When US Airways Flight 1549 crash-landed in the middle of the Hudson River last week, union apologists quickly claimed that the passengers’ harrowing rescue was a result of union procedures. I wonder what they’d say about this troubling story from the Boston Herald?

A bitter feud between Mayor Thomas M. Menino and the firefighters’ union blocked swift action to fill critical maintenance jobs until doomed Ladder 26 barreled into a building killing a Boston jake, both sides acknowledge.

Local 718 president Ed Kelly called the mayor’s move to fill slots open since 2007 a smokescreen for months of inaction ended by Lt. Kevin Kelley’s death.

Why wasn’t the firefighters’ equipment properly maintained? Instead hiring independent mechanics, city union bosses were more concerned with shoving workers into Big Labor’s forced dues-paying ranks (emphasis mine):

Menino yesterday ordered Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser to fill long-vacant mechanic positions nearly eight months after Fraser publicly raised concerns about inadequate staffing at a City Council hearing.

“I don’t think we’re adequately prepared to maintain our apparatus fleet the way we should,” Fraser told councilors at a May budget hearing.

Asked why it took so long to authorize Fraser to hire outside of the firefighters’ union, Menino said union rules blocked him but now he was taking bold action to assure firefighter safety.

“With a union workforce, you have to negotiate any changes,” Menino said. “I see an emergency and I’m going to do something about it.”

Menino’s action could spur a union grievance. The new mechanics will belong to a city union but not Local 718.

Kelly supports hiring mechanics but insists anyone responsible for firefighter safety belong to Local 718.

So the union boss put the expansion of his forced dues revenue stream before the safety of the public — and even the firefighters he claims to "represent." Just another example why forcing our nation’s public safety officials into union’s compulsory unionism ranks is a bad idea.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reports that the SEIU-dominated "Change to Win" coalition and the AFL-CIO are considering a merger. The stated rationale for the proposed deal — to improve "organizing" activities — is all the more ironic in light of Change to Win’s original decision to break-off from the AFL-CIO. Top bosses from the SEIU, Teamsters, and several other unions claimed left the AFL-CIO to form Change to Win because they wanted to focus on workplace organizing.

The result of this decision speaks volumes about the priorities of union bosses: instead of adressing workers’ needs, Change to Win used forced union dues to become one of the most powerful and aggressive political organizations in the United States. According to Stan Greer, a policy analyst at the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, the SEIU hierarchy even implemented a national call center for worker complaints last year in order to free up virtually all union bosses to do full-time electioneering.

The moral of the story? Any union boss reorganization plan is purely cosmetic — it’s all a big side show. The SEIU, Teamsters, and the AFL-CIO will continue to focus their efforts on expanding the scope of compulsory unionism through the political process no matter what.

Foundation VP Stefan Gleason sits down with Professor Bruce Cameron, a Foundation litigator and member of the Regent University Law School faculty, to discuss a money laundering scheme used by the National Education Association to help elect Barack Obama. The MP3 is here.

According to a complaint being submitted by Foundation attorneys to the Federal Election Commission, the NEA illegally laundered teachers’ dues into a union political action committee. Adding insult to injury, when confronted by teachers, union officials tried to dupe them into thinking they were contributing to a "children’s fund."

We’ve already told you about the hypocrisy of Representative Hilda Solis (D-CA), President-elect Obama’s pick to head the Department of Labor, on the secret ballot, and about how Solis as Secretary of Labor is likely to support cuts to the Office of Labor-Management Standards, which investigates union corruption. On Friday, Solis appeared before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. The Ted Kennedy-led committee is presiding over Solis’ nomination.

The LA Times has a good rundown of the hearings. Importantly,

Solis also was pressed by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) about preserving "right to work" laws in states such as his that prohibit employers from requiring workers to be members of a union or to pay dues as condition of employment.

But Solis told Alexander she was "not qualified" to give him a response on the issue, except to say that she believed "that the president-elect feels strongly that American workers should have a choice to join or not to join a union. And to me that is the basic premise of our democracy, whether you want to be associated with a group or not."

Empahsis mine.

The incoming Labor Secretary, if she is to be taken at her word, believes that freedom of association is a basic right of American democracy. This is precisely what the Right to Work principle is — that no worker should be forced to join or pay dues to a union to get or keep a job.

Unfortunately, Right to Work wasn’t the only important issue Solis felt "not qualified" or otherwise unable to articulate her own position or that of President-elect Obama. Solis dodged key questions about the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives, mandatory first contract arbitration, the abuse of prevailing wage rules, and union boss corruption.

So what is she qualified to do, exactly? With her vacuousness on full display last Friday, it is increasingly apparent that her main "qualification" to be Secretary of Labor may simply be being good at doing exactly what she’s told by union bosses.

Yesterday’s Politico featured an article on Big Labor’s agenda for 2009 (which the SEIU union just announced that alone it plans to spend $85 million to push for). As we already know, priority one is imposing the card check organizing mandate that leads to intimidation and harassment of workers who may not wish to affiliate with a union.

The whole article is worth reading, however one particular quote is instructive about the state of Big Labor and union organizing today:

“For American labor, 2009 will be a big year,” McEntee said. “We have a new administration. We have governors all across the country who are looking toward being able to organize more workers in red states that have become blue.”

Notice that McEntee, who is the top official at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union, says that it will be politicians who unionize workers.

This is the dirty little secret: It’s increasingly uncommon for employees to seek unionization on their own.  Instead, most "organizing" takes place because union officials target workers for unionization from the outside top down-style, often with Big Labor supported politicians playing a central role.

Two of the many examples of this are the Maine State workers being represented by Foundation attorneys in the Locke U.S. Supreme Court case and the home and health care workers in Illinois who were forced into union ranks by disgraced Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich. In both those cases, the union was designated by Big Labor-friendly governors — rather than selected by the workers.

Today the New York Times published a letter to the editor from union activist Wilma Liebman, who as a member of the National Labor Relations Board has testified before Congress on behalf of the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (a.k.a. the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill) and complaining about individual rights. In the letter, Liebman writes:

Labor policy is indeed a long-neglected arena, ripe for the intervention of President-elect Barack Obama. What the editorial doesn’t mention is the opportunity to revitalize the National Labor Relations Board, which administers the main federal labor law.

During the Bush administration, nearly every policy choice made by a sharply divided board impeded collective bargaining, created obstacles to union representation or favored employer interests. Not surprisingly, the board has lost legitimacy.

But how can the board be legitimate when a member of the Board spends her free time bashing the very law she is supposed impartially to enforce while campaigning — in Congress, in "academic" journals, in the letters section of the Times — to rewrite it.

One wonders how an employee could expect Liebman (who previously worked as a union lawyer) to fairly apply the law in a case where union intimidation restrains an employee’s free choice to not associate with a union. Surely in most other fora, judges would recuse themselves in such cases.  (In fact, it may be appropriate for legal counsel to seek Liebman’s recusal if they believe her naked union activism has forfeited her objectivity.)

Member Liebman can parrot Big Labor talking points all she wants, but the fact remains that she routinely displays an ugly disdain for true employee free choice — the right for each employee to decide on his or her own, without being intimidated by a union organizer, whether to join or pay dues to a union.

In our latest podcast, Foundation attorney Bruce Cameron sits down with radio host Phil Heimlich to discuss the plight of two Ohio teachers whose religious beliefs compelled them to object to their union’s controversial political advocacy.

Today, columnist Michelle Malkin did a follow up piece on the United Autoworkers (UAW) union for-profit "championship caliber" golf course and "family education center" that has lost over $23 million in the past five years. Malkin examined the financial reports of the UAW union and found that UAW forced union dues expenditures are going into a lot more than the $33 million golf course and "family education center":

In May and November 2007, the UAW forked over nearly $53,000 for union staff meetings at the Thousand Hills Golf Resort in Branson, Mo. In September 2007, the UAW dropped another $5,000 at the Lakes of Taylor Golf Club in Taylor, Mich., and another $9,000 at the Thunderbird Hills Golf Club in Huron, Ohio. Another bill for $5,772 showed up for the Branson, Mo., golf resort. On Oct. 26, 2007, the union spent $5,000 on another "golf outing" in Detroit. In May and June 2007, UAW bosses spent nearly $11,000 on a golf tournament and related expenses at the Hawthorne Hill Country Club in Lima, Ohio. And in April 2007, the UAW spent $12,000 for a charity golf sponsorship in Dearborn, Mich. In August 2007, the UAW paid nearly $10,000 to its for-profit Black Lake golf course operator, UBG, for something itemized as "Golf 2007 Summer School." UBG had nearly $4.4 million worth of outstanding loans from the union. Another for-profit entity that runs the education center, UBE, had nearly $20 million in outstanding loans from the union.

Malkin also points to other so-called "investments" made by UAW union bosses using forced union dues, including a $9.75 million bid made by former UAW union president Steve Yokich to buy a 100-room resort and spa, a $14.7 million "investment" in a failed airline, and $5 million "investment" in a failed liberal talk radio station.

While UAW union officials make bank being subsidized by employees’ forced union dues, they spend millions of dollars on their fat cat lifestyles; and then they have the audacity to demand the American taxpayers foot the bill in the form of a bailout for companies the UAW’s forced unionism stranglehold is helping drive into bankruptcy.

The government should bail out the workers by releasing them from forced union dues.  Then they would have the freedom to choose whether or not to hand over their hard-earned money to financially support the UAW bosses’ ponzi schemes.

The latest edition of Foundation Action is now available online as a free download.
This month’s issue covers a number of topics related to employee freedom in the workplace, including oral arguments from the Foundation’s latest Supreme Court case and a recent legal victory that netted Georgia workers over $250,000 in refunds of dues illegally seized.

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