Senator Ted Kennedy responds to the Wall Street Journal's recent piece that among other things, exposed the coercive nature of "card check" union organizing. He brands the process "simple and fair," but maybe he should watch the video below, which we posted a few weeks back. The only thing simple about such campaigns is how unfair to employees they are. Read more in this letter to the editor from today.

A group of Dana Corporation employees from Albion, Indiana, recently fought their way free of the unwanted United Auto Workers union capitalizing on a ruling won by the National Right to Work Foundation.

Currently, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys are helping Minteq International employee Joel Tibbetts fight union intimidation at his workplace.

Tibbetts, a steel mill worker, turned to the Right to Work Foundation for free legal help after International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 union officials threatened to have Tibbetts fired three separate times in three months over the summer after he refused to join the union.

After the third termination threat, Tibbetts tried to join the union out of fear of losing his job. But IUOE union officials rejected his application since Tibbetts wrote that he was joining “under protest” on his union membership forms.

In retaliation, IUOE union officials told Tibbetts instead that his forced dues would amount to a sum greater than the amount Tibbetts would owe as a regular union member.

In response, Right to Work attorneys filed federal charges against the IUOE Local 150 union on behalf of Tibbetts. The charges highlight that the IUOE union’s failure to provide Tibbetts of adequate notice his rights under the 1988 Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court precedent, Communications Workers v. Beck case.

Tibbetts’ struggle underscores why employees in the Hoosier state need a Right to Work law, which would make union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary.

Labor union officials enjoy many extraordinary powers and immunities created by legislatures and the courts, including the powers to shake down workers for forced dues payments and even to wage campaigns of violent retaliation against nonunion employees.

Sadly, union violence is protected by judicial decree under the federal Hobbs Act. Meanwhile, many states similarly restrict the authority of law enforcement to enforce laws during strikes. As a result, thousands of incidents of violent assaults by union militants have gone unpunished.

A prime example today -- the Indianapolis Business Journal chronicled union violence directed at nonunion workers a Hilton construction site:

“Pickets…slashed 14 tires, cut a telephone line to a trailer and put glue in locks late last week…. The superintendent, Kim Lackey, also said the union-based picket line hurled racial and sexual slurs at the construction workers, many of whom were minorities and women.”

But despite this thuggery and property destruction, law enforcement was AWOL:

“...if violence occurred on the picket line, police should have made arrests.”

Union officials enjoy numerous exemptions and special privileges – and workers pay a high price which sometimes includes their lives. To read the full list of Big Labor’s Top Ten Special Privileges, click here.