The lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal observes that Big Labor is attempting to gag opposition to their card check power grab, which just yesterday was introduced in Congress:

Big Labor’s drive to eliminate secret ballots for union elections has united American business in opposition, so labor chiefs are putting on the brass knuckles: The new strategy is to threaten companies with government retaliation if they don’t stop lobbying against turning U.S. labor markets into Europe.

We wrote on February 13 about the letter from the labor consortium Change to Win to the Financial Services Roundtable, demanding that banks receiving Troubled Asset Relief Program money keep quiet about union "card check." To its credit, the banking lobby hasn’t backed down. Now Big Labor is escalating, demanding in a February 23 letter to Secretary Timothy Geithner that Treasury muzzle the companies if they won’t muzzle themselves.

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The double standard here is remarkable. Every year, unions collect millions of dollars in grants from government agencies they lobby. In 2002 and 2003, the Service Employees International Union — the main driver behind Ms. Burger’s consortium — lobbied the Department of Health and Human Services while receiving between $563,226 and $938,388 per year in grants. Imagine if Tom DeLay had ever said that labor unions or AARP couldn’t speak up about Medicare because they or their affiliates had accepted federal grants. The headlines would have read: "Republican Gag Rule."

Labor chiefs are desperate to pass their easy-organizing agenda this year, because they know liberal majorities on Capitol Hill won’t last. They also know they haven’t been able to organize workers with a level playing field, so they want to rewrite the rules so their organizers can see which individual workers are voting no and apply peer and other pressure. Most workers can see how unions have contributed to the destruction of Detroit, U.S. steel makers and so many other industries. That’s why unions need government-sanctioned coercion to prevail both against business and with workers.

The editorial is of course right about the glaring double standard, but even it understates the scope of this union hypocrisy, which goes far beyond simply the millions of dollars in direct taxpayer dollars that flow into union coffers.

Of course, Big Labor’s massive power depends entirely on its government-granted privilege to force workers to accept its "representation"and then (in states without Right to Work laws) force workers to pay dues to union bosses or be fired.

For a full list of Big Labor’s government-granted special powers, see this list.

Doug Bandow, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, writes in the American Spectator about Big Labor’s Card Check Forced Unionism Bill. In his article Bandow cites the story of Mike Ivey, who was represented by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys after UAW organizers targeted his plant for an aggressive card check campaign complete with plenty of union intimidation, pressure and harassment.

The secret ballot is key. It protects workers from retaliation — that’s why the U.S. elects public officials, rather than allowing citizens to sign election cards. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell which worker is more vulnerable to pressure and even violence: one who gets to cast a secret ballot or one who must sign or not sign a card in public view. Four decades ago a federal appeals court declared: "it is beyond dispute that secret election is a more accurate reflection of the employees’ true desires than a check of authorization cards collected at the behest of a union organizer."

Former union organizer Jen Jason testified before the House Education and Labor Committee: "During the course of my employment with the union, I began to understand the reality behind the rhetoric. I took in the ways that organizers were manipulating workers just to get a majority on ‘the cards’ and the various strategies that they employed. I began to appreciate that promises made by organizers at the worker’s house had little to do with how the union actually functions as a ‘service’ organization."

In fact, misrepresentation and intimidation are routine, as union organizers lie about what signing the care means (claiming, for example, that it certifies attending a meeting or requesting more information) and badger employees to sign (sending groups of pro-union workers to people’s homes). The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has collected the stories of many employees, such as that of Mike Ivey, a South Carolina materials handler, who complained that the UAW "created a hostile work environment" through relentless pressure to sign cards. These abuses would be multiplied if card check automatically yielded recognition, foreclosing the need for a vote.

This may be why even union members favor elections. Polls have found that eight to nine of every ten of them favor a vote. Card check is a tool for union executives and Democratic politicians, not workers.

For more on Mike Ivey’s story watch this video where he talks about his experience with card check:

Today’s sham hearings for the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill looked more like a union brass press conference as civility was repeatedly thrown aside as scores of rowdy union partisans applauded every time a Senator toed the union boss line (and snickered when anyone dared to dissent from that line).

Testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions was virtually monopolized by union partisans. But Larry Getts, a Dana Coproration employee in Fort Wayne, Indiana, offered a first-hand account of the kind of pressure and intimidation by union goons:

In fact, one day, an official approached me again claiming fifty percent of the plant had signed — so now I was going to have to sign the card to “get my information in the system.”

I signed the card then because I thought I had to.

I didn’t learn until later that even then, I should not have been forced to sign the card.

Read Getts’ full testimony here (PDF).

The posh Miami Fontainebleu Hotel will play host to Vice President Biden, Hilda Solis, and the AFL-CIO executive council this week, as union bosses work tirelessly to spend employees’ hard-earned forced dues on $1000 per night rooms and critical projects like sampling each of the facility’s eleven restaurants, thoroughly testing the resort’s 40,000 square foot spa, and enjoying the sights and sounds of Miami Beach:

The conference will also cover union bosses’ novel approach to economic recovery, which involves forcing more unwilling workers into union collectives through the grossly misnamed "Employee Free Choice Act." But we’re not quite sure how extracting millions of dollars in additional forced union dues is supposed to revive our flagging economy — perhaps the AFL-CIO plans to single-handedly save the luxury resort business by scheduling more conferences?

Of course, history tells us handing more forced unionism power over to union bosses will only make the current economic downturn even worse.

For those of you who missed it, the National Right to Work Foundation recently released a video featuring Foundation President Mark Mix urging all Right to Work supporters to get involved in our efforts to stop the Obama Administration from rolling back basic union disclosure regulations. Now Mix’s message is available in podcast form. Click here to listen: