“Streamlining” Union Intimidation
Last week, blogger Clayton Cramer gave his take on why Big Labor bosses would want to wipe out secret ballot elections from the American workplace. His account includes some telling examples of union boss intimidation:
I am more inclined to suspect that a lot of people sign the union authorization cards because they are either strongly encouraged or even directly threatened to do so. Labor unions are fundamentally institutions of organized violence. A friend who has since passed on left me this account of working in a union shop in California during World War II (when the federal government leaned pretty heavily on employers to accept unions):
Our next problem was that after three months on the job, workers were required to join the paper workers union. Those who did not received disfiguring beatings after hours. Having seen what happened to another girl in same position as Wanda and I, we decided that rather than face the same treatment we would quit our jobs before the three months ended.
I remember being quite young and surprised that my father was home during the day. He explained that his union, the Boilermakers/Blacksmiths, had gone on strike. "Can’t you go to work anyway?"
"Not if you want to live."
And unfortunately, this wasn’t just his imagination. There’s a fascinating decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. v. Enmons (1973), that held that the Hobbs Act that "makes it a federal crime to obstruct interstate commerce by robbery or extortion" did not apply to labor unions engaged in destroying power company transformers with rifles and explosives because such use of violence did not qualify as extortion.
Extortion means that you are getting something that you don’t have a right to get–while higher wages obtained through such violence was a legitimate union bargaining tactic. The Court may have actually come to the right conclusion, based on the legal definition of extortion and the legislative intent of the Hobbs Act–but it does show you something of how labor unions get things done.I had a friend in California who grew up in Michigan. His father was a UAW local official. He remembered vividly being in a coffee shop with his family one day. The guy in the next booth made some remark to a companion that was uncomplimentary to the union–and my friend’s father instinctively swung his coffee mug around and shattered it on this guy’s jaw.
There’s a long and ugly, bloody, deadly history of corporations and labor unions fighting it out in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There’s plenty of evil that was done by both sides. But this is not the situation today–not even close. Labor violence today is almost entirely by labor unions. I can easily believe that the reason that the AFL-CIO wants to "streamline" the process is that they are intimidating workers into signing authorization cards–and don’t dare risk a secret ballot.
Well said.
To learn more on how union organizers mislead workers into signing away their rights and to view an appalling example of an actual "authorization card" used by Teamster union organizers to deceive employees into compulsory unionism, click here: Spotlight on "Card Check" Deception.
Special Right to Work Podcast: Election Aftermath and the Looming Union Assault on Our Freedoms
In this special episode of the National Right to Work Podcast, National Right to Work Committee and Foundation President Mark Mix tells host Stefan Gleason about the ramifications of the power-shifting election.
New Right to Work Podcast: Compulsory Unionism and Public Education
In the latest episode, Foundation VP Stefan Gleason sits down with Matt Brouillette of the Pennsylvania-based Commonwealth Foundation to discuss the compulsory unionism stranglehold over much of America’s educational system. Check it out:
You can listen to the entirety of The Commonwealth Foundation’s radio program here.
You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.
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Worker Seeks Injunction to Prevent Unwanted Union from Acquiring Confidential Personal Information
This week, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida challenging the quid pro quo between Mardi Gras Gaming and UNITE HERE Local 355 union bosses:
Boca Raton, Florida (November 6, 2008) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, an employee at a Mardi Gras Gaming facility has filed a federal lawsuit to prevent UNITE HERE Local 355 union officials from obtaining illegal assistance in pressuring workers to unionize – including possession of workers’ personal addresses and other private information.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that union officials violated the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA) by entering into an agreement with Mardi Gras Gaming that allows the union access to information about nonunion employees, use of the employer’s property for organizing, and control over the employer’s communications with workers. The LMRA expressly forbids employers from giving “any money or other thing of value” to unions.
The LMRA’s prohibition on transfers of things of value from employers to unions is intended to prevent deals that induce union officials to place their own interests or the interests of employers above the workers themselves.
Read the rest of the Foundation’s press release here.
Worker Seeks Injunction to Prevent Unwanted Union from Acquiring Confidential Personal Information
Boca Raton, Florida (November 6, 2008) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, an employee at a Mardi Gras Gaming facility has filed a federal lawsuit to prevent UNITE HERE Local 355 union officials from obtaining illegal assistance in pressuring workers to unionize – including possession of workers’ personal addresses and other private information.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, alleges that union officials violated the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA) by entering into an agreement with Mardi Gras Gaming that allows the union access to information about nonunion employees, use of the employer’s property for organizing, and control over the employer’s communications with workers. The LMRA expressly forbids employers from giving “any money or other thing of value” to unions.
The LMRA’s prohibition on transfers of things of value from employers to unions is intended to prevent deals that induce union officials to place their own interests or the interests of employers above the workers themselves.
The Mardi Gras Gaming facility is not yet unionized, but in August of 2004, management entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with Local 355. In return for a union guarantee not to picket, boycott, or strike against the facility, Mardi Gras Gaming agreed to hand over employees’ personal contact information – including home addresses – to union organizers, grant union officials access to Mardi Gras facilities for the purpose of organizing, and to refrain from requesting a federally-supervised secret ballot election to determine whether its employees actually want to unionize. This quid pro quo arrangement is of substantial monetary value to Local 355, as it would dramatically reduce the cost of successfully unionizing workers at the Mardi Gras facility.
Such so-called “neutrality agreements” between companies and unions give union organizers license to browbeat and intimidate workers into acceding to unionization. Armed with employees’ home addresses and access to company facilities, union officials frequently harass workers on and off the job until they agree to sign cards that are then counted as “votes” for unionization. In other Foundation-assisted cases, employees have testified to and documented the pressure, bribery, and outright fraud union organizers use to obtain signed authorization cards.
“UNITE HERE bosses made a secret deal to force Mardi Gras workers into the union whether they like it or not,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “We intend to shut down this major violation of federal law and employee freedom.”
Foundation Action: Supreme Court Justices Hammer Union Lawyers During Oral Arguments
The cover story of the hot-off-the-press November-December issue of Foundation Action recaps the exciting oral arguments of the Foundation’s Locke v. Karass case, which was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in early October.
Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription.
To receive the entire issue via email, just type your email address into the box in the top right corner of this page.
NC Identity Theft Update – Judge Smacks Down Union Motion to Dismiss
In June, Foundation staff attorneys filed suit against Communications Workers of America (CWA) union officials on behalf of several North Carolina citizens. 16 current and former AT&T employees from Burlington, NC alleged that union operatives intentionally displayed their confidential information – including social security numbers – in a public forum, leaving them vulnerable to identity theft and fraud.
Union lawyers responded by filing a motion for dismissal, but the judge wasn’t buying it. Although Judge Albert Diaz dismissed the invasion of privacy complaint filed against the union, he did not dismiss the Foundation’s main charges under the North Carolina Identity Theft Protection Act and the the Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
Diaz’s ruling was the first ever published decision issued under the North Carolina Identity Theft Protection Act. For a more in-depth description of the case, check out this entry from the North Carolina Business Litigation Report. The Foundation’s original press release can be found online here. To watch the Foundation’s video report on union identity theft in North Carolina, click here.
NRTW Podcast, Episode 3 – What’s This Whole “Card Check” Thing REALLY About?
Vice President Stefan Gleason sits down with Foundation Staff Attorney Glenn Taubman to discuss the ugly realities of coercive card-check organizing drives and Big Labor’s efforts to make this process for unionization mandatory; Listen here:
For additional background, check out this op-ed from Foundation President Mark Mix.
You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.
[Note: Firefox users have reported that the audio is distorted when using the player above. To ensure the podcast plays correctly just click here to listen.]
Foundation Action: Full September-October Newsletter is Now Available Online
If you follow Freedom@Work regularly, you know we’ve recently mentioned several Foundation Action articles from our latest newsletter. Now the entire thing is available online, free of charge. If you’re interested in an up-to-date look at our efforts to combat compulsory unionism, download Foundation Action today (.pdf).
Alternatively, you can sign up for a free print subscription or submit your email address at the top right corner of the page for a digital copy of the newsletter.
National Right to Work in the Wall Street Journal: Union Power Grabs Could Turn Market Crash Into Depression
Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation and the National Right to Work Committee, has an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal on the disastrous economic implications of handing Big Labor more forced unionism power:
By the mid-1930s, the U.S. economy appeared to be climbing out of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), which had bottomed out at 41 in 1932, was advancing. It increased 73% from the beginning of 1935 through the end of 1936, when it hit 180. The number of unemployed, 13 million in 1933, dropped to 9.5 million in 1935 and 7.6 million in 1936.
Then, in 1937, the DJIA plunged 33% in what is often called "a depression within a depression." Joblessness skyrocketed.
A principal factor in the meltdown that year was the U.S. Supreme Court’s surprise 5-4 decision in early April to uphold the constitutionality of the Wagner Act, which had passed two years earlier. This measure, which is still the basis of our labor relations regime, authorized union officials to seek and obtain the power to act as the "exclusive" (that is, the monopoly) bargaining agent over all the front-line employees, including union nonmembers as well as members, in a unionized workplace.
[…]
If the mislabeled "Employee Free Choice Act," becomes law, it will likely have a similar effect on the economy as the original Wagner Act, transforming what could have been a recovery into a lengthy, deep recession, or worse.
Read the whole thing here.
What the op-ed didn’t have the space to get to is the card check’s negative impact on employee freedom. As we’ve explained elsewhere, allowing union operatives to publicly browbeat workers into signing away their rights to self-representation would open the door to intimidation and coercion. Because of this, the Foundation is preparing for a flood of cases if card check becomes the law of the land.
For a good primer on the dangers of card-check organizing drives, check out this Foundation video report.
