You wouldn’t know it from watching any of the debates, but the potential for Big Labor to ram "card check" down American workers’ throats is very real and very immediate.  Accordingly, the Foundation is bracing itself for a new wave of employee requests for legal aid. Mickey Kaus, a lefty blogger reveals the rapid timeline:

Obama’s Fast Labor Payoff: kf hears from a trustworthy non-Republican source (with access to actual insider information) that the Dems are getting set to pass "card check" legislation fast next year, right out of the box, assuming Obama wins and the Democrats get their expected big Senate majority. The legislation–which would eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing elections, allowing union organizers to gather signed cards person-to-person–is cheap, in budgetary terms. And it’s very, very important to organized labor.

More here.

The September/October issue of Foundation Action reports on the rare U.S. Supreme Court rebuke of Bush Administration lawyers seeking to argue before the High Court in the October 6, 2008 oral arguments of Locke v. Karass.

Foundation attorneys successfully argued that the Bush Administration had no business getting involved in the proceedings.

Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription.

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Via the Education Intelligence Agency, we learn that (surprise!) Pennsylvania teacher unions oppose attempts to improve public education through the enactment of reforms that could threaten the teacher union monopoly and forced-dues gravy train (emphasis mine):

What do [reformers] think stands in the way…? For Simon Campbell, president of the Yardley-based StopTeacherStrikes.org, the answer is simple: teachers unions.

Mr. Campbell is a resident of the Pennsbury School District in Bucks County that faced a teacher strike in Oct. 2005. For 21 days, 11,500 students were kept out of school, including two of his kids.

"I am really just a parent who got kind of fed up one day," he said. Since the strike he has advocated energetically for abolition of teachers’ right to strike. Currently, 37 states do not allow their teachers to strike.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), a division of the National Education Association which is the nation’s largest teachers union, takes in about $80 million a year in dues and boasts about 185,000 members statewide, Mr. Campbell said.

"The real business that they’re in is collecting union dues," he said. "They are organized like a machine at the grassroots level."

And what do the NEA bosses spend all that money its dues-collecting machine rakes in on?

Bombarding teachers’ families with political propaganda is apparently a high priority. Too bad six year olds don’t vote . . .

The September/October issue of Foundation Action shares the story of a group of non-striking nurses in California who turned to the National Right to Work Foundation for help after union bosses illegally threatened the nurses with 90 days in jail if they did not abandon their patients and go on strike.

After National Right to Work attorneys took action, the National Labor Relations Board Regional Office in Los Angeles prosecuted the union tyrants.

Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription.

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This story from the September/October issue of Foundation Action shares the story of Patricia Pelletier, a Connecticut worker who successfully initiated a decertification election to eject an unwanted union from her workplace. In response, union officials started a campaign of intimidation and harassment against Pelletier.  You can hear Patricia talk about her case in this video.

Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription.

To receive the entire issue via email, just type your email address into the box in the top right corner of this page.

This story from the September/October issue of Foundation Action reports on the Foundation’s efforts on behalf of two nurses who are suffering from a corrupt and illegal agreement between the California Nurses Association (CNA) union and their workplace to force nurses into CNA union ranks.

Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription. To receive the entire issue via email, just type your email address into the box in the top right corner of this page.

Check out the Foundation’s latest Right to Work Video Report on compulsory unionism in the workplace. John McHenry, a Philadelphia worker and union member his entire life, never knew he could resign his formal union membership and stop paying full union dues. But when union bosses rammed a corrupt pension plan down his throat, he turned to the National Right to Work Foundation for help:

For more Right to Work video updates, remember to check back regularly at the Foundation’s YouTube channel or Eyeblast.tv channel.

From 11 to noon today the United States Supreme Court heard arguments in Locke v. Karass, in which Foundation Staff Attorney Jim Young represented 20 Maine State employees challenging attempts by the SEIU union to charge the nonmembers for union litigation unrelated to their collective bargaining unit.

Here, lead plaintiff Daniel Locke takes questions from reporters flanked (left to right) by Former Maine State employee Mark Turek of UnfairShare.org, Foundation V.P. Stefan Gleason and Foundation Staff Attorney Jim Young:

For background on the case watch our video, which includes an exclusive interview with lead plaintiff Daniel Locke, and also see our Locke case page for all the legal briefs in the case. For a more detailed analysis of the case, this article (pdf) from Labor Watch is highly recommended.

UPDATE:
The transcript of today’s Locke argument at the U.S. Supreme Court is now available for download (pdf).

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."

Big Labor’s big money boys are pulling out all the stops to get the presidential candidate of their choice elected. Across the country, teacher union bosses have been pushing their preferred political causes and candidates and the result is the disturbing politicization of the classroom.

Today, the Washington Times reported that union brass of the Virginia Education Association Union (VEA), an affiliate of the National Education Association Union (NEA), sent an e-mail to Virginia teachers which:

…encouraged members to bring politics into the classroom by wearing blue in support of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama and simultaneously suggested that the union’s voter registration efforts include those "you teach."

Meanwhile, the New York Post reported today that teacher union bosses in New York have been "handing out thousands of Barack Obama campaign buttons" to teachers. However, as the Post notes, “the Department of Education… has a long-standing policy barring teachers from wearing political campaign buttons in schools.” The teacher union bosses in New York said they will appeal the Department’s decision. The Post quoted Department of Education spokeswoman Ann Forte as saying:

Schools are not a place for politics and not a place for staff to wear political buttons… We don’t want a school or school staff advocating for any political position or candidate to students and we don’t want students feeling intimidated because they might hold a different belief or support a different candidate than their teachers.

Indeed. But what about the teachers that don’t support the union bosses’ chosen candidate? They too should not be subjected to union officials’ politicking. In the 28 states that do not have Right to Work laws (including New York), union officials are notorious for extracting forced union dues to fund political pet projects that teachers often oppose.

Unfortunately, most teachers are not even aware of their rights to refrain from contributing to Big Labor’s political pet projects as established by Foundation-won Supreme Court cases. However, while our work is cut out for us, there is hope. As Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation, stated in an op-ed printed last month, “Praise the teacher, not the union”:

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is currently providing free legal aid to thousands of teachers and other employees who object to their compulsory fees funding the political agenda of union bosses, whose ultimate goal, according to one former NEA official, is "to re-order the priorities of the United States of America."

If you are a teacher who would like to stand up for your rights against the evils of compulsory unionism, click here.