Unions

There will be plenty of time later to look at how the Associated Press and other wires more than likely fail to report the violence that took place in connection with right-to-work legislative actions in Michigan's legislature today. For now, let's look at the reactions of Associated Press reporters John Flesher and Jeff Karoub on Friday in an item which is no longer at the AP's main national…

Tuesday's CBS This Morning played up the union-led protests against a proposed right-to-work law in Michigan. Elaine Quijano claimed "the protests here in Michigan...[will] likely only get bigger." Quijano added that "they're planning to return today in record numbers - protesters determined to defend one of the biggest union strongholds in the country." The correspondent loaded her report…

It appears as though NBC’s Andrea Mitchell has sided with the unions in the latest battle over workers’ rights, this time in Michigan.  Appearing on Tuesday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, Ms. Mitchell took it upon herself to hammer Governor Rick Snyder (R-Mich.) over his decision to sign a bill making Michigan the 24th right to work state. She later followed up the Snyder segment with a friendly…

Union thugs across the nation are outraged that Michigan has become the latest state to pass a “right to work” law allowing people in unionized companies to choose whether or not they wish to join. Unions oppose such laws because they want people to be forced to join their ranks. Earlier today the union supporters turned violent as they attacked supporters of the Michigan law, tearing down a…

He who first invokes the Nazis during an argument loses, posits Godwin's Law. Allow me to introduce Cook's Corollary to Godwin's Law, whereby he who makes a patently ludicrous analogy to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor forfeits all credibility. The corollary gets its name courtesy of Steve Cook, president of the Michigan Education Association, the state's largest school employee union. (…

Reuters correspondent Andrea King Collier offered readers a heavily-slanted 27-paragraph story last evening about Michigan Republican lawmakers pushing a right-to-work bill in the state legislature. King Collier quoted only one proponent of the legislation -- Gov. Rick Snyder -- who was described as a "reluctant supporter of the measure," unlike "other Republican governors who have championed…

While it's not fair to criticize the press's coverage of November's vehicle sales as unfair or not balanced, it would be more than fair to say that the press is either ignoring or minimizing the impact of two important influences which have been at work all year. The first is the continued loss of combined market share at the industry's two US-headquartered makers, General Motors and Ford (…

To paraphrase the estimable Yogi Berra - it’s like deja vu all over, and over, and over, and over again. The Jurassic Press media is enraptured with a certain story.

Tonight's fun facts relate to the strike by the group a Reuters report describes as "500 clerical workers at the ports, members of the relatively small Office of Clerical Union Workers" at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The strikers' picket lines have been honored by "some 10,000 members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union." These fun facts are rarely mentioned, but…

A week after the staff of Good Morning America joked about the impending closure of Hostess and the loss of 18,000 jobs, the crew at GMA switched to bashing the Hostess executives and sympathizing with the recently laid off employees, ignoring the role unions played in the collapse.   On Friday’s GMA, co-host Josh Elliott introduced the segment by reporting on new data showing corporate…

The third page of an unbylined report with an early Saturday time stamp credited to "USA Today" carried at the Jackson, Mississippi Clarion Ledger (like USAT, a Gannett Company) claimed that "Walmart heiress Alice Walton expressed solidarity with Walmart's striking workers." Putting aside whether or not an action taken by what the company estimated may have been fifty associates is a "strike…

In a Friday report at the Associated Press on Friday with a celebratory headline ("2 YEARS AFTER IPO, GM IS PILING UP CASH"), Auto Writer Tom Krisher described bailed-out General Motors as "thriving," but didn't identify one of the important reasons for that characterization. In paragraphs about the company's profitability and cash stockpile, Krisher failed to note that the company still hasn…

Yesterday, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka may have broken a modern record for chutzpah exhibited by a labor leader Friday in criticizing management's decision at bankrupt snack maker Hostess Brands to liquidate in the wake of irreconcilable issues with its unions. In a Friday afternoon report at Politico, Kevin Cirilli not only let Trumka get away with it; he also lent the labor leader's…

Someone needs to tell Emily Jane Fox that for workers refusing to do scheduled work assigned by their employers to be engaging in a "strike" ("a concerted stopping of work or withdrawal of workers' services, as to compel an employer to accede to workers' demands or in protest against terms or conditions imposed by an employer") there needs needs to be enough of them to matter. If there aren't,…