At Freedom@Work, we’ve spent plenty of time documenting the many problems of public sector forced unionism, including the fiscal abyss it is plunging state and local governments into. But even reports of an impending budget crisis don’t have quite the same impact as a video of teacher union militants demanding more tax dollars:

As George Will notes in his latest Newsweek column, eventually, the bills come due. California’s looming budget crisis is largely the result of public sector union bosses, whose profligate spending risks pushing the entire state into bankruptcy:

California’s parlous condition owes much to burdensome health-care and pension promises negotiated with public employees’ unions, promises that are suffocating the state’s economic growth.

. . .
They [public sector unions] are government organized as an interest group to lobby itself for ever-larger portions of wealth extracted by the taxing power from the private sector.

Unfortunately, this trend threatens to spread other states. For the first time ever, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that public sector unionization outstrips private sector unionization, as Big Labor increasingly turns to government to bolster its forced-dues-paying ranks. The financial consequences of this development could be dire (emphasis mine):

Fred Siegel, a visiting professor of history at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute . . . said, “There were enormous political ramifications” to the fact that public-sector workers are now the majority in organized labor.

“At the same time the country is being squeezed, public-sector unions are a rising political force in the Democratic Party,” he said. “They depend on extra money for the public sector,and that puts the Democrats in a difficult position. In four big states — New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California — the public-sector unions have largely been untouched by the economic downturn. In those states, you have an impending clash between the public-sector unions and the public at large.”

As union operatives become more entrenched at every level of government their immense special privileges allow them to corral more money for extortionate dues payments. As a result, taxes go up and public services become more expensive, leaving over-burdened taxpayers to foot the bill.

The latest Big Labor scheme to accelerate this trend is the Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill, which 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 be able to use their influence over firefighters and police departments to further entrench their monopoly bargaining powers. 

Last week, Joseph Rago noted in the Wall Street Journal the latest union boss payoff by the Obama Administration (emphasis added):

White House payoffs to big labor are by now routine, though rarely are they this transparent: This week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rolled out a new program that, scrubbed down, amounts to a slush fund for union health plans.

When Democrats realized that ObamaCare’s approval numbers were sagging, they loaded the bill up with "early deliverables"—programs that would go into effect immediately, rather than the five or more years of delay used to hide the bill’s true costs. One of those early deliverables was $5 billion in subsidies to early retirees aged 55 to 64 who incur annual health costs over $15,000.

Ms. Sebelius did her best to dress this reinsurance program up in a public-interest blanket, but many of the 3.3 million eligible retirees are ex-union workers who extracted generous benefits from some of America’s most hardpressed industries. Businesses that doled out these unaffordable promises will be delighted with the federal handout, taxpayers less so. And also eligible are retired state and local public employees, as well as certain health-care trusts like one recently set up by the United Auto Workers, which has an estimated 30 cents in cash for every dollar of expected claims.

National Right to Work president Mark Mix called ObamaCare a "a Trojan Horse for more forced unionization" in the Journal last September.  Among other hidden payoffs to Big Labor, Mix noted the discretionary authority given to Sebelius and a provision to bail out insolvent union health-care plans.  

This latest scheme is unsurprising.  And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

National Right to Work staff attorneys have filed a formal amicus curiae brief supporting an appeal in US District Court that challenges a California project labor agreement (PLA) that gives construction union officials new tools to coerce employees and employers who look to bid and perform state-funded construction projects.

Arguing that a PLA between the Rancho Santiago Community College District and a union illegally discriminated against construction workers who exercise their right to refrain from union membership, Foundation attorneys are defending the interests of the vast majority of construction employees in California who have opted against unionization.

Rancho Santiago and the Los Angeles/Orange Counties Building and Construction Trades Council (CTC) union entered into the PLA in 2004, which effectively precluded nonunion apprentices and contractors from working on over 50 construction projects funded by the public agency worth over $300 million. The Foundation-supported appeal challenges this and similar policies to open up the bidding process to all construction workers and contractors.

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.