Right to Work Blog

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 

Michigan has been in the middle of a depression for a number of years with no end in sight. Much of the responsibility for that fact goes to state labor bosses and their allies in the legislature and governor’s office.

The state is negotiating with the SEIU for new state contracts and as the Detroit News notes, and proposed savings are miniscule, showing that the elected officials are not serious about turning the state around.

But what’s worse, state Senator Jason Allen is proposing a direct $4 million taxpayer handout to the SEIU.

Michigan will never get back on their feet until they give worker’s the ability to say no to the union bosses and their continuing forced unionism demands.

We expect big labor bosses will seek a bailout for their underfunded pension funds, but the UAW is seeking another bailout of sorts. As owners of a lavish golf club in Michigan the UAW is asking the township where the course is located for a lower tax rate — taking money right from the schools in the district.  As the Detroit News has noted, the course is a money loser for the union and is kept afloat from loans from the union’s strike funds.  Seems like workers in the UAW wish they had a mulligan on this boondoggle.

Mark Silverman is the Editor of the Tennessean.  But in a previous career, he was a newspaper reporter in Michigan covering the Big Three, the UAW and their interaction with the politicians in Michigan.  Recently, GM demanded that states pay up to $200 million in taxpayer money to GM or they would close plants.  The Democrat governor of Tennessee is rightfully balking.  Decisions on plant closures should be made on questions of profitability and efficiency, not payoffs and subsidies.  But that is the they way they have done it in Michigan for decades — with the help of big labor.  In an insightful piece, Silverman notes the power the UAW has over Michigan elected officials and how that influence helped kill the American car industry.  You can read it here.

Saul Anuzi gives a short history lesson about the brutal history of big labor in Michigan:

The reason that the great American tradition of making cars in my home state has now gone belly up is due in large part to the irrational and unreasonable demands made by UAW chief Ron Gettelfinger, former UAW chief Frank Garrison, and the union leaders that came before them. And the rest of it lies with the management of the Big 3 who made promises they knew they couldn’t keep, and the politicians who continued to enable this to happen.

Its an unemployment rate of nearly 13% — the highest rate since 1983 — the state of Michigan desperately needs to reform its economy.  Enactment of a Right to Work law would end the brain and job drain that is killing the state.  The question remains — are politicians ready to break big labor’s grip on the state’s economy?

David Keene looks at the effort by the Obama Administration to hand control of the Chrysler car company to the UAW and concludes its nothing more than theft and graft.

The insightful Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner looks at the business side of big labor in his recent column.  It’s clear that in many cases big labor is becoming synonymous with big business:

Imagine if President George W. Bush used strong-arm tactics to bend the law to favor a politically connected company with $1.2 billion in assets, including a private golf course. What if that company’s political action committee had spent $13 million in the previous election, including more than $4 million to elect him?

Barack Obama has done just that. The company is called the United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union – or the UAW for short.

Obama and the Democrats will employ euphemisms when discussing the President’s plan to circumvent bankruptcy law and hand majority ownership of Chrysler over to the UAW. They will speak about “the workers” taking ownership of the company, with some arguing that the workers, by right, are the senior creditors in Chrysler’s bankruptcy.

This paints the union-versus-creditors battle for control of Chrysler as a fight between blue-collar workingmen and greedy hedge fund speculators in suits.

But that abstraction-equating the UAW with “the workers”-is grossly misleading. John Doe on the assembly line will not be running Chrysler or directing the use of billions in bailout dollar. No, the union management will become Chrysler’s management.

The Holland Sentinel in Michigan knows that the Card Check Scam is bad for workers and the economy:

. . .

The most important element of the Employee Free Choice Act is its promotion of the “card check” system of union organizing. The bill would eliminate the requirement of a secret ballot to determine union representation; union organizers would merely have to convince a majority of workers to sign cards indicating they want union representation. That’s not real democracy — workers would trade the privacy of the voting booth for the potential intimidation of co-workers pushing them to sign a card on the spot.

The secret ballot is a core democratic principle, and it amazes us that many members of Congress are willing to eliminate it in a matter as critical as union representation. (Notably, the bill contains no provision allowing workers to use the card-check system to decertify a union, which is a much more difficult process.) We doubt many people, regardless of their ideology, would want to sacrifice the secret ballot when it comes to choosing candidates for political office or deciding on a ballot measure.
Workers shouldn’t have to give up that right either.

(Holland area residents may be familiar with the card-check system because it has been employed by the United Auto Workers in efforts to unionize workers at Johnson Controls factories around the country. The card-check system was permitted under a “neutrality agreement” between the UAW and JCI signed in 2003. The UAW has acknowledged recently launching a unionization drive at JCI’s Southview plant in Holland.)

We are also concerned about another provision of the Employee Free Choice Act. If a union is certified as representing workers, the bill would require contract negotiations to begin within 10 days, and if a contract agreement is not reached in 90 days, the issue would be sent to the federal government for mediation and, ultimately, binding arbitration. Binding arbitration means a contract would be put in place not by employers and unions but by federal bureaucrats who may or may not be familiar with the facts that pertain to a specific company. Further, the fact that the law guarantees that a union will win a contract would unfairly tilt negotiating power in favor of the union, which would have little incentive to bargain in good faith and present its best offer.

The decline of organized labor in America is well documented. Unions now represent about 8 percent of non-public sector workers in the country, and the percentage is almost certainly lower here. That’s due, in part, to the fact that we have been fortunate enough to have, both today and in the past, major employers that have shown sincere respect for their workers and built collaborative workplace relationships that have eliminated any need for union representation.

We believe that honest, cooperative employer-employee relations serve workers better than an adversarial company-union arrangement. However, there are companies that mistreat their workers and violate their trust, and in those situations it is understandable that workers turn to union representation. And we know that some of those companies like to play hardball and use aggressive anti-union tactics that stretch or blatantly violate the law, firing supposed “ringleaders” and threatening to shut down plants if workers unionize. Abusive and intimidating behavior must be dealt with, and if regulators need stronger “teeth” to enforce the law, we should give it to them. But the need for better enforcement hardly justifies a major change in federal law that dramatically shifts union-employer dynamics.

To regain their status, unions will have to reverse a deep and abiding skepticism among millions of workers. A survey by Rasmussen Reports last month showed that American workers are hardly beating down the doors to organize — the poll found that 9 percent of non-union workers were eager to join a union. Instead of relying on favorable legislation from political allies, unions need to demonstrate their value to workers in a fair, democratic process. Congress should not rewrite the rules in their favor.
. . .

David Gillis of the Times Herald newspaper in Port Huron, Michigan has looked at the numbers and concludes Michigan can no longer afford to restrict workers’ Right to Work. Why?

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in the 22 states that have right-to-work laws, private-sector employment grew 79% faster than in non-right-to-work states in a 10 year period ending in 2005. During this same period of time, real personal income grew by 37% in right-to-work states compared to 26% in those states without these laws.