With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, a fourth grade teacher from Ohio has filed a federal suit against Ohio's largest teacher union for religious discrimination:

Columbus, OH (December 4, 2008) – A fourth grade teacher from the Coldwater Exempted Village School District has filed a federal suit against the state’s largest teacher union for forcing her to pay compulsory union fees to fund the union whose activities violate her religious faith.

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys, providing the teacher with free legal aid, filed the suit this week in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division.

Kathy Hart, an active member of the Catholic Church, has been a teacher in the Ohio public school system since August 1996. Because the public school she works in is unionized, she works under a collective bargaining agreement which forces her to pay compulsory union fees to the National Education Association (NEA) union and its state and local affiliates - the Ohio Education Association (OEA) union and the Coldwater Teachers Organization (CTO) union. Due to her faith, Hart objects to the unions’ positions on abortion and special rights for homosexuals.

Hart had asked that the union divert her compulsory fees to a charity, thereby accommodating her religious objections to supporting financially unions she believes to be involved in immoral activities.

Read the rest of the Foundation's press release here.

In this week’s episode, Foundation VP Stefan Gleason appears on “The Drive with Gary Nolan”. Stefan and Gary discuss the Big Three/UAW union bailout. They then go on to discuss how union officials have become above the law, enabling them legally to target workers with coercion, intimidation, and violence (and how they can literally get away with murder):

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Tragedy struck on Black Friday at a Wal-Mart on Long Island when impatient customers trampled an employee as they rushed into the store at 5 a.m., leading to his death.

But union bosses -- long engaged in a vicious corporate campaign against the retailer in an effort to force Wal-Mart employees into their forced dues rank -- are trying to exploit the tragedy for their self-serving ends:

"This incident was avoidable," said Bruce Both, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500, the state of New York's largest grocery worker's union.

"Where were the safety barriers? Where was security? How did store management not see dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe manner?

"This is not just tragic; it rises to a level of blatant irresponsibility by Wal-Mart," he said.

(Via Reason)

Yesterday President Bush issued an Exectuive Order exempting several agencies and subdivisions of the Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, Transportation, and Treasury departments from draconian and stifling federal labor-management relations strictures.

This is good policy. However, while freeing any worker from forced union monopoly bargaining is a welcome step, the last-minute move begs the question: What took so long?

Unfortunately, making this common-sense change on the way out the door cheapens it, making it appear to be little more than political retaliation. The administration should have made this and many more pro-individual-rights moves long ago. Instead, the incompetent political managers in the White House thought that making policy concessions to the union bosses would have bought their support. How wrong they were.

Foundation attorneys have long advocated for freeing national security employees from forced unionization, including fighting for the rights of airport screeners to remain free from union monopoly control.

There are other recent examples of Administration officials foolishly failing to agressively protect employee free choice. There are big political lessons to be learned here.

Currently, 22 states have Right to Work protections which ensure that while workers are free to join unions, they are also free to refuse to join or pay tribute to an unwanted union. But this summer, federal legislation to wipe away every Right to Work law in the country was introduced in Congress.

Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation and National Right to Work Committee, explains the nature of the threat -- and how supporters of employee freedom rallied once before to protect Right to Work laws (while forced unionism proponents got wiped out in subsequent elections) -- in Human Events:

In July, Sherman introduced legislation to repeal Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act -- the provision of the 1947 law that affirms the right of states to enact Right to Work laws. Strike Section 14(b) from the books, and state Right to Work laws would be preempted by federal labor policy, which upholds forced unionism.

Sherman’s bill got little attention last year. Even most Democrats
ignored the proposed 14(b) repeal. Only eight House Democrats
cosponsored the bill before Nancy Pelosi sent it to committee.

But as time goes on, and particularly if Big Labor’s cronies in Congress
pass legislation like the Card-Check Forced Unionism Bill or the Police
and Fire Fighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill, which would force countless
thousands of America’s first responders under union control against
their will, a fresh attempt to repeal Section 14(b) may gather steam.

Read the whole thing here.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the underlying law it enforces are major tools for union bosses to force workers into union collectives and force them to pay union dues. The incoming Obama administration is expected to help Big Labor use the NLRB even more aggressively in its war against employee free choice.

Today, Foundation VP Stefan Gleason is joined by former NLRB Member John Raudabaugh, who reveals some disturbing things American workers and businesses should expect from the Obama NLRB: