Right to Work Blog

The Daily Citizen in Searcy, Arkansas reports that “[v]iolent incidents at the Kohler factory in Searcy escalated over the weekend after the labor union withdrew three of four charges before the Federal Labor Relations Board. Members of the United Auto Workers Local 1000 rejected a proposed contract Dec. 9 and went on strike at the stainless steel sink factory. Replacement workers have been hired by Kohler. One of those new workers, Jon David Hicks, was injured by what he said were the actions of a union member walking the picket line.” The article continues:

On March 21, at 8:03 p.m. Hicks was exiting the driveway of the Kohler factory at Beebe-Capps Expressway on his new motorcycle.

“I saw this guy lunge at me,” Hicks said. “Instinctively, I swerved to miss him. Next thing I know, I’m laying on the ground, pulling my helmet off, and there is a first responder standing over me.”

Hicks went into the inside lane and struck an eastbound truck driven by Patrick Parrott. He was transported to the White County Medical Center and treated for a broken collarbone and a bruised right side.

“If I hadn’t been wearing my helmet and jacket I’d be dead right now,” Hicks said.

Hicks wasn’t alone:

Another replacement worker, who asked their name be withheld in fear of retaliation, told The Daily Citizen what they had experienced crossing the picket line.

“They do everything in their power so we will run over them,” the Kohler employee said. “They put nails in the driveway. I’m one of the Maytag people that got laid off. The unemployment office didn’t give us a choice to take this job. They told us if we didn’t take this job we wouldn’t have unemployment.”

According to this man, 20 to 30 percent of the replacement workers are former Maytag workers.

A second temporary worker, who also asked their name be withheld, described what it was like to cross the picket line.

“They follow people home and spray paint their vehicles,” the worker said. “They scream obscenities and hit my car with their signs. They’re being down right vicious.”

A striker who was walking the picket line Monday and who refused to give his name, said he saw a replacement worker flash a gun last week.

According to a Searcy police report, a black male in a Chevrolet Tahoe pointed a handgun at strikers. One witness told police, the man with the gun said, “I’ve got something to take care of you” as he held up the handgun.

On Friday, police reports show three other incidents occurred.

A Kohler employee had the right side mirror broken off her vehicle, causing $200 in damage. The suspect was wearing a black jacket with white stripes.

Another Kohler employee said a small dent was put in the passenger door of his car, knuckle prints were put in the trunk lid and a sign was used to scratch the trunk lid. Damage was estimated at $250.

A picketer said he was hit by the mirror of a small four-door black car occupied by two white females.

On Saturday, a man reported strikers had dented his vehicle with a ball bearing, broke the mirror and dented the hood. Damage was estimated at $1,000. Another employee said two small dents that appeared to be from a pellet gun were made in his car, causing $1,000 in damage. Replacement workers have also said screws have littered the entrance to Kohler as they enter.

Union president David Smith said he had no knowledge of the nails thrown in the driveway, but had not told the picketers to not do that.

“I didn’t see anybody do it,” Smith said. “How about that. That’s as far as I can be truthful about it.”

Smith said he had never asked picketers if they had thrown nails in the driveway.

“I’ve heard of things going on but personally I haven’t done it,” Smith said. “I didn’t tell them to do it but I didn’t tell them not to.”

As union president, Smith said he was in charge of the picketers. A meeting is scheduled for Saturday, Smith said, in which he plans to tell the strikers that if they have been doing anything violent it needs to stop.

Under the Supreme Court’s 1973 Enmons decision, vandalism, assault, and even murder by union officials are exempt from federal anti-extortion law. As long as the violence is aimed at obtaining property for which the union can assert a “lawful claim” — for example, wage or benefit increases — the violence is deemed to be in furtherance of “legitimate” union objectives. By the Court’s peculiar logic, such violence does not count as extortion.

The result has been an epidemic of union-related violence. The National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) has recorded thousands and thousands of incidents of violence from public news reports. Most acts of violence go unreported in the media. For example, in the Daily News Strike in New York City there were over a thousand “police blotter” items relating to the strike, but only a couple of dozen incidents that were reported on in the press. Using this ratio, it is possible that there have been, literally, over 100,000 incidents of violence and property damage during labor disputes over the last 20 years.

Deep in the heart of UAW country, Nolan Finley, the editorial page editor of the Detroit News, proposes a radical change to bolster Michigan’s sagging economy — turn Michigan into a Right to Work state.

The article is certainly worth reprinting:

Michigan needs a big play. We need to send up a signal flare that announces the state’s culture has radically changed.

Ideally, we’d do it by forging the nation’s most competitive tax system. Or creating the most highly skilled work force. Or being boldly innovative by, say, guaranteeing health care costs won’t rise faster than inflation.

But those things will take more time than we have.

Something we can do quickly, and with more dramatic impact is to make Michigan a right-to-work state.

Ending compulsory union membership in the birthplace of the United Auto Workers and the sentimental home of the Teamsters would send a powerful message that Michigan is ready to move into the 21st century.

And it would knock down a major obstacle to attracting investment.

Michigan has a well-earned reputation as being in the iron grasp of Big Labor. Businesses that have a choice won’t come to a state where the politics and policy are dictated by union bosses.

Conventional wisdom says that labor’s influence is too powerful to even consider a right-to-work movement in Michigan.

But increasingly, the right-to-work option is finding its way into serious conversations about what it will take to stop the state’s economic freefall.

Barely 20 percent of Michigan workers belong to a labor union, down from 26 percent in 1989, and the rate is still falling. While labor controls the politicians, its influence with voters is waning.

I’d bet that if a right-to-work proposal made it on the ballot in 2008, it would stand a fighting chance of passing.

Free states prosper

Much of the nation’s growth is coming from the 22 right-to-work states. Those states saw a 20 percent jump in employment between 1995 and 2005, compared with 11 percent for states that compel union membership.

Right-to-work states are attracting the best-paying jobs, posting a 37 percent gain in household income during that period, compared with 26 percent elsewhere.

In metropolitan areas, residents of right-to-work states enjoy the fattest paychecks.

Foreign automakers and suppliers are putting most of their manufacturing facilities in right-to-work states, and paying workers wages and benefits comparable with the Big Three’s union plants.

The UAW’s inability to organize transplant facilities is evidence that manufacturing workers can get along just fine without a union standing between them and their employer.

The Democratic-controlled Congress is battling for legislation to allow unions to organize workers without a secret-ballot election.

If that ever becomes law, it will make Michigan an even more dangerous place for companies that would rather not risk the added costs and inefficiencies a union brings.

Big Labor survives today in a few, isolated strongholds only because its political pals tilt the playing field in its favor.

Michigan is one of those labor bastions, protecting an obsolete institution while cheating its citizens of opportunity.

“Nearly two years after leaving the AFL-CIO with big plans to organize more workers and re-energize the labor movement, a [The Change to Win] group of unions has accomplished much less than it hoped and is grappling with internal divisions,” the Wall Street Journal notes.

[Forced unionism is still a tough sell no matter how it is repackaged.]

Another example of why the Card Check scam is so desperately needed by Big Labor: The UAW lost another 18,000 members last year adding total attrition to 116,000 since 2004. In the 1970’s, the UAW had over 1.5 million members. Today it has a little over 500,000. Imagine if workers in Michigan had a choice whether they wanted to join the union.

Compulsory-union privilege is the only tool left in Big Labor’s tool box.

When a Teamster union official says “things could blow up” people tend to notice. When Teamster President Jimmy Hoffa made that comment recently one wonders just what he means.

According to the Denver Post, Hoffa was talking about the continued efforts to threaten Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter for vetoing legislation that Big Labor tried to ram through the new Democrat state legislature earlier this year. The Union Bosses thought everything was in order to grant them new forced-dues privileges in the state, but at the end of the day Governor Ritter vetoed the measure that sailed through both legislative chambers.

Organized Labor officials are mad — really mad.

In fact, if things aren’t resolved in Big Labor’s favor by the Democrat National Convention next summer, that’s when “things could blow up” according to Hoffa.

Resolved is a relative term.

Capitulated is perhaps a better one.

Democrat candidates for president continue to pander to Labor Bosses. This time it was the Communications Workers of America and the Building and Construction Trades who held auditions, and they did not go away disappointed. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Joseph Biden (D-Del.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) addressed one or both of the conclaves — the first step in unions’ consideration of who to endorse, if anyone, for the 2008 presidential race, the Pro-Big Labor Workday Minnesota reports.

Not surprisingly, all candidates “strongly supported” the Card Check scam bill. While Sen. Dodd proclaimed that he was “a union senator,” the pandering award of the week goes to Clinton who called the bill “as American as apple pie.”
“American as apple pie”?

We always thought secret ballot elections were an American staple.

According to The Oregonian, something appears to be fishy at the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757:

Two years ago, TriMet [Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon] filed an unfair labor complaint after it couldn’t find out whether a union-run program for elder and child care that the agency had been pumping money into even existed.

The union’s treasurer eventually produced paperwork tracing the $375,000 in public money TriMet had contributed up to that time, and the agency dropped the complaint.

But now officials suspect that the evidence they saw was falsified to hide an embezzlement scheme.

Leaders of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 757 have accused Thomas V. Wallace, the local’s elected treasurer, of embezzling money from the elder and child care account to feed a gambling addiction.

Far too many federal and state laws empower union officials to the point of corruption. The ability to demand forced funding from unwilling, and often unknowing participants (non-members and taxpayers alike), along with the special judicially-created exemption in the Hobbs Anti-Extortion Act for union-related violence and extortion, help corrupt union officials avoid the public scrutiny and response necessary to protect the interests of America’s workers and taxpayers alike.

For more information, go here.

Rep. Randy Kuhl, in upstate New York, has been a forced-unionism supporter going all the way back to his days in the New York Assembly and State Senate. He even went so far as to cosponsor the Card Check Forced Unionism scheme in the last Congress as a freshman. But the union bosses had a problem with Kuhl. He is a Republican and was targeted for defeat despite carrying their water for years. Organized labor bosses went all out to beat Kuhl last November.

This year, Kuhl voted against the Card Check Bill and now union militants are taking the fight to a new level. Approximately 150 protesters confronted Kuhl demanding he change his position again. WETM-TV reports that, “Kuhl also says once he was elected he sided with union workers, but after looking in to the issue much deeper decided against it. He says everyone has a right to change their mind and his decision to not support the bill was the right one based on the information he had.”

The fact is, Kuhl should support America’s workers by opposing the Card Check scam. Workers deserve the right to choose whether to join a union without intimidation. The Card Check power-grab would take away that right. Although Kuhl has yet to recognize the need for a Right to Work law, he appears to have seen the light on the Card Check Bill. It’s a step in the right direction.

After Rep. Robert Andrews (D-NJ) conducted his own Card Check organizing campaign, dealers at the Trump Casino in Atlantic City voted to join the United Auto Workers (UAW). The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed an unfair labor practice charge that points out that Congressman Andrews led an extraordinary public event (which was televised and disseminated by other media) and aided UAW union officials in interfering with the free exercise of employee rights in choosing whether to unionize. “Acting under the false imprimatur of NLRB [National Labor Relations Board] authority,” Andrews counted union authorization cards that were not necessarily intended by employees to be considered formal votes, and he signed and announced a “Certification of Majority Status” for unionization.

The NLRB charge notes that such actions tend to suppress turnout for the upcoming election, induce employees to vote for a “pre-certified” union, disenfranchise employees, and destroy the “laboratory conditions” under which NLRB elections must take place. Only the NLRB may “certify” a union and only after a formal, secret ballot election.

No response yet from the NLRB but Andrews’ action should become symbolic of the pressure workers will feel should the Card Check scam become law.

Syndicated columnist Deroy Murdock understands the Card Check scam: As the Senate considers this anti-democratic legislation, Democrats will fight for union bosses like UNITE’s [Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employee’s] Bruce Raynor. He perfectly expresses Big Labor’s position on job-site democracy: “There’s no reason to subject the workers to an election.”