Right to Work on Fox: Foundation President Mark Mix talks Ohio, Wisconsin, and Public Sector Unions
Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with Fox Business host Stuart Varney to discuss Ohio, Wisconsin, and the current debate over public sector unions. You can watch the full interview below:
Right to Work Radio Round-up: Mark Mix talks public sector unions, Wisconsin, and monopoly bargaining
Over the past week, Right to Work President Mark Mix was interviewed on several radio programs about public sector unionism and the protests in Wisconsin. First, here’s Mix on Savage Nation. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:
Mix also appeared on the nationally-syndicated Lars Larson show. Click here to listen or use the player below:
Mix was also interviewed for the ‘Coffee and Markets’ podcast. You can listen to that here.
As always, you can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.
Worker Advocate Challenges Proposed NLRB Rule Designed to Push Workers into Union Ranks
Washington, DC (February 24, 2011) – The National Right to Work Foundation, which provides free legal assistance to employees nationwide, submitted comments criticizing a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) proposal to implement new rules governing the notification of employee rights. Foundation attorneys say that the rules are not authorized by the National Labor Relations Act and would unfairly benefit union organizers.
Under current law, employers can be required to post notices of workers’ rights only when a violation of labor law has been proven in an unfair labor practice case. The proposed rules, however, would require every employer to post incomplete information about employee rights online and in the workplace, even if they’ve never been found to have committed unfair labor practices.
Under the proposed rules, every private-sector employer in the country would have to inform workers about their rights to organize, support a union, and engage in union activities such as strikes. However, the proposed notice would not tell workers in states that allow agreements requiring union “membership” as a condition of employment that they have a right to resign at any time from a union and not pay union dues for political and other non-bargaining activities. The proposed notice also fails to inform workers in Right to Work states that they cannot be required to join or pay anything to a union to keep their jobs.
Union officials, on the other hand, are not required to post any notices under the proposed rules. In non-Right to Work states, workers do not have to be informed that an organizing campaign could result in the mandatory payment of union dues as a condition of employment. The proposed rules also fail to require union organizers to explain to workers exactly what signing means when presented with union authorization cards during controversial “card check” organizing drives.
The proposed rules are the result of a biased and ideologically-charged Labor Board, which prioritizes advancing union officials’ interests over providing truthful and accurate information to employees. The agency’s forced unionism tilt is on display for all to see.
“The proposed rule changes are just the latest example of the NLRB’s biased approach to labor law,” said Patrick Semmens, Legal Information Director for the National Right to Work Foundation. “If the NLRB was really interested in protecting workers, they’d inform them of the dangers of coercive ‘card check’ drives and publicize their rights, under law, to remove an unwanted union.”
New Right to Work Podcast: Mark Mix talks Wisconsin Labor Law Reform
On WSAU-AM Central Wisconsin Morning News, Right to Work President Mark Mix explains why ending union monopoly bargaining privileges is so important as Wisconsin faces widespread, union-instigated protests. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:
As always, you can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.
Worker Asks Labor Board to Review Request for Secret Ballot Unionization Election
Sacramento, CA (February 10, 2011) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, Dennis McLeod is asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to reconsider his request for a secret ballot unionization election at the Thunder Valley Casino.
In the spring of 2010, UNITE HERE Local 49 union officials initiated a coercive “card check” organizing drive to unionize McLeod and his coworkers. Although union organizers claimed to have collected enough signed cards from employees to obtain monopoly bargaining privileges, the casino’s workforce expanded following unionization, raising questions about whether a hurried card check campaign actually reflected the views of a majority of employees.
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 union card check campaigns, which allow organizers to bully or mislead employees into signing cards that count as “votes” toward unionization.
On April 29, 2010, Thunder Valley Casino employees were notified of their rights under the Dana precedent. McLeod and several of his coworkers proceeded to collect signatures from casino employees to trigger a secret ballot unionization election.
Through a quirk of the calendar, the 44th and 45th day of the Dana window period fell on a weekend. Although McLeod faxed and mailed his request for a secret ballot election to the NLRB on the 44th day, the Board’s regional director originally found that his submission was “untimely.” Following an appeal, the regional director again declined to hold an election because McLeod allegedly failed to submit the accompanying signature petitions with his request for a secret ballot election, despite the fact that the petition and the signatures were already in the mail before the window period ended.
With the help of Foundation attorneys, McLeod is now appealing this ruling to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, DC.
“Workers should never be forced into a union’s forced dues-paying ranks without a secret ballot vote,” said Patrick Semmens, Legal Information Director for the National Right to Work Foundation. “UNITE HERE union bosses forced their way into this workplace through a notoriously unreliable card check scheme. The NLRB should respect the intent of workers and order a timely secret ballot election so that Thunder Valley employees have a chance to vote the union out.”
Teachers Collect Settlement After Foundation Supreme Court Victory
Gary Davenport with his wife and three children at the U.S. Supreme Court.
As a result of the National Right to Work Foundation’s precedent-setting victory before the United States Supreme Court in Davenport v. WEA, Washington state’s teachers are receiving compensation for the forced unionism abuses and First Amendment rights violations they suffered at the hands of teacher union officials.
In 2001, Gary Davenport, a history teacher at Kentwood High School, and fellow teachers across the state of Washington who refrained from formal union membership, were being forced to pay $500 or more each per year in fees for the Washington Education Association (WEA) union bosses’ so-called “representation” because their state does not have Right to Work protections for its workers.
It was then that Davenport discovered that WEA union officials were illegally using his and some 10,000 other nonmember teachers’ forced union dues for the union bosses’ political agenda.
After a protracted legal battle in various courts, the U.S. Supreme Court finally weighed in. The Court unanimously ruled in favor of the teachers, declaring unions have no constitutional right to collect fees from nonmembers and allowing states to require union bosses to obtain affirmative consent before spending nonmember public employees’ forced fees on political activities.
After the case went back to state court, WEA union bosses finally settled with the teachers and agreed to refund the dues that were improperly confiscated.
The checks (some of which are pictured below) were sent to thousands of Washington teachers last week.
For more information regarding the National Right To Work Foundation’s history-shaping legal precedents on behalf of abused workers, click here.
Worker Advocate Hits Labor Board for Hypocritical Enforcement of Federal Preemption
Washington, DC – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a charitable organization that provides free legal assistance to employees nationwide, sent a letter to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) protesting the agency’s decision to threaten lawsuits against state ballot amendments aimed at prohibiting ‘card check’ organizing drives but not threaten suits against state laws that aid unions.
The letter, signed by Foundation Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse, points out that this latest move reveals a troubling pattern of forced unionism favoritism at the NLRB, which is charged with overseeing private sector labor and employment law throughout the country.
LaJeunesse notes that in numerous other cases where federal statutes preempt state law, the current NLRB has failed to act if asserting federal prerogatives would mean undermining union officials’ special privileges.
For example, Foundation attorneys currently represent Carol Jean Badertscher, a nurse who was threatened with fines and jail time under California’s draconian ‘anti-strikebreaker’ law for crossing a union picket line. Although the NLRB’s then General Counsel acknowledged that the California law is preempted by the National Labor Relations Act, the Board declined to declare the anti-strikebreaker law preempted or order notice to California workers about their rights to continue working during a strike.
However, the Board recently threatened four high-profile lawsuits against Arizona, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Utah for enacting laws designed to prohibit recognition of unions without an NLRB-supervised secret ballot election.
Those threats highlight a pattern of forced unionism favoritism that further tars the Board’s reputation for evenhandedness. The most notable example of this trend was the recess appointment of Craig Becker, a former SEIU lawyer, to serve on the Board. Despite the involvement of his former employer in several pending cases, Becker has refused to recuse himself and is now poised to issue rulings that could shape American labor law for decades.
“The Board’s selective interest in asserting federal prerogatives is just the latest example of this Administration’s obvious forced unionism bias,” said Foundation Legal Information Director Patrick Semmens. “The Obama NLRB rushed to intervene when it meant stopping state attempts to limit coercive card check organizing drives. But in cases where federal preemption would mean striking down state laws that push more workers into unions’ forced dues-paying ranks, the Board is conspicuously silent.”
Wall Street Journal: As More States Consider Right to Work, Will GOP Cave to Big Labor?
In an editorial yesterday, the Wall Street Journal made both the moral and economic case for states to end forced unionism by passing Right to Work laws:
Contrary to much union rhetoric, right-to-work laws don’t ban or bust unions. They simply grant individual workers the right to join or not to join, even once a workplace is organized by a union. Workers who decline to join the union can’t be forced to have dues taken out of their paycheck and thus used to finance union political campaigns. Most right-to-work states are in the South and West, and only Oklahoma has adopted this freedom to choose in the last 20 years.
Right-to-work states outperform forced-union states in almost every measurable category of worker well-being. A new study in the Cato Journal by economist Richard Vedder finds that from 2000 to 2008 some 4.7 million Americans moved from forced-union to right-to-work states.
The study also found that from 1977 through 2007 there was "a very strong and highly statistically significant relationship between right-to-work laws and economic growth." Right-to-work states experienced a 23% faster rise in per capita income over that period. The two regions that have lost the most jobs in recent years, the once-industrial Northeast and Midwest, are mostly forced-union states.
These arguments demonstrate why poll after poll shows that 80 percent of Americans — even rank-and-file union members — support the Right to Work principle. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal warns, politicians who claim they agree could instead appease the union bosses:
[Indiana Governor Mitch] Daniels adds that the lack of a right-to-work law "does hold us back economically. There is no doubt about it." He estimates that when competing with Southern states for businesses, "a very large number—perhaps as many as a quarter—of the deals we don’t get a shot at are for just this reason."
This damage has motivated Indiana Republicans, who now control both legislature chambers, to announce that they want to pass a right-to-work law. Unions immediately went to Defcon 1, Democrats are up in arms, and Republicans could yet buckle under this union pressure. Even Mr. Daniels, who has stood up to union opposition in the past, seems hesitant. He told the Indianapolis Star that right to work "may be worth a look," but he added it "is not on my agenda." He’s worried that the issue so antagonizes unions that it could derail the rest of his legislative agenda.
We hope Republicans don’t flinch. Right-to-work laws make states more economically competitive, but the bigger issue is about individual rights. Workers should have the right to join a union but also the right not to. Indiana and other states with new Republican majorities have a rare opportunity to pass a major reform that will reduce union power, help to attract new jobs, and liberate workers from union coercion.
Read the rest of the editorial here (subscription required).
Worker Asks Federal Appeals Court to Overturn Backroom Deal Between Union and Company Officials
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.
Worker Asks Federal Appeals Court to Overturn Backroom Deal Between Union and Company Officials
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.
Federal law aimed at preventing union operatives from agreeing to undermine workers’ rights in exchange for concessions from management explicitly prohibits employers from giving “any money or other thing of value” to unions.
The suit also alleges that union bosses’ willingness to spend over a hundred thousand dollars to lobby on behalf of Mardi Gras Gaming demonstrates just how valuable the agreement is to union officials.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently upheld Mulhall’s standing to vindicate his rights in federal court. Now he asks the appellate court to judge his case on the merits and reverse a lower court’s illogical ruling that management’s concessions are not “things of value.”
“So-called ‘neutrality agreements’ between companies and unions like the one agreed upon by Unite Here operatives and Mardi Gras Gaming give union organizers license to browbeat and intimidate workers into acceding to unionization,” said Patrick Semmens, Legal Information Director for the National Right to Work Foundation. “Workers should never be cajoled or harassed into union ranks.”
