Right to Work Blog

Proponents of the Card Check Forced Unionism bill can’t seem to keep their stories straight.  They claim they must eliminate the use of a secret ballot election to ensure workers can unionize over the objections of their abusive bosses and the companies they work for.

But in Maine, big labor supporters are proposing a version of the Card Check Forced Unionism bill that would end the secret ballot for state employees.  Is the state such an abusive employer that state workers can’t form a union with a secret ballot election?  

The same holds true for Hawaii.  

The bottom line is the Card Check bill and every variation thereof is about forcing people into unions without their consent.  Nothing more; nothing less.

Maine public employees may find themselves literally under attack if “LD 934, An Act to Clarify Public Sector Employee Fair Choice in Collective Bargaining” passes.  This will eliminate secret ballot options from employees and invited union organizers into the workers’ homes to persuade them to sign a card check form.  This bill is a state version of the forced unionism card check schemes in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate, H.R. 1409 and S. 560 respectively.

 Tony Payne of Alliance for Maine’s future writes: 

Here’s what the bill’s summary says: “Under current law, if a state employee organization or public employee organization files a request with a public employer alleging that a majority of the employees in an appropriate bargaining unit wish to be represented for the purpose of collective bargaining, the public employer may request an election to determine whether there exists majority support among the employees for such representation. This bill provides instead that the public employer may request an inspection of the evidence of written majority authorization on the part of the employees.”

This bill eliminates the right of any public sector employer in Maine (towns, counties, government agencies, etc.) to call for an election. The bill strikes the word “election” and substitutes it with the word “inspection”.

Worse yet, the bill exposes our state, county and municipal workers to potential coercion – just like the federal card check bill that also is known as the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). What’s also troubling with this bill is there is no evidence that the system is broken.

Employers in both the public and private sectors should be concerned with this attempt to circumvent the secret ballot. The right of workers to organize for purposes of collective bargaining is an important backstop to employer practices that are unfair or unsafe. This measure, however, is simply an invitation to abuse a system that currently serves the interests of employers, employees and the taxpayers.

Even though it’s summer, please let your legislators know how you feel about public employers and employees losing their right to a secret ballot.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) is threatening to move the Card Check Forced Unionism bill to the Senate floor as introduced unless a some other forced unionism scheme is worked out.  Frankly, an up-or-down vote on the Harkin bill would be a great opportunity for workers to see what Senators truly believe in forced unionism.  Senators would not have any fig leaf to hide behind.

Sens. Arlen Specter (D-PA), Jim Webb (D-VA), Mark Pryor (D-AK) and Diane Feinstein (D-CA) are participating in preliminary talks to find a “compromise.”  Seems like a great list of Senators to contact to voice your objections to any and all versions of the Card Check Forced Unionism bill.  Add Senators Warner (VA), Landrieu (LA), Lincoln-Lambert (AK), Snowe (ME), Collins (ME)  Nelson (NE), Conrad (ND), Johnson (SD), Dorgan (ND) and Reid (NV) to that list as well.  Senators can be reached by calling the Senate Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

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.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has a new video.

In the latest update to Right to Work’s YouTube channel, Daniel Locke, lead plaintiff in the Foundation’s Locke v. Karass Supreme Court case, discusses why he felt the need to file suit against Maine State Employees Association union officials.

Also in the video, Foundation president Mark Mix explains what is at stake in the case, and another Maine state employee, Mark Turek, discusses his decision to quit his job rather than be forced to pay union dues to a union he disagreed with.

The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) today released results from a series of surveys in the battleground states of Minnesota, Colorado and Maine conducted by McLaughlin & Associates showing that the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill is hurting its supporters at the ballot box.

Nearly two-thirds of voters in Colorado (68%), Maine (72%) and Minnesota (65%) oppose the Card Check scam. Moreover, voters in Minnesota and Colorado would be less likely to support candidates who support elimination of workplace secret ballot elections. Specifically, a plurality of voters would be less likely to vote for Mark Udall (44%) and Al Franken (41%) if they support this legislation.

The Las Vegas Review Journal eloquently details the stakes of the upcoming Supreme Court’s case from Maine:

In an important First Amendment case out of Washington state, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last June that public employee unions must get consent from individual members before using their dues for political purposes.

The union had argued that if a worker didn’t specifically object to the practice, his dues were fair game for labor bosses to spend on political activity.

The Washington Supreme Court upheld the union position, actually ruling that to hold otherwise would violate the union’s right to free speech, ignoring the dangerous ramifications for the free speech rights of the workers who were being forced to financially support political activism with which they disagreed.

Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court wasn’t buying such snake oil. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote succinctly for a unanimous court that, “Unions have no constitutional entitlement to the fees of non-member employees.”

On Tuesday, the high court agreed to hear another case involving the use of mandatory union fees.

Nationwide, 28 states authorize public unions to collect mandatory fees from all employees. That means 12 million workers in public- and private-sector jobs are required to pay dues or fees to a union even if they elect not to join, according to the National Right to Work Committee.

The latest case comes from Maine, where the Maine State Employees Association (MSEA) is the exclusive bargaining unit for many state workers. As a condition of employment, even those who elect not to join the association must pay compulsory “agency” fees, supposedly to cover the costs of the collective bargaining that benefits them.

But a handful of non-union state workers in Maine noticed that the MSEA was funneling a portion of their fees to its parent union, the Service Employees International, for use in collective bargaining lawsuits in other jurisdictions. That meant the workers were being forced to help pay bargaining costs incurred by union members in other states.

A federal appeals court upheld this practice, but it will now move on to the top court.

“The case is the latest instance of the justices addressing issues that could erode the power of labor unions,” noted The Associated Press.

Yet, if limiting the ability of organized labor to use coercion to fund its agenda erodes union power, it’s power these groups never should have enjoyed in the first place.

And if the justices rely on precedent, the Maine union will have a tough time during arguments.

In a 1984 case outlined on www.lawmemo.com, Justice Harry Blackmun cited a 1981 decision in which the court unanimously “determined that the {Railway Labor Act}, as informed by the First Amendment, prohibits the use of dissenters’ fees for extra-unit litigation.” Therefore, the Bill of Rights “proscribes such assessments in the public sector.”

That would seem to be right on point, here.

If non-union public-sector workers who are part of a collective bargaining unit — and must be in order to continue their employment — wish to voluntarily donate a portion of their checks to help workers elsewhere in their negotiations with management, fine. But they mustn’t be forced to do so.