South Carolina newspaper and television outlets have highlighted the National Right to Work Foundation’s efforts to challenge the National Labor Relations Board’s scheme to undermine laws that protect worker freedom.

The Acting General Counself of the NLRB filed a complaint last month against Boeing for creating over 1000 new jobs in South Carolina, where International Association of Machinists union bosses can’t force workers to pay dues or "fees" as a condition of employment.

The Foundation is offering free legal aid to current or potential Boeing employees affected by this power grab. Also this week, the Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the NLRB.

Charleston’s The Post and Courier interviewed Foundation president Mark Mix earlier this week:

"They’re really saying that private companies can’t make a business decision," he said Monday.

His Springfield, Va.-based foundation’s legal team is looking to persuade as many local Boeing workers as it can to provide affidavits and justify its request for an official place at the litigation table. The group has already heard from at least two unidentified employees who have expressed an interest in participating, he said.

WSCS Live 5 News also covered the Foundation’s offer:

The Foundation relies on the voluntary support of individual Americans who believe in our cause and wish to advance our strategic litigation program. To make a fully tax-deductible donation in whatever amount, please click here.

Union Forced Dues Threats against WRTV Anchor Highlight Need for Indiana Right to Work Law

Union hit with federal labor board charges for demanding TV anchor pay union dues despite lack of valid contract between her employer and the union

Indianapolis, IN (May 19, 2011) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, WRTV anchor Patricia Shepherd has filed federal unfair labor practice charges against the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) union.

Shepherd’s charges allege that AFTRA officials demanded she pay dues despite the fact that she is not a union member and the union has not had a contract with her employer for the past two years.

Because Indiana lacks a Right to Work law, employees can be forced to pay union dues for the purposes of workplace bargaining just to get or keep a job. In recent months, Indiana legislators were considering a law to make union dues payments strictly voluntary, but Governor Mitch Daniels and House Speaker Brian Bosma, despite strong majorities on record in favor of a Right to Work bill in both chambers of the state legislature, ultimately killed the legislation.

Click here to read the whole thing . . . 

Union Member Seeks to Block Obama Labor Department’s Efforts to Roll Back Union Disclosure Rules

Department guts disclosure rule that has exposed numerous corrupt union boss schemes, let rank-and-file members know how dues are spent

Washington, DC (May 23, 2011) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a Maryland county government employee is asking a federal court to stop the Obama Administration from allowing union bosses to conceal lavish and corrupt union expenditures from workers.

Chris Mosquera, a member of a Municipal County Government Employee Local of the United Food and Commercial Worker (UFCW) union, filed the lawsuit against Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for rescinding a union boss disclosure rule which would make it less difficult for workers to hold union officials accountable.

Unions covered by the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) with total annual receipts of $250,000 or more are currently required to submit annual financial statements to the U.S. Department of Labor. LM-2 forms are the public disclosure documents for these larger unions and are available online on the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) website.

These forms have helped workers and citizen activists expose many unscrupulous union boss schemes, including lavish benefits to high-ranking union officials and loyalists, superfluous spending on union boss transportation (including private jets), and shady political spending (such as the Service Employees International Union bosses’ links to the disgraced political organization ACORN).

Read the entire release here.

On Capitol Hill, New Jersey Congressman Rush Holt is a prominent Big Labor enabler: He’s cosponsored the notorious "card check" forced unionism bill, taken tens of thousands of dollars from union bosses who use their forced-dues powers to funnel money into politics, and generally opposed expanding workplace freedom at every turn. His latest stunt? A heavy-handed attempt to block a decertification election that would have thrown an unwanted union out of a New Jersey workplace.

Recently, Holt wrote a letter (pdf) urging the NLRB to block a decertification election that would have removed Teamster bosses from the Durham School Bus offices in Middletown, New Jersey. Holt claims that the company’s unfair labor practices tainted the election, but even if his assertion were true, workers attempting to eject unwelcome union bosses shouldn’t be punished for management’s mistakes. Moreover, Big Labor operatives frequently resort to frivolous legal challenges to prevent employees from getting rid of unions. 

Although the election was held as scheduled and Teamster officials ultimately held on to their forced-dues privileges, Holt’s letter demonstrates Big Labor’s staggering political influence. Union bosses will stop at nothing to push more workers into their forced-dues paying ranks. Getting a sitting Congressman to intervene in what was supposed to be an even-handed union decertification election is just the latest example of their political pull. After all, they’ve done it before, and they’ll surely do it again. 

National Right to Work President Mark Mix appeared on "Your World with Neil Cavuto" to discuss Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis’s efforts to undermine union transparency. Check out the video below:

Today, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation announced it was providing free legal aid to three South Carolina Boeing Employees, who are moving to intervene in a case brought by the Obama National Labor Relations Board and IAM union bosses that would to shut down production at Boeing’s Charleston Dreamliner facility.

A copy of the Foundation’s motion to intervene includes statements from the three Boeing employees, who explain their negative experiences with IAM union officials and their reasons for speaking out against the NLRB’s attempt to move production of the Boeing Dreamliner back to (non-Right to Work) Washington State.

Dennis Murray, one of the intervenors, describes his history with the IAM before Vought, his old employer, was acquired by Boeing:

"When I went to work at Vought in 2008, the IAM had been voted in as the employees’ exclusive bargaining representative, but they were just negotiating a first contract. In November 2008, an IAM representative called an emergency meeting but only told twelve of the 200 union members in the unit about the meeting. A total of thirteen employees attended the meeting and those few in attendance ratified the IAM’s contract by a vote for 12-1. Many of the provisions of the new IAM contract were worse than what Vought employees already had without a contract. For example, employees lost medical, dental, and short term disability. The Vought employees were then extremely unhappy with the IAM’s actions. This unhappiness was exacerbated by subsequent layoffs that lasted from three weeks to five months."

Like many other Charleston-based Boeing employees, Murray is concerned that he’ll lose his job if the NLRB forces Boeing to move back to Washington:

"It seems clear that many Charleston-based employees and I would lose our jobs with Boeing in South Carolina if the General Counsel’s proposed remedy is adopted. The current unemployment rate here is high and jobs are scarce. If I lose my job, my family will be devastated . . ."

Cynthia Ramaker, another Boeing employee, also encountered the IAM’s backroom dealings before Boeing acquired Vought:

"In general there was not much communication between the IAM and the employees."
"Of the 200 union members in the unit only 13 attended the contract ratification meeting. Those few in attendance ratified the IAM’s contract by vote of 12-1. Many of the provisions of the new IAM contract were worse than what Vought employees already had without a contract . . . Employees lost medical, dental, and short term disability. Additionally, dues were set to increase, although this requirement was later reduced due to the strong backlash in the unit."

Ramaker, a former IAM union official, also opposes the NLRB’s efforts to shut down Dreamliner production:

"I am not surprised by the Unfair Labor Practice filed by the IAM in Seattle/Everett against Boeing. They are violating my right to work with a choice. Isn’t that what being an American is all about?"

Like Murray, she worries about the consequences of shutting down the Boeing facility: 

"I understand that the NLRB General Counsel’s remedy in this case will force Boeing to discontinue the final assembly and delivery work in Charleston, and transfer it to Seattle. This remedy is grossly unfair and would devastate our community and thousands of families."

The third intervenor, Meredith Going, Sr., is also concerned about his own job prospects if Boeing is forced to shut down production:

"The current unemployment rate here is high and jobs are scarce. Many people I know would like to work at Boeing if they could. I am 65 years old, and was unemployed for over a year before I got this job with Boeing. Before coming to Boeing, I was laid off from my previous job in the automobile finance business. If I lose my job with Boeing, I’d have to go back on unemployment . . . I am sure that any unemployment I would receive would run out quickly, and at my age getting a good job with good wages and benefits like what I have here with Boeing is extremely difficult."

The statements from these employees give you an idea of what’s at stake here. If the NLRB and the IAM successfully force Boeing to shut down the Dreamliner production line, South Carolina stands to lose over 1,000 existing jobs and thousands more once the plant is in full production.

The NLRB’s unprecedented move would be devastating to these employees and to their entire community, which is why they’ve stepped forward to defend their rights and their jobs.

Writing in The Charleston Post & Courier, National Right to Work President Mark Mix explains the broader issues at stake in the NLRB’s complaint against Boeing:

So why is the National Labor Relations Board so incensed about Boeing’s decision to open a new production line in South Carolina? And why is the IAM so eager to keep Boeing in Washington State?

The answer is simple. South Carolina protects workers’ freedom of choice.

The state’s longstanding Right to Work law ensures that while workers have the right to join a union, they cannot be forced to join or pay dues to a union just to get or keep a job. Washington State, on the other hand, allows union officials to extract dues from nonunion workers as a condition of employment.

Click here to read the whole thing. You can keep up with the latest developments in the case on the Foundation’s Boeing page.  

Kyle Wingfield of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution absolutely demolishes a misleading Wall Street Journal op-ed in favor of the NLRB’s efforts to shut down Boeing’s South Carolina Dreamliner facilities. First, Wingfield addresses the claim that choosing Charleston as a production site hurts Boeing’s Seattle-based employees:

The word “move” is key, because pro-labor people like Geoghegan have depicted Boeing’s decision to open a production line for its 787 Dreamliner jet in North Charleston, S.C., as a loss to workers in Seattle. In fact, this is a new production line; the existing production line will remain in place.

I’m sure the workers in Seattle — or, more precisely, the union leaders whom their union dues pay — would have liked for the new jobs to be in Seattle (in addition to the 2,000 jobs Boeing has added there despite its alleged hostility to unions there, but I digress). Geoghegan, however, is trying to suggest workers in Seattle are losing something they never had. That’s never true.

Wingfield also points out that Boeing’s Charleston employees have more disposable income than their Seattle counterparts after adjusting for cost-of-living, an advantage that can be partly attributed to South Carolina’s popular Right to Work law, which makes union dues and membership strictly voluntary.

Wingfield concludes, "If this is the best argument union allies can make in the Boeing case,
it’s no wonder private-sector labor unions are such dying dinosaurs."

Right to Work staff attorneys are helping Carol Jean Badertscher, a California nurse, fight back against California’s draconian “strikebreaker” law, which authorizes fines and even jail time for employees who repeatedly refuse to walk off the job during a union boss-ordered strike. Last Friday, the case came before a panel of three judges at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Audio of the oral argument is available online here. Below, Foundation attorney Bill DuRoss, who represented Badertscher in the argument, explains the ins and outs of the case to a group of Right to Work supporters who attended the Ninth Circuit’s hearing:

Last week, President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposed new guidelines which will help give union organizers the upper hand over independent-minded employees, and make union organizing campaigns as one-sided as possible.

The new rules, which are designed to allow union organizers to browbeat workers into union ranks and keep independent workers from opposing unionization, make it easier for union organizers to launch stealth campaigns in which they have access to the personal information of workers and harass them (including by making "home visits") into signing "union authorization cards."

Meanwhile, the vast majority of workers and the employer may have no idea what is happening.

Then, after union organizers collect those "authorization cards" from just 30 percent of employees in the workplace, workers would be ambushed with an union organizing election in just days — denying independent-minded employees any time to share truthful, non-coercive information with their coworkers about the effects of unionization.

Well-funded professional union organizers regularly push for unionization behind the scenes for months (or even years) as part of their drive for more forced union dues, and under the new rules, workers wishing to remain free from union boss control would only have days to counter what could be years of union-boss propaganda being used at their workplace — and even at their coworkers’ homes.

Further, even if union bosses don’t think they can win the quickie election, under the new rules they would be able to request the election in order to force the employer to hand over a list of every employee with their home address, phone number, email and shift information. Armed with this information union organizers could then withdraw the election petition and continue pursuing their coercive card check campaign.

In response, the National Right to Work Foundation has requested to address the NLRB at its public hearing next month on the proposed rule changes. If allowed, Foundation staff attorneys will argue at the hearing that the ambush elections Big Labor is pushing for would prevent independent-minded workers their right to resist forced unionization of their workplace and that the rule requiring job providers to hand over the employees’ personal information to union bosses is a violation of their privacy and places them in danger of harassment at the hands of aggressive union organizers.

You can read the Foundation’s request to appear at the NLRB’s public meeting on behalf of independent-minded workers here (pdf).