Looking for a comprehensive breakdown of Obamacare's forced unionism provisions? Check out Foundation President Mark Mix's interview on the nationally-syndicated Lars Larson Show. Click here to listen or use the embeddable player below:

You can also listen to the Foundation's podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.  

After President Barack Obama made numerous promises for a more transparent government, the Department of Labor (DOL) has, for nearly six months, hidden Big Labor insiders Hilda Solis and Deborah Greenfield activities from National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Witnessing the Administration's corrupt Big Labor political paybacks, the Foundation swiftly sprang into action requesting all documents showing exchanges between Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and union bosses and all documentation regarding policy enforcement concerning Big Labor, the pro-compulsory unionism group American Rights at Work, and ACORN.  The Foundation also seeks all documents showing communications between AFL-CIO union lawyer Deborah Greenfield and her former bosses.

Greenfield, a member of Obama's presidential transition team, is a high-ranking official inside Obama’s Labor Department. One item sending red flags is the fact that Greenfield is an AFL-CIO lawyer in a lawsuit challenging DOL union disclosure rules -- the very disclosures that the Obama Administration intends to end.  Greenfield and her fellow union partisans have fought for and succeeded in rolling back union disclosure rules that provide details to rank-and-file workers about the use and misuse of their forced union dues.

Freedom@Work readers may remember that the Foundation filed its disclosure demand (pdf) in April.  Foundation attorneys are now reiterating that demand and gearing up to litigate if necessary.  (To view a pdf copy of the appeal, click here.)

Upon entering office, President Barack Obama claimed his Administration would be transparent -- but his Administration's behavior has failed to keep the President’s word.  The Obama Administration's delay in this particular raises questions that DOL may be attempting to cover up some embarrassing ethics violations.

You can watch the Foundation's video regarding the original FOIA request here on our Youtube.com channel.

Last Tuesday, Health Care for American Now (HCAN) - a radical coalition that includes bosses from the all-powerful SEIU union, the AFL-CIO, the humilated United Auto Workers (UAW) union and dozens of other unions, along with forced unionism-allies such as the corrupt ACORN group - declared a national day of action.

The expressed goal of this Big Labor/ACORN axis? To create "political villains" by demonizing health care providers across the country.

Every health care proposal proposed by the Congressional Majority is loaded down with Big Labor giveaways that will expand forced unionism, so union boss enthusiasm for health care "reform" shouldn't surprise anyone. To achieve this forced unionism takeover of American health care, union bosses are pulling out all the stops, including an astro-turfed campaign in collaboration with ACORN.

A Foundation source (who asked to remain anonymous for fear of union retaliation) filled us in on some interesting details about HCAN's "grassroots activism" in California. Apparently, SEIU bosses from the corruption-riddled "United Long-Term Care Workers" local bused in 300 purple-shirted protesters to harass Blue Cross employees at their offices in downtown Los Angeles.  (The corrupt SEIU Local 434(b) struck it rich in 1999 when Gov. Gray Davis approved a scheme to forcibly unionize home health care independent contractors.  This local union alone saw its revenues rise 5-fold to more than $25 million in forced union dues each year.)

Media reports missed it, but according to our on-scene sources, protesters admitted they were paid and actually promised a free lunch to participate in HCAN's theatrics.

Paying people to protest on behalf of the union bosses isn't uncommon, either. Big Labor frequently buses in paid operatives for vicious corporate campaigns supporting efforts underway across America to impose unions on more workers.

This time, however, union bosses have set their sights quite high -- indeed, on the entire American health care field, or roughly 16 percent of the country's struggling economy.

For more about how Big Labor hopes to impose union affiliation and forced dues on America's unsuspecting health care workers, check out Right to Work President Mark Mix's op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

Last week, the pro-worker think tank National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) released a Fact Sheet entitled “Negative Employment Growth Since November 2001” that details how highly-unionized states are suffering a "lost decade" in terms of private-sector job growth, while the least-unionized states have benefited from a nearly 1.5 million private-sector job growth:

As of 2001, the year of the last national recession prior to the current one, 9.7% of private-sector employees nationwide were under “exclusive” union representation. But in 16 states – Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,. Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin – 11.0% or more of private-sector workers were unionized.

From November 2001, the trough of the last recession, through June 2009, the most recent month for which non-preliminary, state-by-state payroll jobs data are available at this writing, these 16 heavily unionized states suffered an aggregate private-sector job loss of 990,000 – or 2.2% of their November 2001 total. Ten of the 16 states, or nearly two-thirds, had fewer private-sector jobs in June 2009 than they had had nearly eight years earlier.

...

The overall job losses in states with average private-sector unionization were far smaller than in heavily unionized states, and the 16 states which had private-sector unionization of 6.0% or less in 2001 actually gained jobs.

These low union-density states are: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Virginia. They gained an aggregate of nearly 1.5 million private-sector jobs from November 2001 through June 2009. That constitutes a 4.5% increase.

Even with recent setbacks taken into account, fifteen of the 16, or 94%, of the lowest union-density states have experienced net job gains since November 2001.

Putting aside the inherent abuse of workers' rights, the data clearly indicates that job growth is negatively impacted by Big Labor's government-granted monopoly bargaining special privileges.  Yet NILRR's findings should come to no surprise to regular Freedom@Work readers, as we reported recently:

NILRR recently found an especially strong correlation between a state’s Right to Work status and its job growth, while employees in Right to Work states are benefiting from faster job growth and higher real purchasing power than their compulsory unionism counterparts.

History clearly demonstrates how union monopolists have hindered the creation of new jobs with costly operating procedures and wasteful work rules, especially during times of financial hardship.  Meanwhile, union bosses use their monopoly bargaining and other special forced-dues privileges to fill their political coffers while proliferating Big Government-mandated regulations on job providers and higher taxes on employers and employees alike. 

Right to Work President Mark Mix sits down with nationally-syndicated radio host Jason Lewis to discuss health care reform's forced unionism provisions, the AFL-CIO's new top boss, and the status of Big Labor's coercive card check bill. Click here to listen or use the embeddable player below:

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...)