of computer programming to unnecessarily implement the delay then the delay itself saved us.
More of that typically, leftist union scum political BS.
"Rights" are not situational. There is no double standard when it comes to rights. Leftist idiots would empower unions so they can extort campaign contributions from the members and buy the governor with campaign contributions to scam pay raises from Queen Chrissy, the Tribal Ho; all in the form of MANDATORY "dues," which typically wind up going to campaigns like that of the dolt who is our governor and that lying, empty-suited, anti-American racist bigot that ivan supports for president.
So, save your bullshit for a non-thinking, knuckle-dragging idiot that doesn't know better. Feel free to share it with the rest of your uberleftist fringe morons.
Posted by: Hinton on October 25, 2008 05:24 PMYou get drilled, and all you can come back with is more playground crap?
You're not holding up the side at all well, Comrade. The Politbureau Central Committee won't be pleased.
Posted by: Hinton on October 25, 2008 11:28 PMHinton, even though Washington is not a right to work state, no one can be forced to join a union -- your right of disassociation is already protected by law. You can be required to pay a fee for the union's bargaining services, but not for its political activities.
See: http://www.nrtw.org/a/a_1_s.htm
As for dead weight in government, I'm sure there is some -- likely way more than I'd like to see (FEMA under George Bush comes to mind). My personal experience also tells me there's a whole lot in the private sector. Generally, though, I'm not much for trashing a whole sector based on anecdotes, be they my own or gathered from friends and relatives.
Posted by: John on October 26, 2008 12:28 PMWhat the hell?? I assume most know that department heads are not chosen by election, but reading many of these posts, I'm not so sure . . ..
Posted by: John on October 26, 2008 01:31 PMBut, want to know something else? The guys and gals I worked with are all now retired and enjoying the good life with paid for houses.
Posted by: swatter on October 27, 2008 07:38 AMOh, you mean civil service bureaucrats? Yes, they are appointed and not elected. But don't they report to an elected official? If they don't do their job, wouldn't it be up to an elected official (or legislative body) to fire them?
Yes, it would. Of course, we saw what happened when a sitting Governor decided a department head wasn't doing his job in Alaska.
So, the leftist solution to a problem with entrenched management that is unresponsive to the "owners" is to entrench the rank-and-file with a union so they're unresponsive to the management. What could possibly go wrong?
Posted by: JMH on October 27, 2008 09:25 AM