In this week's "Top 10 List" from Human Events, the staff of Human Events listed the "Top 10 Things On Big Labor's Agenda." The list is telling, as it describes Big Labor's outrageous plans to to grab more coercive power and erode employees' rights in the workplace. Of course, the so-called "Employee Free Choice Act", more accurately called the "Card Check" Forced Unionism Bill tops the list:

1. Employee Free Choice Act
In addition to the notorious “card-check” provision that strips union members of their right to a secret ballot, this bill also provides for increased penalties for employers who commit allegedly unfair labor practices...

Besides card check forced unionism, Big Labor is even toying with a relaunch of efforts to "Repeal...Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act [which] would take from states the right to enact Right to Work laws." Big Labor has wanted for decades to repeal this critical provision, and the most serious attempt to do so was in 1960s.

Not only is Big Labor trying to ultimately overturn laws in Right to Work states, but they "also seek the forced unionization of police, firefighters, and EMTs by federal fiat -- overturning the laws of more than two dozen states."

Other notable aspects of Human Events' "Top 10 List" includes Big Labor's nefarious plans of using the Federal government to force more employees into full dues paying compulsory unionism (see: #6, 7), concealing corruption (see: #8), and making it harder for employees to exercise their rights against the abuses of compulsory unionism (see: #9, 10).

Today, the Wall Street Journal editorialized on the fact that Big Labor “has won the intellectual battle for control of the Democratic Party and is reasserting its agenda in a way not seen since the 1970’s.” The WSJ notes Big Labor’s political influence, especially within the Democratic Party, has been steadily increasing over the years.

At the top of Big Labor's agenda is, of course, more compulsory unionism privileges to force workers into dues-paying union ranks:

[R]ewriting federal law to promote union organizing is now near the top of the Democratic agenda. The main vehicle is "card check" legislation, which would eliminate the requirement for secret ballots in union elections. Unable to organize workers when employees can vote in privacy, unions want to expose those votes to peer pressure, and inevitably to public intimidation. This would arguably be the biggest change to federal labor law since the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. The Democratic House passed card check last year, and Mr. Obama has pledged his support. With a few more Senators, it might pass.

Card check is merely the start. Next on the agenda is a campaign to repeal "right to work" laws in the 22 U.S. states that have them. Right to work laws allow employees to decide for themselves whether to join or financially support a union. Former Michigan Congressman David Bonior told a union event in Denver on Monday that limiting right to work laws is essential both to lifting union membership and promoting more Democratic political victories.

The Daily Labor Report (subscription only) recently reported on an important win for National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys in the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court:

Upholding the National Labor Relations Board's January 2006 decision against Studio Transportation Drivers Local 399 of the Teamsters, the appeals court found that the union, which used the arbitration awards for nonrepresentational purposes such as political and charitable contributions, should exclude the money from its calculation of agency fees rather than use it to reduce its reported nonrepresentational expenses.

By spending the arbitration award money on nonrepresentational rather than representational expenditures, the union in effect increased the agency fees owed by the objecting nonmember for representational expenses, Judge Harry Pregerson wrote for the appeals court.

The win is important because it prohibits cooking the books to overcharge nonmembers who are forced to pay dues to union officials as condition of employment.

It is now even more clearly illegal for union officials to funnel revenue from sources other than union dues to pay for "non-chargeable" items – like politics, lobbying and members-only activities.   Using this scheme, union officials try to get away with charging a higher percentage of the remaining activities to forced-dues-payers.

You can be certain that as long as union officials can force employees to pay dues they will continue to develop schemes to maximize the amount of the dues they extract from unwilling workers.  Thanks to National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, at least this particular method of union discrimination is clearly illegal.

Supporting free choice for employees would be the right thing to do, even if it didn't have economic benefits, but fortunately there are significant economic advantages to Right to Work.

The chart below is from the cover story of the latest National Right to Work Committee newsletter, and shows that Right to Work states create new jobs more than twice as fast as forced-union-dues states.

Following up on the recent upheaval within the SEIU union, a group of nurses from Nevada have recently put out a video decrying the disconnect between rank-and-file nurses and the union hierarchy.

This weekend legendary actor Charlton Heston passed away.

Heston, former president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) union, was a rare union official who supported the Right to Work.

As recounted in this article, Heston also led a group of actors who started a campaign in the early 1980's to inform their fellow actors of the right to refrain from formal union membership as won in the National Right to Work Foundation's Abood case:

Mr. Heston also aroused the ire of union leaders in Hollywood when he and a group of conservative SAG actors -- who called themselves Actors Working for an Actors Guild -- led a movement to educate Hollywood union members to the fact that they had the right -- as upheld by the Supreme Court -- to opt out of their unions by declaring "financial core" status. In non-right-to-work states such as California, declaring financial core status gives workers in unionized industries the right to opt out of their union's politics while still requiring them to pay that portion of union dues that go directly towards collective bargaining, contract enforcement and contract administration.

Later, Heston himself resigned his formal SAG union membership in protest of a racist stance by SAG union brass:

Mr. Heston put his principles into action in 1991 when he declared financial core status in Actors Equity to protest the union's refusal to allow a white actor -- Jonathan Pryce -- to play the role of a Eurasian in "Miss Saigon" on Broadway. Mr. Heston, who had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, called the union's action "obscenely racist." He even flew to London to support an actor's right to play any role without regard to race.

Charlton Heston was a champion of freedom who will be missed.

UPDATE: Here is video of Heston talking about the Right to Work principle from the Right to Work YouTube channel.

The Rocky Mountain News had an article this weekend on various proposed ballot initiatives in Colorado. The otherwise informative article concluded with this strange (and unsupported) sentence:

For the most part, states without right-to-work laws have higher levels of union participation, a statistic that some observers attribute to the popularity of unions rather than right-to-work laws.

The idea that the "popularity of unions" accounts for lower rates of union participation in Right to Work states, gets it entirely backwards and fails to understand just what a Right to Work law does.

Right to work laws do nothing to change the process through which a workplace becomes a union shop: a place where union officials have the power to forcibly represent every employee in the bargaining unit). Rather, they simply ensure that once a union is installed, no worker is forced to pay union dues as a condition of keeping or getting a job.

There are at least two ways that these Right to Work protections affect "union participation" rates:

1. Voluntary Participation. The most obvious reason is that in Right to Work states unions can't force employees to pay dues or be fired. This lets employees decide for themselves if they think the union is worth the dues they are being charged. So it should come as no surprise that when employees are actually given a choice, it drives down union participation.
2. Big Labor's Bottom Line. A second way in which Right to Work laws lower participation in unions is that they discourage (though not completely) Top Down union organizing. More and more drives for unionization are instigated by outside professional union organizers, as opposed to employee-led demands for unionization. But like the companies they try to organize, union officials are very aware of the bottom line, and they are always looking to maximize their revenue. Since for union bosses revenue means union dues, they realize that by targeting employers in states without Right to Work laws, they can maximize their haul because every worker - not just those who support the union - will be forced to pay up.

So contrary to what "some observers" say, there are at least two ways that protecting employees' freedom to choose impacts union participation rates.

That's what one person commented on YouTube about our latest video. Though sad, the sentiment is indicative of the mind set that led to such hostility against the employees in the video that simply exercised their Right to Work.

Unfortunately, history shows that it gets even worse.

Today's Wall Street Journal points out that union officials are pouring upwards of a billion dollars, much of it in compulsory dues, into the 2008 election cycle. The goal? A sea change of American labor law.

"This is an all-in bet for them in 2008," says Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, a group that fights down in the trenches against coercive union power. "As market cycles go, they're in their peak, we're in our trough, and they're looking for a clear two-year run" in an all-Democrat Washington.

Then there's the crown jewel:

Tucked into the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act is a provision called 14(b), which allows for "right to work" states. Big Labor last took a run at deleting this section, and forcing more unionization, in the Johnson administration.

Aside from abolishing employees' free choice of whether or not to join or pay dues to a union, wiping the current 22 state Right to Work laws off the map would deal a crushing blow to the American economy.

According to a recent study by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, forced unionism cost the American economy upwards of $436 billion in GDP between 2000-2006 alone.

The yoke of compulsory unionism already takes a severe toll on states without Right to Work laws, the last thing America needs is to expand its reach.

View a new video by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation about the often brutal intimidation that employees face for exercising their Right to Work.

Sadly, while these employees suffered greatly, others often face far worse retaliation for refusing to walk off the job during a strike.