Stealth Unionization, Payday Loan Report, and the Coal Industry

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STEALTH UNIONIZATION – VINCENT VERNUCCIO

CEI.org: CEI, Yankee Institute Push Back Against Stealth Unionization Campaign

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is trying to unionize home health care workers in Connecticut by stealth—and Governor Dannel P. Malloy is helping them. In response, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Yankee Institute for Public Policy together this week launched a mail campaign to inform unsuspecting workers about SEIU’s efforts, and help them make an informed decision.

SEIU has already carried out such stealth tactics in other states. Here’s how it works: A pro-union governor issues an executive orders defining any health care workers who serve clients who receive any sort of government assistance as state employees who can be unionized. The union and its allies avoid media and public attention.

The only notice home health care workers receive concerning a union election is a nondescript mailing asking them if they wish to join the union. Under this process, the union only needs to receive a majority of returned cards—not a majority of all workers—to be recognized as those workers’ exclusive bargaining representative.

> Read about the just-launched mailing to home healthcare workers at CEI.org

> Interview Vincent Vernuccio, CEI Labor Policy Attorney

PAYDAY LOANS – JOHN BERLAU

CEI OnPoint: The 400 Percent Loan, the $36,000 Hotel Room, and the Unicorn

So-called “payday loans” are roundly vilified by many politicians and activists, including the Obama White House. But a new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute finds many “dubious arguments” are made about the true costs of such loans.

CEI’s John Berlau explains why political attacks on such loans are both wrong and harmful to the very people they’re aimed at protecting. The Obama administration and other politicians who use a “destructive myth of 400 percent interest” use a flawed method of calculating interest that makes an apples-and-oranges application of annual percentage rate (APR) to loans of a much shorter duration than one year.

> View the OnPoint, The 400 Percent Loan, the $36,000 Hotel Room, and the Unicorn

>Interview John Berlau, Director of CEI’s Center for Investors & Entrepreneurs

ENERGY & DIRTY POLITICS – MYRON EBELL

Globalwarming.org -Sierra Club Takes $25 Million from Natural Gas To Attack Coal

Myron Ebell discusses news that the Sierra Club got $25 million to attack the coal industry:

Bryan Walsh in Time Magazine broke the big story this week that the Sierra Club received over $25 million from the natural gas industry to serve as a corporate shill for the natural gas industry’s attacks on the coal industry. Walsh wrote: “TIME has learned that between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 million in donations from the gas industry, mostly from Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy—one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the U.S. and a firm heavily involved in fracking—to help fund the Club’s Beyond Coal campaign. Though the group ended its relationship with Chesapeake in 2010—and the Club says it turned its back on an additional $30 million in promised donations—the news raises concerns about influence industry may have had on the Sierra Club’s independence and its support of natural gas in the past.”

> Interview Myron Ebell, Director of CEI’s Center for Energy and Enivornment