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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GraceZ who wrote (19424)	12/23/2004 11:42:05 AM
From: gpowell	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

Glad we have unions to protect us from those corporate vultures. This systematic looting of the [Washington Teachers Union] WTU treasury was uncovered only because of a blunder by the alleged perpetrators. The WTU treasury was so depleted that the union could not pay its 2002 per capita dues to its parent, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Bullock needed $700,000 of union dues to turn over to the AFT in order for representatives of the WTU to be seated at the AFT's annual convention last summer. She allegedly "solved" this problem by a one-month increase of the dues that DC teachers are forced to pay from $16 to $160. The extra $144 per teacher would raise enough money to pay the AFT assessment. However, several teachers were outraged at the unexpected, and unauthorized increase and complained to the AFT which then began to make inquiries and ultimately hired an independent firm to undertake a forensic accounting investigation of the WTU. In addition several teachers filed civil suits against the WTU. cbe.csuhayward.edu Reminds me of when I was a teamster and the local union retroactively raised our dues – conveniently equal to one month’s dues. The union demanded that our employer pull the money directly from our paychecks, but the company refused and dropped the payroll deduction of dues service altogether. Several of my fellow workers were a little lax on manually paying and fell behind by 60 days, which, with the retroactive amount, put them more than 90 days behind. The topper is now that they were delinquent by 90 days, the local decided to make those members rejoin the union by repaying their initiation fees - equivalent to about one week's pay. I talked to the union president to complain about their practices and he essentially told me "tough sh*t" - I replied, "We need a union to protect us from you." Bottom line - you paid whatever they demanded or you didn't work.