Right to Work Blog

The Constitution protects your right to associate and, by logic then, your right to disassociate. But Broome County, New York has decided to punish and discriminate against those exercising this basic right.

The Birmingham, New York Press & Sun Bulletin reports that:

Broome County’s non-union contractors are up in arms over the county’s decision to set aside 90 percent of the work on the $16.9 million George Harvey Justice Building renovation to union members as part of a new labor agreement.

They say it will shut out local workers in favor of out-of-county and even out-of-state workers.

County leaders who are obviously in the back pockets of Big Labor bosses claim the policy will “save money.”

What nonsense.

But non-union contractors say the agreement — a first for Broome County — will jack up costs by attracting fewer bidders and awarding jobs to union members from outside Broome County.

There is a more fundamental issue at stake than dollars and cents.

Using taxpayer dollars to discriminate against Broome County residents who exercise their constitutional rights is an outrage that must be overturned.

The former boss of a New York area Teamsters local was arrested on Tuesday, the New York Times reports, “on charges that he forced his union members to do work for him personally, including building a new roof on his country home, squiring his daughter to her yoga class, and setting up a Christmas tree at his Manhattan apartment.”

Anthony Rumore is accused of extorting “. . . ‘personal services’ from members of his union for nearly 15 years, officials of the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan said.”

According to a federal indictment handed up on Tuesday, the members complied with Mr. Rumore’s demands because they feared being fired from their jobs.

For 16 years, Mr. Rumore, 63, was president of Teamsters Local 812, a beverage drivers’ union with 4,000 members in the New York area. He was forced to step down in late 2004, after similar accusations were made against him by a federal oversight board. He was also the president of Teamsters Joint Council 16, an umbrella group for more than 100,000 area Teamsters.

Workers who are compelled to pay dues and fees to the Teamsters local as a condition of employment have little or no recourse against this type of behavior. Right to Work laws hold union officials accountable for actions like this by allowing workers to withdraw their financial support.

The omnibus spending bill that is making its way through Congress increases federal spending on almost every government program except one — the Office of Labor Management Standards at the Department of Labor — the office that oversees union corruption.

President Bush asked Congress for $57 million, an increase of $9 million over the previous year. Instead, congressional Democrats actually cut spending for the office to $45 million — a 21% cut over the president’s request.

Writing for the New York Sun, Diana Furchtgott-Roth notes:

OLMS protects union members from deceptive practices and irregular accounting by forcing union leaders to disclose them. That is a worthy purpose . . . Congress could not cut the budget of the SEC. It is a large and visible agency whose budget is closely watched by outside groups. But the Office of Labor Management Standards works in relative obscurity, protecting millions of American union members. The Democratic majority does not care about these workers — it just wants to protect the union bosses to preserve the flow of campaign contributions.

According to the Detroit News, union bosses in Michigan are seeking the right to request an automatic payroll contribution from state employees — contributions that would pad the coffers of union political action committees (PACs). The proposal comes from M. Scott Bowen, the director of the Office of State Employer.

Michigan’s Chamber of Commerce general counsel Robert LaBrant is fighting the effort citing:

. . . a 2006 opinion from Attorney General Mike Cox that it’s a violation of the campaign finance act to use government resources to collect and distribute political deductions — even if the unions reimburse the state.

“Amazingly, the staff of the Civil Service Commission are complying with this unlawful request,” LaBrant said in his letter.

“The purpose of the Civil Service Commission was to keep partisan politics out of state classified employment. (Approving the proposal) would re-insert partisan politics into the on-duty operations of state government employment.”

Not surprisingly, Gov. Granholm is siding with the union bosses.

Michigan’s economy remains under the stranglehold of Big Labor. Giving them more power, through payroll deduction, will only stifle much needed reforms to get the economy back on track.

Tim Miller, writing for the New York Post, notes that:

There has been nothing coy about the Democratic presidential candidates’ courtship of Big Labor. After all, union endorsements come with armies of door-knocking, phone-calling, sign-waving foot soldiers; union leaders will spend about half a billion dollars on political campaigns this election cycle.

Of course, the union chiefs are making sure their political suitors come bearing gifts, and what they’re after - support for the de
ceptively named Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) - is a much bigger present than flowers or chocolate.

EFCA, of course, would:

. . . strip employees of the right to a secret ballot vote, and make it much easier for union organizers to push employees into union membership - which in turn means more dollars for labor leaders.

Like a love note written in the heat of passion, Democrats have taken to describing their passion for Big Labor in stark terms.

“I will be the best union president in the history of this country,” John Edwards said.

Barack Obama gushed, “I’m ready to go on offense for organized labor; imagine a president who knows what it’s like to put on a comfortable pair of shoes and walk with you on that picket line.”

And Hillary Clinton, not to be outdone, donned un-presidential-like boxing gloves at an AFSCME press conference and said she would “go 10 rounds with anybody,” on behalf of the union bosses.

Of course, those ten rounds include union members whose rights will be trampled and pounded by enactment of the Card Check Scam bill.

As Miller concludes:

If union officials and politicians are allowed to consummate this relationship in 2008, the result will be a problem child that will choke the American economy for many years to come.

Kentucky’s new governor, Steve Beshear, talks a good game, but don’t expect columnist Jim Waters of the Georgetown News-Graphic to shake his head up and down like a “dashboard bobblehead doll.” Waters wants to know what happens to “good ideas for Kentucky,” like a Right to Work bill, when it clashes against Big Labor special interests with powerful agendas.

Will the governor consider long-term effects and all people or be content to grab short-term political gains? If he chooses the latter, Beshear can join a list of marginal leaders that dwarfs the state’s roll call of courageous governors.

Beshear’s fellow Democrats previously rejected the idea of a “right-to-work” policy, which would prevent employees from being forced to join labor unions or pay dues, whether they came with sufficient benefits or not.

Yet “right-to-work” is one of 16 critical economic variables for states in a new American Legislative Exchange Council report co-authored by highly respected economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore. Without a right-to-work law, Kentucky ranks No. 46 among states - and dead last in the Southeast - in economic competitiveness, the council report shows.

Laffer and Moore report that having a right-to-work law represents one of two economic factors that stand out as “perhaps the most important in attracting jobs and capital.”

Like so many who have asked the same question, we don’t expect to get a surprise answer. When good ideas, like enactment of a Right to Work law, clash against the interests of Big Labor, most politicians take the easy road — they stand with Big Labor bosses and their political coffers against what’s best for their state. I hope Steve Beshear chooses the better road, but have little expectation his rhetoric, about positive change, will match reality.

In Europe, labor unions have a stranglehold on economic growth. From wildcat strikes to violent destruction of property, powerful unions run amok, destroying jobs and prosperity on much of the European continent. Enactment of a similar system in America would be a nightmare, but for Big Labor bosses, it is a dream.

To try to impose European Big Labor policies on the United States, International Labor bosses are meeting in Washington, D.C. as part of a global push for forced unionism.

“More that 200 union officials from 63 countries have convened for a summit this week hosted by the AFL-CIO to discuss ways to reverse the decline in union ranks in the U.S. and other industrialized countries,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Not surprisingly, the one-trick ponies are pushing for enactment of the Card Check Scam Bill to force more Americans onto the union rolls.

Once again the legal-eagles at the National Right to Work have stuck a blow for freedom when an administrative law judge of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) struck down a nationwide policy of a major international union that requires employees to object annually to prevent union officials from spending union dues for political activities. The policy is a pervasive tactic used by union officials to prevent dissenting employees from reclaiming forced-union dues used to promote political causes they oppose.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys helped Robert Prime, an employee of L-3 Communications Vertex Aerospace, LLC at the Naval Air Station, file unfair labor practice charges in December 2003 against the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union Local Lodge 2777. The charges alleged that union officials violated Prime’s rights by forcing him to renew his objection to funding union political advocacy every single year.

NLRB administrative law judge Michael A. Marcionese issued a ruling from the bench yesterday at the conclusion of a hearing in Pensacola. Marcionese found that the IAM policy was arbitrary, discriminatory, and bordered on being irrational. Although Foundation attorneys have asked for refunds for any objecting employee nationally within the last four years, the scope of the remedy will remain unclear for the next few weeks until the judge issues a supporting written ruling.

In November 2003, Prime filed an objection with IAM union officials to funding their political activities, as the Foundation-won Communications Workers of America v. Beck decision permits. The Beck decision recognized that workers have the right to refrain from formal union membership and cannot be forced to pay for activities unrelated to collective bargaining. However, when Prime asked union officials to honor his request as a “continuing objection,” IAM officials refused, claiming that Prime and his coworkers must object annually because they are not subject to the Railway Labor Act (RLA).

IAM union officials already accept “continuing objections” from railroad and airline employees covered by the RLA due to favorable rulings in prior Foundation cases. However, union officials arbitrarily refuse to abide by those rulings for employees covered by the National Labor Relations Act.

“America’s workers may have one fewer hoop to jump through to reclaim their forced dues used for politics,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

“However, this lengthy legal battle underscores why no one should be forced to pay dues to an unwanted union in the first place.”

Florida’s highly-popular Right to Work law, on the books since 1944, is one of 22 state laws that secure the right of employees to decide for themselves whether or not to join or financially support a union.

However, because Vertex Aerospace employees work on federal property under “exclusive federal jurisdiction,” the state’s Right to Work law does not protect those workers from being forced to pay union dues to keep their jobs.

The name, Jaime Escalante, came up in print at least twice last week, but there is more to his story that warrants discussion.

During Univision’s December 9, Presidential Debate, the Moderator asked Congressman Duncan Hunter about Hispanics dropping out of school. The Presidential Candidate responded:

You know, in California there was a great teacher named Jaime Escalante, who taught calculus. And he taught calculus in the barrio so effectively that his kids when they took the test were accused of cheating by the school district because they scored so high.

Jaime Escalante brought to the school system the one thing that we need throughout America, and that is inspiration, because young people are deciding what they want to do when they’re in third, fourth, fifth, sixth grade.

And what we’re going to have to do — and incidentally, Jaime Escalante ultimately left that school district and the calculus program went down because he had a run-in with the teachers union.

That’s an understatement.

There is so much more to Mr. Escalante’s story.

For much of the 1980’s and at the beginning of the 1990’s, roughly one-fourth of all Mexican American students who passed the rigorous Advanced Placement (AP) calculus exam nationwide were educated at Garfield High School in East L.A.

Garfield’s was the most successful inner-city mathematics program in America. The program’s architect was Jaime Escalante, math teacher and math department chairman.

In the late 1980’s, Mr. Escalante became world famous.

The 1988 motion picture Stand and Deliver chronicled the inspiring story of Mr. Escalante and his students.

But in 1990, L.A. teacher union officials engineered his removal as math department chairman.

According to Mr. Escalante, teacher union bosses had previously chastised him for having “too many” students in his calculus class!

In 1991, the humiliated teacher decided to transfer to a high school in another city. When local union bosses heard the news, they circulated a celebratory note that read, “We got him out!”

The sad and incredible end of Jaime Escalante’s career at Garfield High School is unfortunately no aberration.

For decades, teacher union officials have manifested a marked hostility toward outstanding teachers, and they have consistently opposed efforts to compensate teachers properly for going above and beyond the call of duty.

National Review Online’s “The Corner” blogger, Mark Hemingway, had it right when he sent out “Props” to the candidate for discussing Mr. Escalante. Hemingway noted:

Everyone remembers Stand and Deliver, yet no one knows that he was eventually drummed out of his school by unions for being too influential and too good a teacher. He’s a textbook example of why teachers unions are one of the most insidious forces in America.

To ensure Hillary Clinton wins the Democrat nomination for President, two Big Labor groups are starting to spend large sums of workers’ money on radio ads and political consultants, including a million dollar ad buy in Iowa promoting the Clinton candidacy.

“The American Federation Of Teachers AFL-CIO Committee On Political Education reported today it has spent $281,114 on radio ads promoting Clinton in Iowa. Yesterday, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees unveiled a flight of television ads it began airing in Iowa promoting Clinton, the leading edge of what it said would be a seven-figure expenditure . . . ” the Washington Post reports.

The Big Union Bosses seem convinced they will get a good return on their investment should Clinton win the White House. Her record on worker rights issues suggest they are right.