National Labor Relations Act | National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation

Worker Advocate Challenges Obama Labor Board Overreach in Federal Court

Mon, 09/19/2011 - 11:07 — Anthony Riedel

Worker Advocate Challenges Obama Labor Board Overreach in Federal Court

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys fight Labor Board’s decision to promote monopoly unionism in virtually every workplace in America

Washington, DC (September 16, 2011) – Today, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed a federal lawsuit challenging the National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) new rules governing the notification of employee rights in the workplace.

The new rules require every employer to post incomplete information about employee rights online and in the workplace, even if they've never committed a violation or been accused of unfair labor practices. However, these rules do not require union officials to issue information about workers' rights to refrain from union membership or opt out of union dues. Until the rule changes, which were implemented in late August, employers were required to post notices of workers' rights only if a violation of labor law occurred.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys believe the NLRB has exceeded its authority granted by Congress and violated free speech guarantees of the First Amendment. Attorneys from the National Federation of Independent Business are challenging the new rule in the same complaint on behalf of two member businesses, Southeast Sealing, Inc. and Lehigh Valley Racquet and 24/7 Fitness Clubs.

Read the entire release here.

The Right to Work: A Fundamental Freedom

Fri, 07/15/2011 - 15:13 — Patrick Semmens

The following article by National Right to Work Legel Defense Foundation President Mark Mix appeared in the June/July issue of Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College sent each month to 1.9 million subscribers. The article is adapted from a lecture given at Hillsdale College in January 2011.

The Right to Work: A Fundamental Freedom

BOEING IS A GREAT AMERICAN COMPANY. Recently it has built a second production line—its other is in Washington State—in South Carolina for its 787 Dreamliner airplane, creating 1,000 jobs there so far. Who knows what factors led to its decision to do this? As with all such business decisions, there were many. But the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—a five-member agency created in 1935 by the Wagner Act (about which I will speak momentarily)—has taken exception to this decision, ultimately based on the fact that South Carolina is a right-to-work state. That is, South Carolina, like 21 other states today, protects a worker’s right not only to join a union, but also to make the choice not to join or financially support a union. Washington State does not. The general counsel of the NLRB, on behalf of the International Association of Machinists union, has issued a complaint against Boeing, which, if successful, would require it to move its South Carolina operation back to Washington State. This would represent an unprecedented act of intervention by the federal government that appears, on its face, un-American. But it is an act long in the making, and boils down to a fundamental misunderstanding of freedom.

Where does this story begin?

The Wagner Act and Taft-Hartley

In 1935, Congress passed and President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), commonly referred to as the Wagner Act after its Senate sponsor, New York Democrat Robert Wagner. Section 7 of the Wagner Act states:

Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection.

Union officials such as William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), and John L. Lewis, principal founder of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), hailed this legislation at the time as the “Magna Carta of Labor.” But in fact it was far from a charter of liberty for working Americans.

Section 8(3) of the Wagner Act allowed for “agreements” between employers and officers of a union requiring union membership “as a condition of employment” if the union was certified or recognized as the employees’ “exclusive” bargaining agent on matters of pay, benefits, and work rules. On its face, this violates the clear principle that the freedom to associate necessarily includes the freedom not to associate. In other words, the Wagner Act didn’t protect the freedom of workers because it didn’t allow for them to decide against union membership. To be sure, the Wagner Act left states the prerogative to protect employees from compulsory union membership. But federal law was decidedly one-sided: Firing or refusing to hire a worker because he or she had joined a union was a federal crime, whereas firing or refusing to hire a worker for not joining a union with “exclusive” bargaining privileges was federally protected. The National Labor Relations Board was created by the Wagner Act to enforce these policies.

During World War II, FDR’s War Labor Board aggressively promoted compulsory union membership. By the end of the war, the vast majority of unionized workers in America were covered by contracts requiring them to belong to a union in order to keep their jobs. But Americans were coming to see compulsory union membership—euphemistically referred to as “union security”—as a violation of the freedom of association. Furthermore, the nonchalance with which union bosses like John L. Lewis paralyzed the economy by calling employees out on strike in 1946 hardened public support for the right to work as opposed to compulsory unionism. As Gilbert J. Gall, a staunch proponent of the latter, acknowledged in a monograph chronicling legislative battles over this issue from the 1940s on, “the huge post-war strike wave and other problems of reconversion gave an added impetus to right-to-work proposals.”

When dozens of senators and congressmen who backed compulsory unionism were ousted in the 1946 election, the new Republican leaders of Congress had a clear opportunity to curb the legal power of union bosses to force workers to join unions. Instead, they opted for a compromise that they thought would have enough congressional support to override a presidential veto by President Truman. Thus Section 7 of the revised National Labor Relations Act of 1947—commonly referred to as the Taft-Hartley Act—only appears at first to represent an improvement over Section 7 of the Wagner Act. It begins:

Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any and all such activities. . . .

Had this sentence ended there, forced union membership would have been prohibited, and at the same time voluntary union membership would have remained protected. Unfortunately, the sentence continued:

...except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 158(a)(3) of this title.

This qualification, placing federal policy firmly on the side of compulsory union membership, left workers little better off than they were under the Wagner Act. Elsewhere, Taft-Hartley did, for the most part, prohibit “closed shop” arrangements that forced workers to join a union before being hired. But they could still be forced to join, on threat of being fired, within a few weeks after starting on the job.

Boeing’s Interest, and Ours

It cannot be overemphasized that compulsory unionism violates the first principle of the original labor union movement in America. Samuel Gompers, founder and first president of the AFL, wrote that the labor movement was “based upon the recognition of the sovereignty of the worker.” Officers of the AFL, he explained in the American Federationist, can “suggest” or “recommend,” but they “cannot command one man in America to do anything.” He continued: “Under no circumstances can they say, ‘you must do so and so, or, ‘you must desist from doing so and so.’” In a series of Federationist editorials published during World War I, Gompers opposed various government mandate measures being considered in the capitals of industrial states like Massachusetts and New York that would have mandated certain provisions for manual laborers and other select groups of workers:

The workers of America adhere to voluntary institutions in preference to compulsory systems which are held to be not only impractical but a menace to their rights, welfare and their liberty.

This argument applies as much to compulsory unionism—or “union security”—as to the opposite idea that unions should be prohibited. And in a December 1918 address before the Council on Foreign Relations, Gompers made this point explicitly:

There may be here and there a worker who for certain reasons unexplainable to us does not join a union of labor. This is his right no matter how morally wrong he may be. It is his legal right and no one can dare question his exercise of that legal right.

Compare Gompers’s traditional American view of freedom to the contemptuous view toward workers of labor leaders today. Here is United Food and Commercial Workers union strategist Joe Crump advising union organizers in a 1991 trade journal article: “Employees are complex and unpredictable. Employers are simple and predictable. Organize employers, not employees.” And in 2005, Mike Fishman, head of the Service Employees International Union, was even more blunt. When it comes to union organizing campaigns, he told the Wall Street Journal, “We don’t do elections.”

Under a decades-old political compromise, federal labor policies promoting compulsory unionism persist side by side with the ability of states to curb such compulsion with right-to-work laws. So far, as I said, 22 states have done so. And when we compare and contrast the economic performance in these 22 states against the others, we find interesting things. For example, from 1999 to 2009 (the last such year for which data are available), the aggregate real all-industry GDP of the 22 right-to-work states grew by 24.2 percent, nearly 40 percent more than the gain registered by the other 28 states as a group.

Even more dramatic is the contrast if we look at personal income growth. From 2000 to 2010, real personal incomes grew by an average of 24.3 percent in the 22 right-to-work states, more than double the rate for the other 28 as a group. But the strongest indicator is the migration of young adults. In 2009, there were 20 percent more 25- to 34-year-olds in right-to-work states than in 1999. In the compulsory union states, the increase was only 3.3 percent—barely one-sixth as much.

In this context, the decision by Boeing to open a plant in South Carolina may be not only in its own best interest, but in ours as well. So in whose interest is the National Labor Relations Board acting? And more importantly, with a view to what understanding of freedom?

Public Sector Unionism

As more and more workers and businesses have obtained refuge from compulsory unionism in right-to-work states in recent decades, the rationality of the free market has been showing itself. But the public sector is another and a grimmer story.

The National Labor Relations Act affects only private-sector workers. Since the 1960s, however, 21 states have enacted laws authorizing the collection of forced union dues from at least some state and local public employees. More than a dozen additional states have granted union officials the monopoly power to speak for all government workers whether they consent to this or not. Thus today, government workers are more than five times as likely to be unionized as private sector workers. This represents a great danger for taxpayers and consumers of government services. For as Victor Gotbaum, head of the Manhattan-based District 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, said 36 years ago: “We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss.”

How this works is simple, and explains the inordinate power of union officials in so many states that have not adopted right-to-work laws. Union officials funnel a huge portion of the compulsory dues and fees they collect into efforts to influence the outcomes of elections. In return, elected officials are afraid to anger them even in the face of financial crisis. This explains why states with the heaviest tax burdens and the greatest long-term fiscal imbalances (in many cases due to bloated public employee pension funds) are those with the most unionized government workforces. California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Wisconsin represent the worst default risks among the 50 states. In 2010, an average of 59.2 percent of the public employees in these nine worst default-risk states were unionized, 19.2 percentage points higher than the national average of 40 percent. All of these states except Nevada authorize compulsory union dues and fees in the public sector.

* * *

Fortunately, there are signs that taxpayers are recognizing the negative consequences of compulsory unionism in the public sector. Just this March, legislatures in Wisconsin and Ohio revoked compulsory powers of government union bosses, and similar efforts are underway in several other states. Furthermore, the NLRB’s blatantly political and un-constitutional power play with regard to Boeing’s South Carolina production line is sure to strike fair-minded Americans as beyond the pale. Now more than ever, it is time to push home the point that all American workers in all 50 states should be granted the full freedom of association—which includes the freedom not to associate—in the area of union membership.

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.

Security Union Officials Hit With Federal Labor Board Charges for Forcing Employees into Union

Tue, 11/09/2010 - 11:38 — Anthony Riedel

Security Union Officials Hit With Federal Labor Board Charges for Forcing Employees into Union

Stealth union organizing campaign springs union boss control over employees without even a vote

Flint, MI (November 9, 2010) – A group of eight Securitas Security Services employees filed federal charges against a local union and their employer earlier this week for illegally forcing union monopoly representation and mandatory union fees on the employees without a showing of majority support for the union.

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, the employees – who are employed by Securitas in Grand Blanc – recently learned that their employer has recognized the Security, Police, and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) union hierarchy as their monopoly bargaining agent. The employees were unaware of any union organizing campaign occurring in their workplace and a vote never took place.

Federal labor law requires that union officials must show majority support within a workplace before company officials can recognize the union.

The employees were forced to sign union dues deduction authorizations – used by union officials to automatically withhold dues from employee paychecks – and are currently paying dues to the union in order to keep their jobs.

Read the entire release here.

Is Obama Planning an Easter Recess Appointment of Radical SEIU Lawyer Craig Becker to the NLRB?

Fri, 03/26/2010 - 11:25 — Anthony Riedel

Last month, the Senate rejected an attempt to confirm President Barack Obama's nomination of pro-compulsory unionism radical Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Wall Street Journal reports that with the Senate now taking it's Easter recess, Becker could be appointed via a recess appointment "as early as today."

As the Journal notes, a Craig Becker NLRB appointment resurrection would be disastrous to employee rights:

Mr. Becker has written extensively about the National Labor Relations Act, the law that the NLRB interprets and enforces. In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, he said that the "core defect in union election law . . . is the employer's status as a party to labor representation proceedings" and that "employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees' election of representatives."

In other words, you can forget about employees getting truthful and non-coercive information about the downsides of unionization.

But there's more. Becker has publicly argued union goons should have the privilege to repeatedly harass workers at home until the workers sign "card check" union authorization cards; advocated allowing government arbiters impose contracts on workers without even allowing the workers to vote on the contract; and has even compared union organizing elections to US Congressional elections, stating that the only question decided in such elections should be which union gets monopoly control over workers, not whether they wish to remain independent and union free.

Or as the Journal puts it, "the modern union movement is bloody-minded about the will to power and Mr. Becker is one of its fiercest partisans."

Meanwhile, Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work, expressed some additional concerns regarding Becker's extreme forced unionism record in this morning's Washington Times:

Mark Mix of the National Right to Work organization reports that in 2007 alone, Mr. Becker's lawyering forced 63,000 California workers to pay union dues even after rejecting union membership. He [encouraged] repeated "home visits" for union backers, designed to pressure workers to sign public union-organizing petitions. Unions were "formed to escape the evils of individualism and individual competition. ... Their actions necessarily involve coercion," Mr. Becker once explained.

To view more information on Big Labor sycophant Craig Becker's radical views, check out this National Right to Work Committee special video report:

Big Labor and Big Government May Be the Only Winners in UPS - FedEx War

Tue, 11/10/2009 - 15:53 — Anthony Riedel

A heated battle is raging in Congress between major shipping companies United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) and FedEx Corporation and the rights of literally tens -- if not hundreds -- of thousands of employees hang in the balance.

You see, UPS is regulated under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and is heavily unionized, as 240,000 of its total 425,000 employees are required to accept union bosses' monopoly bargaining "representation." Meanwhile, FedEx is under the jurisdiction of the Railway Labor Act (RLA) -- which also gives union bosses monopoly bargaining privileges, but only if an absolute majority of workers in a given bargaining unit vote to accept union bosses as their monopoly bargaining agent -- and so only 4,700 of 290,000 FedEx employees have been unionized.

So now UPS is backing legislation in Congress that would switch FedEx employees to the jurisdiction of the NLRA, making it easier for union bosses to corral FedEx's employees into union ranks and force them to pay union dues just to keep their jobs.

ReasonTV has just released a video -- parodying UPS's famous "Whiteboard" commercials -- detailing the UPS/FedEx dispute:

Unfortunately, FedEx employees' workplace freedoms are not only in jeopardy by Congressional action, but also by federal bureaucratic fiat.

Big Labor is pushing for the National Mediation Board (NMB) -- a government agency charged under the RLA with mediating labor disputes within the railroad and airline industries -- to make dramatic changes to its enforcement of the RLA, greasing the skids for union organizers to force tens of thousands of non-union railway and airline industry workers into union membership.

Big labor partisans from over 30 unions, led by AFL-CIO, are pushing to change the threshold union organizers need to impose unions on workers in the railway and airline industries to just a majority of workers actually voting in a union organizing election to make that decision for the whole group.

What seems like a small procedural change is in reality a major game changer, as it makes it exceedingly difficult for independent-minded workers to resist Big Labor’s well-funded, professional organizing machine, particularly since these campaigns must be run across an entire, often-nationwide bargaining unit. Also, independent-minded FedEx employees would either have to take affirmative action to oppose union "representation" or otherwise potentially allow far less than a majority of their colleagues impose an unwanted union on them.

Unfortunately, regardless of how individual workers lose their rights -- through actions of Congress or through executive branch machinations -- Big Labor and Big Government are likely to be the only winners in the UPS-FedEx war.

Employees File Federal Class Action Suit to Halt Abusive Mandatory Union Dues Scheme

Mon, 09/21/2009 - 16:35 — Anthony Riedel

Employees File Federal Class Action Suit to Halt Abusive Mandatory Union Dues Scheme

Right to Work Foundation helps employees challenge national union’s illegal “annual objection” policy

Aberdeen, MD (September 21, 2009) – Today, two employees filed a class action federal suit challenging the International Association of Machinist and Aerospace Workers (IAM) union’s nationwide policy requiring employees to object year after year to paying union dues they cannot be lawfully forced to pay.

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, Jacobs Technology Incorporated employees Rick Gorham and Robert Negosta are challenging the IAM union officials’ scheme intended to thwart non-union members’ legal rights to refrain from paying union dues for union electioneering and other non-bargaining activities. Foundation attorneys filed the complaint in Maryland’s U.S. District Court on behalf of the two employees and all of Jacobs Technology’s other similarly-situated employees.

In the Foundation-won Communication Workers of America v. Beck (1988), the U.S. Supreme Court held that union officials can lawfully compel nonmembers to pay union dues as a job condition, but not the part of dues spent for non-bargaining activities like political activism, lobbying, and member-only events. However, these limited rights have been difficult to enforce, as union officials often concoct illegal schemes such as these “annual objection” policies to burden or thwart employees from exercising their rights.

(Continue reading this news release...)

The Coercive Nature of American Labor Law

Thu, 02/19/2009 - 18:23 — Anthony Riedel

The Future of Freedom Foundation's "Freedom Daily" published an article titled "The Authoritarianism of American Labor Law" by George C. Leef, author of Free Choice for Workers: A History of the Right to Work Movement.

In it, Leef points out federal labor law, including the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), heavily favors union officials at the expense of workplace freedom and the individual rights of employees. Leef continues by pointing out the dangers to liberty the "Card Check" Forced Organizing schemes pose to workers' rights:

The secret-ballot elections under the NLRA at least have the virtue of shielding individual workers from reprisals for going “the wrong way.” Union officials have found what they regard as a better method of determining whether a majority want their services. It’s called the “card check” system. If a majority of workers sign a card saying that they want a union to represent them, then that should suffice for the NLRB to declare the union to be the exclusive bargaining representative, without resort to an election. Naturally, it’s easier for union organizers to get signatures on cards — using tactics that can include misrepresentation and harassment — than to get workers to vote for them in an election after the airing of arguments for and against the union.

Under the NLRA, however, employers have the right to insist on a secret-ballot election no matter how many cards might be signed. The Employee Free Choice Act would take that away and require the NLRB to certify unions simply on the basis of signed cards.

Furthermore, the [so-called Employee Free Choice Act] EFCA would ratchet up the coercion regarding contract negotiations. The current law is bad enough in compelling “good faith” bargaining, but the proposed new law would allow government officials to arbitrate the terms of the initial union contract. That is to say, if management and the union can’t arrive at a mutually agreeable labor contract, the federal government will impose one. That additional dollop of federal coercion is said by supporters to be necessary to effectuate the workers’ “right to bargain.” In a free society, though, there is no “right to bargain” with people who don’t want to bargain with you, and a fortiori there is no right to have the government dictate the terms of that “bargaining.”

Union officials were licking their chops at the prospect of using the EFCA to dragoon thousands of new workers into their ranks, but the bill has died in Congress. It will be resurrected in the future and we will again hear supporters making claims of why we need its new coercive features. We will also hear opponents arguing that we should stick with the good old status quo. What I think we really need is a discussion about the proper approach to labor law in a free society.

To read the rest of the article and Leef's proposal for ending the compulsion currently entrenched in American labor law, click here.

Quick Hits: 73 Years of Entrenched Federal Forced Unionism Privileges, and the Ugly Reality of Big Labor Racism

Mon, 07/07/2008 - 13:31 — Will Collins

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

1.) July 5th marked the 73rd anniversary of the National Labor Relations Act. This legislation, originally enacted in 1935, imposes union officials as middlemen between management and workers. While reformers thought they were curtailing the worst excesses with the Taft-Hartley Amendments in 1947, the NLRA continued to give government backing to Big Labor's monopoly bargaining privileges while actually increasing the government force behind an immoral policy of forcing workers to pay dues for often unwanted union "representation."

Here's a good primer on the NLRA's evolution from Michigan's Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

2.) Reason Magazine has a good post up on the racially-charged history of mandatory collective bargaining. Here's the money quote:

The NAACP's publication The Crisis, for example, decried the monopoly powers granted to racist unions by the NRA, noting in 1934 that "union labor strategy seems to be to obtain the right to bargain with the employees as the sole representative of labor, and then close the union to black workers."

Institutional union racism continues to this very day. And it is aided and abetted by Big Labor's monopoly bargaining privileges which give union officials inordinate power over employees' livelihood. It is all too common for union bosses to retaliate against employees for any arbitrary reasons, including race. In fact, one need not go back any further than a week to find allegations of racism by union officials.

Alternatives to Compulsory Unionization?

Mon, 06/16/2008 - 11:07 — Will Collins

The Heritage Foundation has just put up an interesting -- if at times confusing -- new web memo on possible alternatives to compulsory unionization. One of the more salient points the author raises is that the legislation governing workplace relations - the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) - is almost entirely obsolete. Times have changed since 1935 (the year the bill was first drafted), and the workplace now emphasizes cooperation over confrontation between management and labor:

That economy no longer exists. Businesses today rely on feedback and communication from employees. Employers do not simply give top-down orders, but incorporate bottom-up communication and employee discretion. The line between workers and management has increasingly blurred, and most workers want cooperative—not adversarial—relations with their employers.

Unfortunately, Big Labor hasn't changed with the times. If anything, union officials are promoting an increasingly adversarial relationship with management that relies on hate-the-boss rhetoric, vicious corporate campaigns, coercive card-check organizing drives, and scurious lawsuits to force companies to herd their employees into forced-dues-paying union collectives.

Would a more cooperative approach benefit employees? According to the memo, alternatives to the current system is certainly popular with American workers:

The fact that few workers want to join traditional unions does not mean that they do not want a voice in workplace relations. Surveys show that workers want to participate in decisions in the workplace and want to be heard by their supervisors, but they do not want hostile relations with management.

Ultimately, the policy prescriptions put forth in the web memo are unfortunately vague on the vital isues of compulsory union dues and monopoly bargaining.

If Heritage's proposed reforms eliminate forced dues, monopoly bargaining, or both, then they would be a step forward for employee rights. However, if the "reforms" do nothing to dismantle these extraordinary monopoly union privileges and make unionism more voluntary, then it is hard to see how trying to add "employee involvement" programs to the NLRA would be anything other than a gigantic waste of time and resources.