One has to love the internet. With a little digging, one can find that the author of this piece is firmly aligned with conservative organizations and thus this anti-union screed (with the usual omission of facts supporting the other side of the argument) does not hold up to honest objective scrutiny.

I for one am proud that Massachusetts is not Wisconsin.

I don't know why the Globe provides a platform for people like this author-I-mean-PR-agent, Charles Chieppo. His outfit http://chieppostrategies.com/about.html is a "public policy writing and advocacy" (i.e. corporate PR) and he is a Senior Fellow at the Pioneer Institute. Through a chain of conservative (corporate) front groups, The Pioneer Institute is ultimately funded by incredibly wealthy family foundations (Koch brothers, Bradley, etc.) who have an enormous financial interest in attacking unions and any restraint on predatory capitalism. These billionaires have been very busy trying to buy elections, which we all know about, but they've also been systematically poisoning democracy another way: by buying media influence through tactics such as this one! http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pioneer_Institute_for_Public_Policy_Research. Also see http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Franklin_Center_for_Government_and_Public_Integrity on paid-for "investigative journalism", includes ties to Pionner Institute. Chieppo is paid by money-laundered billionaire industrialists funds to promote anti-worker viewpoints. In other words, covert propaganda. We get enough sockpuppet commentary in the news. Globe, why here? And if here, why not disclose the financial network behind this "opinion"? There's a huge difference between honest opinion and shilling. As an taxpaying American citzen, I've had it with these tax-exempt front groups and their dirty tricks.

What a lot of nonsense. By the way Mr. Chieppo is your wife's business suffering because of this? Trying to wheedle coverage for mishaps by independent contractors and get away with paying for other benefits is a classic case of having your cake and eat it. An independent contractor is just that. They determine their hours and take responsibility for other expenses such as taxes and health insurance. If Mrs. Chieppo wants to be properly protected from employee mayhem she needs to hire them as employees and pay the freight like any other respectable employer.

I am so disappointed that the Globe gives this individual space to spread his propaganda. Just look at the picture the Globe used for this column. "Let's use the fat-guy picture!" It'll paint Warren with a veneer of fraud, corruption, greed and maybe even organized crime. Stereotypical-"Can someone give Big-Al a "pinkie-ring for our shot?". OMG could they get any more crass and stupid? Chieppo is closely linked to the Pioneer Institute and is a Chamber of Commerce big business zealot of the highest order. He's the kind of guy who uses rigged data. For example, he's the one who is most likely to crow about the success rate of charter schools because of high test scores but fails to mention that he's not counting the 25 percent of kids who didn't make it through the first year. Oh, those kids all had transportation problems-yeah right. What a joke.

Right to work is the way to go. That way everyone can do what they want. No one can argue with that.

Stop the presses!  Union workers make good money.  In fact they make better wages than non-union workers.  Well, we can't have that let's get rid of the unioins so we can pay everyone the same minimum wage.  Wait we can't make the argument that way, no one will buy that.  So let's change the argument.

The arguement must be that the "taxpayers", ie: union and non-union workers, are getting stifed on building contracts.  That's the best approach.  Those dirty union guys are costing the taxpayers money.  If we can make that arguement then the average knucklehead won't realize if he was in a union he might also be making a decent salary.  We can say that they are corrupt and you have to pay those nasty union dues.  What we need is a "right to work" law, it sounds so democratic so open.  What we get from that is the unions get to exist but we dry up their resources because some of the cheap folks will take the benefits but not pay the dues.  We make it all so dirty that Joe the Plumber wants no part of it.

The fact that the union guy makes good money?  Will hide that fact by calling it "dirty money" or "taxpayer money".  Sure enough folks are dumb enough to buy into that and rob themselves.  Amazing.

Is this guy nuts? Like all good propagandists he uses a term (the 1%) that became a rallying cry against greed and corruption against the very group (union members) that consistently organizes against greed and corruption. And of course the anti-union Globe gives him the space to spew his propaganda.

Yes the unions flexed their muscle in the past election....AS THEY SHOULD. Because any examination of the facts reveals that as union density has declined the wages of ALL Americans have been stagnant while the rich in this country has consolidated more and more of the wealth.

And this crap about small businesses is getting tired.  If a small business cannot provide a decent living for its employees than it shouldn't exist. There is no inherent right in our constitution that allows people who want to be their own boss to do it on the backs of their employees. 

The 1% complains that any attempt to bring light onto the basic unfairness in our society is class war.  But this OPINION piece is nothing but class war.  I say bring it on. We have nothing to lose but the chains this guy...and their propaganda machine The Boston Globe...seek to keep us down.

This lying spin doctor, a true toady, has been around for years, occasionally in print, because he is paid by the Association of General contractors. Wait, isn't that like a union, but for employers? Yeah right. They want the advantage of grouping together to further their interests, but don't want anyone else doing the same because it's immoral or, whatever. Notice how he tries to attach himself to Occupy, like a parasite. Chieppo is organizing for the race to the bottom, the finish line is ultimately Mexico or China. The independent contractor scam is well known, giving you the privilege of paying your own workmen's compensation insurance and all other employer obligations, which most don't do, then they wind up on the public dime.

More than 80 percent of the Commonwealth’s construction workforce is not affiliated with a union. ----------Right, if you want to count the paper hangers and porch builders. Unions train and employ people who can weld the main steam in a nuclear power plant. People who can rig massive equipment and put it on the roof of a forty story. Almost every sentence in this guy's column can be disproved and/or seriously debated.

A couple of comments:  First, the school building "study" was debunked at the time it came out for, among other flaws, conflating Boston wages with those in less expensive labor markets around the state.  But the Globe continues to permit it to be burped up by these guys.  Second, "independent contracting" is just one more effort by many, many employers to lower wages, avoid paying for benefits, and escape safety net contributions that make the problem with "entitlements" (outrageous as that term may be) worse.

I'd also remind everyone that using union workers can save the public money. When you go with the lowest bidder, even a smart, young energetic "entrepreneur" that inexperienced out fit can screw things up royally. Then you have to pay for a clean-up, you'll have legal fees, higher costs for construction and materials and lost opportunity costs ends up costing the "taxpayers" much more in the long run. The problem we run into nowadays is that when stimulus money comes around from the feds, with union-only rules attached, there aren't enough union workers around any more to even do the job.

"Cheapo's" writing, which is indeed cheap and riddled with inaccuracies, straw - grasping spin, and outright lies has no business being in a newspaper. Cheapo wants a cheap labor force because the rich guys whom pay for his "services" will benefit. Unions stand in their way because you can't "outsource" labor for domestic building projects. If unions disappear so will decent salaries, benefits, and safety measures. Doesn't the 1% have enough money?

No one seems to point out that the unions are a boys club. Skilled workers who want to join the union can't just do so...you have to get in through a father or brother or something. So what no one else need go into a trade? My brother is a master electrician and he couldn't get in the union. He is highly skilled, has years of experience...so maybe you shouldn't act like if you aren't in the union you have no training and no right to bid on jobs. His costs do not include conferences in Vegas for union heads or millions to political campaigns...that is the main difference. He has a network of other contractors who are equally skilled and they can work together...

The biggest issue I have with this article is the author doesn't disclose his affiliations in his tag line. One can discover that he worked at the the Pioneer Institute from Google and his site. And if you do go to his site, you can find that "opinion writing and placement" is one of his paid services. Further research will show his labor disenfranchisement work and writings. But how many people are going to bother to do that?

Point one: My experience trying to build out office space in NY was that either we tried to use non-union labor and never got the job finished due to sabotage, or we paid 15-25% more using union labor but we were able to finish the project. We tried the non-union route only to find wires ripped out each night even after we hired guards. We caved because we wanted the office.

Point two: unions clearly are in violation of conflict of interest when they vote for/against the people they have to negotiate wages, benefits, and work rules with. 

Union laws need revision.

The issue of labor unions contributing large amounts of money to influence elections would be addressed with the overturn of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The movement to overturn this decision sometimes, referred to as the Democracy Amendment, would provide our elected representatives with the power to establish sensible campaign reform laws that would regulate the amount of money going into elections. Such laws would place limits on what unions, corporations, and individuals could contribute to an election. These laws would reduce the influence large campaign contributions have on candidates running for office and elected officials. It would also mean that our representatives in government would be more responsive to all of their constituents.

Well, the 2012 Presidential election has been over for a month now, but it appears that the need for propagandists to promote their "visions" for America hasn't been slaked.  This piece by this character, Chieppo, is a good example of the tactic that'll be used for the foreseeable future by the REAL one-percenters to try to influence the public and to spread their distortions.  They'll try to get their opinion pieces in any newspaper that'll have them, and that may turn out to be quite a few.  The Globe, in particular, seems to have become all too sensitive to criticism that they're too slanted toward the left, in their news stories and their opinion pieces; so they've tried out these "right-slanted" pieces a lot more lately.  But it's one thing to have a regular commentator like Jacoby, or even Sununu, and another to have "guest writers" who are just PR flacks for the right, and who try to pass themselves off as "experts".  Don't fall for this junk!  And always check the background of the authors.

Congratulations to the Globe for printing this. 

Point of clarifcation: not all public unions are as powerful as the writer suggests. State-university faculty and librarians, for instance, are unionized but are payed significantly below peers, according to every study that has been made of the matter, and spend months or years waiting for each contract to be negotiated and eventually, if ever funded. In fact, the governor took money out of the most recent contract AFTER it was in place.

Regarding other unions, some more honest math is needed. Even if preferential treatment gets members above the median income in this high-cost state, it does not put them into the top 1 percent. 

I support private sector unions, but I'm against unions in the public sector.  Unfortunately, unions in the private sector are a vanishing breed, but public sector unions continue to grow.  

The problem with  unions in Massachusetts is that they enjoy unfair advantages because they bribe Massachusetts politicians (not a difficult task) with contributions and other kinds of support (phone banks, door-to-door, etc.) in return for egregious abuses of the taxpayer such as the Pacheco law, the prevailing wage law, etc., etc., which costs the taxpayers big time and makes it difficult for private companies to compete.  

The companies that are allowed to bid on public works contracts in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts go through a rigorous evaluation process at the State level as well as the local level before they even allowed to submit a bid on certain size and types of public works contracts. It's actually a very evolved and well run process. Having said that, it is also often the case that many of the larger and more complicated projects can only be handled by contracting firms that have access to the skilled and abudant labor forces that labor unions have. Nonetheless, prevailing wage/Bacon-Davis wages are mandatory for all tradesmen and laborers working on public works contracts in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Anyone who thinks laborers and tradesmen shouldn't receive prevailing wage never worked on dusty,dirty,cold,hot and sometimes dangerous construction project. The best interest of the public are served when skilled tradesman and laborers are paid well whether they are union or non-union companies.                 

Unions aren't rich. What a crock that is. The money unions use to support political candidates come from thousands of middle class workers, many of them barely middle class. That money doesn't come from multi-billion-dollar corporations.

Uniions advocate for the middle and lower classes, which are incidentally the majority of the people. The wealthy most campaign for themselves.

The real crime here is the huge amount of money Charles Chieppo pockets by demeaning those who aren't part of the upper classes. He's basically a highly paid right-wing hack.

about as informative and fact based as any of Ann Coulter's screeds