President Barack Obama's efforts to transition the Department of Labor into a giant, taxpayer-funded extension of Big Labor's organizing and political fund-raising machine just hit another milestone. President Barack Obama's January 30, 2009 executive order, aimed to help union bosses seize more forced dues revenue to fund Big Labor’s political agenda, was just printed in the Federal Register -- making it official. 

In a nutshell, the EO tears down posted notices to employees of federal contractors which explain they can actually refrain from paying forced union dues spent for union electioneering and the like.

Obama's directive intends to ensure millions of workers do not learn of their rights and revokes former-President Bush's February 2001 executive order which required federal contractors to post notices in the workplace simply informing employees of their right to refrain from formal, full-dues-paying union membership and pay only the documented cost of collective bargaining.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys won these rights in their precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court victory in Communication Workers v. Beck (1988).  

Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember Obama's edict was one of the first in a long line of political paybacks to Big Labor for their use of over a billion forced-dues dollars in 2008 to elected him and his pro-compulsory unionism allies in Congress.  View some other Obama paybacks to Big Labor, including his picks on who controls the Department of Labor and the NLRB, rolling back union disclosure guidelines and reducing union boss accountability, and using taxpayer dollars to fund their forced dues operations and bail out union boss pension funds.

Following up on this post, today’s Worcester Business Journal contains this editorial which highlights the problems with so-called “project labor agreements,” which often harm both workers and taxpayers. The article states:

“Fair and open competition in public bidding is the American way. Labor unions should compete on the same playing field as anyone else.”

The editorial continues that the U.S. Department of Labor notes 80 percent of the construction workforce in Massachusetts is nonunion. Yet, because the City of Worcester and other Massachusetts communities award only union contractors these public projects, public officials are denying the lion share of the state’s construction workforce a chance to work.

Read about the other multi-million (and sometimes multi-billion) dollar public projects Massachusetts taxpayers have been forced to overpay as a result of PLA’s, here.

Two individual nonunion groups of contractors are fighting compulsory unionism in Northern Ohio – that is, the right to even bid on a multi-million dollar construction contract at MetroHealth Hospital in Cleveland.

Crain's Cleveland Business (subscription required) reports:

The issue is important because the county in the next few years could let contracts for major construction projects including a $450 million convention center, a $140 million juvenile justice center, and a $200 million county administration building.

The fight is centered around a so-called "project labor agreement" (PLA) - a contract awarded by the government exclusively to unionized firms for public construction projects. Cuyahoga County officials and the MetroHealth System have used the PLA contract to exclude nonunion companies and employees from undertaking major construction projects within the county.

But when the two nonunion contractors groups filed a lawsuit asking the court for an injunction blocking the enforcement of the county’s PLA, the judge threw it out. The nonunion workers who want to work on the large hospital project have since filed an appeal, as the PLA requires contractors to grant union officials monopoly bargaining privileges over all workers, and likely requires employees to pay union dues or be fired.

When interviewed, a lawyer for the county made it clear that contractors will be subject to discrimination before being granted any public work in Cleveland. Crain’s Cleveland Business continues:

“Our position is it's up to the union and contractor to determine the terms," said David Lambert, an assistant prosecutor who heads the county prosecutor’s civil division.

Asked whether that stance forces nonunion contractors to become union shops, Mr. Lambert replied, “That’s life in the big city.”

This is just another reason why PLAs sacrifice employee free choice and forcibly impose unwanted union representation and compulsory dues on employees.