Right to Work Blog

With polls suggesting that Sen. Barack Obama will become the next President of the United States, more and more commentators are beginning to examine the impact Obama’s election will have on the legislative agenda of the Big Labor bosses. The Wall Street Journal’s take:

Big Labor is hoping to have a big election next Tuesday, with a goal of building a majority to rewrite negotiating rules between unions and management. Though it has received little media attention, Barack Obama’s pro-union agenda is the most ambitious in decades and has a real prospect of becoming law. His stated goal is to “strengthen the ability of workers to organize unions” by doing the following:

- Mr. Obama is a co-sponsor of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would eliminate the secret ballot in union organizing elections. Unions would be certified to negotiate pay, benefits and work rules simply by collecting signed “union authorization cards” from a majority of employees at a work site. The law passed the House in 2007 but didn’t come up for a Senate vote.

Under current law, union organizers and management both have the opportunity to present the pros and cons of forming a union. A secret employee vote is then held. Under Mr. Obama’s proposal, unions would be the sole provider of information to the employee, and the worker’s decision whether to organize would no longer be private.

Unions say current law favors management, which can stall to a point where workers lose interest in organizing. But the median number of days between filing a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and holding an election has actually fallen over the past two decades. In 2007, more than 1,500 such elections were held, and unions won 54% of them, the same win rate of the early 1970s.

- Another labor-friendly provision of the Employee Free Choice Act is mandatory arbitration. Under current law, labor and management are required to bargain in good faith but aren’t obliged to reach an agreement. Under Mr. Obama’s proposal, if the parties can’t settle on a contract within 120 days, the dispute goes to an arbitration panel which can impose a contract that is binding for two years.
As a practical matter, contracts typically involve dozens of provisions dealing with wages as well as seniority, grievances, overtime, transfers and promotions. Rarely is this accomplished in four months. The provision would notably shift bargaining power to unions, which would have an incentive to run out the 120-day clock and let an arbitrator impose a contract that is bound to include much of what unions demand.

- Mr. Obama also supports legislation to reverse the NLRB’s “Kentucky River” ruling last year, which fleshed out the definition of a supervisor for the purposes of organizing. Unions usually prefer a narrow definition of management, because it increases the number of people potentially under their control. Conversely, labor has worked to expand the definition of “employee” to include everyone from temp workers to graduate-student teaching assistants.

- The Democrat also wants to bar companies from replacing striking workers — a right that management has held for some 70 years. Unions made a similar push in the early 1990s, and a bill passed the House but was blocked in the Senate. Mr. Clinton issued an executive order that would have ended the provision for federal contractors. It was struck down in federal court. Mr. Clinton then tried to get the NLRB to make it more difficult to replace striking workers. The courts overturned that too. Mr. Obama says he will “work to ban the provision,” but hasn’t provided specifics.

- Mr. Obama supports the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act and has said he’d push for its enactment as president. The bill, which passed the House last year and already has 60 votes in the Senate, would force state and local governments to recognize union leaders as the exclusive bargaining agent for police, firefighters and other first responders. More than half of the states would have to change their laws. Thousands of public safety officers would no longer be able to negotiate directly with their employers on their own behalf.

- Last year Congress raised the minimum wage, which is set to rise to $7.25 an hour next year from the current $6.55. But Mr. Obama wants to raise it again, to $9.50 per hour by 2011, and index it for inflation. Mr. Obama says further increases are necessary so that “full-time workers earn a living wage that allows them to raise their families and pay for basic needs.” According to Census data, less than 1% of workers over 25 are earning the minimum. And rather than family heads or full-time workers, they tend to be young single adults, teenagers living at home or spouses providing a second income.
John McCain has not made labor issues a major part of his campaign, but he opposes both the Employee Free Choice Act and the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act. The Republican has also gone on the record in support of national right-to-work legislation that would repeal all current federal laws that authorize the firing of employees for refusing to join or pay dues to a union. Some 22 states currently have right-to-work laws, which Mr. Obama opposes.

Right to Work President Mark Mix reminds Americans that “You Don’t Have to be Trodden by Unions.”

Despite bipartisan abandonment of taxpayers and workers by members of Congress from both parties who are trying to curry favor with police and fireman unions, the Winston-Salem Journal understands what the real issues are:

The U.S. Congress shouldn’t be meddling with the decisions that city and town leaders must make regarding local government salaries.

Yet that is exactly what Congress is trying to do with legislation that would require all cities and towns of more than 5,000 population to bargain collectively with the leading union that represents public-safety officers — police, firefighters and emergency-service workers.

The bill was moving toward Senate approval last week when Republicans suddenly stopped supporting it. Senate leaders now say they will try to work out a compromise and bring the bill back to the floor.

Although President Bush has promised to veto the bill, it’s entirely possible that there is enough support in Congress to override that veto.

At the very least, an override vote will be close because, for a pro-union measure, the bill has had a good deal of Republican support. (North Carolina’s two senators, Elizabeth Dole and Richard Burr, and 5th District Rep. Virginia Foxx have opposed the bill as it has moved through Congress.)

Even if a Bush veto is upheld in Congress, this is not likely to be an issue that will go away. But it should.

The bill is offensive for a number of reasons.

The first and foremost is that it is probably unconstitutional. That annoying 10th Amendment, the one that reserves for the states all powers not explicitly enumerated for the federal government, is still on the books. There’s nothing in the U.S. Constitution that gives Congress the authority to mandate collective bargaining.

In the past, the amendment has been used as the constitutional basis for a lot of bogus arguments — mostly to oppose the civil-rights movement — but this is not such a case. Setting salaries for government workers is a state and local matter.

In North Carolina, public employees do not have the right to bargain collectively. The N.C. State Employees Association has just affiliated itself with a union, but that doesn’t mean it has the right to hold negotiations with the governor and legislators over salaries and benefits. Congress should not come along and decide that it will change the labor structure in this state.

With HR 980, the Congress is also passing a huge unfunded mandate for cities and towns. Collective bargaining would put upward pressure on salaries, and the federal government would not help with them at all. If Congress wants to do something to raise safety officers’ salaries, it should send some money to cities and towns for that purpose.

Congress is meddling here, involving itself in an issue that is best handled by towns, cities and states.

Let’s hope there are enough votes to sustain a Bush veto if the bill passes the Senate. This is an idea best forgotten.

Writing in the Weekly Standard, Stephen Moore details the massive financial obligations and costs imposed on taxpayers by the public employee unions.

It didn’t get much attention on the East Coast, but in late February the town of Vallejo, California, came within an eyelash of becoming the first city since Bridgeport, Connecticut, back in 1991 to declare bankruptcy. This San Francisco Bay suburb of 120,000 residents was threatening to take this radical step because it can no longer afford to pay the extravagant salary and retirement benefits of its public employees. Just a few hours before the city council was to file for bankruptcy, the unions caved in and granted wage concessions to keep the city operational.

Vallejo is not alone.

There are several other cities in California that are contemplating the bankruptcy option thanks to multi-billion-dollar public employee pension and health care obligations that have become effectively unpayable. “Vallejo’s fiscal problems aren’t unique. They’re just the tip of the debt iceberg here in California,” says Keith Richman, a former state legislator and now president of the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility (CFFR). The California Public Employees’ Retirement System has $26 billion of unfunded liabilities. The teachers’ retirement system is $20 billion in the red–health benefits add another $48 billion to its shortfall.

Moore called the situation with public employees’ unions the “. . . next great financial bubble in America–a fiscal time bomb that could cause your local and state tax bills to double or even triple in years to come.”

He is right. But this problem is not only on the state level.

Congress has decided to help make the fiscal time bomb even more explosive and powerful. The House of Representatives passed the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Act (H.R. 980) which would virtually ensure that Big Labor bosses are granted monopoly bargaining status for local and state police, firefighters, county paramedics, and other public safety officers in all 50 states. (This bill is officially called the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act of 2007.)

If you think the problem of public employee unions’ stranglehold on taxpayer funds is bad, wait to see what happens if this bill becomes law.

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 National Volunteer Fire Council (NVFC), for unknown reasons, is carrying water for the International Association of Firefighters (IAFF) union hierarchy.

The article cut-and-pasted below usefully points out that H.R. 980, contrary to IAFF propaganda, constituted a serious threat to two-hatters.

However, the article falsely states that S. 2123 “prohibits” anti-volunteer contracts, when, in fact, all it says is that it doesn’t authorize them. Since such contracts are already permitted under a federal court precedent, and S. 2123 will greatly increase IAFF bosses’ power to obtain such contracts, the NVFC is shirking its duty to oppose legislation that threatens its members’ interests.

National Volunteer Fire Council on Article on Collective Bargaining Legislation

Recently, an article by James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation about the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act (H.R. 980) has been published in a number of newspapers across the country. The stated goal of H.R. 980 is, “To provide collective bargaining rights for public safety officers employed by States or their political subdivisions.”

The article cites a provision in H.R. 980 that was designed to protect the right of a career firefighter to volunteer during off-duty hours. Specifically, the provision bars collective bargaining agreements subject to the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) from prohibiting employees from volunteering during off-duty hours. The article accurately states that this provision would not protect the vast majority of career firefighters. This is because NLRA applies to nongovernmental employees, while most career firefighters are employed by municipal or county units of government.

The NVFC has worked diligently with Senate staff to develop language that would provide protection to career firefighters who volunteer during off-duty hours. On October 1, the Senate version of the Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act (S. 2123) was introduced and included language in Section 8(a)(5) that states that collective bargaining agreements struck in states affected by the bill cannot include provisions prohibiting employees from volunteering during off-duty hours.

The NVFC does not have a position on S. 2123 but is supportive of the language in Section 8(a)(5) protecting volunteer firefighters. The NVFC never established a position on H.R. 980 but would oppose enactment of legislation expanding collective bargaining rights to career firefighters without also protecting the right of those same firefighters to volunteer during off-duty hours should they choose to do so.