The saga continues, as New York City Marriott officials are facing additional federal charges for trying to force workers to accept local union officials’ unwanted "representation" and with it, the obligation of forced dues payments.

Last month, a group of SoHo Marriott workers targeted in a vicious campaign of intimidation and harassment by union organizers and company officials filed federal charges against Marriott and the union with free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation.

New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council Local 6 union organizers entered into a backroom deal (called a "neutrality agreement") with company officials. Of course, there is nothing "neutral" about the agreement, which allows union organizers unfettered access to the employees in order to install a union in the workplace while workers who wish to refrain from union affiliation are silenced with threats and punishment.

For example, Marriott worker Coralina Alcantara (who filed the latest around of charges against Marriott last week) and many of her colleagues are prohibited from meeting in the employee break room. Meanwhile, the company’s lawyer has been interrogating Coralina and her colleagues and threatening them for wishing to remain free from union boss shackles.

It should come to no surprise that the workers are now unanimously opposed to the union officials’ presence in the workplace. The same union officials have used video cameras in employee changing rooms, accessed employee lockers, handled employees’ personal possessions, and resorted to verbal abuse against workers. One union official even took photographs of a female employee without her consent while she was changing her uniform in an employee changing room. As reported in the New York Post last month:

Workers at a downtown hotel charge that union goons resorted to outrageous tactics to browbeat them into joining their ranks — going so far as to photograph a female staffer as she changed clothes in an employee locker room, apparently to blackmail her.

"I was wearing my uniform pants and my bra and holding my shirt to put it on when they started snapping pictures," front-desk worker Gisel Rodriguez, 28, recalled of the alleged sneak attack at the SoHo Courtyard Marriott in December.

"I was furious, really didn’t know what to do," she said. "They said, ‘We’re allowed to be here,’ and clicked away."

Rodriguez said she believes the union reps wanted to use the photos "as blackmail, to get us to sign."

The October/November issue of the Foundation’s bimonthly newsletter is now available online.

In this issue:

• Obama NLRB Exceeds Legal Authority in Payback to Big Labor
• Foundation Overturns Union Schemes that Forced Nonunion Workers to Subsidize Big Labor’s Radical Political Agenda
• Beyond Boeing: The Obama Labor Board’s Forced-Unionism Agenda
• Connecticut Police Officer Wins Forced Dues Refund
• NLRB Shreds Secret Ballots after Overturning Landmark Foundation-won «Card Check» Precedent
• National Right to Work Labor Day News Round-Up

To view the October/November issue of Foundation Action in full screen, click on the viewer below. Use the left and right arrows to flip from page to page and click on any page to zoom in. Press ESC after you have finished to return to this screen.

Or, to download the newsletter as a PDF, please click here.

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Regular Freedom@Work readers are already familiar with a growing body of evidence that points to Right to Work states’ superior economic performance. A new fact sheet from the National Institute for Labor Relations Research further bolsters the economic case for worker freedom. The Institute’s findings show that citizens in Right to Work states enjoyed faster growth and more purchasing power than their counterparts in forced unionism states over the past 10 years. Here are a few of the highlights:

Right to Work States Benefit From Faster Growth, Higher Real Purchasing Power – 2011 Update

Percentage Growth in Non-Farm Private-Sector Employees (2000-2010)

Right to Work States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +0.3%
Forced-Unionism States. . . . . . . . . . . . . . -5.5%
National Average . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  -3.3%
Source: Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)

Percentage Real Growth in Private-Sector Employee Compensation (2000-2010)

Right to Work States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3%
Forced-Unionism States. . . . . . . . . . . . .  . 0.7%
(2000-2010) National Average . . . . .  . . . . 4.3%
BEA; BLS

Cost of Living-Adjusted Compensation Per Private-Sector Employee (2010)

Right to Work States . . . . . . . . . . . . . $56,575
Forced-Unionism States . . . . . . . . . . . $55,420
National Average . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $55,896
Missouri Economic Research and Information Center (MERIC);
BEA; Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (BOC)

Right to Work is first and foremost about protecting employee freedom, but the economic performance of Right to Work states is a nice bonus. For more on the economic benefits of Right to Work laws, check out this op-ed from Foundation President Mark Mix in The Washington Examiner. 

Today, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has published its newest "Know Your Rights" page, this one geared to charter school teachers and employees who are forced to accept union officials’ "representation," even if the workers want nothing to do with the union. 

National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys compiled a list of rights charter school teachers and employees have in the workplace with the specific goal to enlighten charter school employees that they can make decisions in an atmosphere free of threats, harassment, coercion, or misrepresentation.

The Foundation is also publishing a new brochure (pdf) for workers who want to know more about their rights working in a unionized charter school workplace. You can download the tri-fold brochure here (pdf).

In the wake of National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) move to kill the only protection workers have against card check forced unionism, the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a hearing yesterday about the recent onslaught of the NLRB’s pro-forced unionism rulings as former-Chairwoman Wilma Liebman’s term expired late last month.

Testifying at the hearing was Barbara Ivey, who works at a Portland, Oregon-based IT unit at Kaiser Permanente.

Ivey and 60 of her coworkers were subjected to a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) card check forced unionization campaign (via a neutrality agreement).

Many of Ivey’s coworkers reported that they were misled or pressured by SEIU organizers into signing union cards, and didn’t even know what they meant.

After the SEIU succeeded in gaining enough cards to claim monopoly bargaining privileges over the workers, the workers were told that if they didn’t like it, they could file with the NLRB for a secret-ballot decertification election (per Foundation-won precedent in Dana) to overrule the card check campaign and remove the unwanted union.

After leaning about her rights with the assistance of Foundation staff attorneys, Ivey collected the necessary amount of signatures on a petition for a secret-ballot election.  But then, on August 26, 2011, the Obama NLRB overruled the Dana precedent in Lamons Gasket and the election was summarily cancelled.

Now, the employees in the Kaiser IT department are stuck with the SEIU for anywhere from one to four years before they will even have a chance to force a secret-ballot vote (and getting a decertification vote is a major uphill battle for employees who will have campaign against an entrenched union with full-time paid professional organizers).

Yesterday, Ms. Ivey shared with Congress her experiences with the unfairness of card check unionization and the one-sidedness of the Obama NLRB. You can read Barbara Ivey’s testimony by clicking here (pdf).

You can watch the video of the hearing here.

As reported on the Washington Examiner‘s "Beltway Confidential" blog, Development Counselors International (DCI) recently asked corporate executives and representatives which states they thought were the best to locate for business. As the Examiner notes, America’s job providers overwhelmingly favored states with Right to Work laws.

Of course this should come to no surprise. The results of DCI’s survey largely mirrors that of CNBC 2010 "Best for Business" list, in which states with Right to Work protections for its workers were ranked seven of the top 10 and 10 of the top 15.

But despite the economic benefits business enjoy from Right to Work, the real beneficiaries are America’s independent-minded workers. As the National Institute of Labor Relations Research (NILRR) has found time and again, workers and their families benefit immensely from Right to Work protections: from higher incomes and purchasing power to an increased likelihood of sending their children to college and having private, employment-based health insurance.

And most important of all, workers in Right to Work states get to exercise their fundamental freedom of association — a quintessential American value supported by 80 percent of Americans and even 80 percent of union members.

In the New York Times, columnist Joe Nocera writes how the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) unprecedented persecution against Boeing for locating additional production of its Dreamliner airplanes in South Carolina — in part because South Carolina is a Right to Work state — has changed the game for job providers:

It is a mind-boggling stretch to describe Boeing’s strategy as "retaliation." Companies have often moved to right-to-work states to avoid strikes; it is part of the calculus every big manufacturer makes. The South Carolina facility is a hedge against the possibility that Boeing’s union work force will shut down production of the Dreamliner. And it’s a perfectly legitimate hedge, at least under the rules that the business thought it was operating under.

That is what is so jarring about this case — and not just for Boeing. Without any warning, the rules have changed. Uncertainty has replaced certainty. Other companies have to start wondering what other rules could soon change. It becomes a reason to hold back on hiring.

When even the staunchly pro-forced unionism New York Times and its columnist most known for calling the Tea Party «terrorists» acknowledge the dangerous precedent President Barack Obama’s NLRB is creating, you know there is a problem.

It’s worth noting that the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union hierarchy actually enjoyed monopoly bargaining control of the South Carolina facility before the Boeing workers removed the union. If IAM union officials can retaliate against companies for locating work in a Right to Work state and against independent-minded employees for choosing to shake off union control, then the rules haven’t just changed for job providers, but also for America’s workforce.

As previously reported on the Freedom@Work blog, union militants are certainly making headlines of late using violent tactics and vandalism to prove their point.

Stunningly, union thugs in Michigan may have taken this to the next level last week when John King, owner of King Electrical Services, was reportedly shot by a union goon spraying the word "scab" on the side of his car in the driveway.

Of course this should surprise no one familiar with the violent legacy of Big Labor, including that of AFL-CIO union boss Richard Trumka. But for good measure, the Investor’s Business Daily (IBD) opined today about union bosses’ reliance on violence to get their way:

The attack on King is emblematic of the sad fact that the leading perpetrators of political violence today are U.S. labor unions.

They’ve grown more violent in their rhetoric as their political power grows and their appeal to workers diminishes.

According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research, a right-to-work think tank in Washington, there have been 4,400 incidents of union violence in the last 20 years.

The Teamsters are the leading perpetrators, with 454 incidents. But IBEW, which some suspect in the King incident, is in the top 10, having engaged in 125 incidents.

All told, there have been 11,600 incidents of union violence against workers, management and the public since 1975.

In 1973, the United States Supreme Court actually ruled to grant union officials the special privilege to be exempt from federal prosecution for union violence. And shocking these numbers may seem, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research states that for reported incidences of union violence between 1975 and 2000, only three percent of those incidents have led to an arrest and conviction.

The numbers used by IBD also don’t account for the fact that most incidents of union violence go unreported (a study of one strike found seven instances of violence for every on reported on in the media) meaning that the already staggering numbers the article cites are just the tip of the iceberg.

Days into the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) union boss-ordered strike against Verizon, disturbing reports of union militancy — and their effects on workers and customers alike — are becoming widespread. The Associated Press have reported over 70 instances of sabotage in just the first few days of the strike.

In the video below (warning: explicit language), a striking union militant uses his young daughter as a prop, demanding she block a Verizon truck from moving while he curses out the Verizon employees in the truck.

Here’s a rundown of some of the other disturbing reports:

• One non-striking Verizon worker in New York was shot with a BB gun by union militants.
• The Boston Herald interviews a 64-year old mother of five about union strikers who picketed outside of her house while Verizon technicians repaired her broken phone line
• Senior citizens at an independent living facility in Maryland whose phone lines were knocked out in a recent storm have been forced to share phones, if they’ve been able to reach families members at all, reports the Baltimore Sun

The National Right to Work Foundation issued special legal notices informing CWA and IBEW union members of their rights to resign from union membership and return to work (see the notices here and here).  Foundation attorneys have provided free legal aid to victims of union violence.

Chris Mosquera, a Maryland county government employee filed a federal lawsuit in May with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys to stop the Obama Administration from allowing union bosses to conceal lavish and corrupt union expenditures from workers.

In today’s Washington Examiner, Mosquera discussed why he filed the lawsuit against Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis:

As a member of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, I’m more knowledgeable than most about the ins and outs of union finance.

In fact, I’ve learned some interesting things about my own local’s spending habits over the years. Like the $2 million office condo they bought in Gaithersburg, or the fact that the president of my local makes over $200,000 a year, plus other undocumented benefits.

…

Disclosure is a simple but effective tool for fighting corruption and encouraging accountability. If union officials know their spending habits are part of the public record, they’ll be less interested in expensive getaways and more interested in effectively managing their members’ hard-earned dues.

Click here to read the entire op-ed.

For more of the Foundation’s coverage of the union-boss disclosures here, click here.

The Foundation relies completely on voluntary contributions from its supporters to provide free legal aid. To make a tax-deductible contribution in whatever amount, please click here.