Unions

Not Establishment Press News: Two Large Unions' Deep Dissatisfaction W
February 2nd, 2014 2:26 PM
Over at the Associated Press's national site, there's a story about how "Some of the largest public labor unions in Illinois filed a long-awaited lawsuit Tuesday challenging the state's new pension reform law."
Given that it involves hundreds of thousands of workers, it's probably fair to say that the news deserves national attention. But how about another story which involves over 800,000…

AP's Hananel Weakly Covers Union's Threats Against USPS-Staples Retail
January 19th, 2014 10:29 AM
Presumed union member (the News Media Guild) and Associated Press reporter Sam Hananel's Sunday morning coverage of union threats against a pilot partnership between the U.S. Postal Service and Staples Inc. fails to deliver on at least three counts.
First, while noting that American Postal Workers Union (APWU) boycott threats ended a similar effort at Sears stores in the late-1980s, Hananel "…

Ed Schultz Lashes Out at Liberals for ‘Income Envy
December 13th, 2013 5:29 PM
Radio and TV blowhard Ed Schultz decided to take a break from his normal act of ranting against Republicans today by raging against some fellow liberals who had the temerity to criticize him and other MSNBC hosts for declining to publicly take the side of union members in a dispute they're having with the cable channel's parent company, NBC Universal.
Schultz, whose shtick is that he is just…

Covering Wal-Mart in DC, Media Don’t Question Claims of ‘Worker Ad
October 26th, 2013 6:57 PM
For the past several weeks, Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has been playing defense in the news media against “advocates for workers” who favor a “living wage bill.” That’s partly the result of shrewd marketing on the part of lawmakers who favor the legislation – who doesn’t favor a “living wage?” But it’s also because reporters do not typically question self-described “worker advocates”…

NPR Boosts California's SEIU-Assisted ObamaCare Enrollment
October 11th, 2013 6:38 PM
Sarah Varney's report on Friday's Morning Edition is just the latest example of NPR's one-sided coverage of the health care issue in general, and ObamaCare specifically. Varney spotlighted how California's government gave a local chapter of the SEIU – a major supporter of President Obama during his two presidential campaigns – $1 million to enroll people in the state's insurance exchange.…
Walter E. Williams Column: Racial Trade-offs
October 8th, 2013 6:49 PM
Trade-offs apply to our economic lives, as well as our political lives. That means getting more of one thing requires giving up something else. Let's look at some examples.
Black congressmen and black public officials in general, including Barack Obama, always side with teachers unions in their opposition to educational vouchers, tuition tax credits, charter schools and other measures that…

Ed Schultz Wants Unions Exempt from Obamacare
September 27th, 2013 7:20 PM
You'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger cheerleader in media for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, than Ed Schultz.
Hardly a day has passed in three years since the law was enacted that Schultz has not touted its magnificence on his radio show and cable program on MSNBC. Those familiar with Schultz's huff-and-puff shtick know that he's got another soft spot -- for…

Chris Hayes, Closet Cruz Fan? Latest 'Lean Forward' Promo Makes You W
September 27th, 2013 8:22 AM
Could Chris Hayes, the eggheady MSNBC host, be a secret admirer of conservative firebrand Ted Cruz? The question arises in light of Hayes' new "Lean Forward" promo.
In it, Hayes hails those with "the courage to look power in the eye and say 'no.'" Quick: in the current political context, who comes to mind? View the video after the jump.

At AP, Kenosha, Wis. Water Spouts Are More Important Than City's Teach
September 13th, 2013 11:18 PM
A 10:30 p.m. ET search on "Kenosha" at the national web site of the Associated Press returned one result. An unbylined story supposedly deserving of national coverage out of Kenosha, Wisconsin tells us that "Twin water spouts put on a spectacular show over Lake Michigan, near the Wisconsin shore." They were apparently unique because "two water spouts merged into one large one, then split." But…

NBC’s Chuck Todd: Bad PR To Blame For ObamaCare’s Unpopularity
September 12th, 2013 2:32 PM
President Obama’s signature health care law continues to lose support, but NBC’s Chuck Todd sees no problem with the law itself. On Thursday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, he chalked up the declining support to bad messaging by ObamaCare supporters.
Host Joe Scarborough announced that 57 percent of Americans now oppose most or all of the law, according to a recent CNN poll. In addition, the AFL-CIO…
AP Seems to Think that AFL-CIO Membership Expansion Involves One Group
September 11th, 2013 10:11 PM
A brief report from the AFL-CIO convention today by Sam Hananel at the Associated Press tells us two things about how the group headed by Richard Trumka plans to expand its membership rolls.
The first is that the group wants to add "non-union groups." The second is they wish to enroll "workers who aren't covered by a collective bargaining agreement." Hananel never specifically says that one…

Longshore Union Leaves AFL-CIO Over ObamaCare, Liberal Media Largely I
September 4th, 2013 12:50 AM
The AFL-CIO has just lost 40,000 of its most militant members, and it's not news at the Associated Press's national site (there is a regional AP story at the Seattle Times) or at the New York Times. It is getting virtually no other establishment press coverage (results at the link are primarily center-right blogs and similar outlets).
The departing members are those in the International…

Trumka Admits Unions Involved in Writing Obamacare; Press Yawns
September 3rd, 2013 9:34 AM
In a Thursday morning speech, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka told of how surprised how he was, in the words of Time's Alex Rogers at it Swampland blog, "that employers have reduced workers’ hours below 30-a-week to avoid an employer penalty scheduled to go into effect in 2015."
Here's another "surprise" from Rogers' report, at least for those who think that lawmakers sit alone and draw up 2,000-…

'Labor Organizer' Pretends That McDonald's Has 'Plenty of Money' to Ra
August 30th, 2013 10:57 AM
It must be nice to blithely talk about how you would spend somebody else's money without thinking through the consequences.
Kendall Fells, the organizing director of Fast Food Forward in New York, told Yahoo Finance's Bernice Napatch at its Daily Ticker site that "McDonald’s made $5.5 billion in profits and there’s plenty of money to pay the workers who work there and new hires without firing…