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

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 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.

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.

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.