Recently, Right to Work Vice President Stefan Gleason appeared on the Frank Beckmann Show to discuss the Foundation’s efforts to fight union discrimination against religious employees. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:

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

Last week, AFL-CIO union czar Richard Trumka (download the Foundation’s Fact Sheet on his history of condoning union violence and corruption) made headlines by predicting that the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill will pass in early 2010.  The heated debate over the health care overhaul legislation has kept the public eye off this other union boss power grab for a few months, but Trumka’s prediction makes it clear Big Labor’s high command haven’t forgotten about their highest priority.

The Card Check Forced Unionism Bill would effectively eliminate workers’ right to a secret ballot in workplace unionization drives and replace it with overt union intimidation:

Under the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that refer to the secret ballot election would be rendered a dead letter, even though they are not technically stricken from federal law.

Big Labor spin artists can claim all they want that the workers can still “choose” to have a secret ballot election, but there simply is no way by which workers can force union bosses to file for a secret ballot election — and it is union bosses, not workers, who are in possession of the cards.  Reporters who repeat this union boss talking point owe their readers a correction.

Read the full analysis here.  Union bosses prefer card check instant organizing because it puts all of the power in their hands — free from the meddling interference of government election supervisors and the workers themselves.

Fortunately, we already know what card check campaigns look like.  Unfortunately, we only know this because hardworking Americans have been subjected to harassment, intimidation, and coercion by union bosses to get them to sign cards.  In the video below, Dana Corporation employees in Albion, Indiana, shared their stories with the National Right to Work Committee.

The National Right to Work Committee warns to beware of any bogus compromises under the guise of protecting the secret ballot.  One of the most dangerous aspect of the “compromise” talks is the lack of focus on the other toxic provision of the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill: mandatory binding arbitration.

Under the bill, workers won’t just lose the right to a secret ballot when deciding whether or not to form a union.  Even those who choose to join a union’s ranks may see their voting rights severely limited, as mandatory binding arbitration would allow government bureaucrats to impose contracts on workers.  That means union members may not even be able to vote to ratify their contracts: Whatever the government says… goes.

Even Far Left icon George McGovern knows this is a terrible idea.   And as Reason Foundation analyst Shikha Dalmia detailed in the Wall Street Journal, states’ experiments with mandatory binding arbitration and public sector unions have led to atrocious results — including out of control budgets and fiscal mismanagement.

The National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) just released a new study detailing the disturbing trend of the forced unionization of government workers.  In it, NILRR points out that in 2008 and the first 11 months of 2009, unionized private-sector workers lost their jobs at more than double the rate than their private-sector non-unionized colleagues.

Meanwhile, for the first time ever, more than half of our nation’s government workers are now under union boss monopoly bargaining control and the number is growing with disastrous consequences:

While today 51% of unionized workers nationwide are government employees, as recently as 1981 there were more than twice as many unionized private-sector workers as their were unionized public-sector workers. The ever-increasing concentration of Big Labor’s power and influence in government employment will greatly exacerbate the harmful tendency of public employment to grow faster than private employment over time.

Not only that, but Congress is considering passing legislation that would help union bosses corral more city and local government emergency responders into union ranks — legislation that local government officials are warning will make their already-severe budgetary woes even worse.

Combined with NILRR’s recent analysis that taxpayers are fleeing forced unionism states, it’s easy to see their conclusion:  Unless states take action to cut back Big Labor’s numerous government-granted special privileges, fewer and fewer American private-sector workers and their employers are facing a greater tax burden to sustain an ever-growing government — especially in forced unionism states.

Read NILRR’s report here.

And for more on the history of Big Labor’s campaign to acquire incredible power over local, state, and national government, order your free copy of Stranglehold: How union bosses have hijacked our government today.

The January/February 2010 issue of Foundation Action is now available for download as a PDF. This is the Foundation’s official bimonthly publication that provides an excellent overview of hard-hitting legal actions being taken by Foundation attorneys every day to combat forced unionism.

In this issue:

• Right to Work Sues Obama Administration, Demands Info on Big Labor Ties
• Big Labor Moves to Roll Back Sweeping Foundation Precedent
• Right to Work Combats Sneak Attack on Railway/Airline Workers
• Supreme Court Asked to Halt UAW Religious Discrimination
• Grocery Clerks Fight to Free Themselves From Union Ranks

In addition to to reading Foundation Action online, you can sign up to receive a free subscription by mail here.

Over at BigGovernment.com, Don Loos of National Right to Work examines the abysmal record of the Obama Department of Labor when it comes to enforcing the Administration’s ethics policy against union officials:

On January 8^th, BigGovernment.com posted a blog that began, “Outrageously, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Hilda Solis and other DOL Obama appointees appear to have blatantly disregarded the President’s Executive Order #13490 – the Ethics Pledge.”

Somebody at the U.S. Department of Labor must be reading BigGovernment.com because just 11 days after the posting, the DOL ethics officer wrote a letter to The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix and provided copies of signed “EO 13490 ethics pledges.”  (See related Foundation ongoing lawsuit against DOL for DOL’s failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.) Each of these newly provided pledges matched the ethics order language (more on this in another post) unlike the self-administered waivers included in the publicly distributed pledges provided to ProPublica.org and referenced in the earlier blog.

In addition, the DOL ethics officer asserted that 51 people at the DOL have signed the ethics pledge and there has been only one (1) ethics waiver issued by DOL and that was for Naomi Walker.  Her Job: Big Labor Liaison (an Associate Deputy Secretary position). Her past experience includes a stint as an AFL-CIO lobbyist among others. Walker’s ethics waiver is the subject of this blog.

Walker’s ethics waiver and its accompanying explanatory memo was approved “after consultation with the Counsel to the President” expose The President’s Ethics Executive Order for the joke that it is.

The ethics officer provides a four-page memo (probably written in a large part by the Counsel to the President) to justify the reasons that Walker must be provided an ethics waiver of Obama’s ethics executive order.   My summary of the memo follows:

 

The Counsel to President Obama and the Department of Labor reached the conclusion that it would be impossible for Walker not to violate the Ethics Order because of her previous positions with the AFL-CIO; therefore, she must be granted an ethics waiver so that she can do the job for which she was appointed.

Wasn’t the reason for the ethics pledge to prevent appointing someone to a position where their previous employer could greatly benefit with them as a government insider?

[…]

Continue reading the post here.

Worker Advocate Demands Federal Disclosure on Controversial Transportation Union Rule Change

Former airline union officials should not use federal power to help their
unions corral tens of thousands of workers into union membership

Washington, DC (March 5, 2010) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the National Mediation Board (NMB) seeking records of any communication between two of its three members – both former union officials – and any union official or lobbyist concerning a dramatic rule change proposal on how a union is imposed on non-union railway and airline industry workers.

The NMB, the federal agency tasked with mediating labor disputes within the railroad and airline industries, is poised to roll back 75 years of precedent and change labor union organizing regulations, greasing the skids for union organizers to lock industry workers into union ranks. The new procedure would stack the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over workers if the union “wins” an election, no matter how few eligible workers actually participate in the vote. In fact, this means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss “representation” on the whole group as opposed to a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.

Read the full news release.

Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with the Lucy Ann Lance Business Insider to discuss Big Labor’s attempt to force Michigan homecare workers into union collectives. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:

You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed. For more information on the forced unionization of Michigan homecare workers, check out Mix’s interview with Detroit-based radio host Frank Beckman.

The pro-worker freedom think tank National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) just published a study noting that forced unionism hurts young workers the most and because of that, they are leaving forced unionism states for Right to Work states in droves:

Though they are located variously in the New England, Middle Atlantic, South Atlantic, and East North Central regions of the U.S., all 13 states enduring the worst losses [of young workers] all have one important public policy in common: Not one has a Right to Work law that prohibits making forced union dues or fees a condition of employment. In contrast, all six of the states outside the West with young-adult population gains of more than 10.0% are Right to Work states.

The study also notes that states with Right to Work protections for its workers are weathering these tough economic conditions significantly better than their forced unionism counterparts and previous studies have shown that workers who flee forced unionism benefit financially more than their counterparts who moved from a pro-worker freedom state into a forced unionism state.  NILRR’s most recent study suggests that the further expansion of Big Labor’s government-granted forced dues privileges such as those in the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill would not only hurt all of America’s workers but also hit young workers the hardest.

Of course, economic benefits alone do not account for the trend of young workers’ moving patterns. It is easy to surmise that young folks — a notoriously independently-minded group — are seeking to pursue their version of the American Dream without being dictated by power hungry union bosses’ demands and allow them to keep their own hard-earned money if they find union dues payment to be objectionable or even just undesirable.

UFCW Operatives Misled Worker into
Signing Union Card, Ordered Him Fired for Exercising Rights

Vons grocer repeatedly told UFCW union officials he objected to formal union membership

Escondido, CA (March 22, 2010) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a former Vons Grocery employee has filed unfair labor practice charges against United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 135 union officials for misleading him into signing a union card, illegally seizing full union dues from his paycheck, and eventually ordering him fired for attempting to exercise his rights.

In September 2007, Nestor Mendez was told by union officials that he could opt out of union membership and full dues payments by filling out a union membership card and writing “Beck Decision” on top of it. Mendez followed these instructions and wrote a letter in January 2008 informing UFCW officials of his decision not to become a union member.

Under the Foundation-won Supreme Court decision Communications Workers v. Beck, employees can only be forced to pay union dues related to workplace bargaining as a condition of employment. Moreover, union officials are obligated to provide employees with a breakdown of union expenditures to determine how much objecting employees must pay.

Read the full press release for more information.

After the Senate rejected an attempt to confirm President Barack Obama’s nomination of pro-compulsory unionism radical Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Obama appointed Becker via a recess appointment.

On the heals of the appointment, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys sprang into action and filed 12 recusal motions asking Becker to step aside in any pending case involving the Foundation, citing Becker’s bias against independent-minded workers and the Foundation (download two of the motions in .pdf format here and here). The Wall Street Journal reports:

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation said Becker, who has served as counsel for the Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, should not hear cases in which the foundation is providing legal aid to workers, because Becker directly opposed the group while serving as counsel for the SEIU and because his prior writings demonstrate a bias against the group.

“We just don’t think he’s going to be able to impartially adjudicate cases involving the Foundation’s attorneys,” said Nick Cote, a spokesman for the group. He cited several writings, including a 2005 article that Becker co-wrote in the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law in which the foundation is referred to as “funded by the most anti-union fringe of the employer community.”

And as Mark Hemmingway from the Washington Examiner observes:

Well, here’s a new wrinkle. One of the biggest interests groups on labor issues in Washington is National Right to Work. Unions try and portray the organization as a shill for big business, but the fact is that National Right to Work is the only organization providing free legal aid to workers with grievances against their union, and is otherwise responsible for doing a lot to keep unions in check.

Not surprisingly, Becker hates National Right to Work and has written several pointed things about the group including that they are “funded by the most anti-union fringe of the employer community” and are “ideologically driven.” Considering that Becker believes “employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practice case,” he’s probably not the best judge of what it means to be “ideologically driven” or part of “the anti-union fringe.”

Becker has also written “at the urging of the [National] Right to Work Committee the Supreme Court has developed a virtual obsession [with cases where workers get legal aid from the National Right to Work].” And there are other examples of National Right to Work antipathy.

Well, the fact is that you can’t swing a dead cat in the labor relations world without hitting something National Right to Work is involved in. It’s hard to imagine that Becker is capable of giving them (or just about anyone who isn’t a union) a fair hearing. National Right to Work has responded by filing… recusal motions against Becker on the National Labor Relations Board. It will be telling to see how this gets handled.

Meanwhile, Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work appeared on the Fox Business Channel regarding the Becker appointment: