In the wake of National Labor Relations Board's (NLRB) move to kill the only protection workers have against card check forced unionism, the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing yesterday about the recent onslaught of the NLRB's pro-forced unionism rulings as former-Chairwoman Wilma Liebman's term expired late last month.

Testifying at the hearing was Barbara Ivey, who works at a Portland, Oregon-based IT unit at Kaiser Permanente.

Ivey and 60 of her coworkers were subjected to a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) card check forced unionization campaign (via a neutrality agreement).

Many of Ivey's coworkers reported that they were misled or pressured by SEIU organizers into signing union cards, and didn't even know what they meant.

After the SEIU succeeded in gaining enough cards to claim monopoly bargaining privileges over the workers, the workers were told that if they didn't like it, they could file with the NLRB for a secret-ballot decertification election (per Foundation-won precedent in Dana) to overrule the card check campaign and remove the unwanted union.

After leaning about her rights with the assistance of Foundation staff attorneys, Ivey collected the necessary amount of signatures on a petition for a secret-ballot election.  But then, on August 26, 2011, the Obama NLRB overruled the Dana precedent in Lamons Gasket and the election was summarily cancelled.

Now, the employees in the Kaiser IT department are stuck with the SEIU for anywhere from one to four years before they will even have a chance to force a secret-ballot vote (and getting a decertification vote is a major uphill battle for employees who will have campaign against an entrenched union with full-time paid professional organizers).

Yesterday, Ms. Ivey shared with Congress her experiences with the unfairness of card check unionization and the one-sidedness of the Obama NLRB. You can read Barbara Ivey's testimony by clicking here (pdf).

You can watch the video of the hearing here.

Obama Labor Board Kills Important Secret Ballot Precedent

Worker advocate denounces NLRB’s ruling to take away protection workers have against card check forced unionism

Washington, DC (August 30, 2011) – Today, Barack Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) overturned its Dana Corp. decision, in which National Right to Work Foundation attorneys secured for employees the right to challenge union card check organizing campaigns with a secret ballot vote.

Under the Foundation-won Dana decision, workers may collect signatures to request a secret ballot election during a 45-day window period following notice that their employer has recognized a union based on a card check organizing drive. The ruling is intended to counteract coercive practices frequently associated with card check, which allow organizers to bully or mislead employees into signing cards that count as "votes" toward unionization.

The NLRB overturned Dana just as President Obama-appointed NLRB Chairwoman Wilma Liebman's term expired. Meanwhile, Obama-appointed Board Member Craig Becker, who co-authored a union brief in the original Dana case, refused to recuse himself from the case. Becker, a recess nominee, faces bi-partisan opposition to his confirmation in the U.S. Senate. One Board Member, Bryan Hayes, vigorously dissented and called the ruling a blatant roll back of employee freedom.

Any decertification votes that have been cast but not counted by the NLRB will now be discounted, thereby invalidating the voice of thousands of workers nationwide.

Read the entire release here.

Worker Advocate Denounces NLRB Rule Designed to Push Workers into Compulsory Unionism

National Right to Work Foundation President criticizes Labor Board’s decision to selectively publicize workers' rights

Washington, DC (August 25, 2011) – Today, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) implemented new rules governing the notification of employee rights in the workplace.

Until these changes, employers were required to post notices of workers' rights only if a violation of labor law occurred. However, the new rules require every employer to post incomplete information about employee rights online and in the workplace, even if they've never committed a violation or been accused of unfair labor practices. Meanwhile, union officials are not required to issue information about workers' rights to refrain from union membership or opt out of union dues.

Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation – a charitable organization that provides free legal assistance to employees nationwide – made the following statement regarding the new rules:

"The NLRB's new rules are just the latest example of the Obama Labor Board’s biased approach to administering labor law.

"Just as the Obama administration promises to lessen the job-destroying weight of federal regulations, Obama's NLRB comes out with a new 'posting rule' to saddle every business – from ‘mom and pop' stores to IBM – with new mandatory posting requirements designed solely to grease the skids for more forced unionism."

Read the entire release here.

Last week, President Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposed new guidelines which will help give union organizers the upper hand over independent-minded employees, and make union organizing campaigns as one-sided as possible.

The new rules, which are designed to allow union organizers to browbeat workers into union ranks and keep independent workers from opposing unionization, make it easier for union organizers to launch stealth campaigns in which they have access to the personal information of workers and harass them (including by making "home visits") into signing "union authorization cards."

Meanwhile, the vast majority of workers and the employer may have no idea what is happening.

Then, after union organizers collect those "authorization cards" from just 30 percent of employees in the workplace, workers would be ambushed with an union organizing election in just days -- denying independent-minded employees any time to share truthful, non-coercive information with their coworkers about the effects of unionization.

Well-funded professional union organizers regularly push for unionization behind the scenes for months (or even years) as part of their drive for more forced union dues, and under the new rules, workers wishing to remain free from union boss control would only have days to counter what could be years of union-boss propaganda being used at their workplace -- and even at their coworkers' homes.

Further, even if union bosses don't think they can win the quickie election, under the new rules they would be able to request the election in order to force the employer to hand over a list of every employee with their home address, phone number, email and shift information. Armed with this information union organizers could then withdraw the election petition and continue pursuing their coercive card check campaign.

In response, the National Right to Work Foundation has requested to address the NLRB at its public hearing next month on the proposed rule changes. If allowed, Foundation staff attorneys will argue at the hearing that the ambush elections Big Labor is pushing for would prevent independent-minded workers their right to resist forced unionization of their workplace and that the rule requiring job providers to hand over the employees' personal information to union bosses is a violation of their privacy and places them in danger of harassment at the hands of aggressive union organizers.

You can read the Foundation's request to appear at the NLRB's public meeting on behalf of independent-minded workers here (pdf).

Worker Asks Federal Appeals Court to Overturn Backroom Deal Between Union and Company Officials

Union organizers obtained workers’ personal information as part of a quid pro quo with the company to force employees under union control

Hollywood, FL (February 3, 2011) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a Mardi Gras Gaming employee is taking his case against local union officials and his employer to a federal appeals court.

In 2008, Unite Here Local 355 and Mardi Gras Gaming officials entered into an agreement in which union officials agreed to spend over one hundred thousand dollars in workers’ forced union dues on a gambling ballot initiative and guaranteed not to picket, boycott, or strike against the facility.

In return, Mardi Gras officials promised they would hand over employees’ personal contact information (including home addresses), grant union operatives access to company facilities for the purpose of organizing through a coercive card check campaign, and refrain from requesting a federally-supervised secret ballot election to determine whether employees actually wanted to unionize.

With the help of Foundation attorneys, Mardi Gras Gaming employee Martin Mulhall filed a lawsuit against Unite Here in 2008, arguing that the company’s concessions to the union are of substantial monetary value because the company made the union organizing process easier and less expensive.

Read the entire release here.

Home-Care Providers Take Case Challenging State Unionization Scheme to Federal Appeals Court

Right to Work Foundation assists home-based personal care providers pushed into union ranks against their will

Chicago, IL (December 13, 2010) – A group of home-based personal care providers have filed a federal appeal against Governor Pat Quinn and union officials for their agreement to force Illinois’s home-based personal care providers under unwanted union boss control.

With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, the personal care providers filed their appeal with the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals after a district court judge ruled against them.

The appeal stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by the providers after Quinn signed an executive order designating 4,500 home-based personal care providers who care for individuals with disabilities as “public employees” and susceptible to unwanted union boss political “representation.”

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union bosses have been competing to force their monopoly control over the workers, even having out-of-state union organizers making “home visits” attempting to organize the providers through coercive “card check” unionization tactics. Not coincidentally, Quinn received the SEIU union bosses’ political endorsement and support during his closely-contested primary campaign earlier this year.

Read the entire release here.

Over the Labor Day weekend, columns by National Right to Work president Mark Mix appeared in newspapers across the country and online exposing Big Labor's power grabs and coercive practices over American workers.

In Investor's Business Daily Mix highlighted the extremism and ethics problems of Craig Becker, the Service Employee International Union's (SEIU) inside man at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB):

In the face of bipartisan opposition, Obama bypassed Congress and installed Becker at the NLRB through a recess appointment. Now that he's established at the head of an agency responsible for overseeing American labor law, Becker is poised to expand Big Labor's privileges even further.

Faced with apparent conflicts of interests brought to light by the National Right to Work Foundation, Becker quickly downplayed any connection to the SEIU, his longtime employer. Despite crafting legal strategies on behalf of that union for much of his career, Becker refused to recuse himself from several NLRB cases involving the SEIU's local affiliates.

Despite his relatively brief tenure, Becker's biases are already evident. In one recent case, Becker wrote that the board should consider waiving rules that require union bosses to provide workers with independently audited breakdowns of union expenditures.

On National Review Online, Mix outlined union militants' stealth to bypass Congress to implement radical changes to labor law that grant new special privileges to union bosses at the expense of hardworking Americans:

By cramming the NLRB full of forced-unionism operatives, Obama has successfully laid the groundwork for a stealthy push to undermine the rights of American workers. The NLRB’s administrative agenda and electronic-voting schemes now threaten to undo much of the hard work that went into defeating card-check legislation.

Some doubt that such sweeping changes could be enacted without congressional approval, but we’ve already seen Big Labor’s strategy in action. The National Mediation Board (NMB), a federal agency that governs airline and railway employees, has just enacted a far-reaching rule change that allows for workplace unionization without the consent of a true majority of employees.

Mix exposed Big Labor's plot to monopolize government-sector workers in the Washington Times:

The outsized power and privileges of government union bosses clearly are a major force behind the unsustainable growth of government payrolls. According to data furnished by respected labor economists Barry T. Hirsch and David A. Macpherson, nonunion government employment nationwide actually fell by 2 percent, but Big Labor-controlled government employment grew by nearly 4 percent from 2007 to 2009.

Government union bosses' success in expanding the ranks of employees under their monopoly bargaining power - even as private-sector and nonunion government payrolls have shrunk - spells trouble for the future of the American economy. Our country simply must reverse the long-term trend in which the growth of government-union employment far exceeds that of private-sector employment in good and bad times alike.

Otherwise, American taxpayers and businesses are destined to face ever-more-onerous tax burdens to pay for bigger and bigger government in the decades to come.

Finally, in local newspapers nationwide including the Duluth News Tribune, Mix warned that no worker is safe from the union moguls' designs:

Take Major Stephen Godin, a retired Marine who has instructed ROTC in Worcester, MA, for 15 years. Major Godin’s dedicated service to his country and his students deserves our respect and gratitude.

But three months ago, Massachusetts Teachers Association union officials threatened his dismissal for not paying union dues, even though he is not a member of the union. Because Massachusetts lacks a Right to Work law making union association strictly voluntary, nonmembers can be forced to pay some fees to a union as a condition of employment.

Public outcry prompted the governor to exempt ROTC instructors from forced-dues requirements, but other teachers across the state still labor under compulsory unionism.

Mark Mix also appeared on nationally syndicated and local radio shows coast-to-coast.

Obama Labor Board Launches Assault on Workers' Right to Secret Ballot to Remove Unwanted Union

NLRB's decision to revisit pro-worker precedent highlights Board Member Craig Becker's refusal to recuse himself despite massive conflicts of interest

Washington, DC (September 1, 2010) – In a decision dated August 27 but only released yesterday, three members of the National Labor Relations Board granted review of a landmark 2007 case in which the federal labor board granted employees the right to demand a secret ballot election to remove an unwanted union within 45 days after the union obtained monopoly bargaining status through the coercive card check process.

In late 2009, union lawyers initiated a strategy to overturn the Dana Corp. decision won by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys. In a series of cases nationwide, union lawyers asked the NLRB to revoke the new protections to workers swept into union ranks through card check forced unionism, and now three members of the Board – all former union lawyers themselves – have agreed to consolidate two of those cases in a review of Dana.

As the dissenting Board members point out, workers across the country have already used Dana decertification elections to kick out unwanted unions, demonstrating the unreliability of card check instant organizing campaigns. Workers frequently sign union authorization cards due to union organizers’ intimidating tactics or even outright lies about what signing a card means. To remove the limited protection of the secret ballot in these cases – as the Obama NLRB appears set to do – would deny workers the ability to vote according to their conscience and remove an unwanted union from their workplace.

Read the full press release.

Today, House Republican leader John Boehner called on President Barack Obama to veto any controversial legislation that passes during the post-midterm election lame-duck Congressional session. One of those controversial bills is the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill.

As Right to Work Foundation legal director Ray J. LaJeunesse details in the Spring 2010 issue of the Texas Review of Law & Politics journal, this draconian bill's three primary provisions contain many injustices toward American workers and job providers.

Regarding the bill's provision to strip workers of their rights to a secret ballot election and opening them up to intimidating "home visits":

...the absence of a formal election process works an obvious unfairness, facilitates intimidation and deception of workers, and runs contrary to the American tradition of secret ballots and the freedom to vote in privacy. The United States Supreme Court has already spoken to the issue, recognizing that “secret elections are generally the most satisfactory—indeed the preferred—method of ascertaining whether a union has majority support.”

There also is a serious question whether EFCA will unconstitutionally deny employers and employees their free speech rights... Because there would be no open campaign leading up to a secret-ballot election, EFCA would eliminate open debate, thus curtailing the speech rights of employers and individual employees opposed to the union.

As for the unconstitutational, government-mandated binding arbitration provision:

Mandatory governmentally-imposed binding interest arbitration... runs afoul of various provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

Moreover, in requiring governmentally-imposed arbitrators to dictate contract terms, EFCA would unconstitutionally take the property of employers and give that property to their employees (as wages, for example) for a non-public use, in violation of the takings clause...

And finally, regarding the lopsided nature of the penalties imposed on job providers:

These drastic new penalties for unfair labor practices that apply to employers but not to unions raise concerns under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and may violate the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.

These one-sided changes in the NLRA’s remedial scheme would adversely affect employees as well as employers. With the Damoclean sword of punitive remedies looming, employers faced with union organizing campaigns will be more likely to gag themselves to avoid unfair labor practice charges by unions, thus depriving employees of the “information opposing unionization,” which they have an implicit “right to receive” under NLRA section 7, and which is necessary to make an informed and free choice about whether to support unionization or not.

As LaJeunesse clearly explains, the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill certainly "presents serious legal and policy issues" indeed.

The full article is published in the Texas Review of Law & Politics Vol. 14, No. 2.

'Card Check-lite’ proposal would undermine the integrity of workplace elections and push more employees into Big Labor’s forced dues-paying ranks

Washington, DC (June 23, 2010) – The National Right to Work Foundation, a charitable organization that provides free legal aid to employees across the country, has submitted comments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) opposing any attempt to implement “electronic voting” in union organizing drives. The Foundation’s comments detail how electronic voting poses major risks to the integrity of unionization elections and threatens to reproduce the problems of coercive “card check” organizing drives.

In early June, the National Labor Relations Board requested information on the feasibility of electronic voting during unionization drives. Drawing on National Right to Work attorneys’ experience representing thousands of employees, Foundation Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse, Jr., responded by citing numerous concerns about the reliability of electronic ballots and the potential for intimidation or harassment of employees who submit ballots remotely . . .

Click here to read more.