In an op-ed for The Hill published on Labor Day (September 5, 2023) entitled “Biden’s labor board wants to trap workers in unions they oppose,” National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix highlighted the coercive pro-union boss policies being pushed by Biden-majority National Labor Relations Board to the detriment of the rights of independent-minded workers:
Big Labor bosses have a problem: Despite their vitriolic rhetoric and a small number of loud online activists, most workers want nothing to do with unions.
A Gallup poll released last Labor Day spotlighted the issue: A strong majority of nonunion workers in the U.S. (58 percent) say they are “not interested at all” in joining a union, whereas just 11 percent say they are “extremely interested.”
Since it takes a majority of workers in a given workplace to support a union before monopoly union representation can be imposed, union organizers face a basic math problem — one that explains why only 6 percent of private-sector workers are unionized today.
Yet rather than consider ways of making unionization more attractive to rank-and-file workers, politically-connected union bosses have a different plan: Rig the rules to force more workers into their ranks, willing or not.
President Biden, who campaigned on being “the most pro-union president in American history” and is counting on Big Labor’s multi-billion-dollar political machine again in 2024, is unleashing his administration to the benefit of his favorite special interest.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), stocked with Biden appointees and former union lawyers, has been busy doing just that. If workers won’t voluntarily vote unions in, Biden’s NLRB, whose rules cover most private sector workers, wants to take their vote away.
That’s why the NLRB, at the end of August, effectively mandated the “card check” unionization process by bureaucratic fiat. Never mind that numerous union-backed measures in Congress to require this abuse-prone unionization process have failed to pass into law.
Card-check drives occur when employers, usually in the face of union-applied political and economic pressure, waive workers’ right to a secret ballot election. During these drives, union officials are allowed to demand union authorization cards directly from workers using coercive tactics that would be unlawful during a secret ballot vote.
Union organizers can show up at workers’ homes over and over again demanding signatures, in some instances requiring workers to call the police to get organizers to leave. Workers report being misled about the true implications of signing the cards, and some have been told they would be fired if they didn’t sign just before the union successfully took over.
Some workers even face threats of violence. In one SEIU organizing drive, a worker reported being told that the union would “come and get her children” and “slash her tires” if she didn’t sign a union card…
Read the rest of Mark’s piece on the website of The Hill here.
