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

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.

Read the full news release.

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 8^th, 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 President Mark Mix joined Detroit-based radio host Frank Beckmann to discuss Big Labor’s efforts to forcibly unionize homecare workers in Michigan. Click here to download the MP3 or use the embedded player below:

You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed. 

It appears Big Labor will stop at nothing to impose card check forced unionism on American workers and job-providers. Public opposition from energized Right to Work supporters and other concerned Americans to the draconian card check bill — which eliminates the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives, opens up workers to intimidating "home visits," and allows government bureaucrats to impose contracts on workers — has thus far stalled the legislation in the Senate.

On Tuesday, in what may have been a test vote on card check, the Senate rejected an attempt to move President Obama’s nomination of radical union lawyer Craig Becker to a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the quasi-judicial agency that administers federal labor law.  Becker’s writings indicated a willingness to impose the card check forced unionism mechanism through NLRB rules, without even a Congressional vote.

But despite this setback union officials aren’t giving up on card check, and neither are the forced unionism proponents in the Obama Administration.  The Daily Caller reports that White House staffers are considering a new executive order that could effectively require all federal contractors to submit their workers to coercive card check campaigns:

Critics say the proposals would heavily favor unionized companies and significantly increase the cost and amount of time needed to award contracts. Estimates have the potential cost increase at 20 percent, adding about $100 billion a year to the federal budget.

“Making contracting decisions based on political or ideological litmus tests will waste taxpayer dollars and limit economic growth at a time when we can least afford to do so. The administration’s new rules amount to a backdoor attempt at card check. The last thing our small businesses need is to be saddled with new rules that effectively say ‘unionize or die,’” said John Hart, communications director for Senator Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican. Coburn and four other Senate Republicans sent a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag last week asking for a briefing on the proposals; they have yet to receive a response.

…

Now the administration is facing increasing pressure to go around Congress and implement pro-labor policies via executive order. The Service Employees International Union, one of the groups lobbying the White House to adopt the new labor policies, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

No surprises here: SEIU czar Andy Stern was the most frequest visitor to the White House in Obama’s first year.

The January/February 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.

In this issue:

• Right to Work Sues Obama Administration, Demands Info on Big Labor Ties
• Big Labor Moves to Roll Back Sweeping Foundation Precedent
• Right to Work Combats Sneak Attack on Railway/Airline Workers
• Supreme Court Asked to Halt UAW Religious Discrimination
• Grocery Clerks Fight to Free Themselves From Union Ranks

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

The National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) just released a new study detailing the disturbing trend of the forced unionization of government workers.  In it, NILRR points out that in 2008 and the first 11 months of 2009, unionized private-sector workers lost their jobs at more than double the rate than their private-sector non-unionized colleagues.

Meanwhile, for the first time ever, more than half of our nation’s government workers are now under union boss monopoly bargaining control and the number is growing with disastrous consequences:

While today 51% of unionized workers nationwide are government employees, as recently as 1981 there were more than twice as many unionized private-sector workers as their were unionized public-sector workers. The ever-increasing concentration of Big Labor’s power and influence in government employment will greatly exacerbate the harmful tendency of public employment to grow faster than private employment over time.

Not only that, but Congress is considering passing legislation that would help union bosses corral more city and local government emergency responders into union ranks — legislation that local government officials are warning will make their already-severe budgetary woes even worse.

Combined with NILRR’s recent analysis that taxpayers are fleeing forced unionism states, it’s easy to see their conclusion:  Unless states take action to cut back Big Labor’s numerous government-granted special privileges, fewer and fewer American private-sector workers and their employers are facing a greater tax burden to sustain an ever-growing government — especially in forced unionism states.

Read NILRR’s report here.

And for more on the history of Big Labor’s campaign to acquire incredible power over local, state, and national government, order your free copy of Stranglehold: How union bosses have hijacked our government today.

Yesterday in Roll Call, Bret Jacobson noted the importance of today’s Senate hearings on President Obama’s nomination of Service Employee International Union General Counsel, Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

Thus, we have today’s hearing for Becker, a longtime strategist and lawyer for organized labor. If they can’t get “card check” through a broad, participatory legislative process, they’ll push to grab a similar victory through the federal board’s ability to regulate without approval of the people’s Representatives.

As such, this hearing — demanded by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is troubled by Becker’s blatantly anti-employer views — signals that we have officially hit plan B on the administration’s strategy for pandering to the organized labor lobby. This new course will focus on the quiet job-killer of regulation and card check by fiat.

But the real problem isn’t that Becker is anti-employer — it’s that his career as a diehard union boss apologist reveals an extreme hostility to the very employees the union bosses claim to represent.  Last October, National Right Work president Mark Mix took to the pages of the Washington Times to make this very point:

In fact, as a former AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyer, Mr. Becker is solely responsible for forcing tens of thousands of workers under union boss control.

In one case, reports from a Los Angeles SEIU local union revealed that almost 63,000 people rejected membership in the union in 2007, but thanks to Mr. Becker, were still forced to pay dues.

And Mr. Becker’s own words explain why. He was even so bold as to say unions were "formed to escape the evils of individualism and individual competition … their actions necessarily involve coercion."

With that kind of anything-goes attitude, it’s no surprise Mr. Becker supports "home visits," in which union militants repeatedly harass workers at home until they sign union-authorization cards, and even advocates letting Mr. Obama’s handpicked arbiters impose contracts on workers, without even allowing the workers to vote on their own contract.

Contrast Craig Becker’s radical, pro-coercion views with the words of Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor: "No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion."

For more on Becker, see this post from the National Right to Work Committee’s blog and visit their action center here.

Although surprisingly NOT registered as a lobbyist, SEIU Top Boss Andy Stern is The White House’s most frequent visitor. Union bosses get top billing at high-profile administration events. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis’s last job was at Big Labor-front group American Rights at Work. To commemorate the union bosses’ newfound friendliness with top White House politicos, we decided to put together a short video on the Obama Administration relationship with Big Labor:

The Right to Work Foundation continues to work tirelessly to promote greater transparency at the Department of Labor. Unfortunately, the root of the too-close-for-comfort relationship between union bosses and the White House can be traced back to Big Labor’s many government-granted powers. Until we’re able to roll back these union boss privileges, the White House will remain a favored destination for Big Labor bosses. 

At The Daily Caller, the anonymous Anchorman — "a well-known news anchor from a top-10, big-city news station" — brings up an interesting point about his colleagues’ political coverage. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) union "represents" most television network news correspondents and anchors.  That "representation" includes political advocacy, including as the anchorman points out, lobbying efforts on the health care / forced unionization legislation currently pending in Congress.

If that bothers you, you should also know that your “objective” network correspondent, roaming the halls of Congress right now trying to ferret out the “truth,” probably pays hundreds, or even thousands of dollars in union dues to AFTRA every year. He or she, in all likelihood, depends on AFTRA for one of those “Cadillac” health insurance plans that is the subject of so much debate. He or she also will receive a nice little AFTRA pension come retirement time, and perhaps most importantly, will depend on AFTRA to help defend, protect or advise them in any serious conflicts, demotions, firings, or legal issues with management at their TV station or network.

Might this conflict of interest also impact the media’s coverage of the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill?  We’d be surprised if it didn’t affect some reporters’ objectivity  In fact, here’s the kind of analysis of that bill you won’t see on the nightly news.