Irony: Obama Names Andy Stern to Deficit Panel
If the goal of Obama’s Deficit Panel is to increase government budget deficits then naming SEIU top boss Andy Stern makes perfect sense. But since the supposed goal is to reduce the record budget shortfalls, Stern’s nomination is a real head-scratcher.
As many union members know, the self-interest of union bosses to corral more workers into dues-paying ranks often has severe costs. And now that more than half of our nation’s government workers are now under union boss monopoly bargaining control, it’s becoming abundantly clear that one of these costs is the growth of government to fiscally unsustainable levels.
It’s no wonder mayors from across the country are standing up to oppose the Police & Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill, currently pending in Congress, which would force first responders into forced-dues-paying ranks by federal fiat. As Charleston, WV, mayor Danny Jones told the Charleston Daily Mail,
If you look around the states, the most unionized states are the ones that are the most broke.
So while SEIU boss Andy Stern continues his using his frequent White House visits to push for a new federal policy that could add $100 billion a year to the federal budget (while forcing employees of federal contractors into union coffers) and the costs of Big Labor’s public sector growth become more clear, concerned citizens can only wonder what kind of recommendations Andy Stern will make on President Obama’s deficit panel.
Right to Work on the Radio: Opposing the Forced Unionization of Michigan Homecare Workers
Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with the Lucy Ann Lance Business Insider to discuss Big Labor’s attempt to force Michigan homecare workers into union collectives. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:
You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed. For more information on the forced unionization of Michigan homecare workers, check out Mix’s interview with Detroit-based radio host Frank Beckman.
Worker Advocate Demands Federal Disclosure on Controversial Transportation Union Rule Change
Worker Advocate Demands Federal Disclosure on Controversial Transportation Union Rule Change
Former airline union officials should not use federal power to help their
unions corral tens of thousands of workers into union membership
Washington, DC (March 5, 2010) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the National Mediation Board (NMB) seeking records of any communication between two of its three members – both former union officials – and any union official or lobbyist concerning a dramatic rule change proposal on how a union is imposed on non-union railway and airline industry workers.
The NMB, the federal agency tasked with mediating labor disputes within the railroad and airline industries, is poised to roll back 75 years of precedent and change labor union organizing regulations, greasing the skids for union organizers to lock industry workers into union ranks. The new procedure would stack the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over workers if the union “wins” an election, no matter how few eligible workers actually participate in the vote. In fact, this means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss “representation” on the whole group as opposed to a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.
Worker Advocate Demands Federal Disclosure on Controversial Transportation Union Rule Change
Washington, DC (March 5, 2010) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the National Mediation Board (NMB) seeking records of any communication between two of its three members – both former union officials – and any union official or lobbyist concerning a dramatic rule change proposal on how a union is imposed on non-union railway and airline industry workers.
The NMB, the federal agency tasked with mediating labor disputes within the railroad and airline industries, is poised to roll back 75 years of precedent and change labor union organizing regulations, greasing the skids for union organizers to lock industry workers into union ranks. The new procedure would stack the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over workers if the union “wins” an election, no matter how few eligible workers actually participate in the vote. In fact, this means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss “representation” on the whole group as opposed to a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.
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 urging the NMB to discard its longstanding policy. President Barack Obama’s appointment of Puchala in 2009 solidified a pro-forced unionism majority on the NMB.
The members voted 2-1 to preliminarily support the controversial change, and NMB Chair Elizabeth Dougherty has criticized the hasty actions of the two members.
In January, Foundation attorneys filed comments and testified with the NMB opposing the rule change and filed a motion seeking the recusal of Hoglander and Puchala as a conflict of interest.
“President Obama repeatedly promised a new era of openness, transparency, and ethics but has repeatedly violated that pledge when it comes to paying off Organized Labor bosses,” said Patrick Semmens, legal information director of the National Right to Work Foundation. “National Mediation Board members should comply with the letter and spirit of that policy by not making rulings that so directly benefit their recent associates, ALPA and AFA union officials, in their quest to force more workers into union ranks.”
The FOIA request seeks correspondence, transcripts or notes of meetings, reports or handouts, proposals, speeches, phone logs, or other writings or recordings between Hoglander or Puchala and union officials concerning the proposed change.
Obama’s Labor Department Is Serious About Ethics… Except When It Isn’t
Over at BigGovernment.com, Don Loos of National Right to Work examines the abysmal record of the Obama Department of Labor when it comes to enforcing the Administration’s ethics policy against union officials:
On January 8th, BigGovernment.com posted a blog that began, “Outrageously, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Hilda Solis and other DOL Obama appointees appear to have blatantly disregarded the President’s Executive Order #13490 – the Ethics Pledge.”
Somebody at the U.S. Department of Labor must be reading BigGovernment.com because just 11 days after the posting, the DOL ethics officer wrote a letter to The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix and provided copies of signed “EO 13490 ethics pledges.” (See related Foundation ongoing lawsuit against DOL for DOL’s failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.) Each of these newly provided pledges matched the ethics order language (more on this in another post) unlike the self-administered waivers included in the publicly distributed pledges provided to ProPublica.org and referenced in the earlier blog.
In addition, the DOL ethics officer asserted that 51 people at the DOL have signed the ethics pledge and there has been only one (1) ethics waiver issued by DOL and that was for Naomi Walker. Her Job: Big Labor Liaison (an Associate Deputy Secretary position). Her past experience includes a stint as an AFL-CIO lobbyist among others. Walker’s ethics waiver is the subject of this blog.
Walker’s ethics waiver and its accompanying explanatory memo was approved “after consultation with the Counsel to the President” expose The President’s Ethics Executive Order for the joke that it is.
The ethics officer provides a four-page memo (probably written in a large part by the Counsel to the President) to justify the reasons that Walker must be provided an ethics waiver of Obama’s ethics executive order. My summary of the memo follows:
The Counsel to President Obama and the Department of Labor reached the conclusion that it would be impossible for Walker not to violate the Ethics Order because of her previous positions with the AFL-CIO; therefore, she must be granted an ethics waiver so that she can do the job for which she was appointed.
Wasn’t the reason for the ethics pledge to prevent appointing someone to a position where their previous employer could greatly benefit with them as a government insider?
[…]
Continue reading the post here.
Right to Work Foundation Announces New Addition to Legal Team
Right to Work Foundation Announces New Addition to Legal Team
Wake Forest-trained attorney dedicated to the cause of individual liberty
Washington, DC (February 26, 2010) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation announced today that it has hired Erin Elizabeth Smith of Georgetown, Texas, as an addition to its legal staff.
Smith is a recently sworn in member of the North Carolina State Bar and 2009 graduate of the Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, NC.
“Erin Smith brings to the Foundation a real commitment to defending and advancing individual liberty against the looming threat of compulsory unionism,” said Ray LaJeunesse, vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Foundation.
“She will assist the Foundation’s burgeoning, cutting-edge legal strategies to blunt Big Labor’s well-funded, politically-connected attack on individual worker rights – including its coercive ‘card check’ forced union organizing and misuse of compulsory dues for politics.”
Right to Work Foundation Announces New Addition to Legal Team
Washington, DC (February 26, 2010) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation announced today that it has hired Erin Elizabeth Smith of Georgetown, Texas, as an addition to its legal staff.
Smith is a recently sworn in member of the North Carolina State Bar and 2009 graduate of the Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, NC.
“Erin Smith brings to the Foundation a real commitment to defending and advancing individual liberty against the looming threat of compulsory unionism,” said Ray LaJeunesse, vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Foundation.
“She will assist the Foundation’s burgeoning, cutting-edge legal strategies to blunt Big Labor’s well-funded, politically-connected attack on individual worker rights – including its coercive ‘card check’ forced union organizing and misuse of compulsory dues for politics.”
As the newest of the Foundation’s eleven staff attorneys, Smith will help build on the Foundation’s litigation record for union-abused workers that includes 14 cases at the United States Supreme Court, seven of which were won in whole or in part. Currently, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys represent thousands of employees in over 200 active cases nationwide.
Before joining the Foundation, Smith served as an intern for both the National Labor Relations Board regional office and for a federal public defender in Winston-Salem. She also was a law clerk for Davis & Hamrick, LLP of Winston-Salem and for the Institute for Justice in Washington, DC.
Smith holds bachelors degrees in History and Political Science from Wake Forest University, where she graduated with honors. She was also a member of the legal honor society Phi Alpha Delta and an executive staff member of the Wake Forest Journal of Intellectual Property Law.
Right to Work on the Radio: Jerry Doyle Interviews Right to Work President Mark Mix
Following his CPAC panel discussion, Right to Work President Mark Mix was interviewed by Jerry Doyle on Big Labor’s political influence and the Right to Work movement. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:
You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.
Employee Hits AT&T/Union Officials with Federal Labor Charges Attacking Scheme to Unionize Workers
Employee Hits AT&T/Union Officials with Federal Labor Charges Attacking Scheme to Unionize Workers
Fearing lack of support, communications union bosses are attempting to rig election employees initiated to throw out unwanted union
Seattle, WA (February 24, 2010) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, a Redmond-based AT&T Mobility employee filed federal charges after union organizers illegally colluded with company officials to sweep AT&T workers across the state into union ranks in exchange for contract concessions.
Per a so-called “neutrality agreement” between the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union hierarchy and AT&T, workers in a 140-employee bargaining unit (which consists of various locations across the state of Washington) had CWA union monopoly bargaining foisted upon them after a card-check forced unionism campaign. In exchange, union officials agreed with AT&T to subject the employees to a previously negotiated contract which results in lost benefits and perks for the workers.
As part of the agreement, the workers would be swept into the CWA union’s regional monopoly bargaining unit which consists of thousands of employees – making it virtually impossible for them to later organize to remove the union officials’ monopoly bargaining privileges.
Greg Hartmann of Auburn is challenging the pre-recognition negotiations because he and his colleagues were not even aware of the terms either of the neutrality agreement or the employees’ new contract until after the card-check campaign.
Employee Hits AT&T/Union Officials with Federal Labor Charges Attacking Scheme to Unionize Workers
Seattle, WA (February 24, 2010) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, a Redmond-based AT&T Mobility employee filed federal charges after union organizers illegally colluded with company officials to sweep AT&T workers across the state into union ranks in exchange for contract concessions.
Per a so-called “neutrality agreement” between the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union hierarchy and AT&T, workers in a 140-employee bargaining unit (which consists of various locations across the state of Washington) had CWA union monopoly bargaining foisted upon them after a card-check forced unionism campaign. In exchange, union officials agreed with AT&T to subject the employees to a previously negotiated contract which results in lost benefits and perks for the workers.
As part of the agreement, the workers would be swept into the CWA union’s regional monopoly bargaining unit which consists of thousands of employees – making it virtually impossible for them to later organize to remove the union officials’ monopoly bargaining privileges.
Greg Hartmann of Auburn is challenging the pre-recognition negotiations because he and his colleagues were not even aware of the terms either of the neutrality agreement or the employees’ new contract until after the card-check campaign.
Moreover, using precedent won by Right to Work Foundation attorneys in the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) landmark 2007 decision in Dana Corporation, the employees filed a decertification petition demanding a secret ballot election to remove the unwanted union from their workplace. CWA union lawyers failed to convince the NLRB regional director in Seattle to block the employees’ request for a secret ballot election.
Instead, union lawyers are now adding workers who were not included in the card-check campaign to the list of eligible voters for the decertification election – bringing into question AT&T’s recognition of the union as the workers’ monopoly bargaining agent. Hartmann is challenging the company’s granting of bargaining privileges to CWA union officials because changing the eligible voters list suggests the union bosses were prematurely recognized.
“First, CWA union bosses cut a backroom deal to force these workers into their forced dues-paying ranks and now they appear to be rigging the decertification election to prevent workers from throwing out the unwanted union,” said Patrick Semmens, Legal Information Director of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Union officials’ blatant disregard for the rights of employees in this case shows why no worker should ever be forced to pay dues to a union, or to accept union ‘representation’ as a condition of employment.”
