Archives for December 2016

Two Washington, D.C., security guards are taking a labor union to court, alleging workers voted to stop allowing dues to be taken out of their paychecks but the union keeps taking the money more than a year later.

Troy Golson and Yasir Maatoug are security guards at the Ronald Reagan building in the nation’s capital.  They are employed by Coastal International Security and took the jobs with understanding that compulsory dues would be taken from their paychecks by the International Union of Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America, or SPFPA.

In November 2015, being dissatisfied with the representation being provided by the SPFPA, the two employees and their colleagues held a deauthorization vote to free themselves and their income from the mandates of the union.

“A deauthorization election is where the employees get together and they petition to have a vote on whether or not the contract will include a clause that requires them to pay union dues or fees to get or keep a job,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, which is representing Golson and Maatoug in this case.

“In 24 states across the country, and including the District of Columbia, you can be required to pay union dues or fees to get or keep a job.  This contract that covered these employees had that provision.    They thought they weren’t getting the representation they deserved or were paying for,” said Mix.

“So they decided to use what is their right under the National Labor Relations Act to deauthorize the forced collection of dues from this union,” added Mix.

The workers overwhelmingly voted to deauthorize the SPFPA from extracting dues from paychecks in November 2015.

“The union and the employer should stop collecting the dues.  There’s no authorization for this money to be taken out of their paychecks and forwarded to the union by their employer.  Yet, since 2015 after this vote, this particular union continues to demand these workers pay these dues to keep their jobs,” said Mix.

That is why Golson and Maatoug are pursuing legal action more than a year later.

“As far as we know, [the dues] are still being taken out and that’s why we filed the lawsuit, to stop that and to bring it to the attention of the National Labor Relations Board and make sure that they understand that these workers have successfully gone through the process that is laid down by the National Labor Relations Act to take this action.  Yet, they’re not getting the union to adhere to what the rules are,” said Mix.

Mix says the SPFPA acknowledges the vote took place.  However, the union does not accept the results because it did not take place during the proper “window period” to make such an adjustment to the existing contract.

Mix says that’s nonsense.

“That’s not true under deauthorization.  Deauthorization says once we say you can no longer take our money, you can’t.  It’s a little higher standard to get to and the unions don’t like it, but in this case a majority of the workers said that.  Yet, the union won’t accept their desire to get out of this forced payment of fees,” said Mix.

According to Mix, deauthorization votes don’t happen often, largely because many workers don’t know their rights.

“Generally the workers don’t know of their rights and certainly the unions aren’t informing them of their rights to deauthorize the union,” said Mix.

He notes that right to work laws in the 26 other states forbid union membership and compulsory dues payments as a requirement to get and keep a job.

Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America correct the record on Tuesday’s faithless elector story and how the new information makes his actions far worse.  In today’s martinis, they react to a Time magazine piece suggesting people stop paying taxes if a president is ever elected again without winning the popular vote.  They also debunk the liberal fantasy that Democrats can somehow confirm Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court before the senators elected last month get sworn in on Jan. 3.  And they slam Pres. Obama for his incredibly misleading statement about terrorism on U.S. soil during his administration.

A recently uncovered evaluation of Pentagon spending shows $125 billion could be slashed within five years, showcasing the challenge for the incoming Trump administration to make government more efficient, an effort that will also be tested by Trump’s call for a trillion dollars in infrastructure spending.

The Pentagon study was commissioned to find areas of administrative bloat that could be then channeled towards actual military projects.  The review was finished by the Defense Business Board in January 2015, and suggested $125 billion could be cut over a five-year span.  However, the Washington Post reports the amount of waste was so massive that officials buried the study.

“Uncovering the bloat is not a surprise and covering it up is also not a surprise,” said Citizens Against Government Waste President Tom Schatz, who believes $125,000,000,000 in unnecessary spending at the Pentagon is just the tip of the iceberg.

“The Pentagon has never passed a financial audit, so we know that there’s a lot more waste even than the Defense Business Board found,” said Schatz.

One of the most glaring findings from the Defense Business Board is that a quarter of the Pentagon’s $580 billion budget was spent on overhead, such as human resources, accounting and other line items not directly related to training and fighting.

“Right now the Pentagon has almost an equal number of civilian personnel and contractors as it does troops, which seems to be a little bit too much in terms of support.  You should have more troops than support,” said Schatz.

While the Defense Business Board recommended reallocating the wasted money towards combat-related programs in future years, Schatz says it’s not that easy to make those changes.

“A lot of people who have run the Pentagon have tried to get things done to make the whole operation run more effectively.  Congress gets in the way as well.  It’s difficult to get rid of a wasteful program or even reduce staff,” said Schatz.

Schatz says this kind of waste has been going on at the Pentagon for decades.  His own organization was founded to follow up on the government waste-cutting recommendations of the Grace Commission – a panel commissioned by President Reagan.  In 1984, the Grace Commission uncovered billions and future trillions that could be cut throughout government.  Congress ignored the recommendations.

He said the findings on the Pentagon look pretty familiar.

“The Grace Commission found a lot of similar expenditures at the Pentagon.  Five of the forty-seven Grace Commission task force reports were on the Pentagon, a lot of it dealing with procurement and personnel,” said Schatz.

Schatz also says defense official missed a golden opportunity to come clean to Congress.

“The report itself said take this money and use it for more important defense purposes.  The Pentagon brass apparently didn’t trust Congress to do that.  I think they would have received this quite well.  Congress has closed unnecessary military bases when they needed to.  They would certainly cut back on this kind of overhead,” said Schatz.

Many Trump supporters are expecting him to tackle government waste head-on and were encouraged by his call for Boeing to scrap construction of a new Air Force One after going above budget on the project.

Schatz says Trump needs people who will actually address these issues.

“We hope that’s the case.  I think taxpayers and voters brought Donald Trump here to do these kinds of things.  He’s not attached to any of these matters or any of the companies that are involved,” said Schatz.  “It’s time to make changes.  A number of the people coming in have longstanding business experience.”

“While the government is not a business, it’s very difficult to fire people, which is part of the problem.  They can certainly initiate more ways to spend the tax dollars effectively,” said Schatz.

Also looming on the horizon is Trump’s trillion dollar plan to revitalize U.S. infrastructure.  Conservative critics see it as a big government rerun of the Obama stimulus, but Schatz believes that is highly unlikely.  Done right, he thinks a targeted approach could actually be a boon to the U.S.

“I don’t see any way a Republican Congress approves another stimulus, so it won’t look anything like that.  If it’s done properly and it’s done by pushing a lot of that money down to the states so that they can spend it effectively – and the way that transportation funds are spent overall is part of this deal – then yes, some of this could be very helpful,” said Schatz.

But he says they need to avoid horrific ideas like the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” that overwhelmingly passed through a GOP-controlled Congress and was signed by George W. Bush.

He says there also really bad ideas from the Obama stimulus that should not be duplicated.

“We don’t need the federal government to go back to paying for streetscapes and street lights in the middle of a small town, which is part of what happened under the stimulus and the transportation bill in 2006,” said Schatz.

So can it realistically be done in an efficient way that doesn’t result in myriads of wasteful projects.

“Saying that we need a trillion dollars is not the same as putting the legislation into place and determining how it can be done.  There’s a lot of talk about public-private partnerships.  There might be more roads with tolls that help pay for the roads.  So there are ways to pay for some of this in the way the construction is done and how the funding is done into the future,” said Schatz.

Donald Trump made cleaning up the Department of Veterans Affairs one of his top campaign promises, and as the president-elect considers his options to lead that effort, a retired U.S. Marine Corps gunnery sergeant and veterans activist says personnel will be critical since the job of fixing the VA will be long and difficult.

Jessie Jane Duff served 20 years in the Marines.  She is now a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and says Trump must pick someone who can run a massive operation like the VA but is also tough enough to force change upon those addicted to the status quo.

“This is not for somebody who just is well-versed on the VA.  It’s great to be versed on the VA but if you don’t have management experience dealing with unions, dealing with backlogs, dealing with bureaucracy and trying to be a positive change agent, you’re not going to be the person for the job,” said Duff.

Duff says prior military service might be nice but is really not all that vital to doing what needs to be done.

“I’m not even that concerned if someone is a veteran or not.  It’s not a military organization.  It services veterans.  I need somebody who is service-oriented and understands what it is to deliver on a product or service to a customer, particularly one that is so important such as our American veterans,” said Duff.

Because of the sprawling nature of the VA.she says that tough, competent person must have tough, competent people beneath them.

“The changes are going to be difficult.  It’s going to be very difficult.  Whoever does get in there is going to have to align themselves with really strong undersecretaries.  The Veterans Administration is broken up into many, many small departments and they’re scattered throughout the nation.  So you can easily find little pocket groups that are going to do their own thing,” said Duff.

According to Duff, the new secretary must make it crystal clear from day one that business as usual is over.

“Employees have to understand, this is the new sheriff in town.  We’re going to get this right and whatever it takes is what we’re going to do.  You’re going to meet massive resistance and the unions are probably going to fight them left and right.  They have to get the right center of attention and that is back on the veteran and not on the VA employee,” said Duff.

While Duff and many other veterans activists are highly critical of the Obama administration’s approach to the issue, she admits that current VA Secretary Robert McDonald faced roadblocks over the personnel changes he did try to make, precisely because of organized labor.

“He had tried to fire multiple employees VA and was just never successful with it.  Often it was because they would go through this appeal process, and the union that protects these employees would find that little loophole that says, ‘No, that doesn’t fall under the guidances of our agreements,” said Duff.

The union in question is the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE.

“They were able to get many, many of these employees back pay or reassigned to placed back into the jobs that they had been severed from,” said Duff.

She says those kinds of bureaucratic hurdles prevent real change from happening.

“The process, the system, everything about it is so severed, so broken.  You have to have somebody willing to go in there and recognize that and not try to pretend that you’re going to put a bandage on a sucking chest wound,” said Duff.

So how does that entrenched bureaucracy ever budge?  Duff says it’s more about determination and less about any additional legislation.

“You have to find out how how can we fire people without going through all this bureaucracy.  It’s going to require shaking up and breaking up that union.  They’re going to have to figure out a way to do it  because trying to legislate your way out of this has proven time and time and time again to be ineffective,” said Duff.

As an example she says the 2015 legislation that allowed “veterans choice” for vets that don’t live near a VA facility turned out to be a nightmare.  Instead of making life easier for veterans to get private sector care that’s far more convenient, VA bureaucracy turned the opportunity into a nightmare.

“Well guess what happens?  The bureaucracy to fill out the paperwork becomes so deep that many veterans got discouraged doing it.  Some veterans have reported finding out the bills were never paid by the VA and they turned around and got them on their credit report.  And the VA itself had tried to allocate the billions of dollars they were given for it into other areas of the VA,” said Duff.

The care itself is still turning up horror stories as well, most recently the allegations that a VA dentist failed to sterilize his equipment and now some 600 patients need to be screened for HIV and various strains of hepatitis.  The dentist is still on the VA payroll, but has been moved to an administrative position.

Duff says the approach of the new VA boss needs to be very simple.

“We have to get somebody who’s a clear-headed thinker that realizes you’re obviously not going to be able to service all veterans.  You have to allow veterans who are not near a VA medical system, or not getting adequate care, to go to (private sector) facilities near them.  That’s rule number one,” said Duff.

But as critical as Duff is of the current system, she doesn’t want to scrap it.  She wants to replicate what works in successful VA hospitals in the facilities that are failing.

“Rule number two: You don’t have to destroy the entire system,” she said. “There are many model hospitals that are out there.  Use them as the diagram to re-establish those hospitals that are failing,” said Duff.

Duff says VA facilities should face consequences for failing to meet the standard of care our veterans deserve.

“Treat it like a school system.  Set up a standard of excellence that must be managed and maintained.  Those who do not manage or maintain it are threatened to be closed or reformed or [have their entire staffs fired],” said Duff.

If Trump picks someone capable of doing all this, how soon could we see significant results?

“With the right people and the right direction and the right demands of them and they’re given checks and balances and they’re given a benchmark to reach every quarter and every year, I think we’re going to see significant improvement in the first year.  We should see mass improvement in two,” said Duff.

She firmly believes Trump’s fate in 2020 could very well depend upon how well he keeps this promise.

“Should he be re-elected, it means he did a great job because veterans are behind this man.  The reason he’s in office is because a huge number of veterans got out there and voted for him,” said Duff.  “He cannot drop the ball on this one.  It will make or break his re-election,” said Duff.