Teacher Union Bosses Turn America’s Public Schools into Campaign Zones
Big Labor’s big money boys are pulling out all the stops to get the presidential candidate of their choice elected. Across the country, teacher union bosses have been pushing their preferred political causes and candidates and the result is the disturbing politicization of the classroom.
Today, the Washington Times reported that union brass of the Virginia Education Association Union (VEA), an affiliate of the National Education Association Union (NEA), sent an e-mail to Virginia teachers which:
…encouraged members to bring politics into the classroom by wearing blue in support of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama and simultaneously suggested that the union’s voter registration efforts include those "you teach."
Meanwhile, the New York Post reported today that teacher union bosses in New York have been "handing out thousands of Barack Obama campaign buttons" to teachers. However, as the Post notes, “the Department of Education… has a long-standing policy barring teachers from wearing political campaign buttons in schools.” The teacher union bosses in New York said they will appeal the Department’s decision. The Post quoted Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte as saying:
Schools are not a place for politics and not a place for staff to wear political buttons… We don’t want a school or school staff advocating for any political position or candidate to students and we don’t want students feeling intimidated because they might hold a different belief or support a different candidate than their teachers.
Indeed. But what about the teachers that don’t support the union bosses’ chosen candidate? They too should not be subjected to union officials’ politicking. In the 28 states that do not have Right to Work laws (including New York), union officials are notorious for extracting forced union dues to fund political pet projects that teachers often oppose.
Unfortunately, most teachers are not even aware of their rights to refrain from contributing to Big Labor’s political pet projects as established by Foundation-won Supreme Court cases. However, while our work is cut out for us, there is hope. As Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation, stated in an op-ed printed last month, “Praise the teacher, not the union”:
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is currently providing free legal aid to thousands of teachers and other employees who object to their compulsory fees funding the political agenda of union bosses, whose ultimate goal, according to one former NEA official, is "to re-order the priorities of the United States of America."
If you are a teacher who would like to stand up for your rights against the evils of compulsory unionism, click here.
DOL’s Revised Union Trust Disclosure Rules Leave Major Loopholes — And Even DOL Admits It!
Yesterday, the Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) posted on its website a weak final rule which revises standards governing disclosure of certain expenditures of union trusts, including union pension funds, strike funds, and credit unions.
Earlier this year, OLMS sought comments from interested parties concerning the new standards. On April 14, Glenn Taubman, staff attorney at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and counsel for the National Right to Work Committee, submitted comments regarding the gaping "sensitive information" loophole which allows union bosses to hide the very waste, fraud, and corruption that are all too common in these notoriously mismanaged and underfunded union trusts:
This "sensitive information" exception to full disclosure is simply a loophole allowing union and trust fund officials to unilaterally determine what disclosure must be made public, and then hide a vast array of questionable expenditures. Financial reports of trust fund operations and expenditures can never be considered "confidential" information, because this money is owned by the employees, not the union or trust fund officials. Fiduciary agents have no right to maintain secret records or engage in secret transactions that are purposefully hidden from principals – the employees who are the actual owners of the funds.
But instead of closing the loophole, DOL merely pays lip service to these serious concerns. The fact is — as long as this loophole exists, corrupt union bosses will be able to withhold disclosure of any expenditures they wish, claiming an exemption. DOL officials "reiterate" or "emphasize" that their sensitive information loophole should be used "sparingly." They say abuse of the loophole will be investigated. But why even have it? There is no justifiable reason, as Foundation attorneys had explained.
The Department of Labor’s serial refusal to promulgate disclosure rules with real teeth is deeply troubling. If President Bush’s DOL appointees intend to leave so much discretion to the bureaucrats, these appointees ought to go ahead and quit now — rather than waiting until January.
Locke Box: Next Week’s Supreme Court Case Threatens Big Labor’s Legal Slush Fund
Oral arguments in Locke v. Karass, the Foundation’s latest Supreme Court case, occur on Monday, October 6. Just in time, the October issue of Labor Watch features a cover story on the case by Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation:
The U.S. Supreme Court has so far refused to recognize that all compulsory union dues, no matter how they are spent, violate workers’ First Amendment rights and that no compelling state interest exists to justify subverting these rights. However, the Court has concluded that forced union dues for certain union expenditures violates nonmembers’ First Amendment rights. U.S. Supreme Court rulings have established that union officials cannot compel nonmembers to support union lobbying, political activities and other forms of ideological expression.
On behalf of Daniel Locke and 19 other current and former Maine state employees, NRTW Foundation attorneys will argue this month that because litigation is also inherently expressive, unions cannot compel nonmembers to pay for it. Moreover, because litigation regarding a union’s affiliates in another state does not affect the union’s own collective bargaining process, there should be a bright line drawn to ensure that no extra-unit litigation is ever subsidized by objecting nonmembers.
Union lawyers insist workers must pay for litigation activities that unions undertake outside their own bargaining unit using a pooling arrangement that union bosses analogize to insurance. If union bosses get their way, unions will be permitted to seize dues from members and nonmembers alike – even from employees who never wanted a union’s “representation” – and pool them together in a giant slush fund to subsidize Big Labor’s lawsuit machine.
Read the full article online (PDF only).
Foundation Attorneys Win Another NLRB Case: Union Bosses Retaliated Against Nonmember By Yanking Seniority
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled in favor of a nonunion worker represented by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, finding that Interstate Bakeries Corp. and local Teamsters union officials violated the law when they stripped a nonmember worker of his seniority during a merger.
In November of 2005, company and union officials agreed to consolidate two corporate divisions. One division was staffed by a single nonunion sales representative who had put in more time with the company than any of his counterparts at the other division. Company officials tried to ensure that he retained his seniority during the merger, but Teamsters officials stood fast, insisting on discriminating against him because of his nonunion status.
In the sales business, seniority has serious implications for workers. The longer you’ve been with the company, the better your chances are of securing more desirable sales routes and vacation time. In this case, union officials wanted to unilaterally strip a nonunion sales representative of his earned seniority, placing him at the bottom of the totem pole. It was effectively retaliation for his nonunion status.
Fortunately, the NLRB agreed with Foundation attorneys and found that union officials broke the law when they discriminated against the nonunion sales representative by favoring unionized employees during the merger. Here’s the crux of the decision (emphasis mine):
The only difference between Rammage [the nonunion worker] and those Dolly Madison employees who were dovetailed [given favorable seniority status during the merger] was the fact that Rammage had not previously been represented by the Union. The Union admits that it treated Rammage differently and unfavorably because he was not previously represented. In addition, the comments of Respondent Employer’s managers Roberts and Simmons to Rammage, that he lost his seniority because "he was not in the Union," demonstrate that he was singled out becasue he had not previously been represented by a labor organization.
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Cross the Union Bosses, Get a Molotov Cocktail (or 2)
On Friday, a United States District Court judge sentenced a former union organizer to six months in prison and three years of probation for his participation in an arson against a nonunion concrete plant. The Albany Times Union has the details:
The May 2003 arson was part of an organized effort by two union officials to sabotage companies that were using non-unionized workers at construction sites.
The sentencing of Michael Kwarta, 32, who had served as a labor organizer and sergeant-at-arms for Local 190 of Glenmont, marked the culmination of a meandering federal investigation into the underworld of Albany’s politically connected laborers’ unions.
The arson triggered a federal grand jury investigation of the union’s ties to elected officials, public contracts and organized crime figures, and also whether top union leaders had authorized the firebombing.
Even though just about everybody in the union knew about Kwarta’s role in the arson — when an accomplice "hurled two Molotov cocktails at an operations trailer filled with computer equipment and it caught fire" — union hierarchy gladly kept him on the payroll for five years until just days before he entered his guilty plea. (Apparently he was just doing his job.)
For all their government-imposed special privileges, union thugs aren’t above the law. Oh, actually, in many ways, they are:
The most egregious example of organized labor’s special privileges and immunities is the 1973 United States v. Enmons decision. In it, the United States Supreme Court held that union violence is exempted from the Hobbs Act, which makes it a federal crime to obstruct interstate commerce by robbery or extortion. As a result, thousands of incidents of violent assaults (directed mostly against workers) by union militants have gone unpunished. Meanwhile, many states also restrict the authority of law enforcement to enforce laws during strikes.
Foundation Action: Foundation Seeks Federal Investigation into Union Political Fundraising
The cover story of the September/October issue of Foundation Action covers efforts by the Foundation to expose an SEIU union political fundraising scheme that coerces workers to support union politics, and to get the Department of Labor and Department of Justice investigate the scheme.
Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription.
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Federal Court Halts Scheme by Teamsters Union Bosses to Illegally Collect Forced Dues
Pittsburgh, PA (September 26, 2008) – The United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of seven Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) employees against the Teamsters union and PTC for seizing forced union dues in violation of the employees’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
With free legal aid from staff attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, the seven Turnpike workers filed a federal lawsuit last year against Teamsters Local 250, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), and the PTC. Local 250 is the certified monopoly bargaining agent of Turnpike employees – every employee, like it or not, is forced to accept union representation and is required to pay dues or fees to the union to keep his or her job.
In the Foundation-won Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson (1986), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously established due process safeguards to ensure that employees are not compelled to subsidize union activities beyond what union officials can prove is spent on collective bargaining. Union expenditures such as organizing and political activism cannot be legally charged to workers who exercise their right to refrain from union membership. Before collecting an “agency fee” from a nonmember employee, a union must provide an adequate explanation for the basis of the fee, verified by an independent auditor, and an opportunity for the worker to challenge the amount of the fee before an impartial third party.
In its decision released on Thursday, the District Court found that Local 250 failed to provide an adequate basis for the forced union fee seized from the seven workers, from whom the PTC seized more than 92 percent of the dues formal union members paid. The court found that the local’s “procedures for chargeability audits are faulty and incomplete.” Specifically, Local 250 failed to break down the portion of the fees which went to the local’s national affiliates.
Particularly troubling are the court’s findings that the “independent auditor” relied solely on a personal conversation with a Local 250 union boss, “word of mouth” from IBT chiefs, and a quick look at the local’s year end balance sheets to verify the chargeability of the union’s expenses. Local union officials also failed to even obtain an audit of its expenses one year.
The court awarded nominal damages, restitution of the nonchargeable portions of the agency fees seized after the employees resigned in writing (plus interest), and attorneys’ fees. It will hold an evidentiary to determine the amount of the restitution. At the hearing, the court will also consider whether six of the employees may be entitled to restitution for an earlier period because union bosses failed to provide them adequate Hudson notices after they orally expressed their desire to resign from the union.
“Unfortunately, Pennsylvania does not have a Right to Work law,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “In the absence of such a protection, union bosses will continue to try to extract as much dues money as possible from dissenting workers.”
Card Check Forced Unionism: Biggest Intervention Since New Deal?
Big Labor apologist Mark Weisbrot had a piece defending the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act in Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times. Money quote (emphasis mine):
This law would probably change Americans’ lives more than any legislation since the New Deal brought us Social Security. The political influence of millions of new union members would also bring us closer to such basic reforms as universal health care. It’s all long overdue.
Of course, millions of new forced dues paying union members would only increase union bosses’ influence, not the workers’ influence — nearly half of whom do not support Big Labor’s political agenda.
Meanwhile, American who agrees with Big Labor’s political agenda can already choose to financially (or otherwise) support union-backed candidates and causes. But union bosses, you see, know better than the average worker. The average worker isn’t giving enough support to the Far Left politicians prefered by union officials on his own. So union bosses want to use dues money, seized from workers’ paychecks, to finance their own political activism.
Worse, an increase in Card Check forced unionism will open the doors for rampant intimidation of workers by union goons — so much of the increased dues money going to these politics will be from workers who were pressured into union ranks through card check.
Employees should indeed have a free choice — to determine their own representation and to decide for themselves if they want to join a union or fund its political activism.
Many Ways to Get Wired in to America’s Right to Work Movement
Since you already read this blog (after all you’re here aren’t you) here are some other ways you can keep up with everything the National Right to Work Foundation does to defend employees from the abuses of compulsory unionism:
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These are just a few of the many ways to stay on top of the critical developments in the Right to Work movement. Whether you are at work, at home, or on vacation, all you need is a computer to get started.
