Contrary to the usual propaganda union bosses would like you to believe, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) -- an anti-compulsory unionism think tank that exposes the harm forced unionism inflicts on workers -- released a report today entitled "Union Monopoly Linked to Lower Purchasing Power" that details how workers in least-unionized states enjoy the benefits of higher cost-of-living-adjusted earnings and disposable incomes.

You see, not only does government-granted union monopoly bargaining privileges infringe on employees' individual liberty, it also harms employees' economic interests.

According to NILRR:

As of 2008, according to economists Barry Hirsch and David Macpherson, 8.4% of private-sector employees nationwide were under “exclusive” union representation. But in 15 states -- Alaska, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,. Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin --10.0% or more of private-sector workers were unionized.

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In 2008, cost of living-adjusted average weekly earnings in the states with 10.0% or more of private-sector employees subject to union monopoly bargaining were $770.

That’s $48 less than the average in the states with private-sector unionization of 5.0% or less. (These low-union density states are: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.) That comes to a roughly $2500-a-year disadvantage for full-time workers in states with high monopoly-bargaining density.

Aggregate cost of living-adjusted weekly earnings for states with private-sector union density of 5.1% to 9.9% were $783, or, for full-time workers, nearly $700 a year more than in the highest-union-density states, but more than $1800 a year less than in the lowest-union-density states.

NILRR also reports that "disposable income data tell the same story."

The economic benefits of voluntary union membership should come to no surprise to regular Freedom@Work readers, as we reported last month in "Compulsory Unionism Bankrupting States: Workers Flee to Right to Work States for Jobs":

NILRR recently found an especially strong correlation between a state’s Right to Work status and its job growth, while employees in Right to Work states are benefiting from faster job growth and higher real purchasing power than their compulsory unionism counterparts.

To view NILRR's fact sheet "Union Monopoly Linked to Lower Purchasing Power", click here.

In a surprising display of honesty about their true agenda, union bosses and Far Left activists participated on a panel at the Netroots Nation conference called "The Secret Plan to Destroy the American Right."

What's their "secret plan" to expand the power and size of government and raise taxes on hard-working Americans? It's passage of the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, more accurately called the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill.

Union bosses apparently see the billions of forced dues dollars that the bill would funnel into pushing Organized Labor's radical political agenda as THE major selling point for the bill.

Unfortunately for the panelists and the Big Labor hierarchy, but fortunately for the American people, there's nothing secret about the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill and how it would obliterate the rights of American workers.  Right here on Freedom@Work, we've kept concerned citizens informed about this union boss power grab:

• Expert legal analysis explaining how the Card Check Bill would destroy the secret ballot in union certification elections
• Workers in Albion, Indiana tell Fox News about the real life intimidation they felt during a card check organizing drive by the militant United Auto Workers (UAW) union
• A former union president testifies before Congress about the dangers of card check organizing
• Worker explains to Senate labor committee how union goons lied to him to get him to sign a card
• National Right to Work president Mark Mix discusses card check and union intimidation on a nationally syndicated radio program
• At the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference, Mix demonstrates why union bosses love card check
• Far Left icon George McGovern writes in the Wall Street Journal about another disturbing feature of the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill: mandatory binding arbitration

Check out our full archive on card check.

Union bosses are trying to downplay the impact of their 'Card Check Forced Unionism' legislation in Right to Work states.  While Right to Work laws are critical in protecting employees from forced union dues and in creating jobs and a higher standard of living, the fact is they do not deter coercive union organizing and other types of union abuse. The National Right to Work Foundation has released a short backgrounder on this topic, which is now available for download here.

Although state Right to Work laws do ensure that no worker can be forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment, card check organizing campaigns make it dramatically easier for Big Labor to install union cronies in workplaces across the country. The end result is that even in Right to Work states, employees can be forced to accept union "representation" -- where union bosses may dictate the terms and conditions of their employment.

Read the whole thing for a clearer picture of how card check legislation will impact workers' livelihoods across the country, even if they live in Right to Work states.

Here at Freedom@Work, we've covered the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (more accurately called the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill). The job-killing bill would effectively eliminate the secret ballot in union certification elections and open up workers to intimidation and dirty tricks by union organizers in coercive card check organizing drives.  Moreover, the bill's mandatory binding arbitration provision would allow federal bureaucrats to impose terms and conditions of employment on workers and employers -- which even Far Left icon George McGovern opposes.

Shikha Dalmia, senior analyst at the Reason Foundation, wrote in the Wall Street Journal this weekend -- echoing what National Right to Work has been documenting for years -- that mandatory binding arbitration has been occurring in government employment in numerous forced unionism states with atrocious results.

In 1969, the Wolverine State embraced a form of compulsory arbitration nearly identical to the one proposed in EFCA to resolve disputes with its police and firefighters. Years later, Detroit mayor Coleman Young -- who had authored the original law as state senator -- rued what he had done. "We now know that compulsory arbitration has been a failure," he lamented to the National Journal in 1981. "Slowly, inexorably, compulsory interest arbitration has destroyed sensible fiscal management and has caused more damage to the public service than the strikes it was designed to prevent."

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A 2006 task force convened by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who supports compulsory arbitration, found that local government costs in arbitration states are 3%-5% higher compared to nonarbitration states. "While small in percentage terms, the impact in dollar terms is huge," the task force concluded. Given that local governments in Michigan alone spend over $23 billion annually, this works out to over a billion in extra spending for them.

Michigan's experience is hardly unique. Former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis also tried to limit public-sector compulsory arbitration during his first term. In 1977, Mr. Dukakis argued that compulsory arbitration "has removed legitimate management prerogatives in the area of staff assignments, (and) transfers from the control of municipal officials at a time when they are under severe pressure to improve their management and make savings." Mr. Dukakis failed to stop compulsory arbitration, but two years later Massachusetts voters approved a ballot initiative that effectively scrapped it.

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Businesses are not the only losers in compulsory arbitration. Currently, any contract negotiated by union officials has to be ratified through a vote of rank-and-file members. Under compulsory arbitration, workers do not get this vote. In other words, EFCA will take away the right of workers to vote to form a union, and then binding arbitration will take away their right to vote on a contract.

The only clear winners under this law would be the union bosses, who will obtain new powers without any new accountability. If Michigan's experience suggests anything, it's that rank-and-file workers, businesses, and the American economy will suffer. Sen. Lincoln and her colleagues should bear this in mind before they make their final decisions.

[Emphasis added]

Read the whole thing here.

Click here to watch an urgent video message from Senator Jim DeMint, Steve Forbes, and National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. 

Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason sits down with Reality Check Radio to discuss the history of the Right to Work movement, Card Check, and the Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:

At the annual Concerned Educators Against Forced Unionism (CEAFU) conference in Washington, D.C., Right to Work Legislative Director Greg Mourad discussed the state of the card check debate in Congress. Here's the video:

In the latest of a litany of Big Labor political paybacks, President Barack Obama nominated union lawyer George H. Cohen to Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 

According to the Peggy Browning Fund’s biography of Cohen, "he joined the National Labor Relations Board in 1960 as an Attorney Advisor for Board Member [Gerald] Brown where he helped shape the progressive, union [boss]... friendly agenda of the 'Kennedy Board'…  In 1966, George left the Board to begin his 40 year stint as a union-side labor lawyer."

Cohen’s past efforts on behalf of union chiefs clearly indicates that he brings years of forced unionism bias to what is a very coveted position for Big Labor.

Under the mandatory binding arbitration provision in the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, the FMCS bureaucrats would take over employer/union boss contract negotiations 90 days after a card check forced organizing campaign.  The forced arbitration provision that is triggered at 120 days not only snatches the power of contract negotiations away from the people it actually affects; but it also, as the Wall Street Journal notes, emboldens union bosses "to run out the 120-day clock and let an arbitrator impose a contract that is bound to include much of what unions demand."  The federally-imposed contract would be binding for two years.

If Big Labor's Card Check Forced Unionism Bill passes, the Cohen-led FMCS would become a defacto rubber stamp for union boss coercion, doing Big Labor's dirty work during negotiations and empowering them to browbeat employers into forcing more workers into forced-dues-paying union membership.

Obama's nomination of yet another union hired gun, this time for the vital post of FMCS Director, is just another example in a long list of union stooges who clearly do not have the best interests of independent-minded workers at heart.

With all the controversy surrounding card check legislation, it's worth talking to workers who've actually experienced the procedure first-hand. With that in mind, the National Right to Work Foundation interviewed several employees who endured intimidation, harassment and coercion at the hands of union organizers during an actual card check drive. After UAW organizers forced their way into the workplace through the coercive card check scheme, the workers forced a secret ballot decertification vote (using a precedent won by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys) and tossed out the unwanted union.

Here's the video:

The Las Vegas Sun reports that internal disputes and struggles for power within some of the nation's top union monopolies have played a role in Big Labor's inability to force the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill through Congress.

This is largely untrue.  While internal union disputes may be playing a small role, the real story is that the National Right to Work Committee has led mobilized grassroots America to lobby against this toxic union boss power grab.  Of course, this bill would eliminate the secret ballot in union certification elections and empower federal bureaucrats to write and impose contracts on small businesses and workers.

But the current power struggle among UNITE HERE union chiefs is incredibly revealing:

Exhibit A: Unite Here General President Bruce Raynor resigned last week from the apparel and hotel workers union after six months of legal and verbal jousting with co-president John Wilhelm over union resources and the direction of Unite Here.

He said he decided to quit after Wilhelm’s allies, accompanied by nearly a dozen security guards, broke into his New York union office and stole personal files related to mediation sessions aimed at reconciling the two leaders’ differences. Raynor likened the incident to something one would see on the HBO mob series “The Sopranos.”

A bit of a thug himself, Raynor would know.  Sadly, union violence and intimidation is nothing new and it is usually committed against independent-minded American workers.  The Card Check Forced Unionism Bill would only increase union harassment of American workers.

Indeed, even comparing union operations to "The Sopranos" is common.  And it's no laughing matter, as we show in this Right to Work video report about an indictment of twelve Operating Engineers Local 17 union officials.