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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 National Right to Work Foundation has launched an online petition to President Barack Obama advising him that his election did not give him a “mandate” to impose draconian policies that will dramatically increase the power and money of the Big Labor Bosses.

We need your participation — Click here.

After spending record sums to put Obama in the White House, the union bosses are expecting the President to return the favor. And as Obama wrote in his memoir, The Audacity of Hope,

"I owe those unions… When their leaders call, I do my best to call them
back right away. I don’t mind feeling obligated."

The potential payback could start with the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (a.k.a. the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill). Sign the petition to urge the President NOT to advanced such a policy which would, among other things:

DENY workers the right to a secret ballot when voting on whether or not they want to be part of a union (this is at the top of the agenda for Big Labor, because it would enable union organizers to forcibly unionize millions more workers into dues-paying union ranks)

Please sign the petition NOW, by clicking here.

This week, President Obama named Wilma Liebman chair of the National Labor Relations Board, the quasi-judicial body which administers the National Labor Relations Act. A former union lawyer, Liebman has used her seat on the Board to do Big Labor’s bidding and trample upon employee freedom.

In a statement, Liebman said

I am honored by President Obama’s designation to serve as Chairman, and I look forward to continuing my service on the Board with my colleague, Peter Schaumber, and ultimately with a full complement of Board Members.

I wish to thank Member Schaumber for his own outstanding service as Chairman. His leadership and collegiality, coupled with the efforts of dedicated agency staff, have enabled the Board to operate productively this past year.

The Board’s work matters, just as it did when the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935. Democracy in the workplace is still basic to a democratic society, and collective bargaining is still basic to a fair economy. The statute we administer is the foundation of America’s commitment to human rights recognized around the world.

Emphsis mine.

As for "the statute [the Board members] administer," Liebman appears to have forfeited her objectivity by urging Congress to amend that law by passing the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (a.ka. the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill). As we asked earlier this month, how can an employee trust Liebman to impartially administer the NLRA when she is also working to amend it to effectively eliminate the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives?

Moreover, Liebman’s so-called "committment to human rights" does not appear to include any conception of individual freedom. In fact, she has shown an ugly disdain for individual rights, writing in one "academic" journal:

[A]n exclusive orientation toward an individual-rights regime could
have troubling political and social consequences.Workers may view the
employment relationship in purely individual terms and may fail to
grasp common economic interests and the potential of collective action
at work, as well as in the public sphere. Collective action at work
encourages engagement in the community and in politics. Without a
functioning collective bargaining system, fundamental economic issues
are placed off the table: distribution of wealth, control, and
direction of economic enterprises. What institution will be as
effective in efforts to minimize the randomness of fortune of
democratic capitalism? And without a strong independent trade union
movement, what institution will stand effectively as a counterweight in
our democracy to the growing political influence of corporations? What
institution will speak for working people—indeed for the middle
class—as effectively?

The truth is that Wilma Liebman thinks she knows more about what is in a worker’s best interest than the individual worker does.  That’s why she feels is it good public policy to force as many workers into union collectives as possible.  As far as she is concerned, individual free choice is irrelevant.

Foundation attorneys look forward to getting her Board’s rulings slammed down by the federal appellate courts.

The confirmation of radical unionist Hilda Solis, Democrat congresswoman from Los Angeles, to be Obama’s new Secretary of Labor has hit a snag.

While the Senate has approved other Cabinet nominees left and right — including a Treasury Secretary who has admitted to failing to pay income taxes — Solis has yet to make it out of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The Pasadena Star-News has more:

At least one unidentified Republican senator is using a parliamentary procedure to holdup Solis’ confirmation, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, alleged from the Senate floor Thursday.

The anonymous hold — as the informal delay tactic is known — essentially prevents the full Senate from voting on Solis’ confirmation by threatening a filibuster. It could be lifted at any time.

The hold was placed on the nomination because of Solis’ support for legislation aimed at facilitating union organization and regarding pay-discrimination, and for non-responsive answers during her confirmation hearing, the Washington, DC-based Congress Daily reported Friday.

President Obama is asking the Senate — and the American people — to approve as Labor Secretary a Congresswoman who chose not to — or can’t — answer questions about worker freedom, secret ballots, or prevailing wage laws. As we recently wrote, Solis told the HELP Committee that she is "not qualified" to discuss Right to Work.

Solis has made a political career of carrying Big Labor’s water — first in the California legislature and more recently in the U.S. House of Representatives.  She sports a 100 percent lifetime AFL-CIO rating.  In fact, the union bosses hand-picked Solis in 2000 to challenge then-incumbent Congressman Marty Martinez (D-CA) because Martinez "only" voted with Big Labor 80 percent of the time.

Here is what she said at the recent U.S. Senate confirmation hearing in which Solis dodges questions on basic issues any Labor Secretary nominee should be able to address — issues like card check and Right to Work.  Check out the video below: