The Washington Post has an interesting article up on internal divisions within the Washington, DC teacher union. The corrupt union has been in a state of turmoil since former top boss Barbara Bullock was caught embezzling millions of dollars from union funds.

From 1995 to 2002, Bullock ripped off teachers' forced dues to go on massive shopping sprees at Saks, Nieman Marcus, and Tiffany's. Unsurprisingly, Bullock funded her excessive spending by jacking up mandatory union dues.

However, getting rid of Bullock hasn't solved rank-and-file teachers' problems. Teachers, parents, and administrators are dissastified with the system, and teacher union officials are resisting any change that may result in fewer teachers in their forced dues-paying ranks.

"Reformers" are calling for more oversight and transparency, but true reform can only occur if rank-and-file teachers are given a choice to keep their hard-earned money. Only the elimination of forced dues will make it possible to hold union officials accountable.

A recent ruling by a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge upheld the right of employees to sign a union decertification petition in the midst of a debilitating strike. More importantly, the ruling also endorsed the employer's refusal to hand over non-striking workers' home addresses and other personal information to union officials bent on harassment and intimidation.

On the advice of Foundation staff attorneys, a substantial majority (77 percent) of non-striking employees at a Tenneco facility in Grass Lakes, Michigan signed a petition in favor of union decertification. Unwilling to relinquish their stranglehold on workplace representation, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 660 officials filed a complaint with the NLRB, arguing that non-striking employees favored decertification only because of Tenneco's unfair labor practices. The NLRB judge rejected these claims and concluded that the UAW's objections to the decertification process were entirely without merit.

More significant, however, was the stern rebuke delivered to UAW officials for demanding Tenneco hand over the non-striking workers' personal contact information, including home addresses. Union officials claimed they needed the employees' home addresses to "communicate" the benefits of membership directly, but the judge decided that the threat of union intimidation justified Tenneco's decision to withold personal information from UAW militants.

The judge noted that the union's rationale for acquiring the employees' home addresses was suspect, as " . . . the Union had other viable means of communicating with the replacements short of having access to their homes." He also recognized that union operatives had exhibited a pattern of harassment, having previously " . . . traveled to the personal residence of two members, whose address they certainly had access to, and staged a protest of their stance on the strike." The judge further noted the UAW's "venomous" and "disrespectful" attitude towards non-striking workers. So much for fair representation.

Full text of the NLRB ruling is available here. It's a long decision, but you'll find the judge's response to union demands for employees' personal information on pages 62-65. His assesment of the decertification petition's legality is available on pages 74-79.

Strike-related violence is an under-reported aspect of compulsory unionization, and the UAW has a long history of harassment and abuse. In fact, Freedom@Work recently exposed a similar campaign of intimidation against non-striking workers at a Volvo auto plant in Pulaski County, Virginia.

AFL-CIO top boss John Sweeney and Virginia AFL-CIO chief James Leaman recently had an article in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star that shows just how union officials view the workers they claim to represent.

The headline of the article rhetorically asks: "Without labor unions, who speaks for the worker?"

The implication is that workers are incapable of representing themselves. This also implies that workers who reject union membership are too stupid to know what is best for them.

That contemptuous view of workers and their ability to look after their own best interests explains why Big Labor is constantly claiming to have employees' best interests in mind while trying to limit the ability of those very employees to exercise free choice when it comes to unionization.

According to the union boss mentality, forcing workers to be represented by the union (as happens nationwide under monopoly bargaining), forcing workers to pay dues to a union (as happens in non-Right to Work states), and eliminating the protection of a secret ballot (as happens in a card check drive), are all just ways of coercing workers into doing what the union bosses think is best for them.

With such a condescending view of the workers they want to represent, it is no wonder that when actually given the choice, fewer and fewer employees are choosing unionization. Unfortunately, the union bosses are intent on "solving" that problem by eliminating that choice.

The Rocky Mountain News had an article this weekend on various proposed ballot initiatives in Colorado. The otherwise informative article concluded with this strange (and unsupported) sentence:

For the most part, states without right-to-work laws have higher levels of union participation, a statistic that some observers attribute to the popularity of unions rather than right-to-work laws.

The idea that the "popularity of unions" accounts for lower rates of union participation in Right to Work states, gets it entirely backwards and fails to understand just what a Right to Work law does.

Right to work laws do nothing to change the process through which a workplace becomes a union shop: a place where union officials have the power to forcibly represent every employee in the bargaining unit). Rather, they simply ensure that once a union is installed, no worker is forced to pay union dues as a condition of keeping or getting a job.

There are at least two ways that these Right to Work protections affect "union participation" rates:

1. Voluntary Participation. The most obvious reason is that in Right to Work states unions can't force employees to pay dues or be fired. This lets employees decide for themselves if they think the union is worth the dues they are being charged. So it should come as no surprise that when employees are actually given a choice, it drives down union participation.
2. Big Labor's Bottom Line. A second way in which Right to Work laws lower participation in unions is that they discourage (though not completely) Top Down union organizing. More and more drives for unionization are instigated by outside professional union organizers, as opposed to employee-led demands for unionization. But like the companies they try to organize, union officials are very aware of the bottom line, and they are always looking to maximize their revenue. Since for union bosses revenue means union dues, they realize that by targeting employers in states without Right to Work laws, they can maximize their haul because every worker - not just those who support the union - will be forced to pay up.

So contrary to what "some observers" say, there are at least two ways that protecting employees' freedom to choose impacts union participation rates.

Yesterday, Senate Democrats held hearings and called on Members of the National Labor Relations Board to speak about their views of the NLRB.

Member Wilma Liebman, one of the most fiercely pro-compulsory unionism members ever to sit on the National Labor Relations Board, testified about what she described as “a loss of confidence in the board and its processes.”

To understand what she means by that, watch the following video clip of her testifying about the NLRB back in December before a House committee. Not long after the four minute mark of the video, Liebman bemoans the fact that, according to her, the currently NLRB seems too preoccupied with “freedom of choice”:

“The Board has said for the first time that freedom of choice – which is to say the freedom to reject unionization – prevails in the statutory scheme over promoting collective bargaining.”

So there you have it: Big Labor’s real problem with recent NLRB decisions is that the Board is protecting freedom of choice too strongly, thus allowing workers to reject unionization.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit affirmed a district’s court ruling to sentence local union bosses Gwendolyn Hemphill and James Baxter to jail.

The court called their case a “seven-year orgy of greed.”

Between 1995 and 2002, the conspirators stole millions of dollars from Washington Teachers Union (an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers union). As a result, a federal judge convicted two union bosses of multiple counts, including embezzlement, money laundering, false pretenses, and conspiring to commit such crimes.

Here are some of the expensive goodies these union bosses bought using money from the union dues treasury:

• A $50,000 Tiffany silver set
• A wedding reception for Hemphill’s son
• $29,000 in dental work for Hemphill and her spouse
• $19,000 in Washington Wizards tickets
• Car insurance
• Art décor for their homes
• Personal checks to themselves ($18,805 for Hemphill and $31,000 for Baxter)

According to court documents, in 2001, these union bosses stole so much money (using union dues) that the WTU union paid $925,000 to cover the credit card bills. By 2002, the union went broke and could not pay its membership fees to the AFT union.

In the end, Hemphill was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Baxter 10 years. Barbara Bullock, WTU union’s president during this period, and her chauffeur, Leroy Holmes, both pled guilty before trial.

This astonishing example of union boss greed is exactly why forced association with unions breeds corruption. Unfortunately, heinous crimes like these are sure to continue until compulsory unionism ends.

At a United Auto Workers (UAW) conference yesterday, Senator Teddy Kennedy (D-MA) – chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee – told attendees that he wouldn’t give up trying to push the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” down the throats of America’s workers.

The Daily Labor Report highlighted:

"We're going to bring it back again and again, until we prevail,” Kennedy said. “And I guarantee this: we get a Democrat in the White House and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will be the law of the land.”

Meanwhile, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) released a report today entitled “Card-Check Forced Unionism Would Hurt Employees and Employers” that details the economic devastation that would result from increased union monopoly power.

The detailed 13-page research report highlights how Big Labor’s number one legislative priority (you guessed it, EFCA) will exacerbate forced unionism and expand unions’ monopoly bargaining privileges over employees.

NILRR’s report points out some of the following about card check organizing and forced unionism:

• “Card-check” organizing empowers union officials to force a business’s employees to accept a union as their monopoly-bargaining agent solely through the acquisition of signed union authorization cards.
• Key provisions in the legislation would effectively ban employee secret-ballot elections over unionization in the private sector and replace such elections with so-called “card checks.”
• Private sector job growth is nearly three times as fast in low union-monopoly states.

To read all the facts, download the full NILRR report on the card check forced unionism bill here.

A top official – Steven T. Thomas – at the Laborer’s International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 500 in Ohio was fired for spending thousands of dollars on personal entertainment using the union’s credit card.

Of course, the credit card debts are paid by forced dues-paying workers the union local supposedly “represents.” And according to this union boss, there’s apparently no better way to represent the working interests of those employees than to spend the money in multiple gentlemen’s clubs.

The Toledo Blade reports:

[Steven T. Thomas] charged the union $17,414 for 96 separate visits in 2004 to Scarlett’s in Toledo and Kahoots Gentlemen's Club in Columbus, according to report obtained by The Blade.

Thomas, the business manager of the union local, was removed in May 2007 for the misuse of funds.

But in an ironic twist, Judge Nadine S. Pettiford of the Ohio Unemployment Compensation Review Commission recently ruled that Thomas was not fired with just cause from his job and ordered that Thomas’ unemployment benefits be reinstated.

The outcome of this story is entirely amazing, as it highlights yet another reason why compulsory unionism and corruption go hand-in-hand and why labor bosses often barely receive a slap on the wrist when they misuse union dues.

What do union bosses do when independent-minded employees refuse to succumb to union organizing pressure?

Well, it turns out Jimmy Hoffa’s solution is to write a letter to the president of the companies he is trying to organize in order to smear those companies.

Teamsters boss Hoffa did just that in writing to CEO Moir Lockhead once FirstGroup employees began showing admirable resistance to the union's thuggish organizing tactics.

Workers at a Hodgkins, Illinois busing facility – owned by the UK-based FirstGroup – are saying “no” to the Teamsters’ unionization hopes, but union bosses don't like hearing "no" from independent-minded employees.

Hoffa's letter underscores the problems with so-called “neutrality agreements,” since FirstGroup entered into such an agreement with the Teamsters union in order to get the union off its back. Neutrality agreements give unions sweeping access to employees’ personal information and ban secret-ballot elections, since the employer agrees to support a union’s attempt to organize its workforce.

Hoffa’s letter shows that anything short of unyielding assistance to lock employees up in forced unionism by employers is unacceptable to union officials.

In a similar Right to Work Foundation-aided case in Batavia, Illinois, another union with a neutrality pledge refused to go away from a FirstGroup facility – just like what is happening here.

As we continue to follow the Foxwoods Casino and Resort story in Connecticut, the National Labor Relations Board has ended its trial over the validity of the unionization drive as of yesterday.

Center to Foxwood’s argument in the case is the harassment and intimidation tactics it says independent-minded employees endured by United Auto Workers (UAW) union organizers.

TheDay.com covers the story:

Diane Weaver said she was surrounded in an employee cafeteria by a group of 10 to 15 union supporters, who shouted at her. Weaver, a table game dealer for five years, testified that one person called her “stupid” and another threatened to beat her.

One dealer even testified against Bob Madore, the director of UAW Region 9A, after receiving these intimidating threats:

Debra Beebe, a dual-rate dealer for almost 15 years, said she attended a union meeting held the week before the election at the union hall in Norwich. At it, she said, “Bob” spoke and told those in the crowd the union would know who voted “no” in the election and that if those individuals filed grievances, there would be a way for the union to “retaliate.” Beebe testified that she heard Bob say that if someone who was anti-union filed a grievance, the person's paperwork would be shoved to the bottom of the stack.

Administrative Law Judge Raymond Green will issue a written decision on unionization at the casino in early March.