Washington, DC (February 2, 2012) – The National Right to Work Foundation announced today that it is launching a legal task force aimed at protecting Indiana’s newly-enacted Right to Work law.

Union officials publicly floated the idea of challenging the law in Indiana’s courts before the law was even passed by the Indiana state senate.

Indiana is the nation’s 23rd Right to Work state after the state senate passed the bill and Governor Mitch Daniels signed the bill into law on Wednesday.

Foundation attorneys have successfully defended state Right to Work laws in the past, including Oklahoma’s. The task force has already examined reported union lines of attack and determined that Indiana’s Right to Work law is on sound legal ground.

“Union bosses want to undo what thousands of Hoosier citizens have worked hard for over the past decade,” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Because union partisans cannot win the hearts and minds of Indiana’s workers and voters, they seek to have the courts strike down Indiana’s popular Right to Work law for them.”

In addition to defending the Right to Work law from spurious union legal challenges, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys are, as always, available to give free legal aid to employees seeking to exercise their Right to Work. Because the Indiana law applies only to forced dues clauses entered into after March 14, 2012, many employees may not be able to cut off all dues immediately. However, those employees can still exercise their right to refrain from formal union membership and cut off union dues being spent on politics.

Public polling shows that nearly 80 percent of Americans support the Right to Work principle, including 80 percent of union members.

Information about Indiana’s Right to Work law, including how Indiana employees can exercise their Right to Work can be found on the Foundation’s website: www.nrtw.org.

Time Magazine

The Associated Press reports “Indiana’s move to become the Rust Belt’s first “right-to-work” state has intensified debate over the issue in neighboring Michigan.  Supporters of right-to-work laws say they’re more convinced than ever that Michigan should take a similar step in hopes of lessening union clout and attracting more jobs.”

Unfortunately for Michigan workers and taxpayers, Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has decided to punt on the issue.  Other members of the Republican establishment including the Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville are unwilling to cross their union boss allies.  This is an effort that will take time.  But have no fear, in order to compete, Michigan will need to break big labor’s stranglehold on its economy with a Right to Work law.  As the Rolling Stones sung, “time is on our side.”

For the past two weeks, Big Labor bosses around the country have had their eyes on the Indiana capitol — watching in horror as the General Assembly passed a right-to-work bill with commanding majorities.

The passage of Indiana’s right-to-work law is an extraordinarily bitter defeat for the union brass. Less than a year ago, despite the fact that Hoosiers had elected substantial pro-right-to-work majorities to both chambers in 2010, union strategists remained confident they could preserve the forced-unionism status quo.

Last year, union bigwigs convinced the entire Democratic caucus of the Indiana House of Representatives to flee the state for five weeks in order to deny the body a quorum it needed to bring up and pass right-to-work legislation. Big Labor clearly believed whatever it lacked in legislative numbers it could make up for in zeal.

But polls showed Hoosiers overwhelmingly disapproved of the “fleabagger” tactic, and right-to-work supporters kept turning up the pressure on Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and GOP legislative leaders to fight back against Big Labor.

Thanks to legislation passed after last year’s walkout, House members failing to show up to do their jobs when the General Assembly is in session may be hit with $1,000-a-day fines.

In the opening weeks of the 2012 session, House Democrats went public about their reluctance to jump over a cliff again for the union hierarchy. Finally, on Jan. 24, House Minority Leader Pat Bauer announced an end to his caucus’ boycott of the bill. It passed the next day.

Ever since, the caterwauling by Big Labor and its allies has resounded across the state. But what’s so bad about a law that merely says an individual shouldn’t be forced at the workplace to support financially an organization that he or she doesn’t believe acts in his or her interests?

Rather than address this question, union propagandists skirt it. Union officials never act contrary to the interests of any employee, they implicitly argue. Any employee who says otherwise they brand as a hypocritical “freeloader”!

For the stewards of a so-called “workers’ movement,” labor bosses have an unbelievably antagonistic attitude toward workers.

American charities collectively took in nearly $300 billion in 2010. Yet American workers can’t be trusted to support unions that supposedly represent their interests unless they are forced to do so? No law forces two-thirds of Americans to give to charity. And yet they do.

Union officials and their friends won’t acknowledge that being forced under federal or state law to accept a union as your monopoly-bargaining agent with your employer when it comes to pay, benefits and work rules is actually not in the economic interest of many employees.

City Journal looks at the success of the Walker reforms that should be a model for other states looking to balance their budgets:  ”The truth, however, is that the reforms not only are saving money already; they’re doing so with little disruption to services. In early August, noticing the trend, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Milwaukee would save more in health-care and pension costs than it would lose in state aid, leaving the city $11 million ahead in 2012—despite Mayor Tom Barrett’s prediction in March that Walker’s budget ‘makes our structural deficit explode.’”

That is just one example.  Well worth the read.

The Wall Street Journal reports, “the legality of the appointments is being challenged in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, where lawyers for the housing complex owner are challenging an injunction sought by the NLRB to end a lockout of members of the Service Employees International Union following a pay dispute. NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon filed for the injunction last week, after the current board members authorized him to do so….The first legal challenge to Mr. Obama’s recess appointments came last month, when three groups—the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the National Right to Work Foundation and the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace—asked a judge to rule on whether the appointments to the NLRB violate the U.S. Constitution.”

President Obama violated the constitution precedent when he made “recess” appointments to the NLRB while Congress was in session.  It is imperative that the courts stand up to this power grab and we are working to ensure that happens.

Wisconsin watchdog Citizens for Responsible Government in Racine  reported that Racine native Jeff Demet’s name was found four times on the petition to recall Republican State Senator Van Wanggaard. Finding the same signature four times is bad enough, but when Demet was contacted about the four signatures, he claims he never signed the Wanggaard recall petition at all!

“Indiana has by every reckoning the 5th or 6th best business climate in the country, and now it gets a little better,” said Daniels on Fox News. “The phone began literally ringing yesterday afternoon with companies wanting to come to our state.”

“For more than two years, the Michigan Education Association [MEA] has had a manual that urges its members to use students as propaganda in contract negotiations and also lays out how to organize strikes,” writes Tome Gantert of Michigan Capitol Confidential.

Considering the fact that teacher strikes are illegal in Michigan, some may find it odd that the MEA has been encouraging this sort of behavior. In fact, the MEA has done a lot more than just “encourage” potentially illegal activity. As Gantert reports, the organization produced an anonymously written 28-page manual titled, “Building Full Capacity Locals — Crisis Planning, It’s Never Too Early To Start!”

And of course, what union protest would be complete without the exploitation of children in the bargaining process?

“In terms of a bargaining message, the public responds most positively when we talk about children, quality in the classroom and the future,” the MEA manual states.

The manual even suggests one slogan that it claims has worked for other locals: “It’s not about dollars and cents; it’s about our children.”

Perhaps the most disturbing moment occurs when one section appears to quote almost verbatim Saul Alinsky’s “Rules For Radicals.”

Alinsky instructs his followers to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Likewise, the MEA manual instructs teachers to “Pick a target—personalize—and polarize the opposition [pg. 17].” And those are just the verbatim quotes; the entire manual is a handbook for creating, managing, and profiting from crises.

 

Politico reports:

The Kentucky Republican appears to be the first sitting senator to legally object to the Jan. 4 appointments that drew fire from congressional Republicans, who say the president overstepped constitutional boundaries by installing three members to the labor board and Richard Cordray to lead the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“With the recent recess appointments, President Obama has circumvented our Constitution and showed complete disregard for the separation of powers,” Paul said in a statement Tuesday. “He has demonstrated once again that he is willing to treat the office of the presidency like a dictatorship.”

Paul said he plans to file a friend-of-the-court brief backing legal action by the National Federation for Independent Business and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The groups filed court claims on Jan. 13 arguing that the NLRB appointments are unconstitutional.

We will keep you up to date but on thing we do know, Gov. Brewer is not one to back down from a fight.

3:05 PM — Daniels signs right to work bill

Gov. Mitch Daniels signed “right to work” bill this afternoon without ceremony making Indiana the 23rd state in the nation with the law, Daniels and other Republican supporters characterized the measure as needed for Indiana to attract jobs. “The only change will be a positive one,” the governor said in a statement released by his office. “Indiana will improve still further its recently earned reputation as one of America’s best places to do business, and we will see more jobs and opportunity for our young people and for all those looking for a better life.”

SOON — PERHAPS AS EARLY AS TODAY — Gov. Mitch Daniels will sign legislation making Indiana the nation’s 23^rd right-to-work state. Labor unions angrily oppose the change, but their opposition has no legitimate or principled basis.

State right-to-work laws, authorized by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, are not anti-union. They are pro-choice: They protect workers from being forced to join or pay fees to a labor union as a condition of keeping a job. In non-right-to-work states, employees who work in a “union shop” are compelled to fork over part of each paycheck to a labor organization — even if they want nothing to do with unions, let alone to be represented by one. Laws like the one Indiana is poised to enact simply make union support voluntary. Hoosiers can’t be required to kick back part of their wages to the Republican Party or the Methodist Church or the Animal Liberation Front; the new measure will ensure that they don’t have to give a cut of everything they earn to labor unions, either.

Most Americans regard compulsory unionism as unconscionable. In a new Rasmussen survey, 74 percent of likely voters say non-union workers should not have to pay dues against their will. Once upon a time, labor movement giants like Samuel Gompers, a founder of the American Federation of Labor, agreed. “I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty — the principles of voluntarism,” declared Gompers in his last speech to the AFL in 1924. “No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.” Those words can be seen chiseled on Gompers’s memorial in Washington, DC.

So as a matter of by-any-means-necessary expediency, it is easy to understand why Big Labor long ago embraced what liberal scholar Robert Reich (who served as Bill Clinton’s secretary of labor) dubbed “the necessity for coercion.” In order “to maintain themselves,” Reich said in 1985, “unions have got to have some ability to strap their members to the mast.” Or, as Don Corleone might have put it, to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

But is there any ethical reason — any honorable basis — for the union shop?

To hear them tell it, they only object to “free riders.” Labor leaders claim it would be unjust to allow employees to avoid paying for the unions that negotiate benefits on their behalf. “There’s always going to be a certain amount of the population that will take something for free if they can get it for free,” says Nancy Guyott, head of the Indiana AFL-CIO.

That’s not a principle, it’s a shameless pretext. Unions demand monopoly bargaining power — the right to exclusively represent everyone in a workplace — and then insist that each of those workers must pay for the privilege. This is the “principle” of the squeegee-man who aggressively wipes your windshield when you stop at a red light, then demands that you pay for the service he has rendered you.

By the union’s “free-rider” logic, shouldn’t all voters be forced to subscribe to a daily newspaper, since all of them benefit from its journalism? And shouldn’t every company be compelled to support the Chamber of Commerce, which lobbies on behalf of business whether individual firms ask it to or not?

The passion with which Big Labor fights right-to-work helps explain why so many Americans have abandoned unions. The labor movement was born in freedom and choice. That’s not what it stands for anymore.

Indianapolis, Indiana – Today, Mark Mix, President of the 2.6 million-member National Right to Work Committee, praised the Indiana House and Senate for passage of the Indiana Right to Work Law.

Mr. Mix said, “This is a great day for Indiana’s workers and taxpayers.

“After a ten-year struggle involving hundreds of thousands of mobilized Hoosiers, Indiana will finally be able to enjoy all the benefits of a Right to Work law,” said Mr. Mix.

“Today, the Indiana Senate passed the Right to Work Bill by a vote of 28 to 22. The bill has already passed the House, so it now goes straight to Governor Daniels, who has vowed to sign it, making Indiana America’s 23rd Right to Work state,” continued Mix.

Mr. Mix continued, “The Right to Work Law will free nearly 200,000 Hoosiers who have been forced to pay tribute to a union boss for the privilege of getting up everyday and going to work so they can provide for their families.”

Proponents of the bill expect that passage of the Right to Work law will provide significant economic benefits for Indiana and Indiana workers.

For the past decade, non-agricultural employment in Right to Work states grew twice as fast compared to that in non-Right to Work states like Indiana, according to data from the Department of Labor.

“On the job front,” said Mr. Mix, “virtually every site selection consultant on record has testified that as many as half of their clients will not even consider expanding or relocating to non-Right to Work states.”

Governor Daniels experienced this problem firsthand, reporting recently that when Volkswagen was looking to build a production facility in America, he was unable to get the company to even return his phone calls.

Volkswagen ended up choosing to open its new facility in the Right to Work state of Tennessee.

Today’s action makes Indiana the first Right to Work state in the Manufacturing Belt, and supporters say it will give Hoosiers a significant advantage over all of its neighbors and the rest of the 27 non-Right to Work states.

“Besides enjoying an influx of new jobs, Right to Work states also enjoy higher personal income,” said Mr. Mix.

In particular, Mr. Mix drew attention to a study by Dr. Barry Poulson, a past president of the North American Economics and Finance Association and also a professor of economics at the University of Colorado, who compared household incomes in 133 metropolitan areas in Right to Work states with those of 158 metropolitan areas in non-Right to Work states.

“Among other results, he found that the average real income for households in Right to Work state metro areas, when all else was equal, was $4,258 more than non-Right to Work state metro areas,” said Mr. Mix.

Mr. Mix concluded, “I want to take a moment to thank Governor Daniels, House Speaker Bosma, Senate President Long, bill sponsors Jerry Torr and Carlin Yoder, and the men and women of the Indiana Legislature who stood up for the rights of the individual worker and voted to pass Right to Work.

“But most of all, I want to thank the thousands of dedicated Hoosiers who have stood up over the years to demand passage of the Indiana Right to Work Law.”

In an effort to loosen labor’s grip on workers, two GOP lawmakers want legislation that would require workers to re-affirm the existence of their unions with new votes every three years.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Rep. Tim Scott of South Carolina are pushing the Employee Rights Act that also would place limits on strikes, how fast a union can organize and how membership fees may be used to support political candidates. The bill has yet to receive a committee hearing in either chamber.

Few workers – less than 10 percent of union members – vote to organize. Instead, most workers join an existing union as a condition of employment.

This bill, however, would give workers a chance to voice their opinions. Union officials would be up for re-election every three years. At that time, employees could decide whether to keep or eliminate their union.

“My goal is to make sure that employees of a company make the decision on joining unions,” Mr. Scott said. “This just gives them an opportunity to say, ‘Yes, I want to be a part of the union.’”

“It’s neither anti-union, nor pro-employer,” Mr. Hatch told The Washington Times. “It’s pro-worker.”

“There’s not a single provision in this bill that will empower employers at the expense of the union,” Mr. Hatch said. “The only parties whose position will be improved by the Employee Rights Act are employees.”

“It’s about time we start worrying about the employees and the workers, rather than unions and management people,” Mr. Hatch said. “It is fair to both employers and unions, and, far more importantly, it’s fair to workers.”

Secret-ballot elections, instead of card checks, would be the voting method of choice under the Employee Rights Act, which was introduced last August in both chambers.

From the Indystar.com:

Gov. Mitch Daniels says he’ll sign into law a controversial labor law “as soon as it comes to me.”

That could be Wednesday, after a final vote on the so-called “right to work” legislation is taken in the Indiana Senate.

A Senate committee cleared the way for that vote on today, voting 6-1 to approve the bill and send it to the full Senate.

Under the “right to work” legislation, companies and unions could no longer negotiate a contract that requires non-members of the union to pay fees for representation.

Read it and weep:

In a defiant raspberry to the city Department of Education — and taxpayers — disgraced teacher Alan Rosenfeld, 66, won’t retire.

Deemed a danger to kids, the typing teacher with a $10 million real estate portfolio hasn’t been allowed in a classroom for more than a decade, but still collects $100,049 a year in city salary — plus health benefits, a growing pension nest egg, vacation and sick pay.

Mayor Bloomberg and Gov. Cuomo can call for better teacher evaluations until they’re blue-faced, but Rosenfeld and six peers with similar gigs costing about $650,000 a year in total salaries are untouchable. Under a system shackled by protections for tenured teachers, they can’t be fired, the DOE says.

“It’s an F-U,” a friend of Rosenfeld said of his refusal to quit. “He’s happy about it, and very proud that he beat the system. This is a great show-up-but-don’t-do-anything job.”

Accused in 2001 of making lewd comments and ogling eighth-grade girls’ butts at IS 347 in Queens, Rosenfeld was slapped with a week off without pay after the DOE failed to produce enough witnesses at a hearing.

But instead of returning Rosenfeld to the classroom, the DOE kept him in one of its notorious “rubber rooms,” where teachers in misconduct cases sat idle or napped. As The Post reported, Rosenfeld kept busy managing his many investment properties and working on his law practice. He’s a licensed attorney and real-estate broker.

Asked what work he does, Rosenfeld laughingly told his friend, “Oh, I Xeroxed something the other day.”

Rosenfeld could have retired four years ago at 62, but his pension grows by $1,700 for each year he stays — even without teaching. If he quit today, his annual pension would total an estimated $85,400. Rosenfeld will also get paid for 100 unused sick days when he leaves.

New York has no mandatory retirement age for teachers.

That let rubber-room granddaddy Roland Pierre make a mockery of the system. He finally retired at age 76 last year — Criminal charges in 1997 that he molested a sixth-grade girl were dropped. He got $97,101 a year.

The one thing we have never had to worry about was the union bosses not spending enough of their union members due’s money on politics.  While elected officials who benefit from union political largess care about a political cash drain they certainly express little concern about the fact that union workers continue to see their union dues flushed down the drain on wasteful political spending like recall elections.

The pull quote: “’You can tell them we’ll take the Super Bowl and shove it,’ said Combs, the Teamsters organizer.”

From BigGovernment.com:

Recently, former-SEIU Radio Voice, current-MSNBC Host Rachel Maddow and Indiana State Rep. Scott Pelath appeared eager to see Big Labor’s anticipated disruption of Super Bowl Week in Indianapolis, site of the 2012 event. Threats of using the Super Bowl to intimidate lawmakers have been increasing over the past weeks. From the Associate Press:

Facing a legislative vote that would make Indiana a right-to-work state … Labor activists are deciding whether to go ahead with protests that could include Teamsters clogging city streets with trucks and electricians staging a slowdown at the convention center site of the NFL village.

“The last thing the city needs is a black eye,” said Jeff Combs, organizing director for Teamsters Local 135. [But, apparently Combs is willing to give it one.]

“You can tell them we’ll take the Super Bowl and shove it,” said Combs, the Teamsters organizer. Teamsters gathered at the Statehouse Wednesday wearing T-shirts with the roman numerals 46, referring to the Super Bowl, crossed out on the back. He said truckers would be willing to risk arrest by causing traffic jams.

Why does Big Labor from across the USA plan to converge on Indianapolis? Union bosses fear ‘Voluntary Unionism’ and the freedom that Right To Work will bring to Hoosiers. Without ‘Compulsory Unionism,’ currently imposed in Indiana, union bosses will have to create reasons for employees to join their union; and, that is a lot more work that state-sanctioned compulsion.

In an expected vivid example of “union organizing,” international and state union bosses are about to disrupt and diminish what should be one of the most important weeks in football players’ lives. Super Bowl Week is the week of festivities that leads up to the Super Bowl kickoff on Sunday, February 5^th.

The Big Labor irony is that both teams playing the game contain players from compulsory unionism states, New York (New Jersey) and Massachusetts. This means both teams are loaded with union members and/or forced fee-payers. These few players appear to be nothing but pawns in the Big Labor machine as it poises to crush one the biggest weeks of these players’ lives, and disappoint the thousands of fans in the stadium, as well as the millions of football fans who will be watching the game on television.

Perhaps, the real Super Bowl is playing right now underneath the Dome of the Indiana State Capitol: the bulky old Compulsory Unionism team versus the freedom embracing Voluntary Unionism team. Maybe, this Super Bowl will be settled before Big Labor tries roll over the NFL’s Super Bowl.

As Indiana soon becomes a haven for business in the “Rust Belt,” an influential columnist in Michigan is imploring Gov. Rick Snyder to display leadership on Right To Work.

Tom Walsh writes:

By discouraging a right-to-work debate in Michigan, is Gov. Rick Snyder guilty of “kicking the can down the road” — and thereby perpetuating the stigma that Michigan has an unfriendly business climate dominated by militant labor unions?

It’s an interesting question, especially since the kick-the-can analogy has been used so often — by Snyder himself, among others — to assess blame for allowing Michigan’s other economic woes to reach crisis proportions.

Snyder has said that the state of Michigan, too, suffered from a kick-the-can refusal to face up to fiscal problems until he took office last year.So why do I raise the kick-the-can issue now in connection with right-to-work? Several reasons:

• Michigan has a lousy reputation nationally as a place to do business, largely because of a perception that it’s a stronghold of organized labor.

• That image is hard to shake, despite data that show labor union penetration dropping and the gap between Michigan and other states’ unionization rates shrinking by half since 2003.

• A spirited right-to-work debate, no matter the outcome, would send a national message that Michigan is seriously looking at ways to change its culture and boost job creation.

• Lastly, next-door-neighbor Indiana may soon become the first Midwest industrial state to enact a right-to-work law forbidding compulsory union membership and the payment of union dues or fees as a condition of employment. The house approved the measure Wednesday. There are now 22 states nationwide.

Snyder has declared that right-to-work is “too divisive” to tackle right now, and he has urged the Legislature not to send such a bill to his desk. But just because an issue is divisive doesn’t mean it should be ducked.

If the right-to-work debate is divisive, it’s probably also inevitable in Michigan, whether Indiana acts first or not.