Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected the appeal filed by union lawyers in Pichler v. UNITE (read the opinion here), which should result in union liability to pay a multi-million dollar damage award to employees.

The facts of the case are simple: UNITE operatives launched an organizing campaign against the Cintas Corporation, among others. As part of the campaign, UNITE operatives surveiled employee parking lots and recorded license plate numbers of parked cars (as well as cars entering and leaving). "Information brokers" then searched Department of Motor Vehicle records to obtain names and addresses corresponding to the cars.

Union organizers went to employees’ homes to pressure employees to sign union authorization cards intended to corral them into union ranks. By obtaining and using personal information from DMV records, UNITE operatives violated the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (text here).

This appellate ruling clears the path for the payment of $2,500 plus possible punitive damages for each violation. If the lower court allows class-wide relief to the nearly 2,000 affected employees, friends, and families who had their DMV records illegally accessed, we’re talking tens of millions of dollars.

But court records indicate that another 12,000 or so individuals’ personal information was obtained in violation of the DPPA — and these people are entirely unaware of this invasion of their privacy. That’s why Foundation attorneys have asked the courts for the right to do a one-time mailing to these thousands of other victims. That case is currently before the Third Circuit as well (for more information, read our appellate and reply briefs).

If your personal information was obtained illegally, wouldn’t you want to know about it?

Last week we reported on an attempt by National Media Board (NMB) bureaucrats to reposition the agency as a promoter of coercive "card check" union organizing. The NMB is a federal bureaucracy whose purpose is supposedly to, among other things, “to promote… the effectuation of employee rights of self-organization where a representation dispute exists…” within the railroad and airline industries.

Today we learn via the Daily Labor Report that the NMB’s proposal has been yanked, at least for now. The move is a victory for the National Right to Work Foundation, which opposed the changes:

National Right to Work Staff Attorney Glenn M. Taubman submitted opposing comments… regarding the sneaky changes proposed by the National Mediation Board. As Taubman points out, not interfering with “card check” practices is essentially providing a rubber stamp for more union boss interference, influence and coercion.

Taubman makes a forceful argument using historical fact and case law that having rules that allow “card check” undermine employee free choice. Taubman concludes that “all MNB rules, regulations and policies should mandate the secret-ballot election process and entirely forbid ‘card checks.’”

The full document can be downloaded here.

Laboring Away at the Institute points out this flagrant piece of hypocrisy from the AFL-CIO blog:

We have learned painfully that in this third century of our republic, we cannot take our right to vote for granted. We have to defend it. There are people in our political system who think that voting is a privilege reserved for those like themselves, that it is fair and right to confuse and intimidate people into not voting.

So Big Labor thinks voting is a privilege and should be free from confusion and intimidation? Hmmm… Except when union organizers unrelentingly pressure or mislead workers into signing "union authorization cards" so that workers are denied access to the less-abusive secret ballot election process. Except when union bosses decide to spend forced dues on radical politics. The list goes on and on…

Responding to a request from the National Right to Work Foundation, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has finally made its so-called "voluntary recognition” database available to the public by posting it online.

So-called “voluntary recognitions” occur when union bosses and leveraged employers agree to bargain without the affected employees ever having chosen the union through an NLRB-supervised secret-ballot election. Such recognitions are the ultimate goal of most vicious, multi-pronged pressure campaigns waged by union forces against targeted employers.

As result of the Foundation’s Dana/Metalydyne victory, employees may now obtain a traditional decertification election immediately after finding themselves pressured into union ranks through "card check" or other means.

However, in order to obtain the ability to block employees from freeing themselves from union monopoly bargaining once 45 days have elapsed, union officials must now report the occurance of a voluntary recognition in the first place. This “VR Database” is now available on-line and allows the public to see the over 380 so-called “voluntary recognitions” recorded in the past year.

As of September 9, interested persons may access the database by going to the NLRB website and clicking on “ Frequently Requested Documents” under the “What’s New” column. The database can be found by scrolling down to “Dana Corp. and Metaldyne Briefs and Documents” and clicking on “Post Dana Corp. Case Processing” or by going here.

With just the click of your mouse and a few key strokes, National Right to Work Foundation supporters can help the Foundation achieve its mission of providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses.

Right to Work supporters generously make tax-deductible contributions to the Foundation each year, and there are many more ways of giving. (After all, unlike the union bosses, we don’t, can’t, and wouldn’t dare force anyone to support us, but depend on the voluntary contributions of our generous supporters.)

Now with GoodSearch.com, you can supplement your support for the Foundation’s strategic legal program while you search online.

GoodSearch is a search engine powered by Yahoo. But unlike other search engines, GoodSearch contributes a portion of advertising revenue for each search to a charity of your choice. Make GoodSearch your default browser today, and make sure to select the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation as your designated charity. It’s easy, and since you are online anyway, just searching the Internet can help the Foundation defend the rights of victims of forced unionism.

You can even add a toolbar to your Internet browser to make things even easier.

It gets better. GoodSearch has also launched GoodShop.com, which is partnered with over 500 of the most popular online retailers such as Amazon.com, iTunes, and 1-800-flowers. The next time you’re planning on doing some online shopping, go to GoodShop.com, make sure the Foundation is the designated charity, and find the online store of your choice. Up to 30% of your purchase may go to supporting the cause of employee freedom. Using this service doesn’t cost you any extra — you pay the same prices you would if you went straight to the site.

It’s easy. It’s free to use. And you get to help vindicate employees’ rights doing two things you’re doing online anyway — searching and shopping.

We appreciate your continued support.

Ah, the Maine State Employees Association. When they’re not extorting workers’ dues to pay for union activism and legal schemes, MSEA bosses are evidently fond of harassing UPS truck drivers:

Timothy Belcher, the leader [sic] of the state’s workers’ union, has requested that a jury hear allegations that he illegally blocked a UPS driver from continuing his rounds earlier this summer.

Belcher’s attorney, Leonard Sharon, said this week that a trial date has not yet been set in Sagadahoc County Superior Court.

Belcher, 53, the executive director of the Maine State Employee Association, a labor union representing more than 15,000 public and private sector workers throughout Maine, was issued a summons charging him with criminal restraint on June 25 after allegedly standing in front of the UPS drivers’ truck to prevent it from leaving the driveway to Belcher’s Bowdoinham home.

Criminal restraint is a Class D misdemeanor that carries a maximum potential penalty of a year in jail and a fine, Sharon said.

The MSEA, of course, is one of the parties in the upcoming Foundation Supreme Court case Locke v. Karass. Foundation attorneys seek a court ruling that would put greater teeth into protections for nonunion workers laboring under forced union dues.

Here’s how the responding officer described Mr. Belcher’s decision-making faculties after the hapless UPS driver called the police:

"He just seemed to be irrational at the time and wasn’t making good decisions," [Officer] Rogers said.

Now ask yourself: would you trust Mr. Belcher to manage your hard-earned money? Why should Maine State employees be forced to hand over their hard-earned money to Belcher?

The Salt Lake Tribune recently ran the following letter to the editor by Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason in response to an editorial regarding the Foundation’s recent victory in federal court over attempts by union partisans to silence the Foundation’s legal aid program using Utah’s campaign finance regulations:

A newspaper should understand that the First Amendment isn’t merely a "loophole," as implied by The Tribune editorial "Repairs needed: Campaign financing laws should be tougher" (Sept. 11) about the National Right to Work Foundation’s federal court victory that struck down as unconstitutional key parts of Utah’s campaign finance law.

After the foundation received from Utah teachers reports of coercion and illegal use of school property during a union-run petition drive, it ran radio and TV ads informing teachers of their rights and offering free legal aid. Union activists were upset that we would dare to help teacher victims, and they used state campaign finance laws to retaliate. Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert blundered in trying to force our charitable organization to hand over contributor names and other information, even though we never engaged in any kind of electioneering. Herbert’s ham-handed actions led to the deserving demise of Utah’s broad and vague speech regulations.

The editorial noted that legislators must now go back to the drawing board. This time, they ought to read the First Amendment before putting pen to paper.

Stefan Gleason
Vice President
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Inc.
Springfield, Va.

Big Labor apologist Mark Weisbrot had a piece defending the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act in Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times. Money quote (emphasis mine):

This law would probably change Americans’ lives more than any legislation since the New Deal brought us Social Security. The political influence of millions of new union members would also bring us closer to such basic reforms as universal health care. It’s all long overdue.

Of course, millions of new forced dues paying union members would only increase union bosses’ influence, not the workers’ influence — nearly half of whom do not support Big Labor’s political agenda.

Meanwhile, American who agrees with Big Labor’s political agenda can already choose to financially (or otherwise) support union-backed candidates and causes. But union bosses, you see, know better than the average worker. The average worker isn’t giving enough support to the Far Left politicians prefered by union officials on his own. So union bosses want to use dues money, seized from workers’ paychecks, to finance their own political activism.

Worse, an increase in Card Check forced unionism will open the doors for rampant intimidation of workers by union goons — so much of the increased dues money going to these politics will be from workers who were pressured into union ranks through card check.

Employees should indeed have a free choice — to determine their own representation and to decide for themselves if they want to join a union or fund its political activism.

Since you already read this blog (after all you’re here aren’t you) here are some other ways you can keep up with everything the National Right to Work Foundation does to defend employees from the abuses of compulsory unionism:

• Email Alerts – Sign up to get exclusive Foundation emails sent right into your inbox. There is a signup box in on the top right corner of every page on this site.

• Subscribe to our Newsletter – Read the latest edition of the National Right to Work Foundation’s newsletter, Foundation Action, and sign up for your free subscription today. You’ll receive a hard copy in your mailbox every two months.

• Watch our Videos – Check out our Youtube.com and Eyeblast.tv channels to get the latest video updates about NRTW, its cases, and how it helps average working Americans fight the evils of compulsory unionism.

• Network With Us – Join our Facebook.com group and connect with other National Right to Work supporters from across the country.

These are just a few of the many ways to stay on top of the critical developments in the Right to Work movement. Whether you are at work, at home, or on vacation, all you need is a computer to get started.

Ever since the National Labor Relations Board ruled in the Dana/Metaldyne case exactly one year ago yesterday, pro-forced-unionism "scholars" have rushed to decry the decision as "revolutionary." Apparently giving workers more freedom of choice is deeply disturbing to union bosses.

A paper by Anne Marie Lofaso, of the University of West Virginia is a perfect example of hyperbole trumping facts, while posing as academic scholarship. In over-the-top style, Lofaso titles her paper: "September Massacre: The Latest Battle in the War on Workers’ Rights Under the National Labor Relations Act." (Despite being published in May, as of August the paper was still the most downloaded Labor/Employment/Benefit paper off the Social Sciences Research Network site, according to the Workplace Prof Blog.)

Here’s an excerpt from the paper’s section on the Board’s Dana Corp decision, a ruling she calls "The ‘Massacre’ in the September Massacre":

In keeping with a hard-in theme, the Bush Board most notably changed its rules governing voluntary recognition…

In recent years, voluntary recognition has served as an alternative for unions frustrated with the Board’s election rules, which have given employer advantages such as captive-audience speeches. The Board’s modified approach diminishes the value of that alternative and assaults
the principle of majority rule: a decertification petition supported by thirty percent of the employees trumps a card-check agreement supported by seventy percent of the employees,thereby forcing an election.

The problems with her biased analysis are plenty, but the most glaring is that contrary to her claims, unions are actually easy-in and hard-out.

The truth is that even with the Foundation-won protections afforded employees under Dana/Metaldyne, employees face a system drastically skewed to get unions in power and keep them in power. And under "card check," these systemic biases are multiplied exponentially.

First – and most obviously missing from Lofaso’s discussion – is the fact that under a card check "voluntary recognition" both the union organizers and the employer favor instituting the union (otherwise the employer would demand a secret-ballot vote).

Similarly, her complaint about "captive-audience speeches" rings hollow because under the current so-called "voluntary recognition" process captive audience speeches are most likely to be used to aid organizers in imposing the union on employees. Take the case of the Johnson Controls, for example.

Finally, Lofaso completely ducks the issue of the deep problems with card check compared to less coercive methods. There have been numerous employee reports of intimidation, half truths, lies and harassment of employees by union organizers during card check drives, where organizers corner workers one on one to pressure them into signing cards that are later counted as "votes" but Lofaso never addresses, or even references, those obvious problems that help provide the basis for the Dana/Metaldyne decision.

Ultimately despite what Lofaso and other pro-Big Labor "academics" say, Dana-Mataldyne does only one thing… give workers an additional right to challenge a union’s claim of majority support via a secret ballot election. This important yet modest check represents only a small rebuke against the ability of union organizers to gain monopoly control over a workplace without even the support of a majority of employees.

Only in pro-Big Labor academic la-la land could the granting of that small check to employees be part of a "Massacre on Workers’ Rights."