National Right to Work President Mark Mix has a column appearing in newspapers across the country in which he explains that this Labor Day, as union bosses attempt to amass more and more power over American workers, it’s important to remember what the holiday is really about.

Labor Day is a celebration of the efforts of America’s workers. However, the celebration is hollow for millions of American workers because of compulsory unionism.

Throughout the United States, over 12 million workers labor under contracts that require them to be a member of, or financially support, a union as a condition of employment. 

Additionally, millions of more workers are required by law to accept union bosses’ so-called “representation,” thereby losing the right to negotiate their own employment terms.

Big Labor thrives on this system of government-granted special privileges based on coercion. Compulsory unionism makes union bosses more unaccountable to rank-and-file workers, as their financial support is absolutely mandatory. 

This arrangement breeds union boss corruption, extravagance, and abuse. 

Despite the “feel-good” rhetoric about standing up for workers’ rights, union bosses commonly target independent-minded workers who stand up to them and exercise their individual rights. Such retaliation often takes the form of harassment, firings, and even violence.       

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This Labor Day, big labor bosses will dish out their usual Labor Day propaganda about how awful our lives would supposedly be without them. The reality is that millions of workers and indeed our economy are continuing to suffer greatly under the scourge of compulsory unionism.

Yet, there are signs that folks are realizing the truth: cooperation is a healthy alternative to compulsion and is the best way to enhance individual liberty while achieving economic progress and raising workers’ living standards.

Labor Day should be about honoring the hardworking Americans who make our country’s economy prosper — not union bosses who rely on forced unionism privileges for personal and political gain.

Read the full column here.

In the Washington Examiner, columnist Kevin Mooney discusses a shocking new analysis of the "Obamacare" health care overhaul legislation distributed by National Right to Work Committee experts. 

The proposals are a Trojan Horse for forced unionization of the health care field. Numerous troubling provisions in the proposed bills would divert billions of dollars into union coffers and facilitate the imposition of unionization on unsuspecting doctors, surgeons, nurses, and home care providers all across the country.

Union officials are likely to fill key positions on committees making major decisions if President Barack Obama’s government-run health care reform proposal becomes law, according to a new study by the National Right to Work Committee.

Sections 123 and 2251 of H.R. 3200, the version of Obamacare being pushed by House Democratic leaders, are of particular concern, according to NRTWC, because they could put union-backed appointees on new government committees that recommend mandatory health insurance benefits provided by private insurers, and personnel policies the bill describes as necessary "to ensure quality and adequacy" of the nation’s health care workers.

Such provisions could put labor officials in positions to influence health care policies across the country, said Greg Mourad, director of legislation for the NRTWC, and to mandate that health care workers join unions.

"Big labor is guaranteed a place on the various committees, and that’s something we see as a dangerous sign," said Mourad, the principal author of the NRTWC study. "The idea is to get the whole country on a model where you have teams of union stewards telling doctors what to do."

"In every section we cite, unions are guaranteed a place on the various boards, but the compositions of the boards are very flexible, and with Obama and his appointees naming the members of the various committees and commissions, all could easily be stacked by Big Labor sympathizers," he added.

The end result could very well be the forced unionization of every health care professional in the United States.

Read the full article for more information.

A Michigan man appears to have been fired recently from United Way of Saginaw County because he had the audacity to challenge the special legal privileges enjoyed by union bosses.  From Reporting Michigan. 

[Tim] Kelly claims [United Way of Saginaw County CEO Cherrie] Benchley told him during a meeting that his interview had been seen on television by officials with organized labor and they they would pull their funding from the Saginaw United Way if he wasn’t let go. Kelly said that discussion was held in front of another United Way employee.

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In the interview with the local TV station,  Kelly is quoted as
saying about unions:  "I think they’ve outlived their usefulness, certainly here and across the country. … Unions used to be for the common man. Now we’ve got them set up as this special class that we no longer can afford."

Stifling dissent is standard operating procedure for the union bosses, though usually it’s the employees they claim to "represent" who are fired for refusing to toe the union line. They do that using their extraordinary government-granted power to seize dues and fees from the paychecks of hardworking Americans — one of the many special privileges union bullies rely upon to punish severely those who do nothing more than disagree with them.

Contrary to the usual propaganda union bosses would like you to believe, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) — an anti-compulsory unionism think tank that exposes the harm forced unionism inflicts on workers — released a report today entitled "Union Monopoly Linked to Lower Purchasing Power" that details how workers in least-unionized states enjoy the benefits of higher cost-of-living-adjusted earnings and disposable incomes.

You see, not only does government-granted union monopoly bargaining privileges infringe on employees’ individual liberty, it also harms employees’ economic interests.

According to NILRR:

As of 2008, according to economists Barry Hirsch and David Macpherson, 8.4% of private-sector employees nationwide were under “exclusive” union representation. But in 15 states — Alaska, California, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania,. Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin –10.0% or more of private-sector workers were unionized.

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In 2008, cost of living-adjusted average weekly earnings in the states with 10.0% or more of private-sector employees subject to union monopoly bargaining were $770.

That’s $48 less than the average in the states with private-sector unionization of 5.0% or less. (These low-union density states are: Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia.) That comes to a roughly $2500-a-year disadvantage for full-time workers in states with high monopoly-bargaining density.

Aggregate cost of living-adjusted weekly earnings for states with private-sector union density of 5.1% to 9.9% were $783, or, for full-time workers, nearly $700 a year more than in the highest-union-density states, but more than $1800 a year less than in the lowest-union-density states.

NILRR also reports that "disposable income data tell the same story."

The economic benefits of voluntary union membership should come to no surprise to regular Freedom@Work readers, as we reported last month in "Compulsory Unionism Bankrupting States: Workers Flee to Right to Work States for Jobs":

NILRR recently found an especially strong correlation between a state’s Right to Work status and its job growth, while employees in Right to Work states are benefiting from faster job growth and higher real purchasing power than their compulsory unionism counterparts.

To view NILRR‘s fact sheet "Union Monopoly Linked to Lower Purchasing Power", click here.

Fresh on the heels of rumors that former union hatchet man Ron Bloom may become "czar" of US manufacturing policy, the AFL-CIO is crowing about the appointment of one of their own to run the most powerful regional Federal Reserve bank. Former electricians union boss Denis Hughes, top dog in a state where a forced unionism stranglehold has crushed the economy and employee freedom, has just been named chairman of New York’s powerful financial oversight board:

Denis Hughes, president of the New York State AFL-CIO, was named chairman of the powerful Federal Reserve Bank of New York today.

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Hughes, a 40-year member of the Electrical Workers (IBEW), has led the New York State federation since 1999.

The New York bank is the operating arm of the Federal Reserve System in New York, northern New Jersey, Fairfield County in Connecticut, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. It is the largest of the 12 Federal Reserve district banks in terms of assets and volume of activity.

Given the Administration’s history of union-stooge appointments and administrative giveaways, we’re not exactly surprised by this latest development. But it is indeed disturbing to witness a slow-motion takeover of government and other powerful institutions by forced unionism proponents under the guise of "hope" and "change."

Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember Ron Bloom, a former Steelworker union operative charged with running the American auto industry from Washington. Now that car manufacturers are doing so "well," Bloom is about to get a promotion:

The Obama Administration may elevate Ron Bloom, head of the government’s auto task force, to a job that would set U.S. manufacturing policy more broadly, people familiar with the matter said.

Bloom’s responsibilities at the new position? They’re extensive, to say the least:

As the chief policy maker on manufacturing, Bloom would be charged with reviewing U.S. competitiveness in the global economy. His job would likely encompass trade, taxes and other economic issues . . .

Just what American industry needs: another "czar" whose relevant work experience involves running struggling companies into the ground and exploiting their workers. We’re sure industry leaders across the country are thrilled at the prospect of taking orders from a union czar. 

The result of this personnel move seems likely to be more forced unionism, less American competitiveness, more job losses, and ultimately more bankruptcies and taxpayer-funded bailouts of corruptly run union pension plans.  

In a surprising display of honesty about their true agenda, union bosses and Far Left activists participated on a panel at the Netroots Nation conference called "The Secret Plan to Destroy the American Right."

What’s their "secret plan" to expand the power and size of government and raise taxes on hard-working Americans? It’s passage of the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, more accurately called the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill.

Union bosses apparently see the billions of forced dues dollars that the bill would funnel into pushing Organized Labor’s radical political agenda as THE major selling point for the bill.

Unfortunately for the panelists and the Big Labor hierarchy, but fortunately for the American people, there’s nothing secret about the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill and how it would obliterate the rights of American workers.  Right here on Freedom@Work, we’ve kept concerned citizens informed about this union boss power grab:

• Expert legal analysis explaining how the Card Check Bill would destroy the secret ballot in union certification elections
• Workers in Albion, Indiana tell Fox News about the real life intimidation they felt during a card check organizing drive by the militant United Auto Workers (UAW) union
• A former union president testifies before Congress about the dangers of card check organizing
• Worker explains to Senate labor committee how union goons lied to him to get him to sign a card
• National Right to Work president Mark Mix discusses card check and union intimidation on a nationally syndicated radio program
• At the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference, Mix demonstrates why union bosses love card check
• Far Left icon George McGovern writes in the Wall Street Journal about another disturbing feature of the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill: mandatory binding arbitration

Check out our full archive on card check.

Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember the now-infamous Executive Order 13502, which pressures all federal agencies to use discriminatory "Project Labor Agreements" (PLAs) to freeze out non-union contractors and workers from any opportunity to work on government projects.

Once adopted, PLAs require all companies – unionized or otherwise – to agree to unionization as a condition of receiving a government-funded contract. Project labor agreements usually require contractors to grant union officials monopoly bargaining privileges; use exclusive union hiring halls; force workers to pay dues to keep their jobs and work under wasteful union work rules.

Foundation attorneys have now filed formal comments with the Department of Labor urging the Administration to rescind Executive Order 13502. The Foundation argues that the directive is illegal under the the National Labor Relations Act, and that imposing discriminatory PLAs on federal contractors violates workers’ rights, passes along higher costs to taxpayers, and serves no purpose other than to enrich Big Labor’s coffers.

To download a copy of the Foundation’s comments, click here. 

A few months ago, Foundation VP Stefan Gleason appeared on CNN to discuss the Administration’s new directive: