In our latest Right to Work video report, Foundation President Mark Mix discusses how the Foundation is pressing the Obama Administration to disclose its entanglements with Big Labor’s top political operatives using the Freedom of Information Act. Click on the video below to watch the whole thing:

Download the National Right to Work Foundation’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request here.

And visit the Right to Work YouTube channel to watch all our videos.

Recently, former West Wing actors Martin Sheen and Bradley Whitford lobbied in favor of the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (better known as the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill) at a press conference with so-called American Rights at Work, the same militant lobbying group which Labor Secretary Hilda Solis played a formal role while a member of Congress.

CNS News asked the actors why they support a bill which would effectively eliminate the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives.  Whitford responded (emphasis mine),

The notion that the labor movement is out to abolish their own members’ rights to a secret ballot just doesn’t pass the laugh test. And people who are propagating the rumor that it does, their sudden compassion for worker’s rights is just not believable.

There are so many problems with that one, incredibly misinformed sentence.  As I explained last week, the card check bill makes the secret ballot a virtual dead letter.  But Whitford’s comment shows he is willing to believe whatever union bosses tell him.  Union bosses routinely work to undermine employee freedom — it’s nothing new, except to hardcore union partisans.

But Whitford also made another error.  In a sense, he’s right that the labor movement is not "out to abolish their own members’ rights to a secret ballot" — but only because the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill doesn’t have anything to do with unions’ "own members."  The bill would eliminate the secret ballot for prospective members as well as independent-minded workers who do not want the union’s "representation."  Union bosses want to destroy the secret ballot in unionization campaigns so that they can intimidate and trick employees into signing cards.

Fortunately, Sheen and Whitford just play politicians on TV.

In the debate over the grossly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (more accurately called the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill), union bosses have gone out of their way to convince the media that the bill does not eliminate the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives.

But legal experts here at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation have examined the bill and the state of the current law and come to the following conclusion:

Under the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that refer to the secret ballot election would be rendered a dead letter, even though they are not technically stricken from federal law.

Big Labor spin artists can claim all they want that the workers can still "choose" to have a secret ballot election, but there simply is no way by which workers can force union bosses to file for a secret ballot election — and it is union bosses, not workers, who are in possession of the cards.  Reporters who repeat this union boss talking point owe their readers a correction.

The simple fact is that professional union organizers hold tremendous power in a unionization drive. If this forced unionism power grab becomes law, workers will only be privy to the information union bosses disseminate.

The text of the bill clearly states that once union bosses collect a simple majority of signed cards, "the [National Labor Relations] Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative" or monopoly bargaining agent of all employees in the unit.

As former NLRB member John Raudabaugh told U.S. Senators last year,

Were the union to come up short of 50+ percent signed cards, would it really proceed to file a petition for an election? No, the secret ballot would not remain an option under the EFCA proposal.

If union bosses can’t get a majority through card check — a process during which many workers sign cards not due to actual support for the union but due to lies and intimidation by union organizers — they obviously won’t be able to win through the more fair and private secret ballot process.  As James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation and Paul Kersey of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy note,

An election would occur only when union organizers submit cards signed by a minority of workers; but union organizers do not call for an election without signed cards from a majority of workers. They know that unions usually lose these elections. The AFL-CIO’s internal studies show that unions win only 8 percent of elections that are called after less than 40 percent of workers have signed cards.

Less obvious, however, is that union bosses don’t think they can win secret ballot elections even if they collect a simple majority of cards.  Sherk and Kersey explain (emphasis mine):

Consequently union guidelines call for organizers to collect cards from 60 to 70 percent of workers in a company before going to the polls. Unions openly state that they do not go to an election without a supermajority of cards:

1. International Brotherhood of Teamsters: "The general policy of the Airline Division is to file for a representation election only after receiving a 65 percent card return from the eligible voters in a group."

2. New England Nurses Association: "Have 70-75 percent of members sign cards; if unable to reach this goal, review plan."

3. Service Employees International Union (SEIU): "[T]he rule of thumb in the SEIU is that it’s unwise to file for an election when fewer than 70 percent of the workforce has signed interest cards."

The secret ballot is much better than the alternative in workplace unionization drives because of what monopoly unionization actually means in practice under the law. Once a union is in place, it is virtually impossible to remove it. More importantly, independent-minded workers who would prefer to represent themselves, or even workers who would prefer a different union’s representation, are forced to accept the certified union as their monopoly bargaining agent. And unless those workers live in one of 22 states with Right to Work protections, they will be forced to pay dues to an unwanted union.

In other words, an individual worker’s desire to belong to a particular union — or indeed the collective desire of a simple majority of workers in a unit — is different from an individual’s desire to belong to any other private organization. The decision forces one’s coworkers — current and future — to also accept the "representation" of this particular union. A secret ballot can’t overcome this fundamental violation of individual rights, but at the very least, the secret ballot provides workers with a degree of protection against intimidation. And that protection will be lost under EFCA.

Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember the Foundation’s ongoing efforts helping nurses fight back against the California Nurses Association (CNA) union’s coercive organizing drives at Houston and Philadelphia-area healthcare facilities.

Now an employee at Hahnemann University Hospital in Philadelphia has again stepped forward, filing unfair labor practice charges against Tenet Healthcare Corporation for giving CNA operatives preferential access to company property for the purposes of union organizing. Previous Foundation unfair labor practice charges also allege union organizers are engaging in illegal prerecognition bargaining: in exchange for company assistance, union officials may have agreed to terms and conditions of employment on behalf of workers they don’t even have the power to represent yet.

Here’s a copy of the Foundation’s unfair labor practice charges (.pdf). And here’s a link to the Foundation’s video on coercive CNA organizing in Houston. 

Regular Freedom@Work readers will remember our extensive coverage of Barack Obama’s numerous executive orders (during the first month of his Presidency) paying back union bosses for their efforts getting him into the White House.

Yesterday, a provision in Obama’s January 30 executive order took effect — revoking former-President Bush’s February 2001 executive order which required federal contractors to post notices in the workplace simply informing employees of their right to refrain from formal, dues paying union membership and withhold forced dues for everything but the documented cost of collective bargaining. 

The Obama directive is intended to ensure millions of workers do not learn of their right, won in the National Right to Work Foundation’s precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court victory Communication Workers v. Beck, to withhold forced union dues earmarked for union politics, lobbying, and other non-bargaining activities.

This is just the first of many steps by Barack Obama and his Big Labor cronies (for example, his Labor Secretary Hilda Solis) are already taking to help union bosses to seize more forced dues revenue to fund Big Labor’s political agenda.

The woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (better known as the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill) isn’t the only proposed union boss power grab pending in Congress. Big Labor’s high command is always looking for new ways to force more workers into dues-paying ranks — pushing bills from Card Check Forced Unionism to Police and Fire Monopoly Bargaining.

Now, Teamsters union bosses and UPS executives are lobbying Congress to grease the rails for unionization at FedEx, UPS’ chief rival (for background, see this article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal).  Collusion between Teamsters union brass and UPS is nothing new — in fact, independent-minded UPS employees have frequently turned to staff attorneys with the National Right to Work Foundation reporting violations of their rights by both union bosses and the company, including coervice card check campaigns approved by UPS executives.

Many UPS employees who have exercised to refrain from formal union membership have nonetheless been forced to contribute to a "Strike and Defense Fund," which bars benefits to nonmembers. Of course, it was Teamsters union bosses who had no choice but to settle a lawsuit filed by UPS driver Rod Carter, a man union militants severely beat and stabbed for choosing to work during a strike to support his family (union officials also used union funds to bail the assailants out of jail).

With stories like these, it’s little wonder Americans oppose giving union bosses even more government-granted special privileges.

Two years ago, an employee at a San Diego-area childrens’ hospital filed a union decertification petition to eject an unwanted SEIU local. Instead of submitting to a formal decertification election, SEIU union officials filed a series of frivolous "blocking charges" in an attempt to indefinitely delay any decision.

After years of legal wrangling, however, the SEIU’s charges were finally resolved. But rather than face a union decertification election, SEIU officials opted to withdraw from the bargaining unit, knowing full well that they’d lose employees’ votes by a wide margin.

This is the paradox of union "representation": instead of allowing themselves to be held accountable to workers through a secret ballot election, SEIU lawyers took advantage of a few loopholes to stall the entire process — when that ultimately failed, the union bosses finally took a hike. Does anyone think these cynical antics resulted from a sincere desire to represent workers’ interests?

Here’s a copy of the union’s letter (.pdf) disowning any interest in retaining its monopoly bargaining privileges at the hospital. Here’s the National Labor Relations Board’s decision (.pdf) formally revoking the union’s workplace authority. The San Diego Tribune also featured a decent article on the union’s decision to withdraw from the hospital. 

National Right to Work President Mark Mix sits down with nationally syndicated talk radio host Janet Parshall to discuss card check, union intimidation, and the larger problems of compulsory unionism. Click here to listen or use the embeddable player below:

You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed. 

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has a good op-ed up on "card check" legislation at the Los Angeles Times:

There is a bloody spin war over whether card check abolishes the secret ballot or not. Pro-card-check forces insist that it doesn’t. Unfortunately, these voices include many mainstream reporters who consistently use the language preferred by Big Labor. They note that if 30% of the workers sign a card asking for an election, they can have
one.

But this ignores the unions’ crimp tactics. For starters, the cards are written in ways that make "predatory lending" mortgages seem like paragons of full disclosure.

At the National Right to Work website, you can find an example of one of these cards. In big, bold letters on top, it says "Request for Employees Representation Election." But after you fill out all the relevant info, then there’s the small print, authorizing the Teamsters to "represent me in all negotiations of wages, hours and working conditions."

In other words, in many cases, workers who think they’re just voting for an election are in fact voting for unionization. The unions make it as difficult as possible to do the former without also doing the latter. Check a card, find the king’s shilling.

Also, if the number of cards is over 30% but below 50%, there still isn’t an election unless the organizers — not the workers — want it.

As Mickey Kaus, a one-man blogging crusader against card check, wrote, "No individual worker will know if his signed card will provide the 31% plurality or the 51% majority. Only the organizers know this. You could sign the card intending to provoke an election and discover that you actually prevented an election. There’s no way for ordinary workers to reliably game the system in order to ‘choose’ a secret ballot."

Translation: They’re not workers with a vote, they’re marks.

Here’s a link to the "authorization card" Golberg references. Can you read the fine print? Better yet, would you have a chance to read it in the midst of an aggressive card check drive, when you’re surrounded after work by three union goons demanding signatures?