Why is the National Mediation Board Telling Workers Who Oppose Unionization False Information?
Last week, the National Mediation Board ordered a union "representation" election for Delta Air Lines flight attendants. The NMB will conduct the election under its new controversial rules approved by the two former union officials who now comprise a majority of the board.
The new procedure stacks the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over railway or airline industry workers if the union acquires support from just a bare majority of workers who turnout for an election, no matter how few actually vote.
But Delta flight attendants, and other workers in the airline and railway industries who could soon find themselves in similar situations, won’t know that by reading the Frequently Asked Questions page on the NMB’s website.
28. Q: How do voters vote no?
A: If a voter does not wish to be represented, they should not call the TEV telephone number or access the NMB’s Internet voting website.
As National Right to Work Foundation staff attorney Glenn Taubman explains in a letter to the NMB (PDF), this is false and should be immediately corrected so workers can vote in accordance with the rule change.
It’s not like the Obama Administration has a habit of keeping independent-minded employees in the dark about their rights or anything…
Worker Advocates Issue Labor Day Statement: “Big Labor is Pulling Out All the Stops to Maintain Power”
Washington, DC (September 5, 2010) – Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and National Right to Work Committee, released the following statement regarding this year’s Labor Day holiday.
“This Labor Day, as we celebrate working men and women across the nation, union officials are mounting an unprecedented effort to expand their coercive powers over America’s employees and employers. Their goal is to expand the number of workers forced to pay union dues or fees and accept mandatory union representation just to keep their jobs.
“Union officials’ ambitious agenda goes beyond the scope of previous years. By their own admission, Big Labor officials are gearing up for their most aggressive midterm election political blitz ever. And regardless of the outcome, they are focused on a series of unprecedented power grabs and pay backs sure to send shivers up any independent-minded worker’s spine.
“Statements from key congressional leaders and union officials indicate a high probability of a post-election lame-duck Congressional session, where they will try to breathe life into coercive ‘card check’ legislation, which would shove millions of unwilling workers into unions and force struggling job-providers to knuckle-under government-imposed contracts. Meanwhile, the rights-infringing, budget-busting Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill, which threatens America’s first responders with federally-mandated monopoly unionization, still lurks in the shadows of the Senate. The National Right to Work Committee continues to mobilize its 2.6 million members to combat these draconian bills.
“Throughout the U.S., more than 12 million American workers are already compelled to pay union dues as a condition of keeping their jobs. Millions more are required by law to accept a union’s so-called ‘representation,’ even if they never asked or voted for it. And for the first time ever, a majority of government employees nationwide work under monopoly unionism.
“Sadly, many workers feel they have no choice but to pay for organized labor’s extensive political activities, while others are still unaware of their right to object. That’s why the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is providing free legal aid to thousands of employees nationwide.
“American Federation of Labor founder Samuel Gomper’s famous adage that ‘No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion’ is as relevant as ever this Labor Day. This Labor Day, we commend all workers brave enough to stand up to union intimidation, harassment, and even violence as they defend their cherished freedoms. And we look forward to the day when no American is forced to pay tribute to an unwanted union.”
The FEC Turns a Blind Eye to Big Labor’s Shady Fundraising Tactics
In The Washington Examiner, Right to Work President Mark Mix takes on the Federal Election Commission’s lax oversight of suspicious Big Labor political fundraising:
Obama Labor Board Launches Assault on Workers’ Right to Secret Ballot to Remove Unwanted Union
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.
Obama Labor Board Launches Assault on Workers’ Right to Secret Ballot to Remove Unwanted Union
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.
The Board’s decision to reconsider Dana highlights concerns over one member’s ethics and impartiality. President Obama’s radical recess appointee Craig Becker joined in the decision to revisit Dana despite his own participation as a lawyer for the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in that very case.
In response to over a dozen motions for recusal brought by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, Becker agreed to recuse himself in a case that serves as a sequel to Dana because he coauthored a brief jointly filed by the AFL-CIO and United Auto Workers (UAW). However, he refused to recuse himself from two of the cases (AT&T Mobility and Aramark) in which union lawyers are seeking to overturn Dana because “[n]either of [his] former employers is a party or represents a party” in those cases.
But that’s only true if one accepts Becker’s shaky distinction between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and its local affiliate unions (Aramark involves the Service Workers United union, an affiliate of the SEIU). Foundation attorneys have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate whether Becker’s participation in cases involving SEIU local unions violates his ethics pledge.
As Foundation attorneys point out, while Becker contends the national and local unions are “separate and distinct legal entit[ies],” the SEIU itself considers locals to be “constituent subordinate bodies.” Moreover, in 2009 over 85 percent of the SEIU’s receipts came from a per capita tax on the locals’ membership dues and fees. The national union even has the power to assume control over its locals if they do not conform to International policies.
The Obama NLRB’s decision to revisit Dana even appears designed to sidestep Becker’s ethics problem. Even though Aramark is also pending, the Board only consolidated two challenges to Dana, neither of which involves the SEIU or its affiliates. That means Becker could overturn the Dana precedent even though he participated as a union lawyer in the original Dana case and even though doing so would directly benefit his former employer in another pending case.
“While President Obama and members of Congress continue to push for a federal bill that would end the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives, an obscure federal agency stacked with former union lawyers is poised to eliminate the private vote for workers who have been subjected to unreliable and coercive card check campaigns,” explained Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation.
“This is just the beginning of the Obama NLRB’s assault on freedom in the workplace, and individual employees are the ones who will pay the price,” continued Mix.
Mark Mix in DC Examiner: Union Bosses vs. Education Reform
In an op-ed this week in the Washington Examiner, National Right to Work President Mark Mix discusses the threat to real education reform posed by teacher union bosses in Washington, DC.
Just a few weeks ago, Samuel Johnson’s centuries-old observation that a man’s knowledge he is to be hanged “concentrates his mind wonderfully” seemed quite applicable to Washington Teacher Union (WTU) President George Packer.
Of course, no one was threatening Packer with the rope or any of its modern-day equivalents when they agreed to a new contract in late June making it significantly easier for D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to dismiss ineffective teachers.
But when he signed off on the new contract, Packer, whose WTU is a subsidiary of the mammoth American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, faced a Big Labor boss’s worst nightmare, a rapid decline in the number of employees forced to pay to his union dues or fees in order to keep their jobs.
As recently as 2003, there were roughly 5,000 D.C. teachers who had to accept the WTU as their monopoly-bargaining agent and pay union dues or fees as a job condition. Today, there are barely 4,000. Despite the best efforts of Packer and AFT union czarina Randi Weingarten, that number is set to drop still further over the next few years.
Over the years, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have provided free legal aid to teachers whose rights have been violated by compulsory unionism. Read about some of these cases here, here, and here.
Card Check Forced Unionism “Presents Serious Legal and Policy Issues”
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.
Michelle Malkin: “President Obama’s fraudulent ethics pledge”
In her latest syndicated column, Michelle Malkin highlights the National Right to Work Foundation’s request that Attorney General Eric Holder investigate National Labor Relations Board Member Craig Becker for violating his ethics pledge by participating in cases involving his former employer, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
As Malkin notes, Becker’s weak standard for recusal rests on a faulty distinction between the national union and its local affiliates.
It’s no surprise that Becker now refuses to hold himself accountable for the ethics pledge he himself signed in April. As the past two years have taught us, Team Obama’s operational slogan is: Rules are for fools. The contractual ethics commitment states: "I will not for a period of two years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts." Yet, Becker has participated in numerous NLRB cases involving the SEIU and its affiliates — and is parsing the definition of "former employer" by arguing that local SEIU chapters are "separate and distinct legal entities" that don’t fall under the ethics rules.
The National Right to Work Foundation, which has fought both national and local SEIU officials in court on behalf of rank-and-file workers’ rights, eviscerates Becker’s lawyerly blather. SEIU’s own constitution considers local affiliates "constituent subordinate bodies" of the national union, the foundation notes. "Moreover, in 2009 over 85 percent of the SEIU’s receipts came from a per capita tax on the locals’ membership dues and fees. The national union even has the power to assume control over its locals if they do not conform to International policies."
Malkin also rightly ties Becker’s installment onto the federal labor board into the Obama Administration’s pattern of granting special privileges and hidden paybacks to the union bosses.
Read Malkin’s entire column here and more from our Freedom@Work blog on Craig Becker here and here.
Wall Street Journal: Craig Becker’s “Recusal Refusal”
The Wall Street Journal slammed Obama recess appointee Craig Becker this week for participating in cases before the National Labor Relations Board involving his former employer, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU):
In his few months at the NLRB, Mr. Becker, former associate general counsel for the Service Employees International Union, has refused to recuse himself from most cases involving his former employer. This despite the fact that Mr. Becker signed the Obama Administration’s vaunted ethics pledge, in which he promised to refrain for two years from participating in "any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer."
In true lawyerly fashion, Mr. Becker is now running for the loopholes, arguing that the SEIU proper is a "distinct legal entity" that is different from local SEIU unions. Having liberated himself from that legal barrier, Mr. Becker says he intends to continue judging disputes that feature local SEIU shops. He even convinced the NLRB’s inspector general—who was asked to investigate one of the failure-to-recuse cases—to buy the separate legal entity line.
From a technical legal standpoint, SEIU locals may well be distinct from Mr. Becker’s former employer. Yet the clear intention of President Obama’s ethics pledge was to eliminate obvious political conflicts of interest. The example of a former SEIU lawyer like Mr. Becker sitting in judgment on cases featuring SEIU locals is Conflict 101.
No one understands better than Mr. Becker the deep organizational and financial ties between the SEIU and its locals, having been the attorney who crafted national legal strategies for use by SEIU locals everywhere. NLRB Chairwoman Wilma Liebman (another Obama appointee) has applied a more rigorous and appropriate standard of recusal for herself in cases involving her former employer, the Teamsters.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is representing workers in several cases involving SEIU locals, sent a letter Monday requesting that the Department of Justice investigate whether Mr. Becker has violated his pledge. Let’s hope Attorney General Eric Holder isn’t as cavalier about that request as President Obama was with Mr. Becker’s appointment.
Read more about the Foundation’s letter to Attorney General Holder.
Kansas City Nurse Challenges Backroom Union Deal to Silence Employees Who Oppose Unionization
Kansas City Nurse Challenges Backroom Union Deal to Silence Employees Who Oppose Unionization
Research Medical Center nurse files federal unfair labor practice charges against secret “neutrality agreement” that gives union organizers preferential treatment
Kansas City, MO (August 12, 2010) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a Kansas City nurse has filed unfair labor practice charges against two unions and her employer for signing a “neutrality agreement” that gives union organizers preferential access to Research Medical Center.
Mary Hill and many other nurses oppose unionization at Research Medical Center. Despite these reservations, HCA, Inc., Research Medical Center’s parent company, agreed to help organizers from two collaborating unions impose monopoly bargaining on Hill and her colleagues.
Hill states that, facing pressure from Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and California Nurses Association (CNA) union organizers, the company signed a secret “neutrality agreement” with officials from both unions.
