In May, a devastating piece from the Far Left New Republic highlighted the Teamsters’ officials attempts to get rid of the Independent Review Board (IRB), a federal oversight body intended to police the union’s well-documented connections to organized crime. Here’s a particularly choice example of Teamster union "representation" from the article:

But Hoffa’s efforts [to get rid of the IRB] were derailed by a sensational IRB report that appeared late that year detailing the efforts of Chicago Teamsters, working with a Chicago labor broker, Richard Simon, whom Stier [a former federal prosecutor] would later describe as "having ties to organized crime," to undermine a Teamster local in Las Vegas by negotiating non-union, low-wage agreements to service the city’s numerous business conventions.

Now a former Teamsters boss has written in to announce he’s shocked – shocked – by the magazine’s allegations of corruption. Having already been ejected from the union by the IRB for innappropriate conduct, his credibility on this issue is somewhat strained. Fortunately, the author ably defends his original contentions:

The IRB found that the two men [two Teamsters officials — one of whom wrote in to object to the first article] tried to get the Teamsters local 631 in Las Vegas, which provided workers to convention shows, to allow Richard Simon, a Chicago labor broker, to provide non-union workers to conventions. The workers, which would be provided by Simon’s United Temps, would not receive benefits or overtime. All in all, they would earn less than half of the Teamster workers; and under the labor agreement that the Teamsters had with the conventions, Simon’s cut-rate contract could then become the standard for all convention employees. The Teamsters would be screwed, but Simon would come out ahead, and so would Hogan’s brother Michael, who was the vice president of Simon’s company, and also the head of a convention company that would be hiring Simon’s workers.

Notably, the IRB’s investigation was later validated by a federal court:

"Having carefully reviewed the hearing record," the Appeals Court wrote, "we concluded that the IRB’s findings are supported by substantial evidence, are not arbitrary or capricious, and plainly demonstrate that Hogan and Passo were negotiating a contract that they knew would have harmed the union."

While more oversight may seem desirable, it’s no substitute for real reform. Corruption will remain endemic to labor unions like the Teamsters as long as union officials have access to a bottomless source of mandatory dues payments. Furthermore, the entire structure of monopoly bargaining gives employees no meaningful recourse to combat union fraud and corruption, as union officials are essentially installed for life as workers’ sole representatives [this National Institute for Labor Relations Research paper is good primer on the relationship between compulsory unionism and union corruption].

Good-faith efforts at union oversight are also vulnerable to changes in the political environment. According to this Wall Street Journal article, one presidential candidate has already announced his support for dismantling the IRB and giving the Teamsters free reign to police themselves. Unfortunately, we already know how that strategy will turn out (from the original TNR article):

To build an argument for getting rid of the IRB, Hoffa set up his own internal oversight group. It was called RISE (or Respect, Integrity, Strength, and Ethics) and was run by a former federal prosecutor and organized crime expert Ed Stier.

. . .

For Stier, however, those hopes were dashed the next year when he began investigating Chicago-area Teamster locals for corruption. As he later detailed in a report, Stier discovered "multiple issues related to organized crime [and] corruption" in Local 714, and similar issues in five other area locals. The report concluded, "Issues related to organized crime infiltration and associated corruption in the Chicago area are numerous and cut across jurisdictional lines." But in the fall of 2003, as Stier was still in the midst of his investigation, the Teamster leadership began objecting vociferously to it, and in February 2004, Hoffa shut it down.

The cover story of the July/August issue of Foundation Action is now available for download here.

The story details former United States Solicitor General Paul Clement’s efforts to undermine the Foundation’s Locke v. Karass U.S. Supreme Court case. The article also shows that this isn’t the first time that the Solicitor General, who recently-resigned his position, has undercut a Foundation Supreme Court case.

You can get your own free subscription to Foundation Action here.

A few Right to Work-related updates from over the weekend:

1.) Does the AFL-CIO owe $14 million in back taxes? Perhaps an IRS audit will reveal other problems with the AFL-CIO’s overtly partisan and massive campaign expenditures. The author overstates the good that comes from oversight of union finances by the Office of Labor Management Standards, but he does point out the amusing fact that Democrats are in favor of "smaller government" in this one instance:

One of the branches of the Department of Labor that provides a real services to all Americans is the Office of Labor-Management Standards. These are the guys who make sure that labor unions are being transparent about their finances. Or they try, when the Democrats don’t cut their budget. But, for now, you get to see how unions spend their money.

If you’re interested in reading more about the Foundation’s ongoing efforts to ensure greater union financial disclosure, subscribe to the latest issue of Foundation Action. The July/August newsletter features a story on the DOL’s latest half-hearted attempt to promote financial transparency — any why a crippling "confidential information" loophole would render DOL’s whole exercise as useless.

2.) More good stuff from the Washington Examiner. John Barnes has a informative post entitled "Why public sector labor unions are a bad idea." Here’s the money quote:

This is how the cycle works: state workers are forced to join a union, even if they don’t want to — the unions collect mandatory dues from state worker paychecks — the unions use that money to support campaigns for the very elected officials with whom they bargain for contracts — not surprisingly, the unions tend to get favorable contracts that usually result in higher membership dues that in turn provide the unions with more money to fund "friendly" elected officials. Add a growing state workforce, repeat cycle, and stir. What’s the basic ingredient here? Your tax dollars.

For those of you who missed it, Freedom@Work spotlighted Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire’s incestuous relationship with union officials last week. The Seattle Times article detailing her connections to Big Labor is well-worth a read.

Wednesday’s Daily Labor Report (subscription required) featured a self-serving article likely placed by the National Labor Relations Board’s PR flacks in which the two remaining board members assert that the NLRB "might actually be functioning more efficiently" with three vacancies than with a full five-member panel. Hmmm. Perhaps Congress should take another look at the NLRB’s excessive funding levels.

We at Freedom @ Work also take issue with a false claim by the Board contained in the article:

Applying current board precedent, regardless of whether either of the two members disagrees with it and thinks it should be overturned, "hasn’t been difficult, because as usual we generally try to decide cases based on extant board law," [Chairman Peter] Schaumber said. The two members explained that they are following longstanding board policy not to make new law or set new rules without at least a three-member majority voting for the change.

Oops, Mr. Schaumber. Not so. Just a few weeks ago, the two-member Board issued a controversial ruling which changed the law and further encouraged union-stooge congressmen to engage in deception and union coercion. As a Foundation press release explained (emphasis mine):

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued a controversial and ground-breaking ruling that gives Congressmen and other public officials the green light to stage fake “certification” ceremonies that give the misimpression of official government recognition of a union during “card check” organizing drives.

The case dismissed objections to the conduct of Congressman Robert Andrews (D-NJ) and other government officials who participated in a televised sham union “certification” ceremony and public announcement that workers had selected a union immediately prior to a NLRB certification election last summer at the Trump Plaza Hotel in Atlantic City.

The NLRB’s ruling raised the burden of proof requirements for arguing that conduct tainted a certification election. Earlier Board law did not require challengers to present incontrovertible evidence that many employees were actually aware of the objectionable conduct – only that it was likely that many were.

Either Schaumber was confused when deciding this Trump Plaza Hotel case, or he’s being disingenuous to the press.

Yesterday, the AFL-CIO officially endorsed its candidate for president. The endorsement should come as no surprise, of course, since Big Labor has always used member dues — and forced dues from nonmembers — to support its Far Left political agenda. But this year’s campaign will apparently be the largest and most expensive yet:

This year, the AFL-CIO is carrying out its largest grassroots political mobilization in history. Thousands of volunteers are helping educate millions of workers and mobilizing them to get to the polls to elect Barack Obama and a working family-friendly Congress. The AFL-CIO union movement is focusing on mobilizing more than 13 million union voters?including union members, families of members, retirees and members of the AFL-CIO community affiliate Working America?in 24 priority states, working to elect U.S. senators and representatives, as well as state and local candidates.

An Associated Press report reports how much money Big Labor is admitting it will spend on electioneering. (While large, the numbers below understate by several hundred million dollars Big Labor’s true political spending this year, according to our research.):

As expected, the leaders of the nation’s largest labor organization voted unanimously to endorse Obama, freeing the organization and its 56 unions to spend some of its $200 million war chest on his campaign.
…
Between the AFL-CIO and its chief rival, the Change to Win labor organization, the nation’s labor movement plans to spend around $300 million on the 2008 elections. Change to Win, made up of seven powerful unions that broke away from the AFL-CIO in 2005, already has endorsed Obama. The AFL-CIO represents 9 million union members; Change to Win, 6 million.

Big Labor "represents" so many workers because forced unionism laws compel workers in 28 states to join or pay dues to a union. Even in Right to Work states, many workers are unaware of their rights, and in some cases union bosses pretend Right to Work laws don’t even exist. Legally, thanks to Foundation-won Supreme Court cases Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, and Communications Workers of America v. Beck, workers can be forced to pay dues for unwanted bargaining, but may opt out of paying dues which union bosses use on non-bargaining activities such as union politics, lobbying, and member-only events.

But as we so often see, union officials frequently trample these constitutional rights. Last week, the Foundation announced a settlement reached between an Alaska state employee and the Alaska State Employees Association union, an AFL-CIO affiliate. ASEA union officials threatened Hunsick’s dismissal for refusal pay full union dues. Hunsick did not want to support the union’s political and ideological agenda, but union bosses continually denied him the procedural safeguards guaranteed under Hudson.

When an AFL-CIO activist knocks on your door and hands you a pamphlet explaining who to vote for, keep in mind that the funding behind it all might just be seized at gunpoint (figuratively speaking, in most cases) from folks like Robert Hunsick.

Here at Freedom @ Work, we often discuss card check by citing examples of employees being harassed, misled, or lied to by union organizers.

But simple common sense also says that when (often intimidating) individuals shove a piece of paper in your face, and tell you that it is in your interest to sign, you may well do it — even if you aren’t exactly sure what you are signing.

Case in point are two videos — both done for television shows — of people signing absurd petitions. In both cases, the signature collectors don’t even lie to the people whose signatures they seek about what they are signing.

In one video, two comedians set up a table at a fair and easily collect dozens of signatures, mostly from women, to "end women’s suffrage." Meaning that without even lying, they got dozens of women to sign a petition in favor of eliminating their right to vote.

In another video, shown below, a women collects hundreds of signatures to ban "Dihydrogen Monoxide" — better known as water — at a rally of environmentalists. Like, the "end women’s suffrage" pranksters, the signature collector truthfully informs prospective signers about the chemical (water) that they want to ban:

As these videos show, just because someone signs a petition or card, doesn’t mean they really understand what they are signing. Furthermore, Foundation legal cases have shown outright lies about the meaning or effect of the cards. These realities are something that must be remembered when union bosses or their allies in Congress attempt to impose more card check coercion on workers.

The recent Chamber v. Brown decision (.pdf) highlighted one of the worst aspects of coercive union organizing. Writing for the majority, Justice Stevens emphasized the California statute’s most problematic feature: while the free flow of truthful information about the downsides of unionization was shut off by the state’s draconian regulations, union organizers received special dispensation to harass workers both at home and on the job:

Instead of forbidding the use of state funds for all employer advocacy regarding unionization, AB 1889 [the California law] permits use of state funds for select employer advocacy activities that promote unions. Specifically, the statute exempts expenses incurred in connection with, inter alia, giving unions access to the workplace, and voluntarily recognizing unions without a secret ballot election.

"Voluntarily recognizing unions without a secret ballot election" is a euphemism for coercive card-check drives. And while the Chamber v. Brown decision is a small brake on in-your-face union organizing drives underway across America, the frequency of card-check drives has increased markedly over the past several years.  Evidently, union organizers have realized that publicly badgering employees into signing away their rights to self-representation is a lot easier than acceding to federally-supervised secret ballot elections.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, Foundation staff attorneys recently acquired data from the National Labor Relations Board on the incidence of card-check petitions in the workplace.  According to this NLRB spreadsheet, union agents gained monopoly bargaining privileges using these methods in more than 250 America workplaces since November of 2007. The biggest offenders were members of SEIU President Andy Stern’s so-called "Change to Win" coalition: the SEIU and UNITE HERE racked up 26 successful card-check drives each, while the Teamsters managed to pull off an impressive 108 card-check drives.  TheNLRB was not required to record this information until the Foundation’s Dana/Metaldyne victory last September.

So why is coercive card-check organizing so uniquely damaging to employee freedom? The reason is simple: forcing workers to publicly disclose their preferences to union organizers leaves them vulnerable to intimidation, harassment, and retaliation.

Here’s an excerpt from the congressional testimony of Jen Jason, a former UNITE HERE union organizer who participated in several card-check petition drives:

From my experience, the number of cards signed appear to have little relationship to the ultimate vote count. During a private election campaign, even though a union still sends organizers out to workers’ homes on frequent canvassing in attempts to gain support, the worker has a better chance to get perspective on the questions at hand. The time allocated for the election to go forward allows the worker a chance to think through his or her own issues without undue influence—thus avoiding an immediate, impulsive decision based on little or no fact. After all, the decision to join a union is often life-changing, and workers should be afforded the time to debate, discuss and research all of the options available to them.

As an organizer working under a “card check” system versus an election system, I knew that “card check” gave me the ability to quickly agitate a set of workers into signing cards. I did not have to prove the union’s case, answer more informed questions from workers or be held accountable for the service record of my union.

When the union is allowed to implement the “card check” strategy, the decision about whether or not an individual employee would choose to join a union is reduced to a crisis decision. This situation is created by the organizer and places the worker into a high pressure sales situation. Furthermore, my experience is that in jurisdictions in which “card check” was actually legislated, organizers tended to be even more willing to harass, lie and use fear tactics to intimidate workers into signing cards. I have personally heard from workers that they signed the union card simply to get the organizer to leave their home and not harass them further. At no point during a “card check” campaign, is the opportunity created or fostered for employees to seriously consider their working lives and to think about possible solutions to any problems.

Pretty sobering stuff.  Of course, the card-check strategy was never intended to fairly gauge workers’ preferences.

After working with UNITE HERE organizers for years, Jen Jason finally got the full picture. Her experience should make the pernicious nature of card-check organizing abundantly clear:

I began my career with UNITE with a strong belief in worker’s rights and democracy in the workplace. During the course of my employment with the union, I began to understand the reality behind the rhetoric. I took in the ways that organizers were manipulating workers just to get a majority on “the cards” and the various strategies that they employed. I began to appreciate that promises made by organizers at a worker’s house had little to do with how the union actually functions as a “service” organization.