Union // Current TV

The California Prison Guards Union: Still Profiting From Incarceration-mania

“We’re asking the department to come up with a game plan – a sound, public policy planned approach to lower the number of people returning to prison and lower the prison population and crime rate.”

Assemblymember Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge), February 7, 2011.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association (CCPOA) has become a political money force of tremendous proportions. CCPOA’s political clout has trapped California in a self-perpetuating cycle where locking up more people with longer sentences has become the only solution to crime. For decades, the 30,000-member union has worked tirelessly to see more prisons built, while sabotaging prisoner rehabilitation, education, and treatment programs. According to a PPIC poll, prisons garner less than 15 percent (support for higher taxes) across all parties, regions, and demographic groups in California.[1] However, the state prison budget continues to grow. This relentless draining of General Fund resources away from social services and schools will not stop as long as policymakers continue to cave in to the prison guard lobby.

4 Things Every Californian Should Know About the CCPOA:

1. Fighting to build more cells, walls and towers. Thanks to the lobbying efforts of the CCPOA, California has built 43 penal institutions since 1984, making it a global leader in prison construction. Comparatively, between 1852 and 1964, only 12 prisons were built in California.[2] Over the course of the last 20 years the Department of Corrections has become the largest General Fund state agency, reflecting a budget growth of almost $7 billion between 1998 and 2009. [3]

2. The 3 Strikes Law has crippled our state. In 1994, the CCPOA sponsored Proposition 184, the Three Strikes law, which was only the beginning of their membership growth bonanza. The majority of the 4,000-plus people imprisoned under Three Strikes committed a minor, non-violent third strike. According to the California State Auditor, these non-violent third strikers will cost the state at least $4.8 billion over the next 25 years – almost $200 million per year.[4]

3. Incarceration for profit: politicians kneel to the California Prison Lobby. In the aftermath of the Three Strikes Law, legislators and political office hopefuls alike began taking a highly popular tough-on-crime approach, especially during election season. The CCPOA, its subsidized crime victims groups, lobbyists and its members have contributed nearly $38 million to the California legislative and election process in the last decade, resulting in a prison system that costs the state more than public education does.[5]

4. The CCPOA has opposed nearly every “treatment in lieu of incarceration” program proposed. No one has more to lose from lower recidivism rates and higher rehabilitation turnaround than the CCPOA. The Prison Guards have spent millions to defeat treatment-over-incarceration proposals like Proposition 36, 66 and 5, which have been proven to save taxpayers money while decreasing recidivism rates.[6] The numbers never lie; out of the nearly $11 billion Corrections budget, 70% of it goes to pay salaries, overtime and benefits to the union and staff. Just 5% of the budget goes to education and vocational programs.[7 Many prison guards can make as much as $180,000 each year after overtime[8], while the average California teacher makes just $67,000 a year.[9]

http://caprogressivemessage.com/2011/03/04/the-california-prison-guards-union-still-profiting-from-incarceration-mania/“We’re asking the department to come up with a game plan – a sound,... more

crabbyoldguy
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SEIU Steals money from handicapped recieving medicaid.

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GOP Senator Tries to Save SEIU Healthcare ‘Employer’

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SEIU siphons 'dues' from Mich. Medicaid payments

If you're a parent who accepts Medicaid payments from the State of Michigan to help support your mentally-disabled adult children, you qualify as a state employee for the purposes of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). They can now claim and receive a portion of your Medicaid in the form of union dues.

Robert and Patricia Haynes live in Michigan with their two adult children, who have cerebral palsy. The state government provides the family with insurance through Medicaid, but also treats them as caregivers. For the SEIU, this makes them public employees and thus members of the union, which receives $30 out of the family's monthly Medicaid subsidy. The Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQC3) deducts union dues on behalf of SEIU.

Michigan Department of Community Health Director Olga Dazzo explained the process in to her members of her staff. "MQC3 basically runs the program for SEIU and passes the union dues from the state to the union," she wrote in an email obtained by the Mackinac Center. Initiated in 2006 under then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., the plan reportedly provides the SEIU with $6 million annually in union dues deducted from those Medicaid subsidies.

“We're not even home health care workers. We're just parents taking care of our kids,” Robert Haynes, a retired Detroit police officer, told the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. “Our daughter is 34 and our son is 30. They have cerebral palsy. They are basically like 6-month-olds in adult bodies. They need to be fed and they wear diapers. We could sure use that $30 a month that's being sent to the union.”

According to the Mackinac Center, the theoretical public employer for whom the Haynes' work is the Michigan Quality Community Care Council (MQC3), an entity within the DCH that continues to operate, even though the state legislature has defunded it. Even the MQC3 calls the families hiring in-home health care providers "employers of providers," but these health care providers are also treated as employers of MQC3 when it comes time each month to take dues out of their Medicaid payment and send it to the SEIU.

Mr. and Mrs. Haynes, of course, are both the parents (the employer) and the health care providers for their children, but they still lose money to the SEIU every month, despite having no interest in joining the union. They have been arbitrarily classified as state employees so that the union can take money from them.

Gov. Rick Snyder, R-Mich., already ended a similar scheme to provide unions with new "public employees" in the area of child care. His predecessor, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, D-Mich., had classified in-home daycare providers as public employees -- a designation that forced them to pay union dues but conferred no other benefits upon them. Snyder's director of the Department of Human Services ended that program. "[We] will stop all funding and, because these providers are not state employees, will also cease collecting union dues,” DHS director Maura Corrigan said at the time.

Michigan's state House has already passed a bill to prevent this sort of rent-seeking by public-sector unions, but it has stalled in the state Senate.If you're a parent who accepts Medicaid payments from the State of Michigan to... more

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OccupySTL receives 24-hour warning about use of Kiener Plaza

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Most Wanted corporate human rights abusers

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Report: Ex-labor chief's 1-day rehire nets $158,000 city pension

A retired Chicago labor leader secured a $158,000 public pension — roughly five times greater than what a typical retired public-service worker in the Windy City receives — after being rehired for just one day of active duty on the city payroll, local news reports said.

According to The Chicago Tribune, Dennis Gannon stands to collect approximately $5 million in city pension funds during his lifetime. He now draws the pension while working for a hedge fund, the Tribune reported.

The Republican leader of the state House, Tom Cross, said he will introduce a bill to repeal the 1991 law that allows the windfall. Senate President Dennis Cullerton, a Democrat, agreed the law seems flawed.

Gannon, former president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, was able to take a long leave from a city job to work for a union and then receive a city pension based on a high union salary. That arrangement is allowed under a state law signed by Gov. Jim Thompson on his last day in office in 1991, according to an investigation by the Tribune and WGN-TV.

The change has enabled a couple dozen labor leaders to become potential millionaires.

What is different in Gannon’s case is that he became eligible for the especially lucrative pension deal only because the city rehired the former Streets and Sanitation Department worker for one day in 1994, before granting him an indefinite leave of absence, according to the investigation. He retired from the city job in 2004 at age 50.

'Eligible under the law'

Gannon’s pension is so high that it exceeds federal limits and required Chicago’s pension fund to file special paperwork with the Internal Revenue Service to give it to him, the Tribune reported.

"I am extremely proud of my many years of service to the city of Chicago and the working men and women of organized labor," Gannon wrote in a statement provided to the Tribune. "I have always followed the pension laws governed by the state of Illinois statute as well as the city of Chicago municipal pension plan."

Terrance Stefanski, who oversees Chicago’s municipal pension fund, confirmed to the newspaper that pension laws were followed in Gannon’s case.

"Once the city rehired him and he went on a leave of absence to work for the union, he was eligible under the law," Stefanski told the Tribune.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44626194/ns/us_news-life/
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Pretty sweet gig if you can land it..A retired Chicago labor leader secured a $158,000 public pension — roughly five... more

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Sharp Rift in a Strike at Verizon

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LePage's "OPEN FOR BUSINESS" sign updated

This is so awesome!

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click on the link and check out the video

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Wisconsin Judge Issues restraining order against Anti-Union Law

The Los Angeles Times appears to have broken the story, that a Wisconsin judge has blocked the implementation of the Wisconsin legislation against public sector unions. Notice that the challenge to the validity of the law was based on procedural grounds. One reader insisted no court would ever take up that sort of challenge. Funny, this judge looks pretty interested in trying that case.

From the Los Angeles Times:

A Wisconsin judge on Friday issued a temporary restraining order blocking the new state law that curbs collective bargaining rights for most public employees.

Dane County Judge Maryann Sumi …was acting on a request by Dist. Atty. Ismael Ozanne, a Democrat, who had filed a lawsuit contending a legislative committee had violated Wisconsin’s open meetings law by pushing the measure onto the floor. That maneuver was key in unblocking the legislative stalemate and allowing the bill to be signed by Walker on March 11.

Dave Dayen at FireDogLake provides additional commentary:

Sumi stressed that she was not judging on the merits of the legislation, but on the specifics of the open meeting requirements. Wisconsin law requires that public meetings are announced with 24 hours notice, 2 hours if there’s some extenuating circumstance which prevents advanced planning. The meeting in question, the conference committee, actually had less than two hours notice. “I have been shown no rule that overrides the statutory requirement,” Judge Sumi said.

The legislature in Wisconsin could simply re-do the conference committee, under the rules, and pass the bill again. Since they believe it’s a “non-fiscal” bill, quorum requirements would not apply. Alternatively, with the Fab 14 Senators back in Madison, they could just pass the budget repair bill they wanted all along, and have the quorum to do so, unless the Democrats leave the state again.

But this temporary restraining order will stop the implementation scheduled for March 25. And it drags out the process once again, keeping it in the headlines. This is not at all what Scott Walker and the Republicans facing recall elections wanted to see.

In addition, it gives time for other legal cases to be brought. There could be municipal challenges that the law’s changes in pension contributions violates “home rule” provisions that allow the cities and towns to govern their own pensions for their workers.The Los Angeles Times appears to have broken the story, that a Wisconsin judge has... more

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