The Wall Street Journal today has a piece recognizing that Right to Work laws are among two vital public policies that:

"...stand out as perhaps the most important in attracting jobs and capital."

WSJ continues:

"States that permit workers to be compelled to join unions have much lower rates of employment growth than states that don't. Many companies say they will not even consider locating a factory in a state that does not have a right-to-work law."

Interestingly, as visible in the graph below, the bottom 10 economicly competitive states are all forced unionism states, while 9 of the top 10 are long time Right to Work states.

After a four-year legal tangle, Floridian Robert Prime prompted the National Labor Relations Board to strike down an IAM union nationwide policy requiring employees to object annually to paying forced union dues for politics. Prime received free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation.

Union officials commonly use such tactics to hamstring employees from exercising their rights under the Foundation-won Communications Workers v. Beck U.S. Supreme court victory.

Under Beck, employees under the National Labor Relations Act can withhold forced union dues not used for collective barganing, including those used for union political activities.

Though Florida is a Right to Work state, Prime works on an "exclusive federal enclave" where state law does not protect him.

"Troubling." "Notorious." "Deeply disturbing." You would have thought that the sky was falling.

However, no, this is how some members of Congress feel about employees' right to vote out an unwanted union after a coercive "card check" unionization drive, as evidenced by today's Joint Subcommittee hearing regarding the National Labor Relations Board.

Dominating the hearing was talk about the National Right Work Foundation's Dana/Metaldyne victory, which won this right for employees. NLRB Chairman Robert Battista made an analogy that the right for employees to vote out and unwanted union after a card check was a way for them to "speak now or forever hold their peace."

Too bad for America's workers, many times it is only union and company officials that say "I do" to card check/neutrality agreements, and they are left without a say.

Nurses at the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in California are today filing a decertification petition, which is a fancy way of saying they're asking for an election to kick out the unwanted SEIU Local 121RN union.

This should come as no suprise as the National Right to Work Foundation helped a nurse at the facility hit Local 121RN with federal charges for threatening nurses with arrests, jail, and fines for refusing to walk off the job during a union-ordered strike. Some union "representation."

Union operatives also distributed a threatening flier, despite a claim to the contrary by a top union official.

America's most notorious union-only project labor agreement (PLA), Boston's "Big Dig," will come to completion with the end of 2007. What a bittersweet day for citizens of Boston. The Associated Press puts it this way:

"Don't expect any champagne toasts."

As also noted by the AP, the Big Dig's history was "littered with wrong turns" such as a major tunnel leak in 2004, as well as the tragic death of a motorist in 2006.

Financially, the Big Dig sapped taxpayers for $14.8 billion, over five and a half times the original cost estimate of $2.6 billion.

This train wreck of a public construction project should serve as "exhibit A" of the gluttonous waste inherent in PLAs. Such projects are also a "lose-lose" for employees that wish to remain nonunion because they are blackballed from working, as well as for the taxpayers forced to foot the bill.

If "UNITE-HERE" union officials have their way, employees of Donald Trump's new Windy City hotel may soon be hearing "you're fired" if they refuse to pay union dues. According to Crain's Chicago Business:

The Trump International Hotel & Tower offers both a high-profile target and an opportunity to bring 300 or more employees into the union fold. UNITE HERE wants Trump to approve a so-called neutrality agreement, which would permit organizers to try to persuade workers to sign cards supporting union representation.

So called "neutrality agreements"are anything but- they often require employers to assist union officials in organizing employees. Under such pacts, employers must often grant union organizers sweeping access to employees, hold "captive audience" meetings, and even hand out employees' personal information.

Notice too as you read the article, as is common in many similar situations, that union officials are targeting the hotel's employees rather than vice versa. Makes sense, since without a Right to Work law, union officials can force employees in Illinois to pay dues. Looks like it's all about the forced-dues cash.

Today's report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms that efforts to sweep more workers into unionization through coercive "card check" organizing are paying off for union officials.

However, if Congress resurrects and passes mandatory "card check" legislation, workers will have even less say over whether they are unionized. Union officials will unleash a tidal wave of in-your-face organizing drives on America's workers, and potentially millions more will be corralled into dues-paying union ranks.

Las Vegas Non-Union Worker Wins Right to Obtain Over $100,000 from IATSE Union for Discrimination

Threat of federal court appeal forces National Labor Relations Board to reverse itself

Las Vegas, NV (February 5, 2008) — Under threat of a federal court appeal, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) this week reversed itself and authorized a local worker to claim over $100,000 in damages after International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 720 union officials illegally discriminated against him.

Union brass had unlawfully expelled the employee from an exclusive union hiring hall, denied him the ability to obtain work, and offered him no means of reinstatement.

The ruling comes in a case brought by Las Vegas-area worker Steven Lucas, with free legal help from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys. Lucas is an audio-visual equipment technician employed in the Las Vegas trade show and convention industry.

In June 2007, the NLRB in Washington, DC, upheld a preliminary ruling by NLRB Region 28 in Las Vegas allowing Lucas to reclaim only about $16,000 in lost wages from one job due to the unlawful union discrimination. In reality, union officials’ illegal blackballing of Lucas from getting work from more than a dozen employers during 1995 and 1996 had cost him many times that amount.

The Lucas case has been a major source of embarrassment for the NLRB since the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals several years ago reprimanded the agency and forced it to pay attorneys’ fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) because its position in an earlier phase of the case was “not substantially justified.”

“The prospect of even more embarrassment for the NLRB in enabling this outrageous union discrimination forced the agency’s hand,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Even in a Right to Work state where payment of union dues is voluntary, union officials use their monopoly bargaining power to punish workers that don’t toe the union line.”

Lucas was a union member from 1981-1992 and used the hiring hall until 1994, when union officials illegally and arbitrarily expelled him from the hiring hall. By not allowing Lucas to be reinstated in the hiring hall, IATSE union officials denied him work opportunities for a period of roughly 18 months.

Even though Nevada has a highly popular and effective Right to Work law that frees nonunion employees from paying membership dues to an unwanted union, IATSE union officials use their monopoly bargaining privileges to set up “exclusive hiring halls.” In such halls, union officials decide which employees to refer for work at conventions and trade shows, and workers are forced to pay money to the union to be eligible for work.