Right to Work Blog

Release of new economic data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis has provided an opportunity to confirm that Right to Work states perform better that forced-unionism states, and a blog called Willisms has done just that.

After crunching numbers to see what impact labor laws have on economic growth, Willisms discovered that:

[F]rom 2004-2007, no Right To Work state grew less than 5.1%, while fifteen Forced Unionization state[s] grew below that level.

Meanwhile, while America’s GDP growth 2004-2007 . . . [was] 8.4%, Right To Work states grew by 10% on average, while Forced Unionization states grew by only 6.2% on average. The median Right To Work growth rate was 9.2%, compared to the median Forced Unionization rate of 4.9% (the national median for all states was 7.3%).”

Study after study confirms that not only is Right to Work the right moral policy it is a correct economic policy for the American people.

Readers of this blog are aware that the AFL-CIO alone will spend over $53 million over the next few months to elect candidates who will vote to eliminate workplace elections.

In fact, when you add its member-unions spending total, the AFL-CIO plans on spending over $200 million to buy Congress in the next few months. This is still just the tip of the iceberg given that we have already reported on over $400 million already in the political pipeline. It is easy to see that reports of Big Labor spending up to ONE BILLION DOLLARS between 2006 and November 2008 to buy a forced-unionism Congress are easy to believe. The bosses give us a peek at what is in store.

From the Washington Post:

. . . AFL-CIO political director Karen Ackerman sketched out the plans of the labor coalition, which is expected to announce its official endorsement of Obama in the next few days. The coalition has budgeted $53.4 million for the 2008 campaign — more than the $48 million it spent in 2004 — and it expects its 56 member unions to spend more than $200 million overall on electing Obama and congressional Democrats. It will deploy 250,000 volunteers to reach a total of 13 million union members and their families, she said, and use more sophisticated micro-targeting tools than it has in the past.

The top targets for the AFL-CIO’s presidential campaign efforts will be in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota — the swing states where it has the most members. All except Ohio voted Democratic in 2004, which may make the effort seem defensive in nature, but at the same time, Obama’s prospects for picking up a few new states elsewhere mean that he could be in good shape if he, and the unions, can hold the Rust Belt steady for him. In Ohio alone, the coalition says, it expects more than two million voters to be members of AFL households, or of households that belong to Working America, an organization the AFL has created for people who cannot join unions at their workplaces.

The AFL will also spend a lot on congressional races, aware that Obama’s chances of enacting its priorities — such as “card check” legislation making it easier to organize workplaces — would be much higher with large congressional majorities. It will be involved in every “viable” Senate race in the country, including the races in Alaska (where union membership is actually relatively high), Mississippi, North Carolina and Virginia; and 60 House races. While union membership is much lower in the South, Ackerman argues that the AFL had an impact in helping the Democrats win recent special elections in Louisiana and Mississippi by turning out what members there are in those districts.

Of course, the AFL also invested heavily in 2004, with disappointing results (although exit polls showed John Kerry faring better with voters in union households than with white working-class voters as a whole.) The difference this year, Ackerman said, is that the AFL has an earlier, more aggressive effort underway to frame the opposition in a negative light. The upside of not knowing until this month who the Democratic nominee would be, she said, was that it left the AFL free to focus its attention on defining McCain. Since early March, the coalition says it has distributed 1.5 million leaflets at work sites and knocked on the doors of 60,000 union swing voters with information about McCain’s stances on card-check legislation, health care, and trade policy. The coalition takes credit for some of the recent poll numbers showing McCain trailing Obama among union voters and voters worried about the economy.

Flush with cash coerced from workers, the AFL-CIO and the SEIU have announced they have “raised” and will spend over $100 million to elect Democrats to Congress and the White House this Fall.

There is an old saying in politics that personnel translates into policy, and in the case of Barack Obama its clear Big Labor will dominate both ends of the equation:

Barack Obama tapped a new political director for his presidential campaign, naming Patrick Gaspard, a former official in the powerful Service Employees International Union.

Prior to joining the Obama campaign, Gaspard was the Executive Vice President of Politics and Legislation for Local 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, the largest local union in the United States. In that job, he helped coordinate political activity and government relations . . . in New York, Massachusetts, Maryland and Washington DC.

Read on.

In 2006, pro-Big Labor Republicans were stabbed in the back by the AFL-CIO, who decided it was more important to elect a Democrat Congress than a handful of pro-Big Labor Republicans. We are now seeing that same mindset in the U.S. Senate.

Roll Call reports that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) has lost the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, who chose to back Democrat Senate candidate Mark Begich.

Alaska AFL-CIO President Vince Beltrami said the union endorsed Stevens in all of his re-election campaigns in recent memory, though Stevens had either a minimal or token challenger in many of those campaigns.

“My sense, having been a 20-year resident of the state, is that he’s not been not endorsed for decades,” Beltrami said. “So this is a significant departure.”

Beltrami lauded Begich’s support for the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill. This bill is the most significant pro-forced union legislation in decades.

The United States Supreme Court has overturned a 9th Circuit Court ruling that tried to legitimize a massive Big Labor forced-unionism scheme.

As reported by Tony Mouro of the First Amendment Center:

By a 7-2 vote, the Court ruled that federal labor law prevents California from restricting the ability of employers to speak out against union organizing.

The state law, according to the Court, violated “Congress’ express protection of free debate” concerning unionization, and congressional desire to avoid regulation within “a zone protected and reserved for market freedom.” . . .

The California law, similar to statutes on the books or under debate in 20 other states, said that any employer receiving state funds through grants or contracts cannot use those funds — even when commingled with other money — to “assist, promote or deter union organizing.” The law also established what the Court said was a “formidable enforcement scheme” that required employers to maintain records that would establish whether state funds they received were used for purposes related to union organizing. . . .

“The law was nothing more than an underhanded attempt by union officials to use public funds to corral California workers into their forced dues-paying ranks, and the high court was correct to find that the law is pre-empted by federal labor law,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which advocates measures that prevent employees in unionized workplaces from being coerced to join unions.

Steven Law, chief legal officer and general counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, applauded the decision as well. “Today the Supreme Court declared that it’s unlawful under the National Labor Relations Act for a state to muzzle employers’ speech rights.”

The Denver Post ran a column by Al Lewis that questioned the need to enact a Right to Work law in Colorado and the reaction has been visceral. Dozens of citizens have taken it upon themselves to teach Mr. Lewis a thing or two about the unfairness of forced unionism. A sample of the reaction:

* . . . I am 72 years old and had been in the work force for 50 years prior to my employment with the City of Boulder and this is the FIRST time that I have ever been in a union. $10.00 a month is deducted from my pay and to me it is a waste of my money. Don’t feel that I get anything for my money. Can’t even write it off on my taxes. A lot of us are part-time employees, so we don’t make that much anyway and I know most of my peers don’t like the fact that we have to pay union dues. . . .

* I work for Qwest Communications. As a condition of employment with the company, (union requirement) I am forced to pay union dues. I do not have to join the union, however.

I am happily NOT a member but still am forced to pay. . . .

* I was surprised you were unable to find people forced to pay union dues. Perhaps not everyone reads the newspaper. Nonetheless, I do and am grateful to be able to vent about my union dues obligation.

The International Association of Machinists Union (IAM), cover flight attendants employed with our major airline. We are REQUIRED to pay union dues. ([O]ur carrier has a policy against talking to the media, but I can tell you we used to have a large base here - until 1995.) There are still approximately 500 to 1,000 flight attendants residing in the Denver area who commute to work either in Houston, Newark or Cleveland (our three remaining hubs) and must pay dues.

We pay Colorado State taxes, so I’m guessing we all would be covered under Amendment 47 - should it pass.

I unwillingly have $44.75 taken out of my pay check every month. Should I request my employer cease from having the dues paid to the union - contractually they are required to fire me.

My opinion of the IAM union is — we are nothing more than a ‘cash cow’ to them. Their representation is feeble or lame at best.

I hope Amendment 47 passes the vote!

Why is Michigan’s car industry struggling but Alabama’s is thriving? How is the “Yellowhammer State” successfully courting companies like Honda, Toyota Motor Corp. and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz?

Steve Sewell, executive vice president for the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, said availability of an educated work force is the top concern for such companies, but Alabama’s status as a right-to-work state is often touted. In right-to-work states, joining a union cannot be a condition of employment.

“Right-to-work can be an advantage if a company wants to have a direct relationship with its employees, without a third party,” he said.

The difference was profiled in the Detroit News.

You know things must be bad in Montgomery County, Maryland, when the Washington Post takes notice of the taxpayer giveaways to the county’s Big Labor bosses.

In an editorial, the Post notices that Isiah Leggett, the county’s executive, has:

. . . negotiated contracts that grant union members far bigger raises than are common in the private sector, plus staggeringly generous new benefits, Mr. Leggett has now bowed to a blatant power grab by the county’s main general employees’ union. In the interest of county taxpayers, who pay the bills for this unaffordable largesse, the County Council should overcome its own history as a pawn of the unions and say no.

Don’t count on Leggett growing a backbone anytime soon.

The stakes in the current dispute seem obscure: whether to change the composition of Montgomery’s Board of Investment Trustees, which manages more than $3 billion in assets for the county’s employee pensions. Three of the board’s 13 current trustees are union representatives (up from one out of nine until 2004); under the proposal now before the County Council, the board would grow to 16 trustees, five of whom would be union representatives.

The Post also notes that:

This is a terrifically bad idea. Retirement plans should be overseen by investment experts, not labor figures whose agendas can be, and often are, political. . . .

For once, it seems like the Washington Post got one right.

Why do union bosses so desperately want to enact the card check scam? The enactment of a state version of the bill in Colorado shows the reason why:

The Denver Post reports:

At least 22,500 secretaries, prison guards and other state employees will soon fall under a union monopoly bargaining contracts following a vote tallied Wednesday, though the majority of eligible workers didn’t cast a ballot [emphasis added.]

With Colorado’s version of the Card Check Scam, less than 25% of the workforce was able to force the other 75% into the union. About 6,900 state workers from a pool of 22,500 who were eligible participated in the election, which gave them a choice between Colorado WINS (a coalition of labor unions who got together to ensure there would be no fighting over the expected revenue stream) or no union representation.