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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

Big Labor is spending north of a billion dollars to get their favored candidates elected, much of it from employees forced to pay dues to keep their job. Union bosses see it as a smart investment given the forced unionism power grabs that could quickly become law if their chosen candidates take office.

As detailed in today’s Wall Street Journal, those power grabs would mean literally billions new forced dues dollars flowing into union bosses’ coffers.  There is no question that Foundation attorneys will be overwhelmed with legal aid requests from workers seeking refuge from the onslaught:

Big Labor is hoping to have a big election next Tuesday, with a goal of building a majority to rewrite negotiating rules between unions and management. Though it has received little media attention, Barack Obama’s pro-union agenda is the most ambitious in decades and has a real prospect of becoming law. His stated goal is to "strengthen the ability of workers to organize unions" by doing the following:

– Mr. Obama is a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing elections. Unions would be certified to negotiate pay, benefits and work rules simply by collecting signed "union authorization cards" from a majority of employees at a work site. The law passed the House in 2007 but didn’t come up for a Senate vote.

Under current law, union organizers and management both have the opportunity to present the pros and cons of forming a union. A secret employee vote is then held. Under Mr. Obama’s proposal, unions would be the sole provider of information to the employee, and the worker’s decision whether to organize would no longer be private.

Unions say current law favors management, which can stall to a point where workers lose interest in organizing. But the median number of days between filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and holding an election has actually fallen over the past two decades. In 2007, more than 1,500 such elections were held, and unions won 54% of them, the same win rate of the early 1970s.

– Another labor-friendly provision of the Employee Free Choice Act is mandatory arbitration. Under current law, labor and management are required to bargain in good faith but aren’t obliged to reach an agreement. Under Mr. Obama’s proposal, if the parties can’t settle on a contract within 120 days, the dispute goes to an arbitration panel which can impose a contract that is binding for two years.

As a practical matter, contracts typically involve dozens of provisions dealing with wages as well as seniority, grievances, overtime, transfers and promotions. Rarely is this accomplished in four months. The provision would notably shift bargaining power to unions, which would have an incentive to run out the 120-day clock and let an arbitrator impose a contract that is bound to include much of what unions demand.

– Mr. Obama also supports legislation to reverse the NLRB’s "Kentucky River" ruling last year, which fleshed out the definition of a supervisor for the purposes of organizing. Unions usually prefer a narrow definition of management, because it increases the number of people potentially under their control. Conversely, labor has worked to expand the definition of "employee" to include everyone from temp workers to graduate-student teaching assistants.

– The Democrat also wants to bar companies from replacing striking workers — a right that management has held for some 70 years. Unions made a similar push in the early 1990s, and a bill passed the House but was blocked in the Senate. Mr. Clinton issued an executive order that would have ended the provision for federal contractors. It was struck down in federal court. Mr. Clinton then tried to get the NLRB to make it more difficult to replace striking workers. The courts overturned that too. Mr. Obama says he will "work to ban the provision," but hasn’t provided specifics.

– Mr. Obama supports the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act and has said he’d push for its enactment as president. The bill, which passed the House last year and already has 60 votes in the Senate, would force state and local governments to recognize union leaders as the exclusive bargaining agent for police, firefighters and other first responders. More than half of the states would have to change their laws. Thousands of public safety officers would no longer be able to negotiate directly with their employers on their own behalf.

Read the whole thing here.

For background on Big Labor’s plans, listen to this Right to Work podcast with Greg Mourad of the National Right to Work Committee.

Episode 2 of the Foundation’s weekly podcast is now available online for download.

Foundation VP Stefan Gleason discusses union politics and Big Labor’s massive fundraising apparatus with Stanley Greer, program director at the National Institute for Labor Relations Research. Greer pegs the amount of money (largely funded with dues collected under from workers forced to pay) that Big Labor will be spending on this election at $1.2 billion or more, and explains the many ways union bosses funnel money to their hand-picked candidates. Listen here:

You can also subscribe to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.

This article from the September/October issue of Foundation Action discusses the June 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision in United States Chamber of Commerce v. Jerry Brown.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed arguments, with which the Supreme Court agreed, to overturn a controversial California law that pressured companies to assist in coercive union organizing drives.

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