Federal Contractors Demand Collective Bargaining Rights, Higher Pay and Better Benefits Like Those of Federal Employees

U.S. Capitol workers, others strike for higher pay, union

November 13, 2014

Reuters - Hundreds of striking federal contract workers, including for the first time some from the U.S. Capitol, rallied on Thursday to urge President Barack Obama to boost pay and spur unionization.

About 800 striking workers and supporters, including members of Congress, gathered at the Capitol after a march through Washington streets led by a brass band.

The one-day strike by federal contract workers was the 10th organized by the Good Jobs Nation campaign for better pay and benefits since May 2013.

"For the first time in history, workers are on strike at the United States Capitol," rally organizer Joseph Geervarghese told the cheering crowd.

"They don't let people like us in the White House. So we have to protest the rich from the outside."

About two dozen cafeteria workers from the U.S. Capitol Visitor Center joined striking employees from the Smithsonian museums, the Pentagon and other sites, organizers said.

Marchers carried signs saying "Workers need more than the minimum" and "Working women on strike," and chanted, "Mr. President, finish the job." Some protesters wore bandannas over their faces to protect themselves from possible retribution by employers.

The protesters wanted Obama to order improved pay and benefits for federal contract workers. The president has approved $10.10 an hour for workers on new contracts starting in January and has ordered better compliance on contracts but the demonstrators said that was not enough.

"We want more than minimum wage. Who wants a minimum anything? Do you want a minimum marriage?" Representative Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minnesota, said at the rally. He said 70 members of Congress supported the strike.

The strikers and Good Jobs Nation want a presidential order that would give contract preference to companies that pay at least $15 an hour, provide benefits and allow collective bargaining.

The national minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and Republicans in Congress have blocked Obama's proposal to raise it to $10.10. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia had minimum pay above the federal level as of Aug. 1, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Voters in Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota last week approved minimum wage increases, and Illinois voters approved an advisory measure, the Conference said.

Saul Alinsky's 'Rules for Radicals' Tells Unions How to Play Dirty

Obama is a communist who sat under Reverend Wright for 20+ years and was under the teachings of Saul Alinsky. In 1998, Saul Alinsky-trained Barack Obama participated on a panel discussion praising Alinsky alongside Heather Booth, herself a dedicated disciple of Alinsky. Mainstream media uses dishonest Alinsky tactics, such as attempting to keep a person from speaking, or attacking a person’s character, instead of addressing the information he/she presents.

Time and again public officials have described their shock and disbelief at what a union had done to them personally during organizing campaigns or labor disputes. Such activity was entirely predictable because it was almost textbook Alinsky. Their response has generally been that if they had only known what to expect, they could have prepared for it and taken steps to neutralize its worst effects. Alinsky emphatically states that the end justifies the means but cautions that extreme means are only justified in certain situations. He also had a set of rules for what he called power tactics" or the means used to "take." He described it as "how the Have Nots can take power away from the Haves." 

Even a cursory review of Alinsky's “Rules for Radicals” reveals that a union activist schooled in them will have no compunction about using almost any tactic in a conflict. In fact, radicals must often create issues to stir up problems in order to radicalize their potential followers. The tactic that seems to shock the most is the personalization of the attack -- union leaders use the "pick it, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it" tactic no matter how distasteful this might be -- Alinsky says that even if the decision is 48% to 52%, once it is made the opposition becomes "100 percent devil." Even if opponents are not willing to respond in kind to this sort of tactic, a great deal can be accomplished, before a conflict, by warning audiences what will happen.

Saul Alinsky, the radical leftist who trained so many union organizers, told his students that they must "make the enemy live up to their own book of rules." This tactic gives the unions a big advantage.Organizers seek out, not avoid, controversy, resorting to lies if necessary. In outlining the principles of community organizing in his book “Rules for Radicals,” Alinsky wrote that an organizer “must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act.” Alinsky said an organizer acts with the “conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other.” It’s not enough to demonize the opposition: you must also convince us – and perhaps yourself – that heaven is on your side.

The collective bargaining laws have given enormous political power to the public sector unions. No matter what the real intent of these laws, by any objective standard they are not in the public interest. They represent an expression of the selfish self-interest of public sector union organizers and, indirectly, the interest of the politicians who enact them in order to curry favor with the union's political operatives. The existence of public sector collective bargaining makes public employees 'super citizens' and relegates the rest of the public to second class status. Rising public discontent has focused on the public employee, while public employees increasingly take a hostile attitude toward the public. Why is no one pointing out that unions are supposed to be for the people against the corporation, not for the people against the people? - Beyond Public Sector Unionism: A Better Way, Public Service Research Foundation

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Collective Bargaining Gives Enormous Political Power to Public Sector Unions