All Skilled Trades -An Endangered Species

Chicago Skilled Trades Get Schooled by The Chicago Tribune!
Denny Gannon! Welcome to school! The Tribune - a great and long-time friend of Labor is rewarding you for playing ball with the people who are hell-bent on destroying the skilled trades unions - The Good Folks of Redistribution of Wealth! Mr. Gannon, You and all skilled tradesmen are the goat that will be sacrificed. Collective Bargaining is not what Andy Stern calls ‘thinking out of the box.’ The Media – The Sun Times and Chicago Tribune have identified LABOR as whatever Andy Stern and SEIU decide labor to be and Real Labor will head to the Tar-Pits, while wages and benefits will become determined by legislation.

Play ball with Andy Stern and SEIU - The Change America Folks like you did in taking the lead in the Big Box Ordinance Scam and here is what you get -death by a thousand paper cuts. No one is better at destroying a target than the Chicago Tribune. Real Labor is a path to the Middle Class and Andy Stern wants the Middle Class deader than Kelsey’s Nuts – a fine product at one time.
Skilled Tradesmen pass drug tests, show proof of residency, pass examinations, pass apprenticeship programs, pay dues, vote and show solidarity. Then there is SEIU. The Tribune hates Labor –always did. The Tribune Loves SEIU. Obama loves SEIU. SEIU calls the shots. SEIU’s Anna Burger is on Obama’s Economic Advisers – at the moment.

Your Union Local 150 of the International Operating Engineers was placed squarely in the sights of the Tribune acting as apologists for Mayor Daley - not the bad Mayor Daley who helps his allies, but the good Mayor Daley who is co-opted and owned by the Lefty Redistribution of Wealth Artistes - the people to whom Frank 'Too Smart for Bridgeport' Krusei introduced the Mayor - U of C geniuses, Lefty Lawyers Leagues, UICC Distinguished Professors of Education.

Denny, you are in for a regular and sound beating from pencil geeks like Dan Mihalopoulos and the editors who sent him. Here is the opening whipping from The Tribune's Oct 6, 2008 explanation of why Mayor Daley can not pay everyone!

Skilled Trades Unions are to blame for the current Budget Crises ( plural).

Not Arne ' Take the Kids to Soldier Field' Duncan who wastes millions of dollars for a Clown Opera that is Chicago Public Education; Not the Lefty Lawyer Lotto League that Daley settles Millions of Dollars on every time a pigeon flies over G. Flint Taylor's Hybrid; Not 125 Plus Public Relations Firms; Not Every Room Temperature IQ six-figure relative of every Community Activist in Chicago; Nope you Denny and every skilled and talented middle class Tradesman.


The generous wages and benefits given to many in the roughly 38,000-strong municipal workforce amount to 80 percent of the cost of running the city's government, making it impossible to significantly cut the budget without reducing personnel costs.

Those expenses are only going up since Daley agreed last year to a 10-year contract with dozens of labor unions. The deal guarantees continued pay increases that far outstrip inflation.

Take for instance the city's hoisting engineers, members of clout-heavy Local 150. Their top hourly wage of almost $44 an hour has risen from $37.50 in three years.

Local 150's city contract also allows for double time for any work over eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week.

They and other blue-collar workers, such as laborers, get 12 sick days a year, which they can carry over to future years if not used, in addition to 12 paid holidays.

If a relative dies, members of the biggest trade unions get three paid days off—rising to five if the funeral is held out of state.

"Tax increases don't get at the core problem that operating costs are rising far faster than what any revenues could pay for," said Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation, a tax watchdog group.

But Dennis Gannon, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said cutting hundreds of unionized city workers would inevitably have a negative impact on city services.

"At the end of the day, somebody has to do the work," Gannon said. "Take them out of the equation and who is going to pick up that slack?"

Yep, you are about to get it good and regular!


Somebody has to do the work. When Obama is President and Daley has the Olympics, it won't be skilled, trained and experienced Tradesmen. Welcome to School Denny.

SEIU owns you and the Tribune. You are expendable. You and every Tradesman.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-chicago-budget-analysis-06-oct06,0,6345754.story