Record 95,102,000 Americans Not in Labor Force; Number Grew 18% Since Obama Took Office in 2009

Record 95,102,000 Americans Not in Labor Force; Number Grew 18% Since Obama Took Office in 2009: The government collects payroll taxes from Americans who work, and some of that money is spent on government programs that support people who do not work.

PA job picture looks bleak

From Labor Economist Mark Price of the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg:

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports this morning that national payrolls shrunk again in December by more than a half million jobs. The Pennsylvania share of December's job losses will not be known until the end of January, but all signs point to another round of job losses in the commonwealth. Pennsylvania's continued claims for unemployment insurance in December stood 52 percent higher than during the same month last year. In a mild recession, the unemployment rate in Pennsylvania would likely peak in 2010 at 6.7 percent; the Pennsylvania unemployment rate this November was already at 6.1 percent."

Weak Jobs Report for Nation Likely Spells Trouble for Pennsylvania

Guest column: Big Labor harming workers

Big Labor Goal: Emulate China

By Laurel Lynn Petolicchio

Emboldened by the election of President Barack Obama and Democrat control of the House and Senate, Big Labor is no longer hiding their true beliefs. They want total control of all business in the United States even if it means a huge leap backwards for American workers.

In a recent commentary, Jonathan Tasini, former head of the National Writers Union and American Rights at Work (an AFL-CIO front group) and blogger who supports forced unionism, stated: "When it comes to unions, we should be more like China." Tasini then went on to praise the Chinese government for their 2008 legislation that granted huge privileges to the communist Party controlled All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) but prohibiting all unions that were not part of the ACFTU.

Under this new legislation, Chinese employees have no freedom to join any union that is not ACFTU nor do they have any right to stop ACFTU bosses from getting monopoly bargaining rights. They may not object to the union fees removed from their wages and benefits. This legislation, passed by the communist-controlled Chinese government, is another nail in the coffin of freedom for the Chinese people.

Tasini went on to confirm what every liberty-loving American already knows: the proposed "Employee Free Choice Act" (otherwise known as "Card Check") is the top item on America's Big Labor's agenda. Tasini's support for the Chinese crack down on unapproved labor unions indicates that Big Labor wants to put the US one step closer to making us more like China. How ironic that China has never been the poster child for safe working conditions, worker rights and individual freedoms.

Americans overwhelmingly believe that unionization should be a choice, not mandatory. That conviction is based on the understanding that Americans believe they have the right to association with those people and groups that share their interests and values.

Americans also believe that union fees should not be mandatory. They don't like or appreciate the notion that they might be forced to pay for something they never supported to begin with.

Unionization of private industry has been on a gradual decline for years and, based on recent statistics, has fallen below 8% of the American work force. This means that Big Labor is not only teetering on a complete loss of it’s political and social clout but it also failing to raise the kind of revenue ala dues it was able to in the past.

Consequently, Big Labor is turning to Big Government in order to push through legislation like "Card Check" in order to salvage what influence they have left, and it does not matter how many individual worker rights are lost in the process.

"Card Check" should be a wakeup call to all freedom loving Americans. Unions who promote forced union legislation are the problem, not the solution. America has always been the beacon of Freedom but if "Card Check" is passed, how long will it be before we start carving at other critical individual rights of the people in order to satisfy the whims of a few power brokers?

Laurel Lynn Petolicchio lives in Lebanon County and is an advocate for open labor policies in Harrisburg.

Un-American activities in Bucks County

This is an interesting op-ed column by Simon Campbell, best known for his leadership in trying to ban teacher strikes in Pennsylvania.

Denying workers freedom of association

Suppose you are Jewish and attend synagogue. There is a Catholic church across the street. Members of both faiths are exercising their right to support only those private organizations that represent their personal values and beliefs.

This is the American way i.e. equal rights, freedom of association, and freedom of speech. The official Bucks County Democrat party’s platform even touts such virtues on its Web site. Article 1 of their platform reads “we believe in equal rights and individual freedoms for all.”

Consider this scenario. One day a law is passed by a Democrat-majority government that says all members of the Jewish congregation must pay nonmember dues to the Catholic Church. The government has declared that the Catholic Church does good work in the community — work that benefits every resident. Besides, there are more Catholics than Jews and this is what they voted for.

The Catholics call their vote “workplace democracy” to make it sound nice. Every Jew must now pay their fair share of dues to the Catholic Church. To ensure compliance, the law requires all Jews to have the dues deducted at source from their paychecks, whereupon their employer forwards it to the Catholic Church. If the Jews don’t like it, they can go live somewhere else.

If a law like that were enacted, there would be riots in the streets. Well, I just described the law in Pennsylvania EXACTLY as it pertains to compulsory unionism. Elected officials like county commissioners, township supervisors, and school board directors, are empowered by state law to force non-union employees into paying union dues as a condition of their employment. It is despicable. Individual employees all across Bucks County are being denied that most fundamental of American rights — freedom of association.

The Bucks County Democrat Party’s platform of “individual freedoms for all” is pure hypocrisy. The truth about this political party is that not one of their elected officials supports the right of workers to freely accept or reject union affiliation.

Democrat County Commissioner Diane Marseglia just voted to force all nonmember employees to pay union dues in order to keep their jobs. She also voted to prohibit county employees from freely resigning their union membership whenever they like. And she voted to use the resources of government to help pump election money to the union that endorses her campaigns.

There are 22 Right-to-Work states in which it is illegal to force non-union employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment. House Bill 150 in the state Legislature would make Pennsylvania a Right to Work state. It has 36 co-sponsors. Not one of them is a Democrat. Meanwhile, Republican John McCain supports passing a National Right to Work law, while Barack Obama opposes it.

Democrats who justify union dues extortion often say “unions benefit workers.” Whether this is true is irrelevant. The issue is this: Who should decide whether a union benefits an employee — the union or the employee? Democrats like Obama and Marseglia believe that employees should have the right to join and pay dues to a union. But they don’t believe that employees should have the equal right to refrain from doing so. These hypocrites with their phony platform of freedom take the Orwellian view that all workers are created equal, but some workers are more equal than others.

Individual liberty and freedom is precious to most Americans. A blind eye should never be turned when the First Amendment is being trampled upon. This November my wife, who is Jewish, will be voting for the man whose love of liberty left him tortured in a prison cell; the man whose unset broken bones today render him unable to freely move his arms. John McCain will never force her to financially support any private organization against her wishes.
This presidential election isn’t about Republican vs. Democrat. It’s about American vs. un-American.

Simon Campbell is president of StopTeacherStrikes Inc., a nonpartisan group working to ban teacher strikes in Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.stopteacherstrikes.org

15th Annual Labor Day 'Executive Excess' Report

Labor Day is almost here. A new report by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy says U.S. taxpayers are helping subsidize executive compensation packages by more than $20 billion a year.

"Loopholes allow top executives to avoid paying their fair share of taxes," says Sam Pizzigati, who co-authored the report. "As a result, ordinary taxpayers wind up picking up the bill."

Congress refuses to close the loopholes. Could the fact that so many members of Congress are at the mercy of corporate lobby groups have something to do with it?

Follow the link below to read the report:

New Report Finds $20 Billion in Tax Subsidies for Excessive Executive Compensation

The most dangerous jobs in U.S.

If you think your job is killing you, the federal government has new statistics to show that you're probably overreacting.

The Department of Labor has released a new report that shows the number of workplace deaths in the United States declined to a historic low in 2007.

The number of worker deaths dropped to 5,488 in 2007. That's the fewest number of recorded work-related deaths since the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping statistics in 1992. The bureau reported 5,840 deaths reported in 2006.

The report also lists the most dangerous jobs.

No. 1 is fishermen. (That could be why "Deadliest Catch" is such a big hit on TV.) For fishermen, the rate is 111.8 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers.

Logging workers is No. 2 with 86.4 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers.

Aircraft pilots and flight engineers is No. 3 with 66.7 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers.

No. 4 is structural iron and steel workers with 45.5 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers.

Construction continued to have the most deaths of any private sector industry, with 1,178 in 2007.

Although the total number of deaths is down, there were a few categories that saw an increase in fatalities, according to the Labor Department.

Fatal falls on the job rose to a record 835 in 2007, the bureau reports.

Workplace homicides also increased 13 percent, to 610, in 2007, according to the report.

Click on the link below for more on the report:

U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine L. Chao Applauds Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries Report Showing Decline in Worker Fatalities

To read the full report and see where your industry falls, you can download the entire report in PDF format at this site: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf