Right to Work Blog

The following U.S. Senators co-sponsored a cloture vote to end debate on Big Labor Lawyer:

Harry Reid, Roland W. Burris, Tom Harkin, Debbie Stabenow, Dianne Feinstein, Benjamin L. Cardin, Bill Nelson, Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Begich, Byron L. Dorgan, John D. Rockefeller IV, Edward E. Kaufman, Daniel K. Akaka, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown.

Please contact your Senators today and tell them to vote NO on cloture and NO on SEIU/AFL-CIO* union lawyer Craig Becker’s confirmation to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

*SEIU = Service Employees International Union AFL-CIO = American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations labor union

Racing against the clock, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pushed through another Obama Big Labor nominee, Patricia Smith, before Senator-Elect Scott Brown becomes a Senator. Reid won this race, see the Senate votes here.

In addition, Reid is prepared to add radical SEIU & AFL-CIO lawyer, Craig Becker to the list of Obama nominees approved before Senator Brown arrives.

Please thank your Senators who voted against President Obama’s U.S. Labor Department Solicitor of Labor nominee Patricia Smith. And, urge your U.S. Senators to Vote NO on the impending Obama National Labor Relations Board nomination of Craig Becker. 

As the new U.S. Solicitor of Labor, President Obama’s nominee M. Patricia Smith will control the largest civilian pool of government lawyers after the Justice Department.

Then New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer appointed Smith Commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor (NYDOL). Having spent her entire working life as a government employee, Smith brings only bureaucratic experience to the table.

As NYDOL Commissioner, Smith used her position and federal funds to override a state hiring freeze to hire a politically connected union organizer as a state employee.

In her former NYDOL position, Smith fostered and named a program “Wage Watch” that created a direct and integral relationship between NYDOL government enforcement agents and the “program’s partners” who are Big Labor organizers and Big Labor front groups.

Then NYDOL Director of Strategic Enforcement and recently withdrawn Obama DOL Wage and Hour appointee, Lorelei Boylan referred to these Big Labor partners as NYDOL “community enforcers.”

In one giddy e-mail obtained by NRTW, Boylan wrote, “the ‘role of the commuity [sic] enforcer’ is where we will have to come up with original material.”

For a real world example of how this works let us take you back to the Clinton Administration’s Labor Department which colluded with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organizers in an attempt to shakedown an employer to extract an agreement to hand his employees over to labor bosses. Watch the National Right To Work Committee’s interview with Randy Schaber (Link) and read the congressional investigative report (Link) that caused the firing of a Clinton appointee at the Labor Department in the 1990s.

It is past time to stop these political favors and manipulations of federal resources and laws to benefit Big Labor Bosses. And, that is exactly what we can expect with Smith’s confirmation as Solicitor of Labor. She did it in New York, and now she plans to do it across the USA.

ACT NOW, thank your senators who voted against Smith and encourage your senators to vote against Big Labor Lawyer Craig Becker’s nomination to the NLRB.

Unions have gotten on the “green jobs” porkwagon.  The federal government is handing out grants for jobs in the environmental field and unions are monopolizing that space. 

From Human Events:

One of the more startling revelations at the forum came in testimony from Stephen Worth, President & CEO of Worth and Company, a merit shop mechanical contractor out of Pipersville, Pennsylvania, currently employing more than 400 people.

Amid testimony of union harassment and exclusion from contracting bids was a startling revelation of union methods to monopolize “green jobs” through illegitimate and discriminatory regulatory definition.

“‘Green jobs’ is a phrase being used to describe work that is environmentally friendly, both inside and outside the construction industry,” Worth told the forum.  “However, there is no agreed-upon definition.  Currently, organized labor is attempting to define ‘green jobs’ as positions held by workers that receive special green training through union-only apprenticeship programs.”

Given that narrow definition, literally all government contracts would go to unionized construction companies merely by categorizing the work as a ‘green job.’  But it is likely it will not stop there.  Given the aims of this administration, EPA regulation could apply that definition to permitting for any construction project.

“Organized and certain special interest groups claim that only union apprenticeship programs can properly train workers to build green projects,” Worth said.  “However, these claims are nothing more than an effort to monopolize the construction workforce on green building and other construction projects.  Most green building techniques involve simple architectural changes or the use of environmentally-friendly building materials, which requires workers to learn skills that can be taught through both union and nonunion training programs.”

It appears that whenever you look under the hood of this administration’s proposed policies, another forced union scheme stares back.

The Committee was forwarded an e-mail that, in part, read:

We have just learned from our contacts in Washington that the HELP committee [U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions] has postponed other scheduled business and will conduct a hearing on the [Craig] Becker [National Labor Relations Board] nomination next Tuesday at 4 p.m.

– Martin F. Payson

Beware politicians touting “green jobs.”  That has become the new code word for “union-only” jobs.

Look no further that Maryland Sens. Mikulski and Cardin touting new “Green Job Training in Maryland.”  In fact, these taxpayer grants are going to the SEIU to train people in “green healthcare.”  Unfortunately, green jobs just mean more green union dues money to the Big Labor bosses.

With less than a month left in 2009, President Obama gave Big Labor Bosses, ACORN, American Rights At Work, and other Big Labor-front groups another gift.  This time Labor Secretary Solis’ Department will not require Big Labor to complete labor union trust disclosure documents. 

Big Labor has fought the disclosure of information for thousands of “slush” funds and front groups since 2003.  By 2008, courts grew weary of Big Labor’s excuses for wanting to continue to hide billions in forced union dues that it transferred to groups like ACORN and the AFL-CIO’s American Rights At Work. 

Today, the Department published its intent to rescind these disclosures and to allow union bosses to ignore reporting until the Obama Administration disclosure rescission is final. 

Why did Big Labor want to stop these disclosures, referred to as Form T-1 Trust disclosures?  Because, these reports disclose the finances of every significant union controlled trust or Big Labor-front group.  In essence, this information provides the schematic of Big Labor-forced dues funded political operations.

These reports, if filed, will lead to more disclosures of ACORN financing and reveal more about the Big Labor-Front Group American Rights at Work, a political and lobbying operation, where Obama’s Labor Secretary served as Treasurer while a member of Congress..

Today’s Obama Administration’s notice reads in part:

The Department now seeks comments on a proposal to delay the filing due date of the initial Form T–1 reports, pending the outcome of the Department’s proposal to withdraw the October 2, 2008 rule.

The comment period on this proposal will close on December 14, 2009. [Eleven Days of Comments] Time is running out, to share your comments with the Department of Labor follow this link or click here to comment.

The National Right To Work Committee President Mark Mix discussed the Big Labor commuter shutdown that is hurting workers all across Philadelphia with Fox Business Channel’s Brian Sullivan. Mix pointed to the fact that many union members did not want to go on strike; this was a union kingpin decision, not one made by the rank and file. Click video image below to watch the interview.

Talk about embarrassing.  The unionized workers of the Teamsters’ Washington-based national staff are locked in a contract dispute with their own national organization and are threatening to strike against Boss Hoffa and company.

Incredibly, Hoffa is preparing to make contingency plans to operate in case of a strike. Do you think he will cross his own picket line? What happens if Boss Hoffa wants to meet with President Obama or Vice President Joe Biden?  What if federal officials are scheduled to meet with Teamsters officials?  This could get very confusing for the administration and the Teamsters…  Stay tuned.

An AT&T employee has sought and received support from the National Right to Work Foundation over the illegal threats the union made when he expressed his desire not to strike.

The argument that workers will be pressured into joining a union if the Forced Unionism Card Check Bill is enacted into law is not theoretical. Fox News interviewed workers at Dana Corporation Auto Parts for the real story of the Card Check process.