Last week, Joseph Rago noted in the Wall Street Journal the latest union boss payoff by the Obama Administration (emphasis added):

White House payoffs to big labor are by now routine, though rarely are they this transparent: This week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rolled out a new program that, scrubbed down, amounts to a slush fund for union health plans.

When Democrats realized that ObamaCare’s approval numbers were sagging, they loaded the bill up with "early deliverables"—programs that would go into effect immediately, rather than the five or more years of delay used to hide the bill’s true costs. One of those early deliverables was $5 billion in subsidies to early retirees aged 55 to 64 who incur annual health costs over $15,000.

Ms. Sebelius did her best to dress this reinsurance program up in a public-interest blanket, but many of the 3.3 million eligible retirees are ex-union workers who extracted generous benefits from some of America’s most hardpressed industries. Businesses that doled out these unaffordable promises will be delighted with the federal handout, taxpayers less so. And also eligible are retired state and local public employees, as well as certain health-care trusts like one recently set up by the United Auto Workers, which has an estimated 30 cents in cash for every dollar of expected claims.

National Right to Work president Mark Mix called ObamaCare a "a Trojan Horse for more forced unionization" in the Journal last September.  Among other hidden payoffs to Big Labor, Mix noted the discretionary authority given to Sebelius and a provision to bail out insolvent union health-care plans.  

This latest scheme is unsurprising.  And it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

At Freedom@Work, we’ve spent plenty of time documenting the many problems of public sector forced unionism, including the fiscal abyss it is plunging state and local governments into. But even reports of an impending budget crisis don’t have quite the same impact as a video of teacher union militants demanding more tax dollars:

As George Will notes in his latest Newsweek column, eventually, the bills come due. California’s looming budget crisis is largely the result of public sector union bosses, whose profligate spending risks pushing the entire state into bankruptcy:

California’s parlous condition owes much to burdensome health-care and pension promises negotiated with public employees’ unions, promises that are suffocating the state’s economic growth.

. . .
They [public sector unions] are government organized as an interest group to lobby itself for ever-larger portions of wealth extracted by the taxing power from the private sector.

Unfortunately, this trend threatens to spread other states. For the first time ever, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that public sector unionization outstrips private sector unionization, as Big Labor increasingly turns to government to bolster its forced-dues-paying ranks. The financial consequences of this development could be dire (emphasis mine):

Fred Siegel, a visiting professor of history at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute . . . said, “There were enormous political ramifications” to the fact that public-sector workers are now the majority in organized labor.

“At the same time the country is being squeezed, public-sector unions are a rising political force in the Democratic Party,” he said. “They depend on extra money for the public sector,and that puts the Democrats in a difficult position. In four big states — New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California — the public-sector unions have largely been untouched by the economic downturn. In those states, you have an impending clash between the public-sector unions and the public at large.”

As union operatives become more entrenched at every level of government their immense special privileges allow them to corral more money for extortionate dues payments. As a result, taxes go up and public services become more expensive, leaving over-burdened taxpayers to foot the bill.

The latest Big Labor scheme to accelerate this trend is the Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill, which which would leave state and local public safety employees at the mercy of Big Labor organizing drives. Once Big Labor bosses are firmly in control of public safety organizations, they’ll be able to use their influence over firefighters and police departments to further entrench their monopoly bargaining powers. 

Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember a spate of Obama Administration executive orders designed to enhance Big Labor’s already-extensive special privileges. Today, the Department of Labor published a final rule implementing Executive Order 13496, which requires government contractors to post notices informing employees of their workplace rights.

At first glance, that seems pretty innocuous. However, when it comes to the union boss-dominated Obama Department of Labor, "innocuous" isn’t part of the equation. Here’s part of the Department of Labor’s explanation of the notice’s content in yesterday’s Federal Register (emphasis mine):

The final notice retains the provision stating that an employee has the right to not join or remain a member of a union that represents the employee’s bargaining unit. However, the OLMS notes, “further explication of Beck rights will not be included because of space limitations and because of the policy choice, as expressed in Executive Order 13496, to revoke a more explicit notice to employees of Beck rights.”

"Beck rights" refer to the Right to Work Foundation-won Supreme Court decision Communication Workers v. Beck, which guarantees the right of employees to opt-out of union dues for politics, lobbying, and other activities unrelated to workplace bargaining. Although workers in non-Right to Work states can still be forced to pay for union ‘representation’, they cannot be forced to subsidize union activities that go beyond the scope of negotiating with management.

Many workers remain unaware of their right to opt-out of objectionable union dues, but the Administration’s notice avoids any mention of Beck rights. It also does not mention the right to seek decertification of a monopoly bargaining agent or the right to abstain from both union membership and payment of any union dues in Right to Work states. In other words, the new notice intentionally, as a matter of White House policy, keeps workers in the dark about their basic rights, leaving them vulnerable to union bosses who have no qualms about extracting forced dues to fund political activism, lobbying, and members-only activities.

Workers in non-Right to Work states can still be forced to pay union dues just to get or keep a job, so posting Beck notices is no panacea. But informing workers of all of their rights – not just their rights to join or organize a union – provides a modicum of protection against Big Labor’s well-known proclivity for redirecting unsuspecting workers’ dues to political and lobbying slush funds. Unfortunately, this skewed notice is yet more evidence that the Obama White House and Department of Labor are more interested in stacking the deck in Big Labor’s favor than protecting employee rights.

After spending billions of dollars to get Obama and other pro-forced unionism politicians elected, Big Labor is once again reaping its reward through a series of favorable executive orders.

The May/June 2010 issue of Foundation Action is now available for download as a PDF. This is the Foundation’s official bimonthly publication that provides an excellent overview of hard-hitting legal actions being taken by Foundation attorneys every day to combat forced unionism.

This issue’s top story details why Foundation attorneys have demanded Craig Becker, President Barack Obama’s radical recess appointee to the National Labor Relations Board, to recuse himself in 15 pending cases due to his open hostility to the Foundation and independent-minded employees.

Also in this issue:

• Illinois Providers Challenge Big Labor Payback Scheme
• Help Defend Individual Freedom Through Your Estate Plans
• Spotlight on Erin Smith, Foundation Staff Attorney
• UFCW Union Bosses Trick Workers into Paying Full Union Dues
• Sticky-Fingered Union Bosses Caught in PAC Fundraising Scheme

In addition to to reading Foundation Action online, you can sign up to receive a free subscription by mail here.

In a political culture in which most politicians fear Big Labor’s massive forced dues electioneering machine, it’s refreshing to see an elected official articulately and passionately condemn compulsory unionism.  That’s just what New Jersey Governor Chris Christie did last week at a town hall meeting.

In the video below, listen to Gov. Christie explain the evil of forcing teachers to pay union fees (roughly 85 percent of full union dues) just to exercise their right to refrain from union membership. 

New Jersey employees have the limited right — secured by National Right to Work Foundation-won cases at the US Supreme Court — to pay only the portion of the fees that union bosses can prove is spent on bargaining and contract administration.  

In Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977), the Court ruled that compulsory dues for politics violates the First Amendment.  In Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson (1986), the Court agreed with Foundation attorneys and unanimously held that union officials must provide employees with an independently verified breakdown of the union’s expenditures and that employees must have the opportunity to challenge the calculation of their forced fees.

Unfortunately, Christie stops short of calling for the Garden State to pass a Right to Work law, which would make union association 100 percent voluntary.  But he’s right on when he explains that the teacher union officials are motivated by "the accumulation and exercise of raw political power."  Something to think about as Congress considers rewriting states’ employment laws by federal fiat.

In the wake of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) boss Andy Stern’s retirement, SEIU Executive Vice President Mary Kay Henry was ushered in as the new chief of the notoriously corrupt and predatory union hierarchy.

Despite the mainstream media’s portrayal of Henry’s coronation as a change in the way SEIU union organizers coerce workers into dues-paying union ranks through intimidation or political deal-making, nothing could be further from the truth.

From National Right to Work’s contribution to BigGovernment.com:

Don’t let the cheery atmosphere surrounding her anointment ease concerns about her nor the SEIU and its agenda; because for her, ObamaCare and its potential for 21.1 million forced unionism conscripts are just the beginning steps for SEIU’s steady march towards domination of U.S. labor markets.

Mary Kay Henry’s intentions to further radicalize the labor movement and the American economy are clearer than Stern’s vision. With the hundreds of millions of union dues and fees flowing into SEIU’s treasury, she has the financial fuel needed to fund her ambitious desires…

Mary Kay Henry has been credited with most of SEIU’s membership growth for more than a decade; however, that growth did not come from the grassroots; it was top down.

From 1996-2007, SEIU claimed 900,000 “new members” and Mary Kay Henry’s healthcare division provided almost all its growth…

In 2006, Mary Kay Henry laid her plan on the table:

More central power is needed, said Henry. “We believe the American labor movement needs to move beyond voluntarism [joining voluntarily?] … SEIU aims to increase the union rate of health care workers from its current 20 percent to 50 percent.[iii]

SEIU’s game plan is simple and reminiscent of the 1950s: create the allusion that it has the power to subjugate employers by region and couple it with SEIU’s willingness to ignore election rules to intimidate and control almost every elected and appointed Democrat in the United States. If the plan works, SEIU organizations gain control of workers in an entire region of the country.

After creating mega-locals, SEIU begins to sign-up smaller workplaces and move these units into the appropriate mega-local conflating contracts into its master contract for the region.

In the end, SEIU’s mega-local contract spans across numerous states and worksites making it virtually impossible for individual workers to mount a successful decertification or deauthorization NLRB election.

(Emphasis in original)

To view the National Right to Work Committee’s latest video, "SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry: Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss"click here or you can watch it below:

It will come as no surprise to those following the Obama Administration’s labor policy that another  executive order threatens to advance union bosses’ interests at the expense of employers and employees alike. Executive Order 13494 implements a blatant double-standard for federal contractors who are subjected to union organizing drives. The order prohibits contractors from using any federal money to inform employees about the facts of union organizing.

Although this might sound relatively unobjectionable, the new directive reveals itself as a payoff to Big Labor by allowing contractors to write off expenses related to union monopoly bargaining, including company subsidies for union shop stewards and union committees.

This order creates a huge financial incentive for contractors to roll over to coercive union organizing drives, safe in the knowledge that they’ll be able to pass on many union-related expenses to the government (we the people). Meanwhile, employer efforts to truthfully inform employees about the downsides of unionization cannot be reimbursed under this discriminatory directive. In other words, this policy effectively forces taxpayers to subsidize union activities. 

Naturally, the National Right to Work Foundation has filed formal comments with the Administration opposing this latest Big Labor-friendly directive. Unfortunately, this executive order is yet another example of the Obama White House’s fealty to Big Labor bosses, who helped ensure its loyalty by investing hundreds of millions of dollars to elect Obama in 2008.

Many Freedom@Work readers are already following the latest Big Labor offensive on Capitol Hill. Under the guise of protecting our first responders, pro-forced unionism politicians are attempting to ram home the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill.

This legislation would force states to adopt monopoly union bargaining for all police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians. Not only would this bill push unwilling public safety employees into Big Labor’s forced dues-paying ranks, it would also usurp the right of state and local governments to determine if their employees unionize.

In fact, this power grab is so egregious that even the often pro-Big Labor Washington Post has taken notice. Here’s the Post’s blistering editorial against the bill:

What this bill would do is impose a permanent, one-size-fits-all federal solution in an area — public-sector labor relations — that has traditionally been left to the states, and where state flexibility is probably more necessary than ever. The imposition on Virginia would be dramatic, of course, but even union-friendly Maryland, which lets each county decide whether and how to bargain with its employees, might find itself in costly, time-consuming contention with the feds. Farther afield, Colorado’s "fire protection districts," special units of government dedicated to providing that service, would face costly collective bargaining even where firefighters and management are working harmoniously without it.

We share the bill sponsors’ esteem for first responders. They should be adequately, even generously, compensated. Still, many outsized pensions now threatening state and local governments were awarded by politicians to curry favor with public-safety unions. To be sure, the bill includes acompromise provision assuring states that they don’t have to bargain over pensions. But it hardly matters. The bill further empowers an already strong lobby that could use its additional clout to pressure state legislators to allow pension-bargaining anyway — or to enact such benefits by statute. This bill is a bad idea whose time, we hope, has still not come.

Read the whole thing here. And remember, if Big Labor sympathizers at the Washington Post are astounded by this unpopular bill, imagine how bad it must be for the rest of us. 

National Right to Work President Mark Mix discusses the consequences of the Police/Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill on Richmond, Virginia’s Jimmy Barrett Show. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:

As always, you can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.  

From the Washington Post on down, magazines and newspapers across the country are editorializing against the Police and Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill, a Big Labor power grab that would shove thousands of public safety employees into union collectives and usurp state and local laws across the country.

Here’s Right to Work President Mark Mix in the Richmond Times Dispatch:

With Reid and his Big Labor allies in Congress in full payback mode, Sen. Jim Webb’s and Sen. Mark Warner’s votes could easily determine the fate of Virginia’s public safety workers.

If passed, the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill could turn over police and firefighters of local governments to union-boss control by federal mandate. It overrides the laws of at least 25 states, including states like Virginia that have a complete ban on granting union officials bargaining privileges for public-sector employees.

The Virginian-Pilot also editorialized against the bill:

After retreating from one misguided intrusion into labor law, congressional Democrats are mustering another clumsy campaign to appease their union donors.

Much like the failed card-check legislation, the latest initiative is an unnecessary federal interference with employment matters. If adopted, the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act would require state and local governments to engage in collective bargaining with police officers, deputies, firefighters and emergency medical workers over wages and work conditions.

As did the Charleston Daily Mail:

Really, members of Congress are shameless sometimes. Unions are huge contributors to Democratic campaign coffers, and they expect favors in return.

This is one that members of Congress should not grant. There is absolutely no justification for the federal government overcalling state-developed law on collective bargaining.

The Denver Post:

Reid’s measure would require that public safety workers be given collective bargaining rights without voter approval. The Colorado Municipal League, which opposes the measure, points out that the federal mandate would instantly affect thousands of employees and Colorado taxpayers at every level.

We agree. Brushing away the current structure not only tramples on local control, it could result in higher budgets at a time tax revenue is down and local governments are struggling.

The National League of Cities also opposes this legislation, as it would override the laws of 19 states other than Colorado. NLC lobbyist Neil Bomberg tells us the measure could arrive in the form of an amendment to small-business legislation or as a free-standing bill on the Senate floor next week.

And the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

While a boon to unions, this law would seriously damage our federalist system by taking away a large measure of local control over police and firefighters unions and lead to higher costs to local governments and taxpayers, costs that neither will be able to affect at the ballot box. 

And some related commentary from National Review:

Organized labor — increasingly dominated by public-sector workers — sees this as compensation for the failure of their card-check effort. The losers in this scenario will be taxpayers.

We can only hope that elected officials take note of the near-unanimous level of public opposition to this terrible idea.

UPDATE: Yet more editorials against the Police/Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill from the San Francisco Examiner, Watertown Daily Times, Charleston Post and Courier, Newport Daily Press, and the Silver City Sun-News.