Right to Work Blog

Despite not yet achieving a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (Minnesota, Georgia and Alaska election results are still awaiting finality), Big Union activists are pushing hard to get their Card Check Scam Bill enacted into law.

The Investor’s Business Daily takes a look at their efforts:

When the dust settled after the election last week, the Democrats fell just short of the 60-vote, filibuster-proof Senate majority they wanted. That’s put a question mark over one of the party’s most controversial initiatives: the Employee Free Choice Act.

Democrats, including President-elect Barack Obama, campaigned hard for the pro-union legislation, also known as “card check.” Big Labor, which threw its support behind the party, wants it badly. But without a filibuster-proof majority, its chances are slim.

That’s prompted rumors in Washington that unions might accept putting card check aside in favor of pushing issues like binding arbitration. Big Labor publicly scoffs at such talk.

AFL-CIO Legislative Director Bill Samuels said the card check side can count on 58 votes, just two votes short of the number needed to overcome a filibuster.

But three Senate races remain unresolved and some senators may flip, Samuels says. So they see no reason not to push for a vote.

“Business may be looking for a way out of this debate . . . because of the election results,” he said. “But this is a new president, a new Congress, and we hope to bring more Republicans on board.”

He conceded, though, that a Senate vote may have to wait until after Obama’s first 100 days.

. . . Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, which opposes unions, cited a Slate column by William Gould, a NLRB chairman under President Clinton, that advocated a compromise as evidence that Big Labor may take that option.

“The real power for organized labor comes in the forced arbitration,” Mix said. “The secret ballot provision (i.e., card check) is a political loser. They know that. So it’s trade bait for them.”

Brian Johnson, executive director of the Alliance for Worker Freedom, which opposes card check, says some activists fear business groups may accept a compromise.

“There is a scary idea that perhaps the chamber and other business groups might squish,” said Johnson, who added: “According to the chamber and people I’ve talked to, no, they’re still vehemently opposed.”

Robert Borosage, co-director of the labor-backed Campaign for American Future, says the anti-card-check forces are missing the point. Unions believe Democrats’ sweeping win last week means they have a mandate that includes card check.

John Lott takes an insightful look at the Card Check Scam:

WOULD you like elections without secret ballots? To most Americans, the notion is absurd. But, if Barack Obama becomes president, secret ballots seem destined to end for at least one type of election: union certifications.

The reasons for secret ballots are obvious. Not everyone feels comfortable making his or her political positions public; many would rather vote without fear of offending or angering someone else. Secret balloting essentially ended an old abuse, vote buying, in US elections.

Yet Obama promises to sign into law the so-called Employee Free Choice Act - which would end secret-ballot elections when it comes to unionization of workplaces.

Unionization is now a two-step process: When 50 percent of workers in a company sign statements requesting a unionization vote, that merely sets up a second stage, where workers vote by secret ballot on whether to unionize. Under the “card-check” system, however, unionization would be certified as soon as half the workers had signed cards stating that they favor union representation.

In other words, a worker can now placate union supporters by signing a statement saying he wants a union, but then vote the other way when protected by the secrecy of the voting booth.

Unions now win about 60 percent of certification elections. The rules change would not only make that 100 percent - adding 500-plus new unionized shops a year - but also ensure that unions seek many more certifications. You can see why the AFL-CIO calls the Employee Free Choice Act its “million-member mobilization.”

Unions are desperate to increase membership, which has been falling for decades - from 35 percent of the private-sector workforce in the 1950s to 8.2 percent in 2007.

Big Labor is making an all-out push to get this passed, having budgeted $360 million on this year’s election, $200 million more than in 2004. The Service Employees International Union alone is spending $75 million this year - and committed to making 10 million phone calls to Congress early next year to ensure the bill gets enacted.

Obama claims that strengthening unions is good because unions will “lift up the middle-class in this country once more.” If so, why are these very people voting against unions?

In fact, unionization virtually always raises some workers’ pay at the expense of others. (In particular, companies typically have to compensate for the higher payroll costs by using fewer employees.) They also equalize wages within jobs - preventing harder working, more productive employees from earning more than less productive ones.

And those aren’t the only problems. Protecting teachers unions from competition comes at the expense of students. Protecting workers from trade competition comes at the expense of customers and even other workers. (If you protect steel workers from competition, for example, the price of US-made cars rises relative to foreign-made ones.)

Sen. George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, has broken with his own party over card-check. In an ad opposing the bill, he says, “It is hard to believe that any politician would agree to a law denying millions of employees a right to a private vote.” McGovern is so concerned that he has let the ad be targeted against Democrats nationally as well as in seven states with close Senate races.

Obama may feel that card-check will help US workers, or he may simply believe he needs to reward Big Labor for its support. Either way, ending secret-ballot union votes is guaranteed to make the country - and most workers - poorer.

Big Labor bosses are ready to ram through their power-grabbing agenda with the help of a new crop of congressional water carriers — and they are not hiding their demands. Just read the headlines: “After Push for Obama, Unions Seek New Rules” or “Labor Wants Obama to Take on Big Fight,” and even “With strengthened hand on the Hill, liberal lobbies dreaming of big gains.”

There is no arguing that the Big Labor bosses want Congress to give them the power to unionize millions of Americans through new coercive tactics.

The Hill reports:

Labor groups spent heavily on the election in key battleground states and are planning to push for a series of economic changes, including . . . their top priority: passing the [Card Check Forced Unionism Bill] Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), legislation that they argue would make it easier for employees to form a union. . . .

“The gains obviously increase our chances of passing EFCA,” said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, at a post-election briefing. “We’re strengthened. We have more votes in the Senate and the House.”

The Wall Street Journal, without a hint of a suggestion of a quid pro quo, reports:

After unions spent more than $400 million on the election and mounted massive voter-turnout efforts for Mr. Obama, they’re inclined to push for bringing the Employee Free Choice Act up for a vote early next year, believing they have a narrow window to get it passed. . . .

At the top of labor’s wish list is passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it harder for companies to fight union-organizing drives.

“It is the most important issue that we have,” said John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO.

It is also the most important issue we have. Americans should not be forced to join a union and pay union dues as a condition of employment. Period.

Financial Week takes an insightful look at Big Labor’s big hope and big bet — the effort to end the secret ballot election — despite underestimating the amount they will spend to buy enactment of their scheme:

The labor movement’s big-money campaign for Sen. Barack Obama faces stiff challenges in getting rank-and-file union members to overcome their concerns about the candidate, according to labor specialists and polls.

“There’s been a cultural and political divide between union members and Democratic candidates who may not care as much about trade and some other issues as they do,” said Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley. “That makes it hard for union leaders to deliver the vote.”

This clearly worries union leaders, who see the November election as pivotal in getting key legislation passed. At the top of the list: the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill that would allow workers to organize via card checks rather than the usual secret ballots. Mr. Obama endorsed the legislation, which passed the House before stalling in the Senate. Sen. John McCain opposed it. Last week, U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue said his group would lobby against the bill.

“All of labor’s eggs are placed in this legislation’s basket,” said Mike Asensio, a management labor lawyer for Baker Hostetler in Columbus, Ohio. “If they don’t get the bill passed, it raises a specter about their future.”

Given the stakes, it’s hardly surprising that organized labor is splashing massive amounts of cash on the election. The AFL-CIO and its 56 member unions plan to spend a whopping $300 million to support Democrats in the presidential and congressional campaigns this fall and produce about 250,000 volunteers. The breakaway Service Employees International Union plans to pitch in another $85 million.

To put that in perspective, the Democratic Party as a whole had raised $416 million through July.

The campaign at the AFL-CIO is typical of labor’s big-money strategy. The union will target 3 million undecided members, voting family members and retirees in 24 battleground states, the group’s political director, Karen Ackerman, said. That target group consists of about a quarter of all union members.

The umbrella labor organization’s highest priorities will be voters in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania—swing states with large numbers of union members. It plans to spend as much as $18 million to reach undecided union voters and others in those three states with TV ads, flyers, phone calls, e-mails, mailings and one-on-one visits.

“Union members vote at a higher rate than the rest of the population,” said David Karol, a political science professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “Many are basically Democratic who will end up coming around.”

Maybe. But the largest block of undecided U.S. voters consists of older white, blue-collar, church-going men and women, according to a recent bipartisan poll of 1,000 registered voters conducted by Lake Research Partners and the Tarrance Group.

Blue-collar workers in Macomb County, Mich., a Detroit suburb, favor Mr. McCain over Mr. Obama by a 51%-42% margin, according to a survey by Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg that was released Aug. 25.

The Michigan workers, many of whom voted for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, harbor doubts about Mr. Obama’s experience, values and patriotism, with lesser concerns about his race, the poll found. “Many folks have never voted for an African-American,” Ms. Ackerman granted. “It’s complicated by unfamiliarity, inexperience and rumors. Our job is to make sure people know who Barack Obama is and what he stands for.”

But earlier labor-funded ads seem to focus on what John McCain supposedly stands for. One flier about Mr. McCain’s proposal to privatize Social Security said: “McCain’s worth over $100 million…. He owns 10 houses…. He flies around on a $12.6 million corporate jet…. He walks around in $520 loafers…. If John McCain lost his Social Security, he’d get by just fine. Would you?”

An online video showcases Mr. McCain’s houses and condominiums in Arizona, California and Virginia while also needling the Arizona senator about his calfskin loafers made by Salvatore Ferragamo. The video, distributed by the AFL-CIO and SEIU, then focuses on a person whose house was lost to foreclosure.

“Labor’s money provides them with the potential to make a significant impact in publicizing who Obama is, and it doesn’t really matter that it’s coming from the unions,” said Alan Gitelson, a political science professor at Loyola University of Chicago. “Political advertisements have an impact if they are repetitive.”

With the rolls of organized labor down nearly a quarter since 1979, union leaders will no doubt continue to hammer away.

It is no surprise that union officials have been given amazing access to the podium at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. The forced-dues dollars that have flooded into support and sponsor the Convention should buy something. Among those who will call on the delegates to support more forced unionism among other themes will include:

* Tom Balanoff from Illinois SEIU

* NEA President Reg Weaver

* AFT President Randi Weingarten

* Change to Win’s Anna Burger

* AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

Massachusetts labor bosses are used to getting their way, especially from Gov. Deval Patrick. But labor activists are throwing up the red flag at Patrick’s proposed idea to use civilian flaggers on highway work projects instead of state troopers. Massachusetts is the only state in the nation that uses police officers instead of civilian flaggers at nearly all road and utility construction sites, giving union officers a way to make overtime pay. In fact, nearly five percent of the state highway construction budget went to pay state troopers.

Patrick’s draft regulations, which could go into effect as soon as October, would encourage the state to use less expensive civilian flaggers or electronic signs on roads with a 45 mph speed limit or less, and the AFL-CIO isn’t happy about it.

AFL-CIO spokesman Tim Sullivan, who blasted the plan as unsafe and questioned the cost savings, said the union would fight the regulations. “Who’s going to pay for these flagmen to be trained, who’s going to pick up their unemployment insurance? We just don’t think the cost savings are there,” Sullivan said.

This, of course, raises a more important issue in the eyes of David Tuerck of the Beacon Hill Institute. Under Massachusetts Prevailing Wage Law, the state pays about $40 an hour to police officers who do flag work. Union activists note that the law would require civilians to be paid the same amount — thus create no savings to the taxpayers.

Tuerck correctly argues, “By making this argument, the unions have done us a service. If a law compels the state to spend the equivalent of $80,000 a year for someone to flag down oncoming traffic, then it’s time to rethink the law.”

As former House Rep. Jill Long Thompson takes on sitting Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, it appears that infighting amongst the Big Labor bosses in the state is hampering Long Thompson’s campaign for office.

The Associated Press reports that a split between the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO is a battle over membership and dues money. The SEIU has already contributed $1 million in workers’ dues toward Long Thompson’s election campaign. Long Thompson is pledging to give the union bosses the power to negotiate for more taxpayer money if elected, but the AFL-CIO wants to be the lead negotiator.

Donald Lambro of the Washington Times details Sen. Barack Obama’s support for the Card Check Scam Bill. Obama is ready to force millions of Americans into unions.

Speaking to the AFL-CIO about the bill, Obama said, “We’re ready to play offense for organized labor. It’s time we had a president who didn’t choke saying the word ‘union.’ A president who strengthens our unions by letting them do what they do best: organize our workers. . . . I will make it the law of the land when I’m president of the United States. . . . ”

Sen. McCain, on the other hand, opposes the Card Check Scam Bill. His campaign issued a statement saying the bill is “a poorly-disguised attempt by the labor unions to swell their ranks at the expense of workers’ rights and employers. John McCain strongly opposes the efforts of the labor unions to strip working Americans of their right to a private ballot in deciding whether or not to organize as a union. . . .”

At least on the issue of forcing millions of Americans to join unions without votes, the American people have a stark choice, not an echo.

David Freddoso of National Review Online takes a look at a potential appointee to the Department of Labor under an Obama administration — Kim Bobo.

Bobo could be an obvious choice for the Obama Labor Department, perhaps as head of the Wage and Hour Division [WHD] that was the subject of the hearing. Her group already works closely with WHD, and her positions on labor issues are identical to Obama’s.

At a hearing on Capitol Hill put on by Rep. George Miller, Bobo submitted a written document before the hearing, calling for an expansion of the number of Wage and Hour investigators from 750 to:

. . . “more than 12,500” — this is a factor of more than 16, and such an expansion would nearly double the size of the entire 15,000-employee Department of Labor. For perspective, the section of Labor that protects workers from union abuses (the Office of Labor and Management Standards or OLMS) has 350 employees in all, and Democrats have been trying to shrink it. The Democratic Congress froze OLMS’s 2008 budget at the previous year’s levels.

By his own account in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama is a union man, supportive of this one-sided approach to labor issues. Of his union supporters and endorsers, Obama writes: “I owe those unions. When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away.”

In this light, someone like Bobo would be an appropriate choice for an Obama administration. Her group is a significant if small member in the left-labor activist complex. When the editorial board of the Las Vegas Review-Journal recently attacked IWJ [Interfaith Worker Justice] as a “union front group” that was attacking local homebuilders, two IWJ board members protested that the group has only four union leaders (including Linda Chavez-Thompson of the AFL-CIO) on its board, and only receives only 12 percent of its funds from unions. This amounted to $266,000 in 2007.

According to a 2004 profile of Bobo in the San Francisco Chronicle, she “has spent the last 30 years trying to get people of faith to see the connection between their Bibles and the federal budget, to see ‘moral value’ in tax policies that would bridge the widening gulf between rich and poor.” Like Barack Obama, she is a principled believer in the idea that high taxes are a moral imperative. Obama writes in The Audacity of Hope: “I consider the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to be both fiscally irresponsible and morally troubling.”

Whether it’s Bobo or another Big Labor lackey, it’s clear that:

Whomever he appoints to the top jobs at Labor, it is worth remembering that a President Obama will create a Labor Department that does exactly what unions want. He has given several hints of this. “We need a president,” he said in April, “who knows it’s the Department of Labor and not the Department of Management. A president who strengthens our unions by letting them do what they do best — organize our workers.”

But that is not what unions do best, as their declining American membership demonstrates. Unions are best at electing Democrats, and they often do so with the dues money that members cough up — many of them unwillingly. In 2006, unions spent $58 million to elect Democrats. In this election, the AFL-CIO is giving Obama an advance for his prospective pro-union policy by running ads against his presidential opponent that FactCheck.org has documented to be false.

Obama has not condemned the unions’ lies. After all, he “owes those unions.” On the issue of labor and employment, this is the substance of Obama’s “new politics.” It is strangely familiar.

How is the AFL-CIO spending over $50 million in workers dues money? On political mailers, of course. National Journal reports that over 600,000 pieces are hitting mailboxes in four battleground states.

The AFL-CIO begins a ramped-up campaign to define Sen. Barack Obama with union members and their families in battleground states, focusing heavily on working-class, swing union voters in OH, MI, PA and WI. The goal, per union officials, is to dispel the many rumors circulating about Obama via two new mailers, dropped today, that ask and answer still-looming questions about the candidate. The union will send the pieces to 600K swing voters living in the four critical battleground states.

The mailers are just one leg to a very expensive political stool the union bosses are constructing.

Here are other elements of the AFL-CIO’s effort for Obama:

– The group’s focus is on mobilizing working people in 24 states, targeting about 13M union voters, including members, householders, retirees and those involved with the group’s community affiliate, Working America. Union voters make up between 25-35 percent of the vote on Election Day in OH, MI, PA and WI.

– In August, AFL-CIO volunteers will deliver 1M flyers about Obama’s record and background to worksites across the country. Overall, more than 4M flyers have already been distributed to worksites, including flyers about McCain’s “anti-worker” record, sources said.

– Every weekend in August, union volunteers will canvass neighborhoods across the country, providing voters with information about Obama’s record and contrasting it with McCain’s. Again, swing voters will be targeted. AFL-CIO volunteers will also be phone banking all month to swing union voters in key states.

– Members of Working America, the community affiliate of the AFL-CIO for those without a union, are canvassing nightly to discuss the issues that matter to working-class voters. In OH alone, more than 160 canvassers are going out every day. Working America currently has nearly 2.5M members, including 800K in Ohio.

– One note: The AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council, launched last month in five states, is expected to create new state councils expected in August. The Veterans Council will play an integral role in mobilizing 2.1M union veterans, according to union officials. Meanwhile, the TV ad about McCain’s economic priorities, featuring union veteran Jim Wasser, continues to run in media markets in six states: MI, MN, OH, PA, VA and WI. Also since February, AFL-CIO volunteers have now protested at more than 100 McCain campaign events from coast to coast.