Right to Work Blog

Ralph Nader, the one-man wrecking crew against job creation and freedom, has set his sights on a new target — repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act. The law reaffirms the right of states to pass Right to Work laws. And that’s the primary reason Nader wants the law repealed!

Nader and, for that matter, presidential candidates like John Edwards want to bring back closed shop laws that require union membership as a condition of employment. They want to force millions of workers to pay tribute to union bosses and activists before they can get a job. Nader may be way out there, but it’s only a matter of time before Big Labor takes up this banner and runs with it. Hopefully, Nader has as much success with this campaign as his last two presidential runs.

Bloomberg reports that:

The United Auto Workers may oppose a union-run health fund unless U.S. carmakers pressure Denso Corp. to remain neutral while the UAW tries to organize the Japanese auto-parts maker, people with knowledge of the strategy said.

. . .

Denso is Japan’s largest auto-parts company and a supplier to all three U.S. automakers as well as Toyota Motor Corp. Toyota, helped by lower-cost nonunion U.S. plants, has overtaken Ford as the second-biggest automaker in the U.S. The Japanese company owns 23 percent of Denso.

. . .

Denso has 6,862 employees in Michigan, Tennessee, Arkansas, California, Virginia and South Carolina, Denso spokeswoman Marlene Goldsmith said. None belongs to unions.

Denso has a target on its head and Big Labor has them in their sights.

“For the survival of the union, they have to start organizing the Toyota system in North America,” said Sean McAlinden, an analyst at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Right at the head of the line is Denso.”

The New York Post takes a look at New York’s Big Labor movement and sees that union bosses in the Big Apple are probably longing for days gone by:

New York’s union leaders this year decided to pull the plug on their annual Labor Day parade - a city tradition that dates all the way back to 1882.

And though officials insist that they’re only eschewing the festivities in favor of more direct political action - a political rally at Ground Zero for insurance coverage - it’s difficult not to view the cancellation as another sign of big labor’s shrinking profile.

To be sure, the ability of New York’s unions - particularly the public-employee groups - to bribe and bully the City Council and the state Legislature to do their bidding is unquestioned.

Indeed, some would say dismaying.

But the old passion is gone.

Actually, the parade has been pretty much a hit-or-miss affair for some time now.

It was canceled in 2002, coming so close to the first anniversary of 9/11, and again in 2004 in favor of an anti-Bush protest at the Republican National Convention.

The parade sputtered out entirely for most of the ‘70s due to sparse attendance, and hasn’t even been held on Labor Day for the past decade.

Then again, this hasn’t exactly been a stellar year for the sponsoring organization, the Central Labor Council: Its former head, Brian McLaughlin, is under indictment for racketeering, embezzlement and fraud, to the tune of $2.2 million.

As U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said in announcing the indictment - which includes 44 counts and runs to 186 pages: McLaughlin’s alleged larceny “lends new meaning to the term ‘hand in the till.’ “

Besides which, the fact remains that the only real growth in the American labor movement - especially in New York - has been in the public sector: Government workers whose power derives from their unions’ ability to shake down elected officials, particularly during an election year.

The labor movement, in other words, really doesn’t have all that much to celebrate. We can’t think of any other reason why the CLC would voluntarily give up an opportunity for politicians to show up and display their fealty to organized labor.

Other than the likelihood that no one would have shown up to watch it.

Stefan Gleason outlines the failure of the Bush Administration to aggressively confront union bosses’ abuse and limit union coercive powers over employees and employers.

“For starters, Bush didn’t even install a Republican majority until nearly a year into his presidency. And since that installation, his NLRB has failed to correct literally dozens of activist rulings handed down by President Clinton’s NLRB,” Gleason notes.

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether John Edwards is running for president of the United States or union president.”
— Rob Christensen, McClatchy Newspapers, 8/3/07

Immediately after electing a new governor, Big Labor set its sight on Colorado to rig the law to favor union organizing, forced dues and agitation over job creation and production. The union bosses were shocked when Gov. Bill Ritter (D), their golden boy, vetoed a major piece of this agenda earlier this year. But now Ritter appears to be making amends — big time.

State rules give state employees the right “to associate, self-organize, and designate representatives of their choice.” And it permits union representatives to “confer, with prior consent from the supervisor, on employment matters during work hours. Such conferences should be scheduled to minimize disruption to productivity and the general work environment.” But that isn’t good enough for the union bosses.

New guidelines, put forth by Colorado Department of Personnel and Administration Director Rich Gonzales, would have required the state to provide “employee organization” (i.e. union activists) with e-mail addresses of all employees, use of state mailrooms and space to hold meetings. The Rocky Mountain News opines that:

. . . Gonzales drafted rules defining “reasonable access” for “talking to and distributing literature to employees” (a euphemism for union organizing) to include a wide array of common areas including main entrances and exits, cafeterias, break rooms, parking lots, and outdoor walkways at virtually all state facilities.

Not only that, unions are given the explicit right to reserve conference or meeting rooms within state facilities, as well as use both the state’s centralized mail distribution system to communicate with state employees and all internal mail systems within departments.

Finally, unions can use the state’s e-mail system to conduct organizing drives and otherwise communicate with state employees, subject to certain limitations such as volume e-mails (no more than three per month during work hours, which officially do not, surprisingly, include noon to 1 p.m.).

. . .

It is naive to think that volume e-mails dealing with union organizing will not disrupt normal work performance, regardless of when they are sent. Campaign material is inherently a discussion-provoking distraction. Moreover, the possibility of the pervasive presence of union organizers allowed by such broad mandatory access to state workplaces is likely to create at least an irritating and distracting environment for many workers, if not worse.

A small fraction of Colorado’s 74,000 state workers are unionized; the single largest bargaining representation covers about 4,000 members. So it’s easy to see why Colorado labor leaders are so enthusiastic in their defense of the generous assistance being offered by the Ritter administration.

The new policy on “employee organization access” as currently crafted is unnecessary at best. At worst, it is the payback to organized labor that Republicans have characterized it to be.

Some legislators have characterized the move as the creation of a forced-unionism paradise. But we know it’s the beginning of a worker’s nightmare should the policy be implemented.

Leslie Carbone, writing in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, writes about the National Education Association (NEA) unions’ continued opposition to parental choice, opposition to educational reform and lavish spending of teachers’ dues money on a radical political agenda. Carbone notes:

The NEA shows no reservations about taking teachers’ union dues and spending them to spread a radical political agenda. Annual NEA dues can reach as high as $500. A little of it goes toward core union activities, like collective bargaining for contracts that keep members from having to attend after-school meetings or teach another’s class in an emergency. Some goes toward the hefty paychecks of NEA staffers, thousands of whom rake in six-figure annual salaries, far more than the teachers who pay them.

And a lot — as much as half, by some estimates — goes toward politicking. The NEA doesn’t restrict itself to lobbying on issues that directly affect education, like the No Child Left Behind Act. It doesn’t even restrict itself to weighing in on issues that indirectly affect education, like tax reform, which it sees as a threat to its own cash flow. The union lobbies on a host of unrelated issues, like statehood for the District of Columbia, even though many of its dues-payers don’t want it to.

Fortunately, teachers do have some recourse. In right-to-work states, they don’t have to pay union dues at all. And in others, while they can be required to pay dues for core union activities, they cannot be forced to pay for politicking, public relations or other non-essential union activities.

The NEA has done a solid job of stacking the deck against students, parents and teachers who want good schools. But that can change, if everyone interested in quality education stands up — and stops turning money over — to the NEA-borhood bully.