The posh Miami Fontainebleu Hotel will play host to Vice President Biden, Hilda Solis, and the AFL-CIO executive council this week, as union bosses work tirelessly to spend employees’ hard-earned forced dues on $1000 per night rooms and critical projects like sampling each of the facility’s eleven restaurants, thoroughly testing the resort’s 40,000 square foot spa, and enjoying the sights and sounds of Miami Beach:

The conference will also cover union bosses’ novel approach to economic recovery, which involves forcing more unwilling workers into union collectives through the grossly misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act." But we’re not quite sure how extracting millions of dollars in additional forced union dues is supposed to revive our flagging economy — perhaps the AFL-CIO plans to single-handedly save the luxury resort business by scheduling more conferences?

Of course, history tells us handing more forced unionism power over to union bosses will only make the current economic downturn even worse.

Today’s sham hearings for the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill looked more like a union brass press conference as civility was repeatedly thrown aside as scores of rowdy union partisans applauded every time a Senator toed the union boss line (and snickered when anyone dared to dissent from that line).

Testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions was virtually monopolized by union partisans. But Larry Getts, a Dana Coproration employee in Fort Wayne, Indiana, offered a first-hand account of the kind of pressure and intimidation by union goons:

In fact, one day, an official approached me again claiming fifty percent of the plant had signed — so now I was going to have to sign the card to “get my information in the system.”

I signed the card then because I thought I had to.

I didn’t learn until later that even then, I should not have been forced to sign the card.

Read Getts’ full testimony here (PDF).

Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, writes in the American Spectator about Big Labor’s Card Check Forced Unionism Bill. In his article Bandow cites the story of Mike Ivey, who was represented by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys after UAW organizers targeted his plant for an aggressive card check campaign complete with plenty of union intimidation, pressure and harassment.

The secret ballot is key. It protects workers from retaliation — that’s why the U.S. elects public officials, rather than allowing citizens to sign election cards. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell which worker is more vulnerable to pressure and even violence: one who gets to cast a secret ballot or one who must sign or not sign a card in public view. Four decades ago a federal appeals court declared: "it is beyond dispute that secret election is a more accurate reflection of the employees’ true desires than a check of authorization cards collected at the behest of a union organizer."

Former union organizer Jen Jason testified before the House Education and Labor Committee: "During the course of my employment with the union, I began to understand the reality behind the rhetoric. I took in the ways that organizers were manipulating workers just to get a majority on ‘the cards’ and the various strategies that they employed. I began to appreciate that promises made by organizers at the worker’s house had little to do with how the union actually functions as a ‘service’ organization."

In fact, misrepresentation and intimidation are routine, as union organizers lie about what signing the care means (claiming, for example, that it certifies attending a meeting or requesting more information) and badger employees to sign (sending groups of pro-union workers to people’s homes). The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has collected the stories of many employees, such as that of Mike Ivey, a South Carolina materials handler, who complained that the UAW "created a hostile work environment" through relentless pressure to sign cards. These abuses would be multiplied if card check automatically yielded recognition, foreclosing the need for a vote.

This may be why even union members favor elections. Polls have found that eight to nine of every ten of them favor a vote. Card check is a tool for union executives and Democratic politicians, not workers.

For more on Mike Ivey’s story watch this video where he talks about his experience with card check:

Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember the Foundation’s recent identity theft case in North Carolina, where Communication Workers of America union bosses posted nonunion AT&T employees’ social security numbers on a public bulletin board. Not only was this an open invitation to fraud and identity theft, it also violated North Carolina’s newly-enacted Identity Theft Protection Act. Foundation attorneys have slammed CWA bosses in state court, seeking damages for affected AT&T employees.

The union lawyers’ response, however, can only be described as absurd. Instead of working to ensure other workers’ confidential information is kept safe, CWA union operatives filed a counter-suit, alleging that the very act of removing workers’ social security numbers from the bulletin board and warning other workers that their confidential information had been made readily available at a public location itself violated the Identity Theft Protection Act. Naturally, the court dismissed the union’s frivolous claims and will now resolve the Foundation’s original lawsuit. The text of the decision is available here (.pdf). You can also watch the Foundation’s video on union identity theft in North Carolina:

The lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal observes that Big Labor is attempting to gag opposition to their card check power grab, which just yesterday was introduced in Congress:

Big Labor’s drive to eliminate secret ballots for union elections has united American business in opposition, so labor chiefs are putting on the brass knuckles: The new strategy is to threaten companies with government retaliation if they don’t stop lobbying against turning U.S. labor markets into Europe.

We wrote on February 13 about the letter from the labor consortium Change to Win to the Financial Services Roundtable, demanding that banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program money keep quiet about union "card check." To its credit, the banking lobby hasn’t backed down. Now Big Labor is escalating, demanding in a February 23 letter to Secretary Timothy Geithner that Treasury muzzle the companies if they won’t muzzle themselves.

[…]

The double standard here is remarkable. Every year, unions collect millions of dollars in grants from government agencies they lobby. In 2002 and 2003, the Service Employees International Union — the main driver behind Ms. Burger’s consortium — lobbied the Department of Health and Human Services while receiving between $563,226 and $938,388 per year in grants. Imagine if Tom DeLay had ever said that labor unions or AARP couldn’t speak up about Medicare because they or their affiliates had accepted federal grants. The headlines would have read: "Republican Gag Rule."

Labor chiefs are desperate to pass their easy-organizing agenda this year, because they know liberal majorities on Capitol Hill won’t last. They also know they haven’t been able to organize workers with a level playing field, so they want to rewrite the rules so their organizers can see which individual workers are voting no and apply peer and other pressure. Most workers can see how unions have contributed to the destruction of Detroit, U.S. steel makers and so many other industries. That’s why unions need government-sanctioned coercion to prevail both against business and with workers.

The editorial is of course right about the glaring double standard, but even it understates the scope of this union hypocrisy, which goes far beyond simply the millions of dollars in direct taxpayer dollars that flow into union coffers.

Of course, Big Labor’s massive power depends entirely on its government-granted privilege to force workers to accept its "representation"and then (in states without Right to Work laws) force workers to pay dues to union bosses or be fired.

For a full list of Big Labor’s government-granted special powers, see this list.

Lou Dobbs’ recent report on Card Check featured an interview with Committee and Foundation President Mark Mix. Check out the video for a full account of union bosses’ extensive political connections to the Obama Administration and Capitol Hill, as well as their ambitious legislative priorities:

Former solicitor of labor Eugene Scalia takes to the pages of today’s Wall Street Journal to argue against Big Labor’s Card Check scheme. His op-ed explodes the myth that jettisoning the secret ballot will somehow reduce workplace intimidation:

…unions don’t want to eliminate voter intimidation — they want a monopoly on it. If secret-ballot elections aren’t required, then employers won’t get automatic notice that an organizing campaign is underway. They will have less opportunity to exercise their constitutional right to speak to employees about the legitimate reasons that many workers choose not to unionize. Union organizers, on the other hand, could visit employees at their homes or stop them in the parking lot and "encourage" them to choose to unionize on the spot. Employees are still voting — their authorization cards are binding — but now their vote is supervised by union organizers, not the federal government.

EFCA’s supporters argue that when a worker attends a company meeting and hears how his managers dislike unions, days later when he casts a secret vote in an election overseen by federal authorities, he’ll be afraid to vote his conscience. Well if that’s true, imagine how much "free choice" this gentle soul will feel when four of his co-workers surround him at the hardware store, stick an authorization card and pen in his hand, and ask if he’s for them or against them.

Read the whole thing here.

Regular Freedom@Work readers already know that AFL-CIO bosses just spent a week at a luxurious beachfront resort in Miami with VP Biden and Secretary of Labor Solis. Now they want the Department of Labor to rescind simple disclosure guidelines that would help rank-and-file workers learn when they’re funding extravagant union getaways. Check out the National Right to Work video with Committee and Foundation President Mark Mix for more information:

The Foundation’s press release urging the Department to retain union disclosure regulations can be found here.

The National Right to Work Foundation provides free legal aid to employees so they can fight back against union coercion and abuse.

The Foundation must rely on the voluntary support of individual Americans who believe in our cause and wish to advance our strategic litigation program. To make a fully tax-deductible donation in whatever amount, please click here.

Last week, Big Labor’s bought-and-paid-for politicians in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate introduced the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill. This Big Labor-endorsed compulsory unionism scheme is intended to give federal government bureaucrats the unprecedented power to impose wages and working conditions, including forced union dues, on employees and employers after workers are herded into union collectives without even a secret ballot election.

Neal Catlett, former union president at a Whirlpool plant in Arkansas, spoke out against Big Labor’s card check coercion:

Catlett, now retired from Whirlpool, opposes card check. He told The City Wire that he has seen plenty of “nonsense” among Whirlpool leaders and union leaders to know that anything other than a secret ballot will lead to intimidation, coercion and corruption on all sides.

“I strongly support secret ballots. Period. It doesn’t matter at what level, whether it is voting for a union or the president or your congressman,” Catlett said. “Your ideas should be personal as to if you want a union or don’t want a union.”

Card check is a dangerous encroachment on workers’ rights in the workplace and opens up the door for a flood of union intimidation and coercion to force more workers into forced-union-dues-paying ranks. Carlett, discrediting any claim that the legislation protects workers based on his own personal experience as a union president, hit the nail on the head when he stated:

“Doing away with the secret ballot is not good for the unions. It’s not good for any business… Open voting creates an atmosphere of intimidation. It creates an atmosphere where people will use your opinion against you. I’ve seen the threats and I’ve actually seen the physical conflict, if you know what I mean, come from the business side and from the union side,” Catlett said. “I just don’t see how any process that is not private will protect the worker.”

Frankly, we suggest Cartlett hire a bodyguard immediately.  We’re not kidding.  Union retribution can be swift and ugly.

Here at Freedom@Work, we spend a lot of time documenting union bosses’ shameless hypocrisy, but this latest incident (almost) surprised even us. The powerful Service Employees International Union (SEIU) recently fired 75 staffers. But why is an organization that collects hundreds of millions of dollars in easy money (forced dues) per year cutting jobs now, in the midst of a devastating economic recession? Simple – they want even more cash for political lobbying:

"It’s completely hypocritical," said staff union President Malcolm Harris…

Harris said his union’s understanding is that the layoffs are the result of budget troubles faced by SEIU, which, on top of the California dispute, spent $80 million during the 2008 election and is planning to spend tens of millions more to advocate on behalf of Obama’s health-care plan and card check.

The entire sordid episode is sadly reminiscent of the SEIU’s election-year shenanigans, when the union hierarchy threw in the towel on the notion of hands-on employee assistance, replacing a help line with a remote call center — the goal being to free up even more resources for political campaigning.

And now, yet again, SEIU bosses are demonstrating that they are more concerned with politics and forced-dues dollars than looking out the working man. 

(Via National Review)