A recent U.S Court of Appeals ruling found several National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) union officials guilty of violating the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. The decision resolved a 1994 suit brought by David Noble, a postal worker who alleged union officials — including a former NALC president — funneled workers’ dues into unmonitored expense accounts.

Judge Williams’ concurrence features some particularly choice tidbits on the NALC’s corrupt practices:

"Placing union money in the officers’ hands, solely on those same officers’ bland assurances that it will be used for union business, completely subverts the [NALC constitution] clause’s obvious goal of preserving accountability."

He also chides his two colleagues on the panel for refusing to punish union officials for excessive "per diem" expenditures:

At every biennial convention after 1964, a small group of unnamed delegates received a “per diem” payment calculated on the basis of certain estimated expenses: lost wages, hotel rooms, and meals and incidentals. Noble argued in the district court that the presidentially appointed Committee on Mileage and Per Diem asked each post-1964 convention to approve these payments without informing the delegates of two facts: (1) that the union’s officers were among those receiving per diem payments, even though they continued to earn their salaries and thus had no “lost time” (unlike rank-and-file mail carriers); and (2) that the union had already paid (in full or part) for most officers’ hotel rooms, transferring the union’s hotel discount to the officers’ benefit. Thus, the members were unaware of these costs’ peculiarities — peculiarities that might well have been material to their decision.

[Emphasis added]

Full text of the decision can be found here (pdf). More Freedom@Work posts on union corruption available here, here, and here.

While the ruling is welcomed, the fact remains that regulatory oversight of unions — rather than simply stripping union bosses of the government-granted special privileges that facilitate the corruption — results in little more than make-work for federal bureaucrats.

Solicitor General Paul Clement resigned yesterday after seven years with the Bush Administration. As reported by Tony Mauro on the Legal Times blog, Right to Work advocates are thrilled to see him go:

"Paul Clement did not leave soon enough," said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation in a statement. "He kicked the cause of employee freedom from compulsory unionism in the teeth once again before heading out the door."

Clement’s latest offense against the right-to-work movement was a brief he filed with the Supreme Court May 12 in Locke v. Karass, which the Court will consider next term. The foundation is supporting 20 Maine state employees who object to their compulsory agency fees being used to fund nationwide union litigation far removed from the workers’ local bargaining concerns. Clement’s brief says it is constitutional for fees to be used in at least some kinds of pooling arrangements with other unions for litigation, though it suggests limits on the use. His brief can be found here.

The standard Clement uses is not good enough, says Gleason, who asks on his blog "Is Bush’s Top Lawyer Taking Orders from Big Labor?" He says Clement has been soft on unions in past right-to-work cases as well.

No word yet on the reason for Clement’s departure. But it was none too soon for rank-and-file workers under Big Labor’s thumb. Clement joins the ranks of other ex-Bush administration officials — such as DOL’s former General Counsel Andrew Siff — who used their positions to deliver goodies to the union bosses.

The May/June 2008 Foundation Action newsletter is now available for download!

In this issue:

• Foundation Helps Volvo Workers Targeted by Union Terror
• Foundation Fights Labor Board’s Erosion of Worker Rights
• Big Labor Dumps Hundreds of Millions into 2008 Elections
• The Wall Street Journal: The Union Agenda
• High Court to Review Union PAC Deductions
• 28,000 Employees May Claim $3 Million in Forced Dues
• Remembering Charlton Heston: Legendary Actor and Right to Work Champion

Download the May/June 2008 Foundation Action in PDF form today.

You can sign up for a free subscription to Foundation Action here.

U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, the Bush administration’s top lawyer, has just inflicted more damage on America’s working men and women laboring under compulsory unionism. Does President Bush even know what his administration’s lawyer is doing?

This week, the too-clever-by-half lawyer filed a brief in the National Right to Work Foundation’s latest pending U.S. Supreme Court case, Locke v. Karass, and has taken a position that surely must please the union bosses. The High Court in Locke will examine the criteria for determining how much non-union members must pay to a union where they do not enjoy the fundamental protection of a Right to Work law.

Foundation attorneys argue that the U.S. Constitution does not permit the forced extraction of dues or fees for any expenses not directly tied to representational activity in the employees’ actual bargaining unit.

But Mr. Clement apparently has no issue with forcing Maine state workers to pay for union activism anywhere in the world, so long as the union satisfies a vague and weak two-part test. In practical terms, Clement’s standard would further empower union bosses to charge workers for almost anything under the sun, unless a worker gets a lawyer and forces them to prove that the forced fees are being used for narrowly prescribed purposes.

This is not the first time that U.S. Solicitor General Clement has taken positions supportive of compulsory unionism. He adopted the AFL-CIO’s position and seriously undermined employee freedom during oral argument in the Foundation’s Davenport v. WEA case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

With "friends" like Bush’s Solicitor General, who needs enemies?

Over at the LRC blog, a reader writes in to say how Grand Theft Auto 4, currently the best selling video game on the market, contains dialog that compares unions to the mafia. At one point the main character is told: "union’s just another word for mafia."

Ultimately the pop culture video game comparison of union bosses to mafia dons is more than mere tongue-and-cheek.

As currently constituted, with their many compulsory unionism special privileges, some union officials run what could be compared to a classic mafia enterprise: the protection racket.

Wikipedia defines a protection racket as follows:

an extortion scheme whereby a powerful entity or individual coerces other less powerful entities or individuals to pay protection money which allegedly serves to purchase "protection" services against various external threats.

In the case of unions, union bosses frequently paint employers to be exploitive and then demand that workers pay money in exchange for "representation." At the same time, in forced-dues states, employees are threatened with the loss of their job if they refuse to pay for the so-called "representation," whether or not the employees want it.

And for another example of how compulsory unionism leads to union officials’ involvement in organized crime, watch this video:

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today opposing the federal imposition of monopoly bargaining on America’s firefighters, police, and EMTs.

The article lists many compelling reasons to be against monopoly bargaining, but never fully lays out the case for opposition to this form of compulsory unionism as a fundamental issue of employees’ individual rights.

The fact is freedom of association should preclude union bosses from being able to force employees to accept their so-called "representation," thereby stripping individuals of their freedom to contract. Even worse, union bosses force employees — union members or not — to pay money for the "privilege" of losing their right of self-representation.

Even convicted criminals have the right to choose their own representation. It’s deplorable that Congress would try to force states to strip first responders of their freedoms.

The month of May marks the annual ‘window period’ for employees to obtain a reduction in mandatory dues payments from the Communication Workers of America (CWA) union.

The Foundation has had success challenging these window period schemes designed to trap workers into the union’s forced dues-paying ranks, but if you’re a CWA-covered employee in a non-Right to Work state who wants to opt-out of dues spent on activities unrelated to collective bargaining it is still recommended that you file your objection this month. (If you are under a Right to Work law you cannot be compelled to pay any dues whatsoever.)

For information on the forced-dues objection process, read this letter by Foundation Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse (pdf). The document includes a sample objection letter for CWA employees to send in to the agency fee administrator.

Here’s an interesting story (via EIA) from Nevada where teacher union officials are gathering signatures to put a massive tax increase on the ballot in November.

According to the Las Vegas Sun, union political operatives, who need to collect tens of thousands of signatures in order to put the tax hike on the ballot, are having trouble getting people to sign because "blockers" who oppose the tax increase are voicing their opposition to prospective signers during the collection process.

The article quotes one such "blocker" as saying "Say no to the tax grab! Think before you ink!" until the individual who might have signed the union operative’s petition decides against it and leaves. Nevada’s top teacher union official Lynn Warne denounced the actions as "thug tactics" (which is ironic because according to this website, the tactic was invented by union organizers in Oregon).

Normally there wouldn’t be much to add to this story, but a closer look reveals another example of a nasty pattern: Union bosses have realized that absent opposing viewpoints or the privacy of the secret ballot, they have no problem getting anyone to sign anything.

However, when employees or employers insist on providing an opposing viewpoint or demanding a secret ballot election union officials have considerably more trouble selling their power grabs. Rather than persuade workers (or in this case registered voters in Nevada) on the merits, they’d rather hoodwink or pressure them into signing — while denouncing the presentation of an opposing viewpoint as "thug tactics."

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.

The Rocky Mountain News recently published a misleading op-ed by union organizer James Hansen. The article contains a number of misleading claims, but the following passage’s description of a Right to Work law is so fundamentally wrong that it has to be addressed:

“A right-to-work [sic] law would allow the government to intervene in labor-management relations, undermining the freedom that employers and workers now have to negotiate the best agreement possible for both sides.”

Union officials in Colorado already have government granted power to force every employee – member or not – to pay union dues as a condition of keeping their job (or getting a job in the first place). No other organization or association is allowed to extort forced fees from individuals.

State Right to Work protections simply eliminate this extraordinary government intervention, which is the exact opposite Hansen’s claim.

Further, if Hansen was really concerned with government intervention into employer-employee relations, he would call for the repeal of government imposed monopoly bargaining (that allows union officials to forcibly represent every employee) or the numerous other special government-granted powers that unions have.

But contrary to Hansen’s assertion, union officials are not at all concerned about preventing government intervention into employee-employer relations, as they long ago rejected AFL-CIO founder Samuel Gompers’ call for purely voluntary unionism. For the better part of the last 100 years, union bosses have built their empire on special government-granted powers, with forced dues as the most glaring example of the power.