Right to Work Blog

Hold on your your wallets if you are a taxpayer in Atlanta.  The union bosses are demanding their due.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Steve Visser reports that big labor expects big favors from new mayor Kasim Reed. Local union boss Charlie Flemming says “we did a lot of work and we spent a lot of our resources” supporting Reed. It should be noted that it wasn’t Flemming’s resources but worker’s dues money that was spent but that is another story. Flemming is demanding that Reed pay them back with kickback and favoritism.

In the book, Stranglehold, Reed Larson reveals the astonishing story of how organized labor has acquired incredible, hidden power over local, state, and national governments in America. For a free copy of Stranglehold, go here.

The Augusta Chronicle joins the growing opposition to the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, S.560, pointing out that Georgia House of  Representatives member John Barrow is refusing to protect workers rights.

In a letter to Congress, 10 governors voiced objections to imposition of the Card Check Scam (i.e. the so-called Employee Free Choice Act) on their states.

The letter states:

January 8, 2009

Dear Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, Speaker Pelosi, and Representative Boehner,

The “Employee Free Choice Act” is a highly controversial federal bill which seeks to fundamentally alter federal labor laws that run counter to long held traditions that have protected the privacy and security of American workers. We believe that America must maintain and encourage a competitive workforce. To keep America competitive, the federal government must protect the confidential nature of a worker’s vote. Some of the Act’s primary flaws include:

— Violating the elections process that allows employees to choose whether they want union representation through a secret ballot. Currently, neither the union nor the employer knows how an employee votes. The proposed legislation would eliminate this important protection for employees — one supported by a recent poll that showed 75% of Americans believe that a free and impartial secret ballot election is the fairest way for workers to decide on union membership.

— Imposing Contract Terms on Employers which are not actually requested by their workers. The National Labor Relations Board will be de facto authorized to force an employer to implement a collective bargaining agreement imposed by an arbitrator rather than through the long held tradition of unions working independently on an agreement between the employer and employees in order to secure their top priorities. Instead this bill will allow far removed union executives to insert their own priorities without prior consultation with the affected workers. This represents an unprecedented government intrusion on the right to bargain freely over working terms and conditions.

We respectfully request that you join us in opposing this legislation and cast your vote against it.

Sincerely,

Gov. Sonny Perdue,
Georgia

Gov. Bobby Jindal,
Louisiana

Gov. Tim Pawlenty,
Minnesota

Gov. Haley Barbour,
Mississippi

Gov. Jim Gibbons,
Nevada

Gov. John Hoeven,
North Dakota

Gov. Mark Sanford,
South Carolina

Gov. Mike Rounds,
South Dakota

Gov. Rick Perry,
Texas

Gov. Jim Douglas,
Vermont

James Walters and Matthew Simpson respond to the boss of Georgia’s AFL-CIO and his call for passage of the Card Check Scam Bill.

Waters and Simpson get right to the point: The centerpiece of the Act is the elimination of government-run secret ballot union elections. And by stripping employees of the fundamental right to cast a private vote for or against union representation, the Employee Free Choice Act undermines the very principles of a free and democratic society, and only robs employees of their vital “freedom to choose.”

Newspapers from across the nation continue to urge Congress to fight the Big Labor power grab known as the Card Check Scam Bill. The Augusta Chronicle believes that a Pro-Big Labor Senate with a 60 vote super-majority should send shivers down your spine:

George Orwell is turning over in his grave. But if you live in Georgia, you can put a stop to it.

The so-called “Employee Free Choice Act,” is as Orwellian a name for any law we’ve ever seen. The proposed law before Congress, in fact, is not about free choice at all; rather, it seeks to restrict the free choice of those who don’t want to join a union, in a most underhanded way.

Democrats love the law for what it will do for their bread-and-butter Big Labor friends: It will take away employees’ right to a secret ballot when voting on whether to form a union.

Democrats and union bosses know that public votes on unions will put crushing pressure on intimidated workers to vote in favor of forming or joining unions.

And what kind of reprisals might the workers risk if they vote against the union?

This is precisely what Big Labor bosses are demanding as payback from the large Democratic congressional majority that they helped get elected.

The “card check” law, as it’s called, provides yet another reason why it’s critical to re-elect Republican Saxby Chambliss to Georgia’s U.S. Senate seat.

Chambliss won the most votes in the Nov. 4 election, but just not enough to avoid a runoff on Dec. 2.

Now, with Democrats closing in on a possible 60-vote advatnage [sic] in the U.S. Senate — enough to end debate on bills and proceed to a vote — the Chambliss race has become one of the most-watched, most important elections in the country. In one of the most important election years in our lifetimes.

Chambliss may be all that stands in the way of Democrats gaining a filibuster-proof Senate majority — and their virtually certain approval of “card check.”

Here’s how it would work: Under current labor rules, if you are approached by a couple of burly, threatening-looking 200-pound guys asking you to sign a petition to establish a union shop at your place of work — and you are opposed to the idea — you can smile nicely and sign the petition, safe in the knowledge that you can vote against the union in the privacy of the voting booth. But under card check, you wouldn’t get a chance to cast a secret ballot. The petition would empower labor bosses to form a union shop if more than 50 percent of workers signed on.

What could be more un-democratic than abolishing the secret ballot? That’s what they do in dictatorships.

Union bosses claim that secret ballot elections are unfair because of management coercion and intimidation. This is simply not true. Government investigations have uncovered no evidence of widespread management abuse. And workers themselves say they have no problem with the National Labor Relations Board’s oversight of union elections.

Even more significant are polls showing that more than 70 percent of both union and non-union workers favor the secret ballot over card check. Moreover, coercion and intimidation is more likely to come from Big Labor’s thuggery than anything management does.

The misnamed Employee Free Choice Act is nothing more than Democrats paying off labor bosses — special interest legislation at its worst.

And didn’t President-elect Barack Obama promise he’d put an end to the clout of special interest lobbyists? Don’t count on it; he was for card check when he was in the Senate.

The re-election of U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss on Dec. 2 would greatly enhance the chance that Republicans could mount a successful filibuster against card check.

It’s not card check that the nation will need over the next few years, but a check against a left-wing Congress run amok. You can be sure Chambliss will help provide that check. His opponent would only add to it.

Readers know the difficulty Michigan is having creating jobs and economic prosperity. But defenders of Big Labor like to deny that the regulations and costs the United Auto Workers (UAW) and other big unions have imposed on the state have anything to do with the state’s mired economic conditions. Albeit already difficult, it is getting harder to make such an argument.

Phil Gramm and Mike Solon writing in the Wall Street Journalnote:

The Competitiveness Index created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) identifies “16 policy variables that have a proven impact on the migration of capital — both investment capital and human capital — into and out of states.” Its analysis shows that “generally speaking, states that spend less, especially on income transfer programs, and states that tax less, particularly on productive activities such as working or investing, experience higher growth rates than states that tax and spend more.”

Ranking states by domestic migration, per-capita income growth and employment growth, ALEC found that from 1996 through 2006, Texas, Florida and Arizona were the three most successful states. Illinois, Ohio and Michigan were the three least successful.

The rewards for success were huge. Texas gained 1.7 million net new jobs, Florida gained 1.4 million and Arizona gained 600,000. While the U.S. average job growth percentage was 9.9%, Texas, Florida and Arizona had job growth of 18.5%, 21.4% and 28.9%, respectively.

. . .

There also appears to be a clear difference between union interests and the worker interests. Texas, Florida and Arizona are right-to-work states, while Michigan, Ohio and Illinois are not. Michigan, Ohio and Illinois impose significantly higher minimum wages than Texas, Florida and Arizona. Yet with all the proclaimed benefits of unionism and higher minimum wages, Texas, Florida and Arizona workers saw their real income grow more than twice as fast as workers in Michigan, Ohio and Illinois.

Incredibly, the business climate in Michigan is now so unfavorable that it has overwhelmed the considerable comparative advantage in auto production that Michigan spent a century building up. No one should let Michigan politicians blame their problems solely on the decline of the U.S. auto industry. Yes, Michigan lost 83,000 auto manufacturing jobs during the past decade and a half, but more than 91,000 new auto manufacturing jobs sprung up in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Texas.

Gramm and Solon ask whether any of these facts play into the presidential debate and the positions the candidates have on issues like Right to Work?

So what do the state laboratories tell us about the potential success of the economic programs presented by Barack Obama and John McCain?

Mr. McCain will lower taxes. Mr. Obama will raise them, especially on small businesses. To understand why, you need to know something about the “infamous” top 1% of income tax filers: In order to avoid high corporate tax rates and the double taxation of dividends, small business owners have increasingly filed as individuals rather than corporations. When Democrats talk about soaking the rich, it isn’t the Rockefellers they’re talking about; it’s the companies where most Americans work. Three out of four individual income tax filers in the top 1% are, in fact, small businesses.

In the name of taxing the rich, Mr. Obama would raise the marginal tax rates to over 50% on millions of small businesses that provide 75% of all new jobs in America. Investors and corporations will also pay higher taxes under the Obama program, but, as the Michigan-Ohio-Illinois experience painfully demonstrates, workers ultimately pay for higher taxes in lower wages and fewer jobs.

Mr. Obama would spend all the savings from walking out of Iraq to expand the government. Mr. McCain would reserve all the savings from our success in Iraq to shrink the deficit, as part of a credible and internally consistent program to balance the budget by the end of his first term. Mr. Obama’s program offers no hope, or even a promise, of ever achieving a balanced budget.

Mr. Obama would stimulate the economy by increasing federal spending. Mr. McCain would stimulate the economy by cutting the corporate tax rate. Mr. Obama would expand unionism by denying workers the right to a secret ballot on the decision to form a union, and would dramatically increase the minimum wage. Mr. Obama would also expand the role of government in the economy, and stop reforms in areas like tort abuse.

The states have already tested the McCain and Obama programs, and the results are clear. We now face a national choice to determine if everything that has failed the families of Michigan, Ohio and Illinois will be imposed on a grander scale across the nation. In an appropriate twist of fate, Michigan and Ohio, the two states that have suffered the most from the policies that Mr. Obama proposes, have it within their power not only to reverse their own misfortunes but to spare the nation from a similar fate.