Obama Nominates Two Union Militants to Labor Board
On Monday, President Barack Obama announced two nominations – both with extensive backgrounds as Big Labor lawyers – to the National Labor Relations Board, the quasi-judicial body which administers federal labor law.
Craig Becker, one of the nominees, is the Associate General Counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the American Federation of Labor & Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Sources indicate he was a key player in Obama’s early executive order aimed at blacklisting non-union contractors and keeping employees in the dark about their right to refrain from supporting union political activities.
Worse, and perhaps more tellingly, Becker wrote in a "labor studies" journal in 1998 that employees should not have to "petition the NLRB" or "cast an affirmative vote simply to establish a ‘representative process’ in the workplace" (see page 15 of this PDF). In other words, Becker has indicated he would be fine with installing a union monopoly even if mere "majority support" had not been established, through either a secret ballot or the more abusive "card check" process.
These appointments are just the latest payoffs by President Obama to Big Labor for spending well over one billion dollars electing him and other pro-forced unionism politicians nationwide in 2008.
Federal Appellate Court Finds NLRB’s 2008 Rulings Invalid Due to Bush Administration’s Incompetence
As we noted earlier this week, President Barack Obama nominated two hard-line union militants to the National Labor Relations Board. Now, President Bush’s inability to properly staff the five-member Board during his eight years in the Oval Office has come home to roost.
According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C. Circuit ruled that decisions of the NLRB last year (approximately 300 in total) are not valid because only two of the five seats were filled. In other words, there was no valid quorum, even if the two members agreed how to rule. (A less influential federal circuit court ruled two member board decision are valid, so the circuit court split may lead to U.S. Supreme Court review)
Either way, the fact that the Board was comprised of a mere two members for such a long time is a testimony to the total incompetence of the Bush Administration in dealing with the agency.
Bill Clinton’s NLRB overturned 1200 years of precedent in an effort to make it easier for union officials to coerce workers into union ranks and misuse their forced dues on political activism.
At first, the Bush administration simply kept intact a Clinton majority on the Board for a full year after taking office. Then the Bushies kept hardened union activists like Clinton holdover Wilma Liebman (who Obama has since named Board chairman) on the Board, while nominating soft and inexperienced Republican appointees.
As a result, the Bush Board was unable to get itself moving to reverse most of the controversial rulings of the activist Clinton Board.
After years of foolish efforts to cozy up to certain union bosses combined with a Keystone Cop-like incompetence with respect their NLRB nomination strategy, Bush and his staff simply gave up trying to fill the Board’s vacancies in mid 2007 and failed to make recess appointments.
The union bosses must be ecstatic about their good fortune. For nearly a decade, a resurgent Big Labor had its way with this Bush Administration. And now they’ve got one of their own in the White House, and the payback has already begun.
Big Labor knows how important the NLRB is to its forced unionism power over the American workplace and economy. You can bet the Obama administration will not make similar mistakes.
New Right to Work Podcast: VP Stefan Gleason talks Card Check and Specter with the Liberty Roundtable
National Right to Work Vice President Stefan Gleason sits down with the Liberty Roundtable to discuss card check, the Obama administration’s early moves, and Specter’s recent GOP defection. Click here to listen or use the embeddable player below:
Oklahoma Leader of Professional, Non-Union Teachers Receives High Recognition from National Right to Work
On April 24, the National Right to Work Committee presented Professional Oklahoma Educators (POE) executive director Ginger Tinney with the Carol Applegate Education Award.
Ginger Tinney (center) with National Right to Work Chairman of the Executive Committee Reed Larson and President Mark Mix
Tinney was a teacher for more than 11 years before taking on her full-time role as executive director of POE. She taught in both regular and special education, at elementary and secondary grade levels, and in urban and rural school districts.
Vice president of National Right to Work Stefan Gleason stated in the POE’s news release:
“We have had the pleasure of working with Ginger Tinney over many years, and we’ve always been impressed with her leadership skills, her passion for teacher excellence, and her passion for the principles of freedom and volunteerism that embody the Right to Work cause."
The Carol Applegate Education Award is presented annually by the Committee’s Board of Directors to exceptional educators who take courageous stands against the coercive policies of the National Education Association (NEA) union. The award is named in honor of Carol Applegate, a longtime English teacher who refused to formally join the NEA union and was fired from her job.
A longtime member of Concerned Educators Against Forced Unionism (an umbrella organization established by the National Right to Work Foundation), the Professional Oklahoma Educators is a all voluntary professional educators association that serves more than 4,000 teachers, administrators, and support professionals in Oklahoma. The group puts children first and focuses on true professionalism, unlike its militant union counterpart. For more information on the POE, click here.
Far Left Icon George McGovern Takes Aim at Mandatory Binding Arbitration
As we told you last year, Far Left icon and former Democrat presidential nominee George McGovern came out in strong opposition to the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill in the Wall Street Journal. In his op-ed, McGovern recognized that the union boss power grab would destroy the secret ballot, and he noted card check instant organizing drives are infamous for worker intimidation and dirty tricks by union organizers.
Now, McGovern has again taken to the pages of the Journal to criticize another disturbing provision of the card check bill: mandatory binding arbitration.
Last year, I wrote on these pages that I was opposed to this bill because it would eliminate secret ballots in union organizing elections. However, the bill has an additional feature that isn’t often mentioned but that is just as troublesome — compulsory arbitration.
This feature would give the government the power to step into labor disputes where employers and labor leaders cannot reach an agreement and compel both sides to accept a contract. Compulsory arbitration is bound to trigger the law of unintended consequences.
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In a contract negotiation, each party typically perceives the other as too demanding. But no one loses their right to contract willingly or suffers being forced to agree to anything. Employees can strike if they feel that they have been dealt with unfairly, but it is a costly option. Employers are free to reject labor demands they find to be too difficult to accept, but running a business without experienced employees is itself difficult. Both sides have an incentive to press their demands, but they also have compelling reasons not to press their demands too far. EFCA would disrupt that balance by enabling government-appointed lawyers to decide what they believe is fair or reasonable.
A federally appointed arbitrator cannot be expected to understand the nuances specific to each business dispute, the competitive market position of the business, or the plethora of other factors unique to each case. Yet fundamental decisions on wages and benefit costs, rules for promotions, or even rules for exiting an unprofitable line of business could fall to federal arbitrators under EFCA.
Many labor contracts can run over 100 pages with their requirements of each party. Compulsory arbitration is, in one sense, government dictating to employees what they will win or lose in the deal, with no opportunity to approve the "agreement." Why should employees pay union dues to get such a contract?
Good points, but McGovern didn’t think to add: the public sector binding arbitration experience proves arbitrators will usually include a forced union dues requirement in the imposed contract!
But it’s worth remembering the even the secret ballot isn’t a cure-all. As long as individual workers are forced to accept a union-boss "representation," there is no true employee free choice.
Obama’s a Budget Hawk! But Only Slashes Budget of Watchdog Agency Over Union Corruption
For all the talk of "restoring labor standards," the Obama Administration is cutting four million dollars from the Office of Labor and Management Standards’ (OLMS) already small budget for 2010 (see page 13 of the budget appendix under "Employment Standards Administration").
Not coincidentally, the OLMS is the branch responsible for policing union corruption and enforcing basic transparency standards. This follows on the heels of several Big Labor-friendly executive orders that can only be described as payback by the Obama Administration for union bosses’ political support. After all, who wants oversight when your union bosses allies are involved in all kinds of corrupt schemes?
Of course, all the disclosure in the world won’t fix the much more fundamental problem of forced unionism, but it’s telling that, in the process of exploding the size of the federal budget to unprecedented heights, Obama saw his way clear to cut funding for union oversight.
Washington Examiner: The Big Business of Big Labor
In today’s Washington Examiner, Timothy Carney has an excellent column about President Obama’s plan to "save" Chrysler. As Carney shows, it’s more accurate to call Obama’s plan a bailout of Big Labor and political payback for the UAW union’s exorbitant politicking on behalf of Obama and his party in the 2008 election:
The union’s $1.98 million to Democratic candidates last cycle (not counting the $4.87 million in independent expenditures to elect Obama president) is more than any PAC spent on Republicans. If you combine the political spending of the top three oil company PACs and the UAW’s PAC, Republicans and Democrats come out about even.
Peer deeper into the UAW’s finances, and it starts to look even more like a big business. The organization sits on nearly $1.2 billion in investments. This is money the UAW took from the paychecks of workers, money that now functions as an endowment out of which the union pays its staff and subsidizes its golf resort.
Black Lake Golf Club, which the UAW brags is "one of the finest anywhere in the nation," is owned by the union. Situated at the very top of Michigan, a drive of more than four hours from Detroit, it’s not exactly accessible to the union rank and file.
The resort is subsidized by workers’ paychecks, too—the union currently has $29.6 million in loans outstanding to the resort. That’s not their only posh real estate. The UAW’s Washington headquarters, home base for the union’s $1.6 million-a-year lobbying operation, is a beautiful $2.98 million townhouse in the DuPont circle neighborhood.
While UAW membership has fallen by 32.5 percent since 2002, the national headquarters has kept its spending nearly the same—a reduction of only 1.9 percent. Add these facts together, and it starts to look like the union management exists largely to preserve union management.
These are the people who would, practically speaking, own Chrysler under Obama’s plan. These are the benefactors of Obama’s upturning bankruptcy law and threatening investors.
But Obama’s team will maintain that it’s “the workers” who are taking ownership of Chrysler under their plan. When Obama and Democrats extend future bailouts and subsidies to Chrysler, they will have even more reason to claim that they are simply helping the workingmen. In truth, subsidies and special favors for the UAW are corporate welfare, and considering the UAW’s political activities, the right word might be crony capitalism.
Read the full column here.
It’s also worth remembering that the UAW is one of the most militant unions whose leaders relish in intimidating workers and lashing out at independent-minded employees.
Greedy Detroit Union Boss Threatens Firings: Teachers, Your Money or Your Jobs!
The Detroit Free Press reports that the Detroit Federation of Teachers union is threatening to have up to 70 teachers fired for not paying forced union dues. A school district error is mainly responsible for the mix up.
Yet, because of the clerical error, union official Mark O’Keefe stated that the "fair" thing to do would be to fire the teachers who fail to pay the full union dues.
No, Mark. The "fair" thing to do is to not require teachers to pay ANY union dues as a condition of teaching Detroit’s schoolchildren.
Foundation Urges NLRB General Counsel to Prosecute Forced Unionism Scheme in Entertainment Industry
On Thursday, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys asked the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) General Counsel to reinstate federal charges challenging a common and illegal union tactic in the entertainment industry.
Foundation attorneys are helping an independent contractor who occasionally works as a "daily hire" for ABC.
The monopoly bargaining contract between the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) union and ABC contains a forced-unionism clause mandating that "daily hires" join the union or pay so-called agency dues to the union "after twenty (20) days of employment in one year or thirty (30) days employment in two consecutive years."
But the National Labor Relations Act clearly states that union officials may only begin compelling the payment of dues after thirty days of actual employment, a so-called "grace period" from the unjust practice. But Brain Johnson, the independent contractor who filed the unfair labor practices charges, has never worked close to 30 days consecutively and is in fact a "daily hire" for the entertainment company.
As Foundation attorney W. James Young explains in the letter of appeal, NLRB precedent indicates that "an employee has a right to a new grace period when an employer rehired him unless the employee was delinquent in dues when previously employed by that employer." Because Johnson had never surpassed 30 days of employment with ABC, he could never have been delinquent, and thus the NABET union cannot force him to pay dues.
But the NLRB’s Regional Director in New York refused to prosecute the union for misrepresenting his rights and obligations under federal labor law. Amazingly, the Regional Director even ignored NLRB precedent from her own region that held a similar forced-dues clause facially invalid.
Young urges the NLRB’s General Counsel to reverse the Regional Director’s outrageous and desperate attempt to back the union position in this case, sidestepping the core, and potentially far-sweeping issue in the case.
Click here to read the full text of the letter of appeal.
Houston Nurses File Decert Petition to Eject Unwanted Union
Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember the Foundation’s ongoing efforts to help Houston nurses fight back against a coercive organizing scheme hatched by Tenet Healthcare Corporation and the California Nurses Association union bosses. We’re pleased to report that the Foundation’s charges have forced union officials to stop their illegal and coercive organizing efforts at two area hospitals. Not only that, but independent nurses have filed a union decertification petition at a third location. From the Foundation’s press release:
With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, nurses at the Cypress Fairbanks Medical Center have filed a decertification petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to remove an unwanted union from their workplace.
The nurses’ decertification petition comes on the heels of the California Nurses Association (CNA) union’s decision to withdraw its controversial petitions for unionization at the Park Plaza and Houston Northwest medical centers. Hospital employees became increasingly disillusioned with union officials after many nurses raised concerns about conflict in the workplace and the quality of patient care.
For more info, check out the Foundation’s interview with two Houston nurses:
