Legal Foundation Files Federal Charges for Nurses Who Refused to Abandon Patients to Participate in Union-Instigated Strike
Minneapolis, MN (July 29, 2010) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, three Minneapolis nurses have filed federal unfair labor practice charges against the Minnesota Nurses Association (MNA) union after MNA officials illegally threatened them with disciplinary action for refusing to participate in a recent strike. Foundation attorneys anticipate filing additional charges within the next several days.
Under the 1985 Supreme Court decision Pattern Makers v. National Labor Relations Board, workers have the right to resign from union membership. Although workers can still be fired for failing to pay union dues, nurses and other employees who exercise their right to refrain from formal union membership cannot be subjected to internal union discipline or compelled to participate in union activities, including strikes. Such union “discipline” often includes punitive fines, which can reach tens of thousands of dollars.
Despite these safeguards, MNA officials are threatening to discipline nurses who resigned from the union before the June 10, 2010 strike. Nurses who left the union received letters from the MNA on July 23 notifying them of an upcoming union disciplinary hearing for working during the strike. The letters also stated that nurses who didn’t participate in the strike are “subject to reprimand” from MNA operatives.
In early June, the Right to Work Foundation announced an offer of free legal assistance to any nurses who wished to resign their union membership to avoid participating in the MNA work stoppage or felt threatened or coerced into joining the union strike. Right to Work attorneys know from experience that workers who refuse to abandon their jobs during a union-instigated strike often face threats and retaliation from union officials.
“Attempting to drag these brave nurses into a kangaroo court is nothing more than a tired union boss intimidation tactic,” said Patrick Semmens, Legal Information Director for the National Right to Work Foundation. “All workers – including medical professionals – have the right to resign their formal union membership and continue working rather than be ordered off the job by union operatives.”
The nurses’ charges will now be investigated by the National Labor Relations Board.
Right to Work to Elena Kagan: Stop Forcing Workers to Fund Union Political Activism!
Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with nationally-syndicated radio host Lars Larson to discuss Obama Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan’s support for forcing workers to contribute to union political activism. 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.
New Right to Work Podcast: How Forced Unionism Hurts Growth and Job Creation
Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with Richmond, Virginia’s Jimmy Barrett Show to discuss how forced unionism is hurting our chances at a strong economic recovery. 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.
Airline Workers Challenge Federal Ruling on Sham Transportation Unionization Election Procedures
Airline Workers Challenge Federal Ruling on Sham Transportation Unionization Election Procedures
Appeal contests federal district court ruling that upheld new policy stacking the deck in favor of forced unionization of railway and airline employees
Washington, DC (July 22, 2010) – With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, five Delta Air Lines employees have appealed a U.S. District Court judge’s decision to uphold a major rule change on how a union is imposed on railway and airline industry workers.
In June, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Paul Friedman refused to impose an injunction halting the new unionization election procedures, which were hastily instituted over the objections of National Mediation Board Chair Elizabeth Dougherty.
The two NMB members who approved the new rule, Harry Hoglander and Linda Puchala, are former union officials with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) unions, respectively. Both unions are a major part of an American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) union-led coalition that urged the NMB to discard its election policy of 75 years.
The new procedure stacks the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over railway or airline industry workers if the union acquires support from just a bare majority of eligible workers in an election, no matter how few actually vote. This means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss “representation” on the whole group rather than having a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.
Airline Workers Challenge Federal Ruling on Sham Transportation Unionization Election Procedures
Washington, DC (July 22, 2010) – With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, five Delta Air Lines employees have appealed a U.S. District Court judge’s decision to uphold a major rule change on how a union is imposed on railway and airline industry workers.
In June, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Paul Friedman refused to impose an injunction halting the new unionization election procedures, which were hastily instituted over the objections of National Mediation Board Chair Elizabeth Dougherty.
The two NMB members who approved the new rule, Harry Hoglander and Linda Puchala, are former union officials with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) unions, respectively. Both unions are a major part of an American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) union-led coalition that urged the NMB to discard its election policy of 75 years.
The new procedure stacks the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over railway or airline industry workers if the union acquires support from just a bare majority of eligible workers in an election, no matter how few actually vote. This means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss “representation” on the whole group rather than having a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.
The five Delta workers and similarly situated employees in the railway and airline industries could soon find themselves forced into fees-paying ranks against their will. There are ongoing unionization efforts at Delta by the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and AFA unions.
Foundation attorneys contend that the new rule is unconstitutional because it violates the workers’ rights of freedom of association and due process, especially when the union can only demonstrate support from a minority of workers in a class or craft.
Unlike private sector workers covered by the National Labor Relations Act, nonmember employees in the railway and airline industries are not protected by the Right to Work laws in Georgia, where Delta is headquartered, and 21 other states. Furthermore, the rule change is especially troubling given the complicated bureaucratic hoops these workers must jump through to remove an unwanted union.
“Legal disputes over terms of employment are too often depicted as battles between union bosses and management,” said Patrick Semmens, National Right to Work Foundation Legal Information Director. “We believe the district court erred in ignoring the impact of these new election procedures on individual employees, whose right to bargain individually with their employers could now be tossed aside by a stealth organizing campaign undertaken by professional union organizers.”
No Surprise: Right to Work States Top CNBC «Best for Business» List
Not only is forced unionism bad for workers’ rights, it’s also bad for business. As we’ve documented elsewhere, wasteful union work rules and extravagant, company-funded union boss salaries tend to drag down productivity and innovation. That’s why it’s no surprise to find Right to Work states at the top of CNBC’s 2010 "Best States for Business" rankings. Seven of the top 10 and 10 of the top 15 states identified by CNBC enjoy Right to Work protections.
Of course, protecting workers’ rights and combating union coercion remain the best reasons for states to adopt Right to Work laws. But the beneficial economic side-effects of Right to Work protections – particularly in the midst of an economic downturn – aren’t bad inducements, either.
Right to Work Foundation Calls on NLRB Inspector General to Expand Investigation into Board Member’s Conflicts of Interest
Washington, DC (July 8, 2010) – The National Right to Work Foundation, a charitable organization that provides free legal aid to employees, has asked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Inspector General to expand the scope of his announced investigation into Craig Becker, Obama’s recess appointee to the Board. Prompted by a letter from Rep. Darrell Issa (R, CA.) and other members of the House Oversight Committee, the Inspector General has indicated he will investigate Becker’s involvement in St. Barnabas v. SEIU Local 1957 for possible conflicts of interest.
Earlier this summer, Right to Work attorneys filed 13 recusal motions against Becker, who served as associate general counsel for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and AFL-CIO before he was appointed to the NLRB during a Congressional recess. As the SEIU’s in-house lawyer, Becker litigated against Right to Work Foundation attorneys and developed legal strategies for SEIU affiliates across the country. His published writings also indicate a strong level of hostility to the Foundation’s employee-oriented legal aid program.
Foundation attorneys asked Becker to step aside from any case involving Foundation-assisted workers or the SEIU and its subordinate affiliates. Despite these apparent conflicts of interest, Becker has rejected the recusal motions in all but one pending case.
In one notable instance, Becker refused to recuse himself from a pending case that would overturn the NLRB’s landmark Dana decision, which created a 45 day window period for employees to vote out union officials if they acquired their monopoly bargaining privileges through a card check organizing drive. Becker denies having pre-judged the case despite a career of advocating for card check union organizing and despite having filed a brief arguing against the Board’s decision.
The Foundation’s letter to the NLRB Inspector General also notes that the Obama Administration ethics pledge Becker signed explicitly forbids any appointee from involving themselves with a former employer for no less than two years. Despite this provision, Becker is poised to decide several cases involving SEIU affiliates.
“Craig Becker has repeatedly refused to recuse himself from cases involving his former employer,” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “If the NLRB Inspector General is serious about investigating Becker’s clear conflicts of interest, he should examine all cases where Becker’s work as a leading SEIU lawyer raises serious ethical questions.”
Mark Mix in the Washington Examiner: When Big Labor plays with fire, taxpayers get burned
Earlier this week, Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work, was published in the Washington Examiner warning about the threat the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill (pdf), which just passed the House last week, poses not only public safety workers’ rights, but also state and community budgets. As we noted before, public officials across the country are waking up to the fact that public sector forced unionism is behind the financial crises in their communities.
From Mark Mix’s commentary:
(I)n the 22 states which prohibit forced union dues for government employees and most of which don’t authorize public-sector union monopoly bargaining, fewer than 30 percent of public workers are unionized. Not one of these 22 states was to be found on last month’s Business Insider’s list of the states “most likely to default.”
Business Insider ranked heavily unionized California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin as the worst default risks. And the Hirsch-Macpherson data shows that an average of 61 percent of public-sector employees in these nine states were under union monopoly bargaining — 20 percent higher than the typical state.
In these nine worst default-risk states from 1999 to 2009, aggregate private-sector jobs fell by 4.2 percent, but heavily unionized state and local government jobs increased by 9 percent. Since annual state and local government employee compensation costs nationwide come to $1.1 trillion, or half of all state and local government spending, it’s not hard to see that the Big Labor-driven growth in government payrolls is a fiscal catastrophe for states like California, Illinois, and New Jersey.
…
But government union bosses are expecting to have the last laugh if fed-up taxpayers and their allies limit themselves to going after just bloated public-sector payrolls and unsustainable public pension plans, rather than root of the problem itself.
Laws empowering government union officials to negotiate the contract terms for all front-line employees at a public agency, even for those employees who want nothing to do with the union, are behind the messes in Sacramento, Springfield and Trenton. And laws that authorize the firing of public servants for refusing to pay union dues or fees to an unwanted union make matters even worse.
Long-term solutions to state budget crises will require addressing the core problems of union monopoly bargaining and forced union dues in the public sector.
Until then, hopefully the Senate will spare police officers, firefighters, and EMTs from forced union “representation” that will make budget matters worse for the numerous states that have already rejected it.
Read the entire Washington Examiner guest commentary by Mark Mix here.
California Teachers Unwittingly Fund Union Political Activism
From the San Jose Mercury News, here’s an excellent op-ed from retired teacher Larry Sand on forced teacher union dues:
So why does CTA not let its members decide if they want to contribute to CTA’s various political funds? It is simply because the union knows that if these donations were voluntary, the vast majority of teachers wouldn’t contribute a penny.So does CTA really care about the needs and opinions of its teachers, or does it just see its members as convenient ATMs to further its own political agenda?
Teachers should closely examine whether they want to continue giving their hard-earned money to candidates and causes in which they have no interest or find repellent. And CTA needs to fess up to its arrogant attitude that it knows what’s best for teachers, when, in fact, what teachers actually think about various issues is of no concern to it.
As Sand notes, even if teachers opt-out of dues for union political activism, they’re still forced to pay over $700 annually in so-called "agency fees" to teacher union bosses. And even that’s no guarantee that their money won’t be used to fund union political activism – as many Foundation-assisted employees can attest, union officials often funnel forced dues collected for "workplace bargaining" to union-backed political causes.
The solution, of course, is for California to adopt a Right to Work law, which would make all union dues strictly voluntary. Right to Work laws ensure that union officials only accept voluntary contributions from all employees, including public school teachers.
Federal Labor Board Hits Nurses Union Hierarchy with Complaint for Keeping Workers in Dark
Federal Labor Board Hits Nurses Union
Hierarchy with Complaint for Keeping Workers in Dark
Warwick, RI (July 8, 2010) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional office in Boston issued a formal complaint indicating that local union officials have kept nurses in the dark about the amount of compulsory union dues.
The NLRB’s regional director investigated unfair labor practices charges filed by a Kent Hospital nurse with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation. The regional director found merit to the charges that United Nurses & Allied Professionals (UNAP) union officials failed to meet federal financial disclosure requirements and will now prosecute the union before an administrative law judge.
In September 2009, Jeanette Geary and other nurses informed UNAP union officials that they were exercising their right to refrain from formal union membership and to the payment of any fees for non-bargaining activities including politics and member-only events.
