In The Washington Examiner, Right to Work President Mark Mix takes on the Federal Election Commission's lax oversight of suspicious Big Labor political fundraising:
Imagine the outcry if McDonalds executives demanded that franchise owners collect “voluntary” contributions totaling $25,000 for the company’s Political Action Committee (PAC) from employees at every restaurant.
What if the fast food titan’s headquarters followed up with a threat - pay us, or face a $37,500 fine? Do you think this heavy handed scheme would raise a few eyebrows at the Federal Election Commission (FEC)?
Replace “McDonalds” with “SEIU” in that description and you’ve got a pretty good idea of Big Labor’s latest political fundraising strategy. To meet their ambitious fundraising targets, Service Employees International Union bosses are now threatening to fine any local affiliate that doesn’t meet its PAC contribution requirements.
Today, House Republican leader John Boehner called on President Barack Obama to veto any controversial legislation that passes during the post-midterm election lame-duck Congressional session. One of those controversial bills is the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill.
As Right to Work Foundation legal director Ray J. LaJeunesse details in the Spring 2010 issue of the Texas Review of Law & Politics journal, this draconian bill's three primary provisions contain many injustices toward American workers and job providers.
Regarding the bill's provision to strip workers of their rights to a secret ballot election and opening them up to intimidating "home visits":
...the absence of a formal election process works an obvious unfairness, facilitates intimidation and deception of workers, and runs contrary to the American tradition of secret ballots and the freedom to vote in privacy. The United States Supreme Court has already spoken to the issue, recognizing that “secret elections are generally the most satisfactory—indeed the preferred—method of ascertaining whether a union has majority support.”
There also is a serious question whether EFCA will unconstitutionally deny employers and employees their free speech rights... Because there would be no open campaign leading up to a secret-ballot election, EFCA would eliminate open debate, thus curtailing the speech rights of employers and individual employees opposed to the union.
Mandatory governmentally-imposed binding interest arbitration... runs afoul of various provisions of the U.S. Constitution.
Moreover, in requiring governmentally-imposed arbitrators to dictate contract terms, EFCA would unconstitutionally take the property of employers and give that property to their employees (as wages, for example) for a non-public use, in violation of the takings clause...
And finally, regarding the lopsided nature of the penalties imposed on job providers:
These drastic new penalties for unfair labor practices that apply to employers but not to unions raise concerns under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and may violate the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.
These one-sided changes in the NLRA’s remedial scheme would adversely affect employees as well as employers. With the Damoclean sword of punitive remedies looming, employers faced with union organizing campaigns will be more likely to gag themselves to avoid unfair labor practice charges by unions, thus depriving employees of the “information opposing unionization,” which they have an implicit “right to receive” under NLRA section 7, and which is necessary to make an informed and free choice about whether to support unionization or not.
As LaJeunesse clearly explains, the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill certainly "presents serious legal and policy issues" indeed.
Faced with a looming strike on June 10, 2010, several Minneapolis nurses refused to follow union boss marching orders to stay on the job and care for their patients. Although they resigned their membership before the strike took place, three nurses were threatened with union disciplinary hearings for refusing to walk off the job. With the help of Right to Work attorneys, these nurses have now filed unfair labor practice charges to hold union officials accountable for their heavy-handed intimidation tactics. Here's a video report on the incident from a local Minneapolis station:
The Right to Work Foundation has also extended an offer of free legal aid to any nurses facing similar union "disciplinary hearings." Interested parties should use the contact information provided here to determine if they're eligible for assistance.
UPDATE: On Monday, August 2, Foundation attorneys filed another round of charges against the MNA union on behalf of Susan Clark, a nurse who was never informed of her right to leave the union to avoid participating in the recent Minneapolis hospital strike. A copy of Clark's charges can be found here (.pdf).
Manny Lopez from the Detroit Newscomments on the United Autoworker (UAW) union hierarchy's "new" strategy of organizing workers, (i.e. using even more intimidation and harassment to force additional workers into their dues-paying ranks):
Bob King, the new president of the UAW was stumping for democracy yesterday, and you'd think that it would be hard to corrupt such a thing.
But he did. See, democracy to the unions means do it our way, or no way.
King said the UAW will try a new tactic to organize foreign automakers. The membership-declining union is going to draft a set of principles that will bar companies from using derogatory, untruthful or threatening statements to dissuade workers from organizing (as if that was a one-way street).
"Any company that does not agree to the UAW principles is essentially declaring war on freedom of speech and assembly," he said.
Ta-da, the "shame campaign" (my interpretation, not his).
Those that don't sign on will be labeled as being against the First Amendment.
But as Lopez correctly points out, UAW union hypocrites seem the least bit interested in protecting Michigan workers' rights to also not be forced to associate with something they want no part of:
I'll buy into the UAW's campaign for the First Amendment and the freedom of speech and assembly when it gives its workers in every state that same opportunity.
How about it Mr. King? Let's make Michigan a right-to-work state. Or is the freedom to choose limited to certain circumstances?
And not only would Right to Work protections be great for workers' rights, it would also be good for their wallets. Now that's a "new" strategy Michigan's families could support.
Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with Richmond, Virginia's Jimmy Barrett Show to discuss how forced unionism is hurting our chances at a strong economic recovery. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:
Lacking the evolutionary finesse that keeps most parasites from killing their host organisms, the American labor movement has driven the private firms that once employed its members offshore or into bankruptcy. Consequently, the only growth market remaining for the union movement is government: More union members today are employed by government than by the private sector. The union bosses, being neither blind nor stupid, see the advantages of sitting on both sides of the negotiating table, and their influence on politics has been predictably baleful. Unfortunately for those who would curtail their influence, they enjoy a steady stream of cash, expropriated from the paychecks of their members, and a ready supply of foot soldiers available for get-out-the-vote and rent-a-mob duties.
That’s a problem for conservatives. One of the more dynamic Republican leaders in the country, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, is battening down his political hatches for the hurricane of union abuse headed his way in response to his sober efforts to get his state’s finances in order. It is going to be ugly, with the unions employing the same tactics they used to derail the governorship of Arnold Schwarzenegger. So why in the name of Barry Goldwater would a single Republican, much less a half-dozen senators, support extending the influence of the people who made New Jersey New Jersey? The Senate Republicans supporting the bill include not only the usual practitioners of Me-Tooism — the Maine ladies, Lisa Murkowski — but also Scott Brown of Massachusetts and New Hampshire’s Judd Gregg. (What, no Lindsey Graham?) It would be cheaper and better for the country if these Republicans would just go ahead and make a direct donation to the Democratic National Committee, an act to which supporting this bill is equivalent. If Sen. Mike Johanns really wants to turn Lincoln, Neb., into Trenton on the Prairie, let him confine his efforts to his own state and leave the other 49 to go their own way.
Click here to read the whole thing. For more editorials opposing this terrible piece of legislation, check out our earlier blog post on the groundswell of public opposition to expanding Big Labor's control over public safety employees.
National Right to Work President Mark Mix discusses the consequences of the Police/Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill on Richmond, Virginia’s Jimmy Barrett Show. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:
National Right to Work Legislative Director Dmitri Kesari appeared on the Lars Larson show to discuss Big Labor's latest effort to push the Police/Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill into law. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:
Many Freedom@Work readers are already following the latest Big Labor offensive on Capitol Hill. Under the guise of protecting our first responders, pro-forced unionism politicians are attempting to ram home the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill.
This legislation would force states to adopt monopoly union bargaining for all police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians. Not only would this bill push unwilling public safety employees into Big Labor's forced dues-paying ranks, it would also usurp the right of state and local governments to determine if their employees unionize.
In fact, this power grab is so egregious that even the often pro-Big Labor Washington Post has taken notice. Here's the Post'sblistering editorial against the bill:
What this bill would do is impose a permanent, one-size-fits-all federal solution in an area -- public-sector labor relations -- that has traditionally been left to the states, and where state flexibility is probably more necessary than ever. The imposition on Virginia would be dramatic, of course, but even union-friendly Maryland, which lets each county decide whether and how to bargain with its employees, might find itself in costly, time-consuming contention with the feds. Farther afield, Colorado's "fire protection districts," special units of government dedicated to providing that service, would face costly collective bargaining even where firefighters and management are working harmoniously without it.
We share the bill sponsors' esteem for first responders. They should be adequately, even generously, compensated. Still, many outsized pensions now threatening state and local governments were awarded by politicians to curry favor with public-safety unions. To be sure, the bill includes acompromise provision assuring states that they don't have to bargain over pensions. But it hardly matters. The bill further empowers an already strong lobby that could use its additional clout to pressure state legislators to allow pension-bargaining anyway -- or to enact such benefits by statute. This bill is a bad idea whose time, we hope, has still not come.
Read the whole thing here. And remember, if Big Labor sympathizers at the Washington Post are astounded by this unpopular bill, imagine how bad it must be for the rest of us.
It will come as no surprise to those following the Obama Administration's labor policy that another executive order threatens to advance union bosses' interests at the expense of employers and employees alike. Executive Order 13494 implements a blatant double-standard for federal contractors who are subjected to union organizing drives. The order prohibits contractors from using any federal money to inform employees about the facts of union organizing.
Although this might sound relatively unobjectionable, the new directive reveals itself as a payoff to Big Labor by allowing contractors to write off expenses related to union monopoly bargaining, including company subsidies for union shop stewards and union committees.
This order creates a huge financial incentive for contractors to roll over to coercive union organizing drives, safe in the knowledge that they'll be able to pass on many union-related expenses to the government (we the people). Meanwhile, employer efforts to truthfully inform employees about the downsides of unionization cannot be reimbursed under this discriminatory directive. In other words, this policy effectively forces taxpayers to subsidize union activities.
Naturally, the National Right to Work Foundation has filed formal comments with the Administration opposing this latest Big Labor-friendly directive. Unfortunately, this executive order is yet another example of the Obama White House's fealty to Big Labor bosses, who helped ensure its loyalty by investing hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Obama in 2008.
