Right to Work Blog

The Arkansas News recognizes that the President’s nomination of Craig Becker is a “bad pick.”

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

The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation Jan-Feb 2010 Newsletter Now On-line:

In this issue:

• Right to Work Sues Obama Administration, Demands Info on Big Labor Ties
• Big Labor Moves to Roll Back Sweeping Foundation Precedent
• Right to Work Combats Sneak Attack on Railway/Airline Workers
• Supreme Court Asked to Halt UAW Religious Discrimination
• Grocery Clerks Fight to Free Themselves From Union Ranks

In addition to to reading Foundation Action online, you can sign up to receive a free subscription by mail here.

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.

The Washington Examiner catches the Senate rushing pro-labor agenda items to the floor before Senator-Elect Scott Brown is sworn into the esteemed body:

… the Senate is again trying to perform as many favors for Big Labor as it can before newly elected Republican Senator Scott Brown is seated and Democrats lose their supermajority. Senate Democrats are now trying to rush through the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Becker would be the first union-employed lawyer to be confirmed by the Senate to the NLRB and is very cozy with and has received many paychecks from big politically active unions like the SEIU and AFL-CIO.

Firing a teacher in New York is almost impossible thanks to the powerful teacher union that dominates City politics. Just ask Alan Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld was accused to sexual misconduct. Rather than replace him, the City was forced to put him in a room by himself allowing him to keep his $100,000 a year salary. That was in 2001. Almost a million dollars later, the City wants something done about it. Union monopoly bargaining is the cause.

Newly-elected New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has signed an executive order ending the current system of pay to play politics in the Garden State. The order states that unions are now added to the list of groups which are barred from receiving state contracts of more than $17,500 if they had donated more than $300 to a campaign for Governor or county political committee in the previous 18 months.   The order is expected to curb the union influence and patronage that was prevalant during the Corzine administration.

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

Detroit, MI (January 28, 2010) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a citizen activist announced today that he will file an appeal with the Michigan Supreme Court in an ongoing public disclosure battle over the use of school district e-mail systems for union political activities.

In 2007, political activist Chetly Zarko from DeWitt – invoking Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosure law – requested e-mail communications among Howell Education Association (HEA) union brass regarding heated collective bargaining negotiations between the Howell Public School (HPS) system and union officials.  The HEA union is a local affiliate of the Michigan Education Association and National Education Association unions.

At the time of the collective bargaining conflict, Zarko suspected union boss lobbying was occurring at taxpayer expense.  Zarko is seeking the release of approximately 5,500 e-mails between the union hierarchy and teachers.

HEA union officials claimed a special exception from the requirements of Michigan’s FOIA law, despite the fact that the e-mails were sent over a taxpayer funded e-mail system and the HPS’s “Acceptable Use Policy” explicitly states that e-mails sent on the server are “not consider private communication [and] may be re-posted.” 

Foundation attorneys won a ruling from the Livingston Circuit Court requiring disclosure, but union lawyers managed to convince the State of Michigan Court of Appeals to overturn the lower court’s decision.  

“Public resources should not be spent on the shadowy and self-serving political activities of union bosses,” said Patrick Semmens, Legal Information Director of the National Right to Work Foundation.  “Howell Education Association union officials should be subject to the same public disclosure requirements as everyone else who uses taxpayer funds.”

            The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses.  The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, is assisting thousands of employees in over 200 cases nationwide. Its web address is www.nrtw.org. 

For Release: January 28, 2010

Contact: Anthony Riedel (800) 336-3600 

You can’t help but wonder if Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) reads his local newspapers. With a Senator so far out of touch with his local constituency, the obvious answer is: probably not.

Despite vehement opposition from the Las Vegas Review Journal and others, Reid keeps carrying big labor’s agenda and the taxpayers are the ones that pay the price.