This Holiday Season, Shop Online and Help Right to Work!
The holiday season is upon us, and if you are like me, you still have plenty of presents to buy for family and friends. There has never been a better time to take advantage of the National Right to Work Foundation’s relationship with GoodShop.com.
Through GoodShop, you can shop at more than 700 top online retailers and a percentage of your purchases will go to help the Foundation provide free legal aid to victims of compulsory unionism.
Participating online stores include Amazon, Apple, Best Buy, Gap, Macy’s, Old Navy, Target, Toys R Us, and many, many more.
It’s free and easy to use. Just go to Goodshop.com, select the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation as your charity, and click on the retailer of your choice.
You can also help the Foundation even more by replacing your search engine with GoodSearch.com. With each search, GoodSearch sends a portion of the advertising revenue to the Foundation.
And if you’re feeling particularly generous, click here to learn about all the ways you can support the Foundation.
Coldwater Teacher Files Federal Suit Against Ohio Teacher Union Notorious for Religious Discrimination
With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, a fourth grade teacher from Ohio has filed a federal suit against Ohio’s largest teacher union for religious discrimination:
Columbus, OH (December 4, 2008) – A fourth grade teacher from the Coldwater Exempted Village School District has filed a federal suit against the state’s largest teacher union for forcing her to pay compulsory union fees to fund the union whose activities violate her religious faith.
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys, providing the teacher with free legal aid, filed the suit this week in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division.
Kathy Hart, an active member of the Catholic Church, has been a teacher in the Ohio public school system since August 1996. Because the public school she works in is unionized, she works under a collective bargaining agreement which forces her to pay compulsory union fees to the National Education Association (NEA) union and its state and local affiliates – the Ohio Education Association (OEA) union and the Coldwater Teachers Organization (CTO) union. Due to her faith, Hart objects to the unions’ positions on abortion and special rights for homosexuals.
Hart had asked that the union divert her compulsory fees to a charity, thereby accommodating her religious objections to supporting financially unions she believes to be involved in immoral activities.
Read the rest of the Foundation’s press release here.
Union Partisan: «When It Comes to Unions, We Should Be More Like China»
It’s fascinating to examine the mindset of union partisans fighting to enact the misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (a.k.a Card Check Forced Unionism Act), which would virtually eliminate the secret ballot in workplace elections.
Jon Tasini, a union consultant and former union boss, supports Card Check Forced Unionism which would allow union goons to collect "votes" in public by repeatedly harassing workers at the job and at home.
But Tasini thinks the Card Check Forced Unionism does not go far enough. He’d rather just have absolute government-imposed forced unionism, like China, where the authoritarian regime simply tells companies "you have to have unions" — and that’s, that.
Read Tasini’s entire post here.
Note that he doesn’t even attempt to couch his support of the bill under the premise that card card is a better barometer of majority support than an election (which, of course, is absurd). In fact, there’s no mention of majority support at all — or even whether or not ANY of the workers at a company want to unionize.
Coldwater Teacher Files Federal Suit Against Ohio Teacher Union Notorious for Religious Discrimination
Columbus, OH (December 4, 2008) – A fourth grade teacher from the Coldwater Exempted Village School District has filed a federal suit against the state’s largest teacher union for forcing her to pay compulsory union fees to fund the union whose activities violate her religious faith.
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys, providing the teacher with free legal aid, filed the suit this week in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division.
Kathy Hart, an active member of the Catholic Church, has been a teacher in the Ohio public school system since August 1996. Because the public school she works in is unionized, she works under a collective bargaining agreement which forces her to pay compulsory union fees to the National Education Association (NEA) union and its state and local affiliates – the Ohio Education Association (OEA) union and the Coldwater Teachers Organization (CTO) union. Due to her faith, Hart objects to the unions’ positions on abortion and special rights for homosexuals.
Hart had asked that the union divert her compulsory fees to a charity, thereby accommodating her religious objections to supporting financially unions she believes to be involved in immoral activities.
NEA union officials agreed to allow Hart to redirect her compulsory union dues to a mutually agreed upon charity. However, OEA officials refused to accommodate Hart and used the CTO to collect forced union dues from her paycheck. In response, Hart filed charges with the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging that the union officials’ actions were religious discrimination in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The EEOC authorized Hart in September to proceed with her own civil action against the OEA and CTO.
National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have helped Ohio teachers in dozens of cases over the last decade involving harassment by officials at the OEA union and its affiliates.
“OEA union bosses have a long and abusive record of violating employees’ rights by refusing to accommodate religious objectors in the workplace,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The OEA union hierarchy’s ugly policy of forcing teachers to fund unions which offend their consciences will continue until Ohio gives employees the protections of a Right to Work law.”
A Right to Work law secures the right of employees to decide whether or not to join or financially support a union. In the 22 states that have passed Right to Work laws, employees are free to follow their conscience and refrain from supporting an unwanted union without having to resort to costly litigation.
New Right to Work Podcast: Theft, Extortion, and Murder: Union Bosses Act Above the Law
In this week’s episode, Foundation VP Stefan Gleason appears on “The Drive with Gary Nolan”. Stefan and Gary discuss the Big Three/UAW union bailout. They then go on to discuss how union officials have become above the law, enabling them legally to target workers with coercion, intimidation, and violence (and how they can literally get away with murder):
You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.
[Note: Some Firefox users have reported audio distortion when using the player above. To ensure the podcast plays correctly just click here to listen.]
Union Bigwigs Exploit Another Tragedy To Promote Forced Unionism
Tragedy struck on Black Friday at a Wal-Mart on Long Island when impatient customers trampled an employee as they rushed into the store at 5 a.m., leading to his death.
But union bosses — long engaged in a vicious corporate campaign against the retailer in an effort to force Wal-Mart employees into their forced dues rank — are trying to exploit the tragedy for their self-serving ends:
"This incident was avoidable," said Bruce Both, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500, the state of New York’s largest grocery worker’s union.
"Where were the safety barriers? Where was security? How did store management not see dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe manner?
"This is not just tragic; it rises to a level of blatant irresponsibility by Wal-Mart," he said.
(Via Reason)
Bush Executive Order Exempts Some Federal Employees from Monopoly Bargaining: Too Little Too Late?
Yesterday President Bush issued an Exectuive Order exempting several agencies and subdivisions of the Energy, Homeland Security, Justice, Transportation, and Treasury departments from draconian and stifling federal labor-management relations strictures.
This is good policy. However, while freeing any worker from forced union monopoly bargaining is a welcome step, the last-minute move begs the question: What took so long?
Unfortunately, making this common-sense change on the way out the door cheapens it, making it appear to be little more than political retaliation. The administration should have made this and many more pro-individual-rights moves long ago. Instead, the incompetent political managers in the White House thought that making policy concessions to the union bosses would have bought their support. How wrong they were.
Foundation attorneys have long advocated for freeing national security employees from forced unionization, including fighting for the rights of airport screeners to remain free from union monopoly control.
There are other recent examples of Administration officials foolishly failing to agressively protect employee free choice. There are big political lessons to be learned here.
