kicked off debate Thursday with a speech listing off a “litany of issues with unions,” including several run-ins that … involved racist comments by union members.

The senator promised to continue supporting “rank and file” union members, but added that “labor unions can’t expect carte blanche support anymore.”

The senator has a point here. The interests of the African American community and union leaders are not always aligned, and the rights of minorities are sometimes sacrificed for the good of the politically stronger labor movement.

Ironically, labor reforms such as paycheck protection are about protecting the rights of a minority from the will of a majority. Paycheck protection allows a worker to opt out of the campaign contributions and expenditures of a government labor union. Paycheck protection recognizes the fact that not everyone has the same political views as their union and that this difference of opinion should be respected.

The other labor reforms we’ve discussed, transparency and union elections, are also aimed at protecting a minority from the majority. Financial transparency would allow workers and taxpayers to see how government unions spend taxpayer-funded union dues. Union elections would give workers the chance to de-unionize their workplace every few years. All of these reforms make unions more responsive to all of their constituents, not just the majority. And all of these reforms lead to greater worker freedom.

The next time our elected officials want to take a stand on protecting minority rights, they might consider endorsing public policies that actually protect minority rights.

The post Did the Missouri Senate Sacrifice the Rights of Minorities for Union Executives? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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There are cases for both sides. Graduate students are Mizzou students working toward a post-graduate degree, such as a Master’s or PhD. Many graduate students also receive a stipend so they can focus on their scholarly duties. In addition, many grad students assist the university in teaching undergraduate students. If grad students are employees, this stipend is pay for the teaching assistance they provide.

If grad students successfully redefine themselves as employees, then they can unionize and collectively bargain. Through collective bargaining and the threat of collectively withholding labor, grad students might be able to force the university to pay them a larger stipend. If their effort is successful, this will be the first time that graduate students at a public university in Missouri have unionized.

Successful grad student unionization could turn out to be another headache for a university that’s already laying people off to cope with declining enrollment. This could affect everyone; Mizzou is a government institution, and taxpayers ultimately foot the bill.

The post Group of Mizzou Graduate Students Attempting to Unionize appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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In California, where unions such as SEIU and Unite Here successfully pushed through a $15-dollar minimum wage law, the very same unions are seeing a backlash after workers discover they’re left out of the deal. It turns out these unions also pushed through exemptions to the minimum wage for unionized workers. Now businesses have a choice of paying $15 an hour for a nonunion worker or about $10 an hour for a union worker. A clear incentive to buy union labor.

Needless to say, workers feel betrayed. Alicia Yale, 42, a waitress at a hotel in Los Angeles and a mother of two children, is critical of the union’s policy.

"Why is it more of a benefit to be in a union? The union isn't really doing anything for us," she told the LA Times. "It's completely upside-down. They want to pay us less than the minimum wage… We should get the raise just like everybody else does."

From a union executive’s position, advocating lower wages for union workers may make a lot of sense. True, your members get paid less, but if the end result is more union workers, that will translate to more union dues.

Here in Missouri, union money is still going to the $15 minimum wage campaign. One of their slogans is “$15 and a union.” Union workers who are part of their campaign might want to ask their union’s executives for some clarification: “Will I be cut out of this deal, like union members in California were?”

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As with any action from the Saint Louis city government, there are winners and losers. The obvious winner here is the land developer behind the NorthSide Regeneration project, which will get what amounts to a bailout with this deal. The city as a whole? Saint Louis will pay for the land it will turn over (at no charge) to the NGA. Because the NGA was already located in Saint Louis, the effect on the city economy will be minimal. The NGA may add more jobs, but nothing that one could expect to reverse Saint Louis’s long decline.

The families who will be forced out of their homes are the ones losing out. They face an uncertain future, and if the NGA’s decision is finalized, they’ll need to navigate the eminent domain process and find new places to live.

In Saint Louis, political officials seem to prefer looking for shortcuts to development and lack enthusiasm for pursuing the hard but boring path to civic success: low taxes, a level economic playing field, and quality essential services. Meanwhile, those without political connections or wealth are swept aside.

Will things ever change for this city?

The post Who Really Wins or Loses with NGA Deal? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas is taking a step in the right direction. The Kansas Senate just passed a bill that would give teachers the right to vote for their union on a regular basis. In most states, including Kansas and Missouri, once a union takes control of a group of public employees, such as teachers or firefighters, that union remains in power indefinitely. There is no election every two or four years whereby workers can hold their union accountable. If workers want to remove a union from power, they need to organize again and go through a difficult “decertification” process.

Some Missouri lawmakers have also explored the possibility of regular union elections for government workers. So far, these bills haven’t had a floor vote.

If individual employees of our public institutions are going to be forced to subsidize a union, we need to protect them from unaccountable union executives. Unions can force people to pay for their services on the theory that an individual’s rights can be curtailed for “workplace democracy.” So let’s ensure there’s democracy. Require unions to run for re-election every couple of years. This is how democracy works.

The post Supreme Court Decision Deals a Blow to Union Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The agreement between the city council and the fire fighters union awards the fire department over $8 million more than the amount outlined in the city’s five-year plan. Even Yael Abouhalkah of the Kansas City Star, normally sympathetic to Kansas City government, blasted the city council in a scathing opinion piece.

The fact that the union donated to the city’s pro-tax campaign the day after winning a favorable deal from the city illustrates a larger point about what can happen when government employees unionize. Government unions have the ability to work through both the political process and the collective bargaining process. By playing the processes off of each other, a government union can do quite well for itself.

When a union works the political process it influences, donates to, and campaigns for political officials. Then when it comes time to negotiate a union contract, the union may end up bargaining with a friendly party who owes his or her success, at least in part, to the union’s previous support. This is very different from a traditional labor negotiation where union leaders bargain with business managers in an attempt to capture a worker’s fair share of the profits. In government there is no profit. Revenues come from taxpayers.

Taxpayer advocates often liken politicians negotiating with unions to a fox guarding a henhouse.  And for good reason: Politicians get powerful and reliable support in the form of government unions; unions get better deals for their members, usually in the form of more tax money directed to government payrolls. Everybody wins but the taxpayer.

To some readers this may just be how government works. But why does it have to work this way? 

The post KC Fire Union Donates to Pro-Tax Campaign the Day after Winning Deal appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

McKee is asking the city for handouts to complete this new project: at least $5 million in new market tax credits. To date, the city has authorized McKee to take almost $400 million dollars in TIF handouts. McKee’s promises for the north side go back at least to 2009 and include plans to build a hospital, office buildings, retail stores, and homes.

Rather than start any of these projects, McKee’s regeneration project has stalled and held out for more and more tax incentives. In the past two years the regeneration project has been delinquent paying taxes and has had financial problems resulting in foreclosures.

Shelia Rendon, a homeowner who lives in the community Paul McKee has made so many promises to, questions why the city continues to work with Paul McKee. “The community lost faith in him a long time ago,” she told me. Sheila would like to see development in her neighborhood, but not at the expense of the people who already live there.

Unfortunately, the only north side development project associated with McKee that seems to have made any progress, relocating National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) to north St. Louis, would come at the expense of the existing community. Relocating the NGA to the north side would require using eminent domain to kick St. Louis residents like Sheila out of their homes. This is something members of the community strongly oppose.

The fact that the city government keeps awarding tax incentives to these development projects leaves residents like Sheila shaking their heads, “The city does not need to keep pouring money into projects for Paul McKee. It needs to invest in the existing community.”

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For background, a civil litigation funding company helps a person pay for the costs of a lawsuit before a reward is obtained. In return, the company gets a portion of the reward if the litigant is successful. Critics say that civil litigation funding companies often take an unreasonably large portion of the eventual reward. Critics are also hopeful that regulation will reduce the number of lawsuits brought against businesses, saving businesses money.

Defenders of civil litigation funding say that without these funding arrangements, many people with legitimate claims wouldn’t be able to access our justice system. In many instances people who’ve been injured or wronged would be forced to settle with an insurance company for a fraction of the compensation necessary to make them whole again. If you make it harder for people to fund lawsuits, you won’t necessarily decrease the number of frivolous claims—but you will limit access to justice for people who can’t afford to wait for resolution of their claim.

I’m most interested in whether regulating lawsuit funding companies is consistent with a free market. Shouldn’t a plaintiff be able to sell a portion of a legal claim at any freely agreed upon price? What business does the state have in regulating how people pay for a lawyer?

Professor Jeremy Kidd, a law professor at Mercer University, addressed the Alabama State Senate Judiciary Committee opposing a bill that would regulate lawsuit funding in Alabama. In doing so, he helped answer this question:

“This issue—and so many others—requires acknowledgement of a simple truth, that there is a fundamental difference between being pro-business and being pro-market. Free markets enable tremendous human flourishing, and protecting markets is essential to growth. Importantly, however, while protecting markets protects consumers and businesses, protecting businesses typically improves the businesses’ bottom line at the expense of markets and, by extension, every consumer. Senate Bill 67 is pro-business, rather than pro-market, because it is designed to protect businesses against lawsuits without inquiring as to whether those businesses are actually at fault.”

I see a great deal of truth in this statement. Real tort reform will address the problematic aspects of our tort system. Regulation of civil litigation funding appears to ignore the merits of individual lawsuits, making it even more difficult for poor Missourians to pursue legitimate legal claims.

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Some background: When Springfield police and fire department employees won increases to their pension several years back, they agreed to pay for it themselves through employee contributions. However, the cost of the benefit has ballooned as the number of people paying into the pension fund has shrunk. Because the pension is a defined benefit plan, growing unfunded liabilities now put the entire pension fund at risk. In this case, taxpayers may end up paying for a benefit they were told they wouldn’t have to cover.

Springfield is not the only municipality facing a defined benefit pension with growing unfunded liabilities. According to SMI’s 2016 study on the funding of Missouri’s state and local pension liabilities, the average public pension could be between 48 and 59 percent underfunded. According to that same study, total unfunded liabilities for Missouri’s public pensions could be as high as $89 billion.

In theory, a defined benefit pension plan can be fully funded and operated in a sustainable way. But in practice, elected officials tend to promise more than they can deliver, and defined benefit pension systems can run into problems years or even decades after they were put into place.

For cities that want to avoid issues like the one facing Springfield, making the switch to a defined contribution plan might be the way to go. With a defined contribution pension, the city would make regular contributions into an employee-managed retirement account throughout the employee’s career. When the employee retires, he or she would draw from the money deposited into that account plus or minus any investment gains or losses. Underfunding situations like the one in Springfield would be impossible, because a defined contribution pension is necessarily and by definition fully funded.

A defined contribution pension benefit is not a cure-all, because benefits already accrued will have to be paid out pursuant to the older defined benefit plan. But switching to a more sustainable benefit system might keep a potential problem from becoming a catastrophe. 

The post Springfield Taxpayers on the Hook for “Employee-Funded” Pension? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

As reported earlier, St. Louis officials are considering using eminent domain to clear out a neighborhood on the north side. They’ve begun eminent domain proceedings, but are waiting on the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), the federal agency they’re clearing the land for, to decide whether it even wants to relocate to North St. Louis. Is it worth it putting property owners in limbo like this for a development project that might not even happen?

Alderwoman Sharon Tyus doesn’t think so. Tyus is not opposed to the use of eminent domain, but when it comes to using eminent domain on homeowner occupied land, she says “you’ve got to really step lightly.”

In this case, the need for eminent domain is in question because there are three other tracts of land in the region where NGA might choose to relocate instead of Gustavo’s neighborhood. Tyus believes one tract, right by Scott Airforce Base, makes the most sense. “It’s got everything. I think it’s a no-brainer.”

“I’m not trying to lose business for the city.” Tyus told me. “I just don’t think you need to decimate a neighborhood.”

Homeowners like Gustavo and Joyce Cooks don’t think you need to destroy a neighborhood either. “They say they’re trying to revitalize the community,” Gustavo tells me, commenting on the irony of the situation. “They’re killing the community.”

The post Why Is Saint Louis Using Eminent Domain “On Spec”? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, currently in South City, is considering moving to a new location in the region. In order to keep the NGA within St. Louis City, city officials are considering using eminent domain to clear out a neighborhood on the north side. It goes without saying that the people who would lose their homes in the deal are unhappy about it.

Joyce lives in a three-story brick Victorian house built in 1893. Her mother bought the house in the 1960s and she grew up in the neighborhood. “I love my home,” she tells me. If the city uses eminent domain, that home would be bulldozed.

One would hope that city leaders would resort to eminent domain—the power of government to remove a person from their land—only when there’s a very clear public benefit and no clear alternatives.

But in the case of the NGA, there are alternatives. In fact, there are three of them. One in particular, a parcel of land in St. Clair County, would have the advantage of being adjacent to an existing Department of Defense campus at Scott Air Force Base. Of the four proposals the NGA is considering, only the one in St. Louis City requires the use of eminent domain to raze an entire neighborhood.

When I asked Joyce what she’ll do if the city is successful in forcing her to move, she was despondent. “That’s my biggest fear,” she admitted. Joyce still has no idea where she’ll go if it comes to that. “What will I do?”

I have my own questions: Why is the city serving as an agent of the federal government and using eminent domain to clear a tract for a federal agency that may not even locate within the city of St. Louis? Is keeping the NGA within the city worth keeping property owners in limbo while the NGA decides where to relocate? And if the city does use eminent domain to clear out this neighborhood on the north side, where will its residents go?

The post Eminent Domain Puts St. Louis Homeowners in Jeopardy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

However, I would like to raise an issue with the language of the bill. The bill includes a financial disclosure provision that appears to require some government unions (fire and police unions are excluded) to make the same sorts of financial disclosures the private sector unions already have to make. As the bill is currently written, these financial disclosures lack teeth.

• For one, a worker has to request the union’s financials in order to access them. This could paint a target on the back of any whistleblower who wanted to report irregularities in the way union executives are recording their finances.
• Secondly, the financial information doesn’t have to be reported to any government agency or made publicly available. Private sector unions have had to make public financial filings with the government for decades. Why should public sector unions be less transparent than private sector unions? And shouldn’t the public have a right to know how government unions are spending taxpayer funded dues?
• Finally, the bill is written in such a way that government union executives can shred their financial documents after five years. Who benefits from this?

Make no mistake: requiring unions to make their financial information available to their members is a good idea. But the financial disclosure provisions in the paycheck protection bill need to be changed, if they are to be worth anything.

***

To underscore the need for financial disclosures, I have included a link (below) showing a list of dozens of federal embezzlement charges brought against the Communication Workers of America (CWA) executives over the past few years. CWA represents some of Missouri’s state employees, and its leadership is vehemently opposed to having to make meaningful financial filings.

https://www.unionfacts.com/olmscrime/Communications_Workers_of_America/embezzlement_charges

The post Financial Disclosure Provision in Paycheck Protection Bill is Toothless appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Geri’s father and husband were both union members. And she was initially fine with joining. But now she wants out.

Geri’s situation is worsened by the fact that she has a moral objection to many of the activities of her union. Her union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, spends heavily on politics. According to the Washington Times, they spent $5.9 million on lobbying and campaign contributions in 2014 alone. “It breaks my heart,” she told me.

Geri called her local’s business agent to ask about the political spending. She says it didn’t help anything. I also called Geri’s local to ask about their stance on forcing people to join the union. I’m still waiting for a call back. 

Thousands of Missourians are in Geri’s situation—forced to pay for a union’s services while skeptical that the union is actually doing anything for them. Giving workers the freedom to opt out of a union is one way to hold a union accountable. Giving workers a regular secret ballot vote on whether to keep their union is another way to make union executives listen to the concerns of the people they represent.

I had the opportunity to interview Geri; the video is available via the link above.

The post Geri’s Story: Holding Unions Accountable appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

African-style hair braiding, or natural hair care, is a traditional hair care practice where hair is twisted, braided, and weaved without the use of chemicals or heating. It’s often practiced by Africans, African-Americans, and immigrants. In Missouri, anyone who handles hair is required to get a cosmetology license from the government. This license requires thousands of dollars and at least 1,500 hours of cosmetology training—and teaches you nothing about African hair braiding.  

The Institute for Justice has helped Joba and Tameka file a lawsuit to allow them to continue practicing their trade without government interference. “The U.S. Constitution protects every individual’s right to earn an honest living in their chosen occupation free from pointless government interference,” says Greg Reed, an Institute for Justice attorney.

African-style hair braiding is just one example of government overreach through occupational licensing and regulation. I’ve written before about the state’s interference with yoga teacher training. We’ve also commented on proposals to license street performers, landlords, and of course the regulation of taxicabs to keep competitors like Lyft and Uber out of the market.

For further information, the Institute for Justice’s video on the licensing of African hair braiders is available here.

The post Hair Braiders’ Hands Tied by Missouri’s Twisted Regulations appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Several union contracts allow the union to demand fees from employees as a condition of employment. There’s also case law that allows unions to force employees to pay agency fees. (See Schaffer v. Board of Education of the City of St. Louis.) Perhaps there’s an argument this case should be overturned, but for now it’s law.

So then why the confusion?

The issue came up in a recent hearing on a bill that would increase the transparency of government unions. In the hearing, Clark Brown, an executive with SEIU, seemed to imply there were no forced dues clauses in state contracts. The Kansas City Star also repeated the misconception in a recent article.

It is true that some unions do not have a forced payment clause in their contract. Workers covered by these contracts can choose whether or not to pay for union membership. The fact that many state employees are not currently forced to join a union may be the reason why many people believe Missouri government workers have “right to work.”

I can understand why many, including the Kansas City Star, would be confused by this. But SEIU should know better. It’s a little complicated, but in essence, at least two of their state contracts (here and here) include a type of forced-pay clause. Make no mistake: Although there is variation among different contracts, some Missouri public-sector workers can be forced to pay for union representation.

The post Is There “Right to Work” for Missouri’s Government Union Members? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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In 1959 Congress passed the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), a powerful set of protections for unionized workers and a much-needed check on the power of union executives. Among other things, the LMRDA required all private sector unions to disclose their finances annually in what are called “LM filings.”

The impact of the LMRDA was huge. Although it didn’t fix everything, workers and journalists were better able to discover instances of self-dealing by looking through LM filings. In many cases this meant a better, more responsive union. The lack of secrecy in union finances is still helping workers hold their union leadership accountable.

Unfortunately, the LMRDA does not apply to Missouri’s government unions. As a result, public sector workers have no easy way of finding out where their dues go, which hinders their ability to question the use of these funds. Self-dealing schemes like the kind this AFSCME executive took part in become harder to uncover when union finances are not transparent.

Our public sector workers deserve the same level of protection that private sector workers have enjoyed for decades. It’s time to close the gap between the public and private sectors. Government unions should be at least as transparent as their private sector counterparts.

The post Kansas City Government Union Embezzlement Shows Need for Greater Transparency appeared first on Show-Me Institute.