U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, the Bush administration’s top lawyer, has just inflicted more damage on America’s working men and women laboring under compulsory unionism. Does President Bush even know what his administration’s lawyer is doing?

This week, the too-clever-by-half lawyer filed a brief in the National Right to Work Foundation’s latest pending U.S. Supreme Court case, Locke v. Karass, and has taken a position that surely must please the union bosses. The High Court in Locke will examine the criteria for determining how much non-union members must pay to a union where they do not enjoy the fundamental protection of a Right to Work law.

Foundation attorneys argue that the U.S. Constitution does not permit the forced extraction of dues or fees for any expenses not directly tied to representational activity in the employees’ actual bargaining unit.

But Mr. Clement apparently has no issue with forcing Maine state workers to pay for union activism anywhere in the world, so long as the union satisfies a vague and weak two-part test. In practical terms, Clement’s standard would further empower union bosses to charge workers for almost anything under the sun, unless a worker gets a lawyer and forces them to prove that the forced fees are being used for narrowly prescribed purposes.

This is not the first time that U.S. Solicitor General Clement has taken positions supportive of compulsory unionism. He adopted the AFL-CIO’s position and seriously undermined employee freedom during oral argument in the Foundation’s Davenport v. WEA case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

With "friends" like Bush’s Solicitor General, who needs enemies?

Over at the LRC blog, a reader writes in to say how Grand Theft Auto 4, currently the best selling video game on the market, contains dialog that compares unions to the mafia. At one point the main character is told: "union’s just another word for mafia."

Ultimately the pop culture video game comparison of union bosses to mafia dons is more than mere tongue-and-cheek.

As currently constituted, with their many compulsory unionism special privileges, some union officials run what could be compared to a classic mafia enterprise: the protection racket.

Wikipedia defines a protection racket as follows:

an extortion scheme whereby a powerful entity or individual coerces other less powerful entities or individuals to pay protection money which allegedly serves to purchase "protection" services against various external threats.

In the case of unions, union bosses frequently paint employers to be exploitive and then demand that workers pay money in exchange for "representation." At the same time, in forced-dues states, employees are threatened with the loss of their job if they refuse to pay for the so-called "representation," whether or not the employees want it.

And for another example of how compulsory unionism leads to union officials’ involvement in organized crime, watch this video:

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today opposing the federal imposition of monopoly bargaining on America’s firefighters, police, and EMTs.

The article lists many compelling reasons to be against monopoly bargaining, but never fully lays out the case for opposition to this form of compulsory unionism as a fundamental issue of employees’ individual rights.

The fact is freedom of association should preclude union bosses from being able to force employees to accept their so-called "representation," thereby stripping individuals of their freedom to contract. Even worse, union bosses force employees — union members or not — to pay money for the "privilege" of losing their right of self-representation.

Even convicted criminals have the right to choose their own representation. It’s deplorable that Congress would try to force states to strip first responders of their freedoms.

The month of May marks the annual ‘window period’ for employees to obtain a reduction in mandatory dues payments from the Communication Workers of America (CWA) union.

The Foundation has had success challenging these window period schemes designed to trap workers into the union’s forced dues-paying ranks, but if you’re a CWA-covered employee in a non-Right to Work state who wants to opt-out of dues spent on activities unrelated to collective bargaining it is still recommended that you file your objection this month. (If you are under a Right to Work law you cannot be compelled to pay any dues whatsoever.)

For information on the forced-dues objection process, read this letter by Foundation Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse (pdf). The document includes a sample objection letter for CWA employees to send in to the agency fee administrator.

Here’s an interesting story (via EIA) from Nevada where teacher union officials are gathering signatures to put a massive tax increase on the ballot in November.

According to the Las Vegas Sun, union political operatives, who need to collect tens of thousands of signatures in order to put the tax hike on the ballot, are having trouble getting people to sign because "blockers" who oppose the tax increase are voicing their opposition to prospective signers during the collection process.

The article quotes one such "blocker" as saying "Say no to the tax grab! Think before you ink!" until the individual who might have signed the union operative’s petition decides against it and leaves. Nevada’s top teacher union official Lynn Warne denounced the actions as "thug tactics" (which is ironic because according to this website, the tactic was invented by union organizers in Oregon).

Normally there wouldn’t be much to add to this story, but a closer look reveals another example of a nasty pattern: Union bosses have realized that absent opposing viewpoints or the privacy of the secret ballot, they have no problem getting anyone to sign anything.

However, when employees or employers insist on providing an opposing viewpoint or demanding a secret ballot election union officials have considerably more trouble selling their power grabs. Rather than persuade workers (or in this case registered voters in Nevada) on the merits, they’d rather hoodwink or pressure them into signing — while denouncing the presentation of an opposing viewpoint as "thug tactics."

The Washington Post has an interesting article up on internal divisions within the Washington, DC teacher union. The corrupt union has been in a state of turmoil since former top boss Barbara Bullock was caught embezzling millions of dollars from union funds.

From 1995 to 2002, Bullock ripped off teachers’ forced dues to go on massive shopping sprees at Saks, Nieman Marcus, and Tiffany’s. Unsurprisingly, Bullock funded her excessive spending by jacking up mandatory union dues.

However, getting rid of Bullock hasn’t solved rank-and-file teachers’ problems. Teachers, parents, and administrators are dissastified with the system, and teacher union officials are resisting any change that may result in fewer teachers in their forced dues-paying ranks.

"Reformers" are calling for more oversight and transparency, but true reform can only occur if rank-and-file teachers are given a choice to keep their hard-earned money. Only the elimination of forced dues will make it possible to hold union officials accountable.

The Rocky Mountain News recently published a misleading op-ed by union organizer James Hansen. The article contains a number of misleading claims, but the following passage’s description of a Right to Work law is so fundamentally wrong that it has to be addressed:

“A right-to-work [sic] law would allow the government to intervene in labor-management relations, undermining the freedom that employers and workers now have to negotiate the best agreement possible for both sides.”

Union officials in Colorado already have government granted power to force every employee – member or not – to pay union dues as a condition of keeping their job (or getting a job in the first place). No other organization or association is allowed to extort forced fees from individuals.

State Right to Work protections simply eliminate this extraordinary government intervention, which is the exact opposite Hansen’s claim.

Further, if Hansen was really concerned with government intervention into employer-employee relations, he would call for the repeal of government imposed monopoly bargaining (that allows union officials to forcibly represent every employee) or the numerous other special government-granted powers that unions have.

But contrary to Hansen’s assertion, union officials are not at all concerned about preventing government intervention into employee-employer relations, as they long ago rejected AFL-CIO founder Samuel Gompers’ call for purely voluntary unionism. For the better part of the last 100 years, union bosses have built their empire on special government-granted powers, with forced dues as the most glaring example of the power.

As we’ve said before in this space, defending the rights of employees’ not to be forced to pay dues to get or keep a job is the right thing to do no matter the economic ramifications. Fortunately though, there are economic benefits to protecting employees’ Right to Work, as many studies by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research have found.

And a new paper released yesterday by the Michigan-based Mackinac Center, again confirms the Right to Work economic advantage:

In the key metrics of economic growth, Right to Work states have a distinct advantage when it comes to unemployment rates, income growth, population increases and jobs.

You can read the Mackinac paper in its entirety here. The paper also looks at the devastating economic impact that forced unionism has had on Michigan.

The Foundation’s sister organization, the National Right to Work Committee, reports that it is increasingly gaining traction in efforts to pass a Right to Work law through the Michigan legislature.

For two weeks now, Freedom @ Work has covered the indictment of twelve union officials in Upstate New York for a laundry list of criminal activity that includes a stabbing and death threats. Nonunion employers and employees were targeted in an effort to push more workers into the union officials’ forced dues-paying ranks.

A local paper even compared the acts depicted in the indictment to an episode of the HBO hit TV show The Sopranos.

The latest video added to the National Right to Work Foundation’s YouTube video channel shows just how brutal these union officials’ acts were by simply quoting word for word from the 62-page indictment.

A recent ruling by a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge upheld the right of employees to sign a union decertification petition in the midst of a debilitating strike. More importantly, the ruling also endorsed the employer’s refusal to hand over non-striking workers’ home addresses and other personal information to union officials bent on harassment and intimidation.

On the advice of Foundation staff attorneys, a substantial majority (77 percent) of non-striking employees at a Tenneco facility in Grass Lakes, Michigan signed a petition in favor of union decertification. Unwilling to relinquish their stranglehold on workplace representation, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 660 officials filed a complaint with the NLRB, arguing that non-striking employees favored decertification only because of Tenneco’s unfair labor practices. The NLRB judge rejected these claims and concluded that the UAW’s objections to the decertification process were entirely without merit.

More significant, however, was the stern rebuke delivered to UAW officials for demanding Tenneco hand over the non-striking workers’ personal contact information, including home addresses. Union officials claimed they needed the employees’ home addresses to "communicate" the benefits of membership directly, but the judge decided that the threat of union intimidation justified Tenneco’s decision to withold personal information from UAW militants.

The judge noted that the union’s rationale for acquiring the employees’ home addresses was suspect, as " . . . the Union had other viable means of communicating with the replacements short of having access to their homes." He also recognized that union operatives had exhibited a pattern of harassment, having previously " . . . traveled to the personal residence of two members, whose address they certainly had access to, and staged a protest of their stance on the strike." The judge further noted the UAW’s "venomous" and "disrespectful" attitude towards non-striking workers. So much for fair representation.

Full text of the NLRB ruling is available here. It’s a long decision, but you’ll find the judge’s response to union demands for employees’ personal information on pages 62-65. His assesment of the decertification petition’s legality is available on pages 74-79.

Strike-related violence is an under-reported aspect of compulsory unionization, and the UAW has a long history of harassment and abuse. In fact, Freedom@Work recently exposed a similar campaign of intimidation against non-striking workers at a Volvo auto plant in Pulaski County, Virginia.