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Then NYDOL Director of Strategic Enforcement and recently withdrawn Obama DOL Wage and Hour appointee, Lorelei Boylan referred to these Big Labor partners as NYDOL “community enforcers.”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

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.

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

Radical Big Labor lawyer Craig Becker has been renominated to that National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by President Obama. 

The National Right to Work Committee has opposed Becker’s nomination from the start and other groups are joining the chorus.

The Committee’s Becker Alert highlights the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) Founder Wade Rathke’s ringing endorsement of Obama’s Becker nomination. Rathke wrote, “Here’s a big win no matter how you shake and bake it: Craig Becker being nominated for a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)!

Becker, an associate general counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO, will likely support measures to eliminate a workers right to a secret ballot through executive action.  

As 2009 fades away, President Obama has decided to let disclosure of hundreds of millions of dollars in forced-union-dues disclosure fade away too. Under current law and regulations valid until December 30th, union bosses were supposed to carefully document the billions of dollars they extract from workers as a condition of employment that they in turn pour into front groups and other “funds” each year.

A large part of the billions were about to be made public and reported on a Department of Labor disclosure form known as the Form T-1 Annual Report. But, that won’t happen now!

According to Bureau of National Affairs, Inc, “The Labor Department is issuing a final rule that extends for one year the deadlines for unions to file Form T-1 Trust Annual Report Reports.”

After allowing only 11 days of comments from the public, the Obama Administration postponed requiring reports for another year. During 2010, the Obama Administration states that it intends to completely eliminate the financial disclosure.

Again, the Obama Administration is blatantly paying back union bosses at the expense of rank-and-file workers.

Mark Mix, the President of the National Right to Work, reminds people that Labor Day is for all Americans not just for labor bosses:

Labor Day is a celebration of the efforts of America’s workers.  However, the celebration is hollow for millions of American workers because of compulsory unionism.

Throughout the United States, over 12 million workers labor under contracts that require them to be a member of, or financially support, a union as a condition of employment. 

Additionally, millions of more workers are required by law to accept union bosses’ so-called “representation,” thereby losing the right to negotiate their own employment terms.

Big Labor thrives on this system of government-granted special privileges based on coercion. Compulsory unionism makes union bosses more unaccountable to rank-and-file workers, as their financial support is absolutely mandatory. 

This arrangement breeds union boss corruption, extravagance, and abuse. 

Despite the “feel-good” rhetoric about standing up for workers’ rights, union bosses commonly target independent-minded workers who stand up to them and exercise their individual rights. Such retaliation often takes the form of harassment, firings, and even violence.         

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is fighting back for thousands of workers.

Compulsory union abuse involves a wide array of tactics. In one recent example, a Hartford, Connecticut-based employee named Patricia Pelletier of the Connecticut Student Loan Foundation became the target of a local union’s harassment campaign after being dissatisfied with the union’s presence in her workplace.

Simply for exercising her legal right to circulate an employee petition which allowed Pelletier and her coworkers to ultimately vote out the unwanted Communications Workers of America union local from their workplace, union operatives forged her signature on numerous magazine subscriptions and consumer product solicitations.

Pelletier’s home was then flooded with hundreds of unwanted magazines and advertisements. Not only was Pelletier forced to spend several hours each day canceling individual subscriptions, she was also billed for thousands of dollars by various companies which often turned her over to collection agencies. Union agents then raised the stakes by planting cocaine in Pelletier’s office in an effort to frame her.

With free legal help from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Pelletier filed a fraud and civil conspiracy suit, ultimately forcing a satisfactory settlement.

In over 200 cases nationwide, the National Right to Work Foundation is helping workers take a stand for their rights in the face of union boss intimidation, coercion, and even violence. These cases underscore the extreme lengths to which union operatives will go to retaliate against those who do not toe the union line — and are a direct result of compulsory unionism.

This Labor Day, big labor bosses will dish out their usual Labor Day propaganda about how awful our lives would supposedly be without them. The reality is that millions of workers and indeed our economy are continuing to suffer greatly under the scourge of compulsory unionism.

Yet, there are signs that folks are realizing the truth: cooperation is a healthy alternative to compulsion and is the best way to enhance individual liberty while achieving economic progress and raising workers’ living standards.

Labor Day should be about honoring the hardworking Americans who make our country’s economy prosper — not union bosses who rely on forced unionism privileges for personal and political gain.

To download Mark Mix’s statement as an MP3: Click here.

Chicago’s Fran Eaton calls the effects of forced unionism as she sees it:

Just when that house begins to teeter is when the bullies really get mean and desperate. We’re seeing that now at the federal level. Unions want to strip away workers’ right to privacy when they vote on unionizing. The federal “Card Check” legislation will strip away secret balloting for workers.  

“OK, everyone who wants me to be in charge, raise your hands,” imagine the bully shouting on the playground with his trusted goons standing on either side.

Instead, union thugs hike demands and press taxpayers for more under the guise of better education for the kids and compassionate welfare for the state’s helpless. The Illinois Education Association and the Service Employees International Union then have the guts to use those confiscated tax dollars to run radio ads and demand more tax increases.

It gets worse.

In Illinois, only union workers can build bridges, schools or roads. While only 43 percent of Illinois construction workers are in unions, impeached Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s Executive Order 13 made it impossible for non-union crews to bid on state-funded construction projects.

Recently, President Barack Obama signed a similar order for federally-funded plans.

It’s simply a choice between freedom and coercion, National Right to Work’s Mark Mix said Monday during a private meeting in Chicago. “We’re not against unions, we’re just for people being given the choice whether or not they want to belong,” Mix said. “Freedom always works best.”

Mix is an average-sized guy, and one who would surprise you for being gutsy enough to stir up the idea that union bullies should be challenged in Illinois. Mix is the type of guy you always admired for his backbone but who also made you feel a little ashamed you weren’t quite as brave.

Mix, though, has been part of several statewide victories over the past few years and thinks Illinois needs to challenge statewide union tyranny. Twenty-two states are now “Right to Work” states, including nearby Ohio and neighboring Iowa. Indiana is right on the verge of joining their ranks.

“When the cost of government is less, the cost of living is less, and companies find those states more desirable to build new businesses and bring in more jobs,” Mix said.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed suit in United States District Court for an employee forced to pay unjustifiable fees by Teamsters officials at a Luzerne County government office.  See the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation’s release.

“Giving union officials free reign to deduct money from workers’ paychecks is an open invitation to abuse,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Enacting a Pennsylvania Right to Work law to make union dues fully voluntary is the only way to ensure employees are protected from avaricious union bosses.”

Despite Iowa’s strong history of support for workers’ choice, Big Labor is once again pushing a new state law that would allow unions to charge fees to nonunion workers. The Des Moines Register notes that “the measure represents a major expansion of a bill that failed two years ago despite support from Gov. Chet Culver, a Democrat.”

Big Labor likes to call the measure the “Fair Share” Bill, but workers know it’s no such thing. The bill would force nonunion members to subsidize the outrageous spending habits of the union bosses.