With the Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill looming on the horizon, here’s a portent of things to come from the Cal Watchdog blog:

North Bay firefighters launched a boycott of a Napa Valley winery this weekend after its owner criticized their wages and benefits in a letter published in the St. Helena Star. But more than a boycott was launched, as the winery owner has received veiled threats online from some public safety employees, potentially refusing to fight a fire at his home or winery, or save him from choking in a restaurant.

A concerned winery owner has the temerity to point out that public sector union bosses have bankrupted California. In return, he’s threatened by union operatives who say they’ll refuse to fight a fire at his home or place of business. The union militants’ reaction is all the more thuggish in light of the original letter to the editor, which is about as mild as political criticism gets, putting the blame squarely on the politicians:

Napa Valley winery owner Dario Sattui of V. Sattui Winery wrote a letter to the Editor of the St. Helena Star, venting about the benefits and pensions that firefighters receive. In his April 9 letter, Sattui wrote, “I thought I was doing well in the wine business. Had I had any real brains I would have become a firefighter. What a racket they have. While I respect the work they do and the inherent dangers, they are greatly overpaid, work only two days a week (a third of which they sleep) and get to retire at 50 years old at 90 percent of their pay after working 30 years. I don’t blame the firefighters. Good for them for getting as much as they can. The blame goes to the politicians and the government administrators. What do they care? It isn’t their money.”

The skyrocketing costs of public services are an inevitable consequence of public sector unionization, which relentlessly expands government and drives up taxes. Union operatives’ threat to ignore a fire at the winery owner’s home also highlights the dangers of the Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill, which would leave state and local public safety employees at the mercy of Big Labor organizing drives. Once Big Labor bosses are firmly in control of public safety organizations, they’ll have no qualms about leveraging their influence over firefighters and police departments to threaten anyone who dares to question their monopoly bargaining powers. 

Gov. Quinn Faces Class-Action Suit for Executive Order Designed to Unionize Home-Care Providers

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys assist home-based personal care providers pushed into union’s forced-dues ranks against their will

Chicago, IL (April 22, 2010) – With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, a group of home-based personal care providers today filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against Governor Pat Quinn and union officials for their efforts to force Illinois personal care providers under unwanted union boss control.

The suit stems from an executive order issued by disgraced former-Governor Rod Blagojevich shortly after his election, later codified, in which over 20,000 personal care providers who care for individuals with disabilities were designated as “public employees” of the state of Illinois for the purpose of granting Service Employees International Union (SEIU) bosses monopoly “representation” and forced dues privileges over them.

Following the Rod Blagojevich blueprint of forced unionism, Quinn signed an executive order last June that made an additional 4,500 home-based personal care providers susceptible to unwanted union boss bargaining and political “representation.” Not coincidentally, Quinn received the SEIU union bosses’ political endorsement and support during his recent closely-contested primary campaign for the Democratic nomination for Governor.

The additional 4,500 home-care providers who are not yet under union control soundly rejected union membership by a two-to-one margin in a mail-in vote. However, per Quinn’s executive order, the home-care providers may again be subject to out-of-state SEIU and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union organizers making “home visits” attempting to organize the home-care providers through coercive “card check” unionization tactics.

Pam Harris, Gordon Stiefel, and several other home-care providers — with assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation — filed the federal suit on behalf of all of Illinois’s providers unionized by Blagojevich and on behalf of home-care providers threatened by forced unionism as a result of Quinn’s executive order.

“My primary concern is that someone else will be telling me how to best care for my son,” said Harris, who provides personal care for her adult son and is the lead plaintiff in the suit. “Union dues would be a deduction from what we have available to provide for my son’s needs. And then I would be giving my money to a union to exercise their political muscle on issues I may vehemently disagree with.”

Click here to read the whole release.

A copy of the complaint can be downloaded (pdf) by clicking here.

Right to Work President Mark Mix appeared on "The Gary Nolan Show" to explain how Project Labor Agreements enrich union bosses. 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.  

As we struggle to get in our tax returns before the April 15 deadline, it’s worth considering Big Labor’s impact on state and federal taxation. Private sector union membership is dropping dramatically, and union bosses have now turned to federal and state governments to make up the difference. In 2009, more unionized workers were employed in the public sector than by private employers for the first time in history. As a result of these trends, union bosses are more committed than ever to big government and higher taxes to expand the available pool of dues-paying public sector union members. To quote the National Institute for Labor Relations Research:

In mid-December, two of America’s best known labor economists, Drs. Barry Hirsch and David Macpherson, released their analysis of Current Population Survey (CPS) data for the first 11 months of 2009, indicating strongly that last year, for the first time ever, a majority of unionized workers across America were government employees.

Today Big Government, not the private sector, is Big Labor’s bread and butter. That’s why union bosses unabashedly push for higher taxes and bigger government, and seem unconcerned that the policies they advocate will surely slash overall private-sector job growth in future years.

On Tuesday, the Obama Administration implemented a new policy — initiated by an early executive order signed by President Obama — encouraging federal agencies to adopt so-called "project labor agreements" (PLAs) on large-scale federal construction projects.

Some of the typical conditions demanded by unions in PLAs include monopoly bargaining, forced dues and fees for all “represented” workers, exclusive union hiring halls, and inflexible union work rules which strictly separate job functions into exclusive union jurisdictions based on craft.

The Wall Street Journal strongly criticized the new policy, which effectively discriminates against the 85 percent of all construction workers who are not under union monopoly control. Moreover,

It’s also a rotten deal for taxpayers. White House economist Jared Bernstein blogged that these agreements "significantly enhance the economy and efficiency of Federal Construction projects." In fact, the carve-outs put an end to open, competitive federal bidding, which means higher project costs. They also mean taxpayers must finance the benefits and work rules of union members.

…

Boston’s Big Dig, Seattle’s Safeco field, Los Angeles’s Eastside Reservoir project, the San Francisco airport, Detroit’s Comerica Park—all were built under PLAs marked by embarrassing cost overruns. We’d list more, but newsprint is expensive.

The White House went out of its way to note that the Supreme Court has upheld such agreements in the past, suggesting it has a guilty conscience. In fact, the High Court has never ruled on the legality of these agreements under federal competitive bidding laws. Industry groups are now threatening legal action to defend the rights of workers who will be denied employment for the crime of not sporting Obama-Biden bumper stickers. It’s a fight worth having.

The Washington Examiner likewise denounced the discriminatory policy, noting the National Right to Work Foundation’s objections:

"The Obama administration’s policy is a slap in the face to the vast majority of construction workers who have chosen not to unionize," said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation."Qualified nonunion contractors whose workers have opted against unionization will be locked out from large-scale construction projects. The true purpose of so-called project labor agreements is simple: To impose unwanted union boss control on workers from the top down."

Another factor helps explain Obama’s willingness to sign an executive order that will put millions more tax dollars in union coffers. Mix points out that unions under PLAs typically exact agreements that include requiring contractors to make payments to union pension funds. This is an increasingly urgent issue, as the Washington Examiner’s Mark Hemingway has recently detailed in these pages. According to Labor Department filings, the average union pension has only enough money on hand to cover 62 percent of the benefits it has promised to union members. Pension plans with 80 percent funding are considered "endangered" by federal auditors, while those with less than 65 percent funding are put on the "critical" list. With this latest executive order, it’s clear that Obama intends to give unions on the critical list a massive dose of federal tax dollars to cure what ails them.

The National Right to Work Foundation has submitted formal comments opposing proposed rule changes that would dramatically undermine union transparency at the Obama Department of Labor (DoL). The full comments can be found here, but the long and short of it is that the Obama DoL is proposing two major changes to union disclosure under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) of 1959:

1) The first change would exempt "intermediate bodies" from LMRDA union disclosure requirements. "Intermediate bodies" are basically state and local subsidiaries of national unions, which means that Big Labor bosses could funnel forced-dues dollars to regional affiliates to avoid DoL transparency requirements if the proposed rule changes go through. Allowing union operatives to hide questionable expenditures through local and state subsidiaries clearly hampers the ability of workers to learn how their mandatory union dues are being spent.

2) The second change, which the Foundation also opposes, would no longer require Big Labor to file T-1 disclosure forms. These forms disclose financial information about Big Labor trusts – strike funds, political front groups, and other organizations unions control through board appointments, financial ccontributions, or contributions through a collective bargaining agreement. This means that Big Labor-funded organizations like American Rights at Work, a political front group that Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis served on before her appointment, would no longer be subject to basic disclosure guidelines.

Big Labor’s influence at the Obama DoL has already been extensively documented, so we can’t say we’re surprised by this development. Although transparency is a poor substitute for freeing employees from the burden of compulsory unionism, if workers continue to be forced to pay union dues, Big Labor should at the very least have to explain where the money is going. That’s why the Foundation opposes these rule changes, as well as any other attempt to undermine union transparency at the Obama DoL.

Today, Craig Becker – Associate General Counsel for the AFL-CIO and radical SEIU – officially took his seat on the National Labor Relations Board. For a rundown of Craig Becker’s controversial recess appointment to the NLRB, listen to these two recent radio interviews featuring National Right to Work President Mark Mix.

First, Mark Mix sat down with nationally-syndicated radio host Lars Larson for a short primer on Becker’s forced unionism agenda. Click here to listen or use the emebedded player below:

Second, here’s a longer interview with Mix from the Jason Lewis Show on Becker’s radical views. 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.

Last week, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed recusal motions asking Craig Becker, President Barack Obama’s recess appointee to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), to remove himself from any pending cases involving Foundation attorneys based on his personal bias and malice toward the organization, as revealed by his published writings about the Foundation. Let’s take a closer look.

In a 2005 article in the Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law, Becker described the Foundation as "an organization that purports to represent employees…."

Only the most rabid and unthinking forced unionism militant can’t see indisputable evidence that Foundation attorneys only provide free legal aid to workers. As the Washington Examiner’s Mark Hemingway notes in a column about Becker’s bias,

Unions try and portray the organization as a shill for big business, but the fact is that National Right to Work is the only organization providing free legal aid to workers with grievances against their union, and is otherwise responsible for doing a lot to keep unions in check.

Currently, Foundation attorneys are assisting thousands of employees in over 200 cases nationwide. The Foundation’s legal aid program is designed to enforce employees’ existing legal rights against forced unionism abuses and to win new legal precedents expanding these rights and protections.  Here’s a sample:

• Last month, Foundation attorneys filed unfair labor practice charges on behalf of Nestor Mendez, a former Vons grocery store worker who was wrongfully fired on December 14, 2009 at the request of local UFCW union officials.  Mendez seeks financial compensation for lost wages and reinstatement of his position.
• In 2001, with help from Foundation attorneys, Rod Carter received a monetary settlement from Teamsters Local 769 for its direct involvement in a bloody attack on Carter during a nationwide strike against UPS. 
• Foundation attorneys are at the forefront in protecting religious objectors’ rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  In one case, a Ohio Education Association union official told a 21-year veteran teacher to "change religions" if she wanted a religious accommodation.
• Last year Foundation attorneys helped secure a settlement for five Phoenix-based employees who filed a federal lawsuit against their employer and IBEW Local 1269 union officials for a corrupt scheme to divert sales commissions from the employees to union officials. Some of the methods used to increase the union agents’ compensation included giving union agents “double commissions” for sales made by other workers.

Why else but malice would Craig Becker write that the National Right to Work Foundation “purports to represent employees”? Foundation attorneys do not just claim to provide free legal aid to workers. They do it on a daily basis.

The undercurrent of Craig Becker’s agenda is that individual employees are irrelevant in the workplace and should be afforded no recourse against the union operatives who violate their rights.  The Right to Work principle makes no judgment on whether workers should join or support a union for whatever reason. That is a decision best left up to the individual.  The Right to Work principle is therefore not "anti-union" but anti-compulsory unionism and pro-freedom of choice. Freedom of association is a basic right, but today’s unions operate via forced association.

It’s worth noting that the Foundation is entirely supported by voluntary contributions from individuals, foundations, and job providers — unlike unions, which rely on using the power of the state to seize money straight out of unwilling workers’ paychecks.  In fact, Foundation supporters come from all walks of life, sections of the country, and social backgrounds.  The vast majority of Foundation contributors — tens of thousands of concerned citizens — give $100 or less each year.

There’s nothing remotely "fringe" about our principle, and that’s why 22 states have adopted Right to Work laws and nearly 80% of the American people agree that no worker should ever be forced to associate with a union to get or keep a job.

If you do want to find fringe views on labor law, look no further than Craig Becker himself.  "At first blush it might seem fair to give workers the choice to remain unrepresented," Becker wrote in a 1998 New Labor Forum article.  Sorry, Member Becker: it’s always fair to give workers a choice no matter how many ways you look at it.

Today, the Denver Post questioned President Obama’s recess appointment of radical SEIU union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, noting how Becker’s biases against workers’ rights:

From the Denver Post:

We question Becker’s ability to be an arbiter enforcing fairness in union elections…Becker served as counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO. It was [SEIU] president Andy Stern who visited the Obama White House 38 times (at last count), and his union spent a reported $66 million to help the president win election.

The Post continues:

He not only supports so-called “card check,” the Employee Free Choice Act that which would effectively eliminate secret ballots and strip away worker privacy when forming a union, he also advocates for the elimination of the “no union” option from workers’ ballots. And he thinks employers should have no “role in union organizing campaigns and in union representation elections.”

How can Americans expect Becker will exhibit impartiality?

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, for instance, already has asked Becker to recuse himself from 12 cases because “his prior writings demonstrate a bias against the group.”

Read the whole Denver Post editorial here.

Union members receive access to counsel while nonmember teachers aren’t allowed to bring their own attorneys

Miami, FL (April 1, 2010) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a Miami-Dade public school teacher has filed unfair labor practice charges challenging a discriminatory policy that prevents nonunion teachers from using representatives of their own choosing during school investigatory interviews.

Shawn Beightol, a veteran chemistry teacher at Michel Krop Sr. High School, was told to report to the Miami-Dade County Office of Professional Standards (OPS) to discuss a possible violation of the school’s email policy last October.

The United Teachers of Dade (UTD) union is the exclusive bargaining agent for the Miami-Dade School District. However, Beightol is a member of the Professional Educations Network of Florida (PENFL), a nonunion teachers association. Although Beightol brought a representative from the PENFL to the October hearing, school officials refused to allow his advisor to participate.

Click here to read more . . .