Last week, Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work, pointed out in Investor’s Business Daily that the real issue in the ongoing battles between Big Labor and reform-minded public officials in various states across the country is getting lost in the union bosses’ self-serving rhetoric.

As Mix notes, given the media coverage of the battle in Wisconsin:

Americans learning about organized labor’s battles in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states from TV, radio and newspaper reports may understandably be confused about what is at stake, especially if they have no personal experience with unions themselves. From afar, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that public employees’ right to join a union is at stake.

Of course a worker’s right to join a union is not the issue at all. The real issue at stake is that Big Labor enjoys numerous government-granted special privileges at the expense of workers’ individual rights:

…What reform-minded elected officials are seeking to curtail, and in
some cases even abolish, is government union chiefs’ legal power to
force public servants into a union as a condition of employment.

Under the current labor laws of nearly half of the states, government union officials have been explicitly authorized to force all public employees in a workplace to pay union dues or be fired, as long as a majority of their fellow employees (among those expressing an opinion) support unionization.

Such forced-unionism laws, which Big Labor is now fighting furiously to keep on the books in the face of increasingly intense public opposition, actually trample on, rather than protect, employees’ freedom to make personal decisions about unionism.

And that’s the point. So next time you hear union bosses like Richard Trumka shouting about "protecting workers’ rights," it’s important to keep in mind that what he really means is "protecting union bosses’ special powers."

Over the past week, Right to Work President Mark Mix was interviewed on several radio programs about public sector unionism and the protests in Wisconsin. First, here’s Mix on Savage Nation. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:

Mix also appeared on the nationally-syndicated Lars Larson show. Click here to listen or use the player below:

Mix was also interviewed for the ‘Coffee and Markets’ podcast. You can listen to that here.

As always, you can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.  

On WSAU-AM Central Wisconsin Morning News, Right to Work President Mark Mix explains why ending union monopoly bargaining privileges is so important as Wisconsin faces widespread, union-instigated protests. 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.  

 Gary Davenport with his wife and three children at the U.S. Supreme Court.

As a result of the National Right to Work Foundation’s precedent-setting victory before the United States Supreme Court in Davenport v. WEA, Washington state’s teachers are receiving compensation for the forced unionism abuses and First Amendment rights violations they suffered at the hands of teacher union officials.

In 2001, Gary Davenport, a history teacher at Kentwood High School, and fellow teachers across the state of Washington who refrained from formal union membership, were being forced to pay $500 or more each per year in fees for the Washington Education Association (WEA) union bosses’ so-called “representation” because their state does not have Right to Work protections for its workers.

It was then that Davenport discovered that WEA union officials were illegally using his and some 10,000 other nonmember teachers’ forced union dues for the union bosses’ political agenda.

After a protracted legal battle in various courts, the U.S. Supreme Court finally weighed in. The Court unanimously ruled in favor of the teachers, declaring unions have no constitutional right to collect fees from nonmembers and allowing states to require union bosses to obtain affirmative consent before spending nonmember public employees’ forced fees on political activities.

After the case went back to state court, WEA union bosses finally settled with the teachers and agreed to refund the dues that were improperly confiscated.

The checks (some of which are pictured below) were sent to thousands of Washington teachers last week.

 

For more information regarding the National Right To Work Foundation’s history-shaping legal precedents on behalf of abused workers, click here.

In an editorial yesterday, the Wall Street Journal made both the moral and economic case for states to end forced unionism by passing Right to Work laws:

Contrary to much union rhetoric, right-to-work laws don’t ban or bust unions. They simply grant individual workers the right to join or not to join, even once a workplace is organized by a union. Workers who decline to join the union can’t be forced to have dues taken out of their paycheck and thus used to finance union political campaigns. Most right-to-work states are in the South and West, and only Oklahoma has adopted this freedom to choose in the last 20 years.

Right-to-work states outperform forced-union states in almost every measurable category of worker well-being. A new study in the Cato Journal by economist Richard Vedder finds that from 2000 to 2008 some 4.7 million Americans moved from forced-union to right-to-work states.

The study also found that from 1977 through 2007 there was "a very strong and highly statistically significant relationship between right-to-work laws and economic growth." Right-to-work states experienced a 23% faster rise in per capita income over that period. The two regions that have lost the most jobs in recent years, the once-industrial Northeast and Midwest, are mostly forced-union states.

These arguments demonstrate why poll after poll shows that 80 percent of Americans — even rank-and-file union members — support the Right to Work principle. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal warns, politicians who claim they agree could instead appease the union bosses:

[Indiana Governor Mitch] Daniels adds that the lack of a right-to-work law "does hold us back economically. There is no doubt about it." He estimates that when competing with Southern states for businesses, "a very large number—perhaps as many as a quarter—of the deals we don’t get a shot at are for just this reason."

This damage has motivated Indiana Republicans, who now control both legislature chambers, to announce that they want to pass a right-to-work law. Unions immediately went to Defcon 1, Democrats are up in arms, and Republicans could yet buckle under this union pressure. Even Mr. Daniels, who has stood up to union opposition in the past, seems hesitant. He told the Indianapolis Star that right to work "may be worth a look," but he added it "is not on my agenda." He’s worried that the issue so antagonizes unions that it could derail the rest of his legislative agenda.

We hope Republicans don’t flinch. Right-to-work laws make states more economically competitive, but the bigger issue is about individual rights. Workers should have the right to join a union but also the right not to. Indiana and other states with new Republican majorities have a rare opportunity to pass a major reform that will reduce union power, help to attract new jobs, and liberate workers from union coercion.

Read the rest of the editorial here (subscription required).

As Indiana’s state legislators discuss the merits of passing Right to Work protections for Hoosier workers, a group of scholars released a study last week confirming (pdf) workers and their families in Right to Work states benefit from workplace freedom in a very tangible way. From a press release announcing their findings:

Improving the per-capita income of Indiana workers and creating more job opportunities for Hoosiers would be among the major benefits of Indiana becoming the 23rd state to pass a right-to-work (RTW) law, according to research released today by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. In addition, statewide voter polling results show Hoosiers favoring adoption of RTW by a 3-to-1 margin.

Dr. Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economist, and his colleagues report in the study (Right-to-Work and Indiana’s Economic Future) that if Indiana had adopted RTW in 1977, per-capita income would have been $2,925 higher — or $11,700 higher for a family of four – by 2008. Looking forward (projecting the same growth rate in the next 10 years after adjusting for inflation), passage of a RTW law in 2011 would raise per capita income by $968 — or $3,872 for a family of four — by 2021.

The scholars conclude that a Right to Work law would benefit workers with greater job growth and real personal income. These results mirror the thorough research conducted by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR), which has found that families benefit from Right to Work laws with more job availability and higher expendable income. No wonder workers and their families are seeking greater workplace freedom, leaving forced unionism states in droves.

Right to Work President Mark Mix updates Greg Budell of Montgomery, Alabama’s News Talk 107.9 on several pressing issues related to the Right to Work movement, including the possibility of the Foundation’s landmark Dana decision being overturned by Obama’s NLRB. 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.  

For decades, Delta Air Lines flight attendants have repeatedly rebuked Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) union organizers’ efforts to take monopoly bargaining control over their workplaces.

Despite a recent intense union organizing campaign, AFA union officials have lost yet another union organizing election, but true to form, AFA union bosses refuse to leave this independent-minded group of employees alone due to their blind lust for more forced union dues dollars.

So yesterday, more than thirty flight attendants from across the country met outside the AFA union headquarters on their day off to send them a message: "Leave us alone!"

From one participating flight attendant:

Flight attendants [from] more than seven bases spent three hours in the wind and bitter cold. The bundled-up group marched in front of the Communications Workers of America building, the posh home of AFA… Each flight attendant carried homemade signs with messages, ranging from “Respect Our Choice,” to “No Means No” and “No Union, No Dues, No Problem.”

Hats (and beanies) off to this courageous group of independent-minded employees as they take a stand for their workplace rights.

Read more about how fed-up Delta flight attendants are taking the fight to AFA union bosses in the July/August 2010 edition (pdf) of National Right to Work’s newsletter, Foundation Action.

Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with nationally-syndicated radio host Lars Larson yesterday to discuss the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill, a Big Labor power grab that is poised to pass during the "lame duck" congressional session. 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.  

Today, Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work was published in the Washington Times regarding today’s U.S. Senate vote on Senator Harry Reid’s Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill (S. 3991). Despite voters sending a clear message to Washington last month, it appears some pro-forced unionism senators didn’t quite get the message:

If Mr. Reid cared one whit for what ordinary Americans think, he would respond to such electoral drubbings for his fellow Big Labor Democrats and GOP fellow travelers by backing away from federally mandated union-boss control over public-safety officers. Instead, he announced over the weekend that he will file for cloture and force a vote on this draconian bill on Wednesday. Among those voting will be 14 defeated or retiring senators who won’t be back in January.

Federalizing union monopoly bargaining over public-safety employees would be ill-advised under any circumstances, but at a time when taxes are already poised to skyrocket and cities and towns across America are already struggling to get through the worst fiscal crisis in decades, Congress would have to be incredibly reckless to enact this harmful legislation.

By tipping the scales even further in favor of government employment growth over job growth, S. 3991 could damage the hopes of reviving America’s private-sector economy. Moreover, as former Service Employees International Union second-in-command Anna Burger boasted, a federal public-safety union mandate would "create a national collective," i.e. monopoly, "bargaining standard for all [state and local] public workers."

Meanwhile, the Washington Post came out with a hard-hitting editorial against the bill:

…the Senate is about to take up a measure that might compound the financial predicament of state and local governments. Pushed by Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act would require all states to give police and fire unions "adequate" collective bargaining rights – as determined by the Federal Labor Relations Authority. Unions could sue states deemed "inadequate" in federal court. Mr. Reid is trying to get this measure through the lame-duck Congress as a reward to the firefighters’ union, which backed his reelection campaign. But it also enjoys support from several key Republicans. 

We share the sponsors’ high regard for first responders. But this measure would trample long-standing state autonomy in public-sector labor relations, to no obvious national purpose. Of the 10 states with the lowest violent crime rates in 2008, three did not require collective bargaining for police and one, Virginia, forbids it for all public employees.

The bill could disrupt the law in both Virginia and Maryland, the latter of which lets counties decide whether and how to bargain with employees. The predictable result would be higher costs for employee contracts or legal bills – or both – at precisely the moment when cash-strapped states and localities can least afford them.

It’s no wonder that the Fort Worth Star-Telegram declared today that "The Senate would do taxpayers a big favor by killing this bill."