Right to Work Blog

House Democrat leaders are pushing for another bailout of American car manufacturers. $25 billion in loans have already been approved and Sen. Debbie Stabenow is looking for another $25 billion more.

Of course, the loans would come with no strings attached meaning that the taxpayers’ monies would finance and underwrite existing United Auto Workers (UAW) contracts that are the cause of much of the recent difficulties. The Wall Street Journal notes that these contracts even pay workers not to work.

American automobile dealers need fundamental reform, not a handout from the taxpayers. Any reform package must include giving the American auto worker the ability to exercise his/her Right to Work. Don’t hold your breathe — especially with the band of Big Labor supporters currently running Washington, DC.

From the Washington Post:

The Virginia Democratic Party failed to properly disclose a $200,000 donation it received in early September from a labor union, party officials admitted . . . .

On Sept. 4, the Laborers’ Political League Education Fund gave the state party $200,000, which at the time was the largest contribution the state party had received in at least a decade, excluding transfers from candidates or other Democratic committees. But the state party never reported it until Oct. 15, when it filed its quarterly campaign finance report.

After being questioned by the Washington Post, party officials said they mistakenly failed to abide by the law.

“The Democratic Party of Virginia’s compliance operation missed advance reporting on a September contribution,” said Jared Leopold, a spokesman for the Virginia Democratic Party. “The Party acknowledges the error. Today, the Party reached out to the State Board of Elections to report the oversight and remedy the situation.” . . .

Since Sept. 1, the party has collected $570,000 from four labor unions, including $205,000 on Oct. 21 from the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, campaign finance records show.

The Wall Street Journal asks its readers to take a pop quiz:

Who’s donated the most money to an effort in California to defeat Proposition 8, an initiative on the November 4 ballot that would define marriage as between a man and a woman in the state?

A) Gay-advocacy organizations

B) Civil-rights groups

C) The California Teachers Association

If you guessed “C,” you understand the nature of modern liberal politics. And if you didn’t, perhaps you’re wondering what exactly gay marriage has to do with K-12 public education. The high school dropout rate is 1-in-4 in California and 1-in-3 in the Los Angeles public school system, odds that worsen considerably among black and Hispanic children. So you might think the CTA, the state’s largest teachers’ union, would have other priorities.

Yet last week the union donated $1 million to the “No on Proposition 8″ campaign. Of the roughly $3 million raised by opponents of the measure so far, $1.25 million has come from the teachers’ union. “What does this cause have to do with education?” said Randy Peart, a public school teacher in San Juan who was contacted by a local television station. “Why not put that money into classrooms, into making a better place for these kids?”

In fact, the CTA and its parent organization, the National Education Association, have used tens of millions of dollars in mandatory teachers’ dues to advance all manner of left-wing political causes. And members like Ms. Peart are right to ask questions. In some years barely a third of the NEA’s budget has gone toward improving the lot of teachers themselves.

In addition to vigorously fighting school choice and other reforms that benefit underprivileged children but threaten the public education monopoly, the NEA has directly (or via state affiliates) bankrolled Acorn, the Democratic Leadership Council, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and, naturally, the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights.”

Public school teachers of America, take note. This is your dues money at work.

With Sen. Elizabeth Dole fighting for her political life, as well as Rep. Robin Hayes, Big Labor has contributed a total of $730,000 to the North Carolina Democrat Party just last week.

That raises the total to over $1.1 million that the government employees union has given the party. The money is being provided for a “sustained” effort to help Big Labor, according to the boss of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

What is that “sustained” effort? The News and Observer says “Unions typically want to weaken or overturn North Carolina’s right-to-work law, which prohibits unions from compelling membership among employees.”

Despite claims by state Democrat party leaders that they won’t touch North Carolina’s Right to Work Law, we all know the old saying: “He who pays the piper gets to pick the tune.”

Add another $20 million in the already ballooning political budget of the union bosses. The “Change to Win labor federation” is “. . . spending more than $20 million — mostly under the radar — to help elect Democrats in battleground states,” Marc Ambinder notes in his blog for the Atlantic.

The CTW union effort, focused principally in 14 states, most of them with competitive Senate races, compliments a mostly separate effort by the AFL-CIO, which has budgeted $53.4 million on its political program. Change To Win unions disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO in 2006 to focus on organizing. Since then, the two groups have worked well together, signing agreements to share information and some resources. Change to Win unions have worked with the National Education Association, the Steelworkers, and the Communications Workers of America — the latter two being stalwart AFL-CIO unions — on specific projects. Unilaterally, the Change to Win unions have mailed more than 31.2 million persuasion placards, made nearly 4.6 million phone calls, and made millions of what the unions call “member to member” contacts — direct engagements with union members, often at worksites.

Anna Burger the CTW’s president, said that more than 3000 union members had worked more than 40,000 volunteer shifts on the Obama campaign’s behalf in 14 battlegrounds. About 1250 of those union members canvassed white, working class union members. Burger said the mood among workers in these states has shifted from “anxiety to anger” about the economy, and that economic discontent was behind a recent surge of support for Democrats. CTW executive director Chris Chafe said that the economy, combined with union muscle, was putting Senate seats into play that Democrats had previously written off, including Rep. Tom Allen’s challenge to Sen. Susan Collins in Maine. On election day, more than 50,000 CTW members will have participated in the political program, he said.

Smelling blood — and a chance for another vote to end employee secret ballot elections — union bosses in Indiana are bankrolling the upstart campaign of Michael Montagano against incumbent Mark Souder.

Souder, who has called the Card Check Scam Bill a license to intimidate workers, is under attack by Montagano whose campaign is funded almost exclusively by Big Labor money. The Journal Gazette reports that Big Labor has:

. . . contributed more than $130,000 to Montagano’s campaign operation – $20 of every $100 in total donations; 75 percent of all the political action committee money.

It’s more cash than unions donated to Souder’s last six challengers combined.

Spending a record $60 million on the presidential campaign alone, the big government union American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is putting 40,000 “volunteers” on the ground in Ohio to carry the state for Sen. Barack Obama and, as AFSCME union boss Gerald McEntee says to “increase worker-friendly majorities” in the House and Senate. “Worker friendly?”

Those “worker friendly” House and Senate members will eliminate workers’ right to a secret ballot election. Those “worker friendly” House and Senate members will coerce more workers into joining unions as never before. Those “worker friendly” House and Senate members will try to eliminate your Right to Work.

The only thing they are friendly to is the union bosses who put them in power.

We have been warning readers for years that enactment of the Card Check Scam Bill — certainly a top agenda item for a Democrat Congress and a Democrat president — will have a negative impact on Right to Work states, and more people are starting to recognize that fact.

The Birmingham Business Journal takes a look at the possible impact the so-called Employee Free Choice Act will have on Alabama employers:

The proposed bill, often referred to as card check legislation, would take away the right of the employer to demand a secret ballot when more than 30 percent of its employees petition in favor of union participation. If the petition is declared valid, the union would then be certified as the exclusive representative of all the company’s employees.

The bill also proposes federal mediation if a unionized company and a union can’t agree upon a collective bargaining contract within 120 days.

The concern for businesses is that unions might use pressure to push employees into union membership and that they won’t understand the ramifications, like the union bargaining exclusively for all employees, said Jay St. Clair of labor and employment law firm Littler Mendelson PC in Birmingham.

“The concern is that there can be coercion and people can’t vote their true feelings,” he said. “It does away with the fundamental process (secret ballot) that has been in law since 1930 and a process we’re all familiar with and have endorsed for 70 years.”

And in Virginia, where former Democrat Gov. Mark Warner is running for the Senate, Warner refuses to say that he will vote against the Card Check Scam Bill — a fact that has the Harrisonburg Daily News-Record rightfully up in arms:

As the polls repeatedly tell us, former Gov. Mark Warner makes an appealing candidate for U.S. Senate. But a recent refusal to commit, up or down, on an issue critical to many Virginia voters, in our mind, diminishes this appeal.

The issue to which we refer is the proposed Employee Free Choice Act, which would, in essence, replace the secret ballot in the decision to organize a union with a “card check” system. The system would allow union organizers to place pressure — at times, undue pressure — on individual workers to “check” that “card” to organize a union. A secret ballot affords each and every worker, well, the secrecy of their vote on this matter. It affords them protection. So in a state such as Virginia, which cherishes a right-to-work tradition that for decades has been a foundation stone of state prosperity, Mr. Warner’s position, or lack thereof, should be political dynamite for the business community and its employees.

Asked no less than three times this past Friday during a question-and-answer session at The Winchester Star whether he would vote “yes” or “no” on this undemocratic bill, Mr. Warner admirably imitated a crawfish. He wiggled and danced, and gave explanations for his wiggling and dancing, but never did answer the question.

We find that middling odd — and much more when we note that such a committed old liberal as George McGovern has actually made a television commercial opposing this “undemocratic overreach.” Part of the script reads as follows: “Voting is an immense privilege. That is why I am concerned about a new development that could deny this freedom to many Americans. As a longtime friend of labor unions, I must raise my voice against pending legislation I see as a disturbing and undemocratic overreach not in the interest of either management or labor.”

We wholeheartedly agree with Mr. McGovern, but would lend a bit of nuance to his statement. While it is true that “labor” — and by this we mean individual workers — would see no benefit from this act, “Big Labor,” the unions themselves, could realize substantial succor.

For his part, Mr. Warner pledged fealty to the state’s right-to-work law and tradition, but said the process of union organization was an entirely different matter. He said “reform” of the process was necessary, and that “over the last eight years,” the balance had shifted too much toward management, at the expense of labor. Nonetheless, he did say he had certain “concerns” about provisions of the legislation in question. Bottom line: Mr. Warner said he would not vote for any measure giving an “unfair advantage” to labor or management, yet refused to commit either way on this piece of legislation.

Yet this bill would give an “unfair advantage” to labor leaders by taking away from workers the right to choose without coercion, the same right all Americans exercise in an election. What about this does Mr. Warner not understand — particularly when a liberal like George McGovern sees it so clearly? This is a right-to-work issue.

A former Albany, New York union boss was sentenced to six months in prison for his role in a firebombing of a concrete plant five years ago.

The May 2003 arson was part of an organized effort by two union officials to sabotage companies that were using non-unionized workers at construction sites.

The sentencing of Michael Kwarta, 32, who had served as a labor organizer and sergeant-at-arms for Local 190 of Glenmont, marked the culmination of a meandering federal investigation into the underworld of Albany’s politically connected laborers’ unions.

The arson triggered a federal grand jury investigation of the union’s ties to elected officials, public contracts and organized crime figures, and also whether top union leaders had authorized the firebombing.

. . .

Kwarta was the third person convicted in connection with the arson. Remarkably, despite widespread knowledge in the union’s ranks that he was involved in the firebombing, Kwarta remained on the union’s payroll until May, just days before he pleaded guilty. He admitted his role as the statute of limitations on charges in the arson was set to expire.

Just think, if some union bosses are willing to firebomb a company for using non-union labor, what do you think they will do to get workers to sign a so-called “union Authorization card”?

Chicago Inspector General David Hoffman has found that the city’s unionized sanitation department is riddled with fraud and abuse of taxpayer monies.

The Sun Times reports:

Laborers and truck drivers whose movements were eyeballed and tracked by undercover investigators were found to be in bars and restaurants, relaxing at home, sitting in their cars or standing around drinking and, in one case, urinating on the street when they were supposed to be hard at work.

Of the 145 laborers whose daily movements were tracked, investigators “did not see a single laborer doing a full day’s work.” The worst ward had crews slacking off for an average of two hours, 28 minutes a day. In the best-performing ward, laborers were paid to do nothing for one hour, 38 minutes.”

Instead of expressing outrage over the abuse of taxpayer funds, Lou Phillips, an operative for the Laborers Union Local 1001 that represents the slacking workers complained about the report. Phillips puffed:

“Sounds a little bit like a witch hunt to me. They’re laying off 1,080 people. Over 300 are members of Local 1001. Read between the lines,” he said. . . .