USA Today Comes Out Against Card Check Instant Organizing
Today USA Today, the largest circulation newspaper in the country, editorializes against efforts to impose the coercive Card Check Instant Organizing on every worker in America:
Under the current system, once 30% of a company’s workers sign union authorization cards, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administers a confidential vote, typically 39 days after it receives the cards. The union and employer campaign for votes.
Under a major rewrite of U.S. labor law being promoted by unions, when more than 50% of employees sign authorization cards, the NLRB would have to recognize the new union. No campaign. No secret ballot.
This misguided measure passed the House shortly after Democrats took the majority in 2007. But it needs several more votes in the Senate and a president who will sign it. Barack Obama supports it; John McCain does not. It’s no surprise, then, that the AFL-CIO plans to spend an eye-popping $200 million this election cycle to support Obama and Democratic candidates for Congress. A win for Obama and big gains for Senate Democrats could remove the remaining obstacles to the euphemistically named "Employee Free Choice Act."
Cajoled choice is more like it. The proposed change would give unions and pro-union employees more incentive to use peer pressure, or worse, to persuade reluctant workers to sign their cards. And without elections, workers who weren’t contacted by union organizers would have no say in the final outcome.
Labor leaders [sic], such as AFL-CIO President John Sweeney in the space below, argue that the proposed law wouldn’t prohibit private balloting. This is accurate but misleading. Union organizers would have no reason to seek an election if they had union cards signed by more than 50% of workers. And if they had less than a majority, they’d be unlikely to call for a vote they’d probably lose.
Read the whole thing here. USA Today’s editorial board joins a growing chorus of voices from across the political spectrum recognizing the horrible abuses involved in "card check" organizing. Here, for example, is former United States Senator and leftist George McGovern writing about the dangers of Card Check Instant Organizing.
Introducing the National Right to Work Podcast: Episode 1- Big Labor’s Agenda and Election 2008
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is pleased to announce the launch of our official podcast. Each episode will feature a discussion about a topic related to compulsory unionism.
Episode 1 of the National Right to Work Podcast is titled "Big Labor’s Agenda and Election 2008". In this episode, National Right to Work Foundation vice president Stefan Gleason interviews Greg Mourad, Director of Legislation for the National Right to Work Committee about Big Labor’s legislative power grabs. Topics range from Big Labor’s full court press to pass mandatory “card check” legislation to the plan to federally impose monopoly bargaining on America’s first responders. Also find out what advocates of employee freedom are doing about it.
You can listen to the National Right to Work Podcast "Big Labor’s Agenda and Election 2008" on the flash player below or download the mp3.
You can subscribe to the National Right to Work Podcast through iTunes or other podcasting programs by using this feed: http://righttowork.podbean.com/feed/.
Foundation Prepares for Tsunami of Card Check Organizing Victims in Early 2009
You wouldn’t know it from watching any of the debates, but the potential for Big Labor to ram "card check" down American workers’ throats is very real and very immediate. Accordingly, the Foundation is bracing itself for a new wave of employee requests for legal aid. Mickey Kaus, a lefty blogger reveals the rapid timeline:
Obama’s Fast Labor Payoff: kf hears from a trustworthy non-Republican source (with access to actual insider information) that the Dems are getting set to pass "card check" legislation fast next year, right out of the box, assuming Obama wins and the Democrats get their expected big Senate majority. The legislation–which would eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing elections, allowing union organizers to gather signed cards person-to-person–is cheap, in budgetary terms. And it’s very, very important to organized labor.
More here.
Foundation Action: Supreme Court Issues Rare Rebuke to Meddling Bush Lawyers
The September/October issue of Foundation Action reports on the rare U.S. Supreme Court rebuke of Bush Administration lawyers seeking to argue before the High Court in the October 6, 2008 oral arguments of Locke v. Karass.
Foundation attorneys successfully argued that the Bush Administration had no business getting involved in the proceedings.
Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription.
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Teamsters Local Hit with Unfair Labor Practice Charges for Illegal Forced Dues Demands
Salisbury, Maryland (October 16, 2008) – National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys have filed unfair labor practice charges against the International Brotherhood of Teamsters/Graphic Communications Conference District Council 9 union for compelling nonmember employees to annually object to the payment of union dues unrelated to collective bargaining.
Four days after the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the union agreed to a settlement that eliminated the Teamsters’ annual objector policy, Teamsters officials issued a letter to nonunion Standard Register employees in Salisbury, Maryland indicating they would still have to annually opt-out of and object to paying certain union fees each year.
District Council 9/Graphic Communications Conference union officials are the monopoly bargaining agents for companies across the Mid-Atlantic region. The Foundation’s unfair labor practice charges were filed on behalf of ten workers in Maryland and seven in Pennsylvania, many of whom fear that the union will reverse or ignore its earlier promise to end the annual objection policy.
Nonunion employees can be forced to pay union dues for workplace representation as a condition of employment, but under the Foundation-won Supreme Court precedent Communication Workers v. Beck they cannot be legally required to pay for union activities unrelated to collective bargaining. As a result of previous Foundation unfair labor practice charges, the NLRB’s settlement eliminated a requirement forcing nonmember employees to annually renew their objections to excessive union dues. Despite this settlement agreement, Salisbury-area union officials maintained an annual objection policy designed to make it difficult for employees to exercise their Beck rights.
Although the NLRB issued its decision as a result of an unfair labor practice charge in Philadelphia, the settlement applied to the entire local. In that settlement, union officials agreed to remove their annual objector policy, as well as refund several nonmember employees for payments unrelated to collective bargaining.
“This is a scoff law union that has developed a disturbing reputation for pushing nonunion workers around,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The incident demonstrates the fundamental injustice of forced unionism. If union bosses were stripped of their special powers to force employees into unions and their forced dues ranks, this type of abuse couldn’t happen.”
Pennsylvania Teacher Union Bosses Fight to Protect their Stranglehold on Keystone State Schools, Teachers
Via the Education Intelligence Agency, we learn that (surprise!) Pennsylvania teacher unions oppose attempts to improve public education through the enactment of reforms that could threaten the teacher union monopoly and forced-dues gravy train (emphasis mine):
What do [reformers] think stands in the way…? For Simon Campbell, president of the Yardley-based StopTeacherStrikes.org, the answer is simple: teachers unions.
Mr. Campbell is a resident of the Pennsbury School District in Bucks County that faced a teacher strike in Oct. 2005. For 21 days, 11,500 students were kept out of school, including two of his kids.
"I am really just a parent who got kind of fed up one day," he said. Since the strike he has advocated energetically for abolition of teachers’ right to strike. Currently, 37 states do not allow their teachers to strike.The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), a division of the National Education Association which is the nation’s largest teachers union, takes in about $80 million a year in dues and boasts about 185,000 members statewide, Mr. Campbell said.
"The real business that they’re in is collecting union dues," he said. "They are organized like a machine at the grassroots level."
And what do the NEA bosses spend all that money its dues-collecting machine rakes in on?
Bombarding teachers’ families with political propaganda is apparently a high priority. Too bad six year olds don’t vote . . .
Foundation Action: NLRB Persuaded to Prosecute Nurse Union Officials for Threats
The September/October issue of Foundation Action shares the story of a group of non-striking nurses in California who turned to the National Right to Work Foundation for help after union bosses illegally threatened the nurses with 90 days in jail if they did not abandon their patients and go on strike.
After National Right to Work attorneys took action, the National Labor Relations Board Regional Office in Los Angeles prosecuted the union tyrants.
Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription.
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Foundation Action: Foundation Defends Against Union Identity Theft, Conspiracy
This story from the September/October issue of Foundation Action shares the story of Patricia Pelletier, a Connecticut worker who successfully initiated a decertification election to eject an unwanted union from her workplace. In response, union officials started a campaign of intimidation and harassment against Pelletier. You can hear Patricia talk about her case in this video.
Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription.
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Foundation Action: Union Bosses, Co-Opted Hospital Scheme to Impose Union
This story from the September/October issue of Foundation Action reports on the Foundation’s efforts on behalf of two nurses who are suffering from a corrupt and illegal agreement between the California Nurses Association (CNA) union and their workplace to force nurses into CNA union ranks.
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.
New Right to Work Video Report: “In The Dark”
Check out the Foundation’s latest Right to Work Video Report on compulsory unionism in the workplace. John McHenry, a Philadelphia worker and union member his entire life, never knew he could resign his formal union membership and stop paying full union dues. But when union bosses rammed a corrupt pension plan down his throat, he turned to the National Right to Work Foundation for help:
For more Right to Work video updates, remember to check back regularly at the Foundation’s YouTube channel or Eyeblast.tv channel.
