In the wake of Tuesday's long-awaited ruling at the NLRB won by Right to Work attorneys, union officials are remaining mum. This silence is deafening.

Perhaps union officials are embarrassed to have to fought to prevent rank-and-file workers from the chance to vote out an unwanted union for up to four years after a coercive "card check" drive. Maybe they took a look at this 2007 McLaughlin & Associates poll showing that just shy of 80 percent of likely voters oppose mandating this coercive organizing method.

In either case, despite a cascade of crocodile tears shed by the union elite over decisions by this NLRB, it has generally crashed and burned in reversing the damage done to employee free choice by the agency during the Clinton years.

As more details emerge about the proposed deal between GM and the UAW hierarchy, which involves a two-tiered wage structure, this sentence jumped off the page:

In a side-letter to the contract, GM and the UAW also identified 3,126 jobs now outsourced to non-union companies that could be transferred to UAW-represented companies at the lower wage rates.

In other words, UAW officials are willing to sell out these employees on wages so long as they can count them within UAW ranks, and force employees in non-Right to Work states to pay dues or be fired. Some deal.

As is normally the case when union officials fear losing a secret ballot election, the UAW walked away from an election at Toledo Hospital.

Perhaps hospital employees have been paying attention to the uphill battle that nurses at St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center in Toledo have faced in ridding their workplace of the unwanted union.

In the run up to that election, in charges that were settled after Right to Work attorneys came to the nurses' aid, the NLRB agreed to prosecute the UAW union for bullying dissenting nurses including “following, surrounding, and impeding access to employees." The complaint also cited that in one instance a union operative physically “struck a clipboard containing the petition” from one of the nurse’s hands.

Adding insult to injury, these same nurses must still pay dues to the UAW union as a condition of employment since Ohio is not a Right to Work state.

AFL-CIO head honcho John Sweeney and SEIU chief Andy Stern both chimed in about last week's victory on behalf of employees by Right to Work attorneys. Sweeney cites a previous NLRB decision calling coercive card check unionization drives "a favored element of national policy."

What a joke. As previously cited, the Board in this decision cited:

“Card checks are less reliable because they lack secrecy and procedural safeguards… union card-solicitation campaigns have been accompanied by misinformation… workers sometimes sign union authorization cards…to get the person off their back.”

Stern, however, gets one thing right when he says:

"The NLRB has become a caricature of itself, and as a nation, we should be embarrassed by governing bodies that fail to consider even the most basic needs and rights of workers.”

How true. The NLRB has failed America's workers in many other Foundation cases. Here are just a few.

And while union officials bemoan recent NLRB decisions, consider this:

According to an analysis by Jones Day attorney G. Roger King, prepared for the American Bar Association, from 1994 to 2001 the Clinton NLRB overturned 60 long-standing cases, throwing a jaw-dropping 1,181 years of combined precedent out the window.

The NLRB hasn't even come close to this during the Bush years. And with three vacancies at the five member Board at the end of this year, the window of opportunity for the agency to make further strides for employee rights is rapidly closing.

With the specter of forced union dues looming over child care providers in Maryland, some providers worry it could hurt those at the very bottom.

"My understanding of the union is that they would automatically take out of our Purchase of Care vouchers as union dues," Sarecia Powers, child care provider in the Cresaptown area, said. "Having to pay what might be an astronomical amount of dues might make providers consider signing on families based upon being paid privately, where the provider gets everything they are being paid. You could have providers turning down Purchase of Care families, and they are the families that need it most. If they can't find care, it will have a domino effect."

While Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley proclaimed Friday that "no one should be forced to join a union," his is one of 28 states without a Right to Work law where employees can be fired if they refuse to pay union dues.

The Sacramento Bee says that the 87,000 member SEIU Local 1000 behemoth faces an internal battle in one of its bargaining units over forcing employees to pay dues.

If they are successful, the "fair share" employees, who are not union members but are required to pay fees every month for representation services they receive from SEIU 1000, won't have to pay the money anymore.

"Fair share" is a euphemism union officials use when they mean forced union dues. Not only that, but it is doubly offensive to employees since not every one of them necessarily wants to be subject to or benefits from union monopoly barganining.

Another so-called "paycheck protection" campaign finance regulation has been struck down in federal court. (A similar law has been struck down in Utah.)

As noted by former Federal Election Commission chair Brad Smith in The Washington Times in the wake of the Right to Work Foundation's defensive victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in June, such regulations are both bad policy and bad politics.