Last week, AFL-CIO bosses viciously accused the grassroots citizens who are increasingly alarmed about unfolding Big Government power grabs (and who are expressing their legitimate concerns at Congressional town hall meetings on government run health care) of orchestrating "extremist disruptions" in coordination with "a growing number of health care reform opponents, including Republican leaders trying to kill President Obama’s reform initiatives."

AFL-CIO operatives are convinced that these so-called "extremist disruptions" are meant "to kill health care reform, not debate it, not refine it, not find a middle ground, just kill it."

Richard Trumka, AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer and heir apparent to AFL-CIO chieftain John Sweeney, had this to say:

"Mob rule is not a democracy. People have a democratic right to express themselves and our elected leaders have a right to hear from their constituents — not organized thugs whose sole purpose is to shut down the conversation and attempt to scare our leaders into inaction."

Such over-the-top hyperbole might be dismissed if it didn’t come from someone who makes his living coercing and intimidating. After all, union bosses are the ones known for intimidating and shouting-down people who refuse to toe the union line. When anyone questions Big Labor’s government-granted special privileges, union bosses frequently resort to intimidation, harassment, or worse to end the discussion.

And Trumka himself has tacitly endorsed such thuggery. Here’s how he responded to reports of UMW union violence against independent-minded workers:

"I’m saying if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger."

The presumptive AFL-CIO president Trumka isn’t the only culprit, of course. When California teachers Judy Liegmann and Jeralee Smith spoke out against forced union dues for politics, union bosses rounded up a mob of union toughs to shout down and intimidate them.  As Ms. Liegmann and Ms. Smith bravely announced their opposition to funding union political activism, union militants chanted "shame on you" while other Big Labor goons booed and hurled insults. This sounds like REAL "extremist disruption" to me. 

Union bosses are trying to downplay the impact of their ‘Card Check Forced Unionism’ legislation in Right to Work states.  While Right to Work laws are critical in protecting employees from forced union dues and in creating jobs and a higher standard of living, the fact is they do not deter coercive union organizing and other types of union abuse. The National Right to Work Foundation has released a short backgrounder on this topic, which is now available for download here.

Although state Right to Work laws do ensure that no worker can be forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment, card check organizing campaigns make it dramatically easier for Big Labor to install union cronies in workplaces across the country. The end result is that even in Right to Work states, employees can be forced to accept union "representation" — where union bosses may dictate the terms and conditions of their employment.

Read the whole thing for a clearer picture of how card check legislation will impact workers’ livelihoods across the country, even if they live in Right to Work states.

This week, the National Right to Work Foundation received an anonymous letter from an American worker who has been a union member for 30 years and recently came around to supporting the Right to Work principle after witnessing horrific union boss corruption and government bailouts of forced unionism.

But after watching the auto industry go through bankruptcies and then STILL seeing the same corrupt practices go on, I feel like I am getting screwed TWICE!  Once as a taxpayer and once as a dues paying union member!

…

In Right to Work states, union dues are paid only by those members who feel like they are being represented.  That would make the unions honest and do their jobs like they are paid to!

…

I don’t dare sign this letter.  The retaliation would cost me my job, my safety and my sanity!

I am not alone, there are many that feel this way but are too scared to speak up.

This anonymous writer offers a good reminder of what the Right to Work principle is all about — true freedom in the workplace.  Read the full letter here.

Here at Freedom@Work, we’ve spent some time documenting the Obama Administration’s efforts to gut basic union transparency guidelines under the guise of saving money. We’ve also urged concerned readers to get involved to help stop the Department of Labor from rolling back transparency requirements aimed at curbing Big Labor’s corrupt practices. Unfortunately, the worst may be yet to come — the Administration has just announced its potential plans to close the Employment Standards Administration, an office tasked with rooting out union corruption:

The Obama Administration has found a way to cut $100 million from the federal budget and one of the items on the chopping block is an office inside the Department of Labor that conducts oversight of labor unions.

Pursuant to President Obama’s April order that federal agencies come up with away to eliminate $100 million in wasteful spending, White House Budget Chief Peter Orzsag and Cabinet Secretary Christopher Lu issued a 20-page list of items to cut to the president on Monday.

One of the proposed cost-saving measures is the disbanding of the Employment Standards Administration (page 11 in the link), an office in the Department of Labor that has the power to audit and investigate labor unions for corruption and embezzlement.

While transparency is no substitute for rolling back union bosses’ many government-granted privileges, the Administration’s eagerness to give its Big Labor allies a free pass on financial disclosure shows a callous disregard for the rank-and-file workers whose money union bosses are spending. So long as workers across the country are being forced to pay union dues just to keep their jobs, they should be getting more information about how their seized dues are being spent, not less.

When Nashua, New Hampshire postal worker Philip Wakeman paid dues to the National Post Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU), a division of the Laborers’ International Union, he had no idea that union bosses would illegally launder his money into their political coffers.

In July 2006, Mr. Wakeman gave a check to the NPMHU union for the full amount of his annual union dues. On the "Memo" line at the bottom of the check, he wrote "Union Dues."  A union official later acknowledged receipt of the dues and everything seemed fine – that is – until he received a bizarre phone call.

In October 2008, over two years after submitting the check to the NPMHU union, a stranger informed Wakeman that she found his information on the internet and suggested he do a "Google" internet search of his name. The search results were astounding:  Mr. Wakeman found his name disclosed as making a contribution in the exact amount of his annual NPMHU union membership dues to the NPMHU Political Action Committee (PAC) – all without his knowledge.

Apparently NPMHU union bosses had illegally diverted his dues payment to the union’s PAC.  Wakeman contacted the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and Foundation attorneys filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. 

It is illegal for union officials to fund union PACs using "dues, fees, or other moneys required as a condition of membership in a labor organization."  NPMHU union bosses are also accused of violating federal election law by making a political campaign contribution in another person’s name and failing to inform Mr. Wakeman that his membership dues would be used for political purposes.

To read the Foundation’s media release regarding the FEC complaint, click here.

To read the FEC complaint, click here.

The National Right to Work Foundation assembled a crack team of experts to construct a revolutionary new device that translates union boss propaganda into plain English. We decided to test the prototype on a recent speech from a top teacher union lawyer – click on the video below to watch the results:

As always, be sure to check back regularly at the Foundation’s YouTube Channel for more Right to Work video updates. 

In case you missed it, earlier this month the Washington Examiner reported that from 2005 to 2008, Big Labor’s big money boys have funneled nearly $10 million from forced-dues-fueled union treasuries to the scandal-ridden Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (popularly known as "ACORN") and its affiliates.

According to the report, leading the way is the scandal-plauged Service Employees International Union (SEIU), doling out a whopping $7.4 million; followed by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the Longshore and Warehouse Union, the Communication Workers of America (CWA), and the National Education Association (NEA) unions. The Examiner also notes:

SEIU Locals 100 and 880 were listed as allied organizations on ACORN’s web site until The Examiner highlighted this connection.

LM-2’s show over $600,000 in contributions between these SEIU locals and other ACORN operations. A 2007 LM-2 form shows SEIU Local 880, which is active in Illinois and Minnesota, donated $60,118 to ACORN for "membership services." Organized labor has kicked it back in the form of gifts and grants to ACORN totaling $2.4 million, according to the disclosure forms.

ACORN activists have participated in highly aggressive, well-coordinated anti-corporate campaigns across the country unofficially called “Muscle for Money” funded by SEIU.

In other words, SEIU union kingpins shelled out top dollar for ACORN activists to conduct corporate shakedown campaigns, with tactics that include crashing business meetings and harassing company officials and their families at their own homes, to extract corporate donations and intimidate employers into accepting the Big Labor syndicate’s compulsory unionism agenda (which prominently includes forcing the companies’ workers into union ranks).

One must wonder if the workers who are "represented" by SEIU union bosses are even aware that their dues are funding a "mob-style ‘protection’ racket."

To learn about your rights, including your right to opt out of paying union dues which union bosses use on non-bargaining activities such as union politics, lobbying, and member-only events, please check out the Foundation’s "Know Your Rights" page here.

Earlier this month, AFL-CIO union chief John Sweeney sunk his teeth into Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Charity in Truth, which addresses the global economy and, in part, the role of unions — and that nation’s largest union boss umbrella organization even insinuated that the Vatican supports passage of the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill.

But it’s worth revisiting the Catholic Church’s teachings on human freedom, autonomy, and politics.  Several years ago, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorney Richard Clair compiled an educational dossier on Catholicism, unions, and Right to Work.  For instance, in 1981, Pope John Paul II wrote about unions:

[T]he number of associations of almost every possible kind, especially of associations of workers, is now far greater than ever before. . . . But the opinion is, and it is one confirmed by a good deal of evidence, that they are largely under the control of secret leaders and that these leaders apply principles which are in harmony with neither Christianity nor the welfare of States, and that, after having possession of all available work, they contrive that those who refuse to join with them will be forced by want to pay the penalty.  Under these circumstances, workers who are Christians must choose one of two things; either to join associations in which it is greatly to be feared that there is danger to religion, or to form their own associations and unite their forces in such a way that they may be able manfully to free themselves from such unjust and intolerable oppression. Can they who refuse to place man’s highest good in imminent jeopardy hesitate to affirm that the second course is by all means to be followed?

Emphasis added.  Right to Work laws protect true freedom of association for Christians and non-Christians alike, allowing them to act on their conscience if they disagree with a union’s practices.  Moreover, once a workplace is unionized, monopoly bargaining provisions in labor law actually ban dissenting employees, including Christians, to form their own associations or unions to negotiate with employer.

John Paul also addressed the destructive effects of the politicization of unions:

[T]he role of unions is not to "play politics" in the sense that the expression is commonly understood today. Unions do not have the character of political parties struggling for power; they should not be subjected to the decision of political parties or have too close links with them. In fact, in such a situation they easily lose contact with their specific role, which is to secure the just rights of workers within the framework of the common good of the whole of society; instead they become an instrument used for other purposes.

In total, Big Labor spent well over one billion dollars in the 2008 election cycle to elect their favored candidates.  And now, their favored politicians are rewarding the union bosses by slashing union financial transparency regulations and appointing union chiefs and their allies to key positions in the Department of Labor, National Labor Relations Board, and other agencies and offices.

Furthermore, Clair notes that other aspects of Big Labor’s politicking tend to diverge from other Catholic teachings:

Eventually, [University of Detroit professor Robert] Roesser discovered that the NEA union was heavily involved in promoting abortion rights. When he thought about his dues money going to an organization with such an immoral agenda and compared it with the "Vatican Declaration on Abortion," which says that it is a serious sin to "take part in a propaganda campaign in favor of such a law," as well as "Christ Speaks Through His Church About Abortion" and the 1895 encyclical of Pope Leo XIII on Catholicism in the United States titled, "Longinqua," he came to the conclusion that, in good conscience, he could no longer financially support the NEA and the MEA, the state and national levels that were involved in promoting abortion rights.

Roesser asked the NEA union brass if he could pay his fees to a charity instead, but the union bosses refused to accommodate his religious objection and had him fired (he eventually prevailed in the courts with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation).

Read the rest of "Catholic Social Teaching and Right to Work" here (PDF).

The National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) has just published an eye-opening fact sheet revealing the dangers of Big Labor’s latest push to use the U.S. Congress to impose union monopoly bargaining and forced dues on public safety workers in cash-strapped states and localities.

Never satisfied with the special privileges already granted to them by their bought-and-paid-for lackeys at all levels of government, union bosses are pushing alarming new federal legislative proposals that increase their stranglehold on otherwise independent-minded workers, such as the draconian Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining bill (H.R. 413).  States have rejected similar legislation dozens of time in recent year.  (In fact, Big Labor-backed Democrat Governor Bill Ritter in Colorado vetoed such a bill at the request of cash-strapped mayors).

The Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining bill would allow public safety union bosses to seize monopoly bargaining privileges over public safety employees who otherwise have chosen to refrain from being represented by or  financially supporting a union. Union officials would gain new powers in 28 states to become  "exclusive bargaining agents" of all public safety employees at a unionized workplace, thereby depriving the employees of the right to make their own individual employment contracts.

According to NILRR:

The only policies acceptable under this measure are those that empower union bosses to bargain on behalf of police and firefighters who have refused to join the union and want nothing to do with it, as well as those who have voluntarily joined.

…H.R. 413 would rewrite the public-sector labor laws of the vast majority of the 50 states to make them more pro-forced unionism.

In states that don’t currently authorize public-safety monopoly bargaining, H.R. 413 would impose it, denying localities the option to refuse to grant a single union the power to speak for all front-line employees, including those who don’t want to join. And in most states that already authorize union monopoly bargaining, H.R. 413 would widen its scope.

To view NILRR’s fact sheet, click here.

Employees Force Settlement in Precedent-Setting Federal Union Racketeering Lawsuit

Right to Work Foundation uses innovative legal techniques after company and union officials collude to enrich union bosses

Phoenix, AZ (July 22, 2009) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, five Phoenix-based employees who refrained from formal dues-paying union membership forced a settlement with the defendants in a federal lawsuit laying out how union agents conducted a corrupt scheme to divert sales commissions from the employees to union officials.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys used the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) anti-corruption statute (establishing new legal precedent in the process) and the Labor Management Relations Act (LMRA) to attack a scheme allegedly orchestrated by Qwest Communications and Dex Media, publisher of the yellow pages phone books, and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1269 union bosses.

Evidence discovered in the lawsuit showed that IBEW Local 1269 union officials manipulated company procedures to receive greater compensation at the expense of the nonunion plaintiffs. Some of the methods used to increase the union agents’ compensation included reassigning accounts from nonunion employees to union officials, giving union agents “double commissions” for sales made by other workers, and allowing union officials to regularly sell lucrative “group ads” while denying similar opportunities to nonmember employees. By knowingly aiding union agents as they manipulated company rules to increase their performance-based pay, Qwest and Dex were accused of bribing union officials to act against workers’ interests in bargaining negotiations.

(Continue reading this news release…)