Coming off their less than successful protests in Wisconsin, the top minds at the SEIU have decided to spend millions in mandatory union dues money for more protests.

 “The new plan, revealed in a planning document reviewed by POLITICO and in the subsequent interview with Henry, reflects the widening recognition by labor leaders that the shrinking national ranks of union members no longer carry the political heft they once did. The draft plan, titled “Fight for a Fair Economy” in what Henry said was a preliminary planning document, would reach outside union ranks to focus on “mobilizing underpaid, underemployed and unemployed workers” and “channeling anger about jobs into action for positive change.”

The National Right to Work Foundation [NRTW] has aggressively pursued recusal motions against Craig Becker, a recess appointment by President Obama to the National Labor Relations Board. Becker had previously served as associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, an organization which has come under increasing scrutiny in connection to illicit activities by Obama and his supporters.

Becker took an ethics pledge last April, at the time of his recess appointment, in which he swore to abstain for a period of two years from involving himself in any matter before the board in which a client or former employer had been involved. Despite this pledge, the NRWF [NRTW] has identified cases involving SEUI locals and in which Becker participated in the cases. Becker has insisted that local unions are “separate and distinct entities” from the SEIU itself. This contradicts the SEIU Constitution, which presumably Becker would know something about as counsel for that organization, and which describes local affiliates as “constituent subordinate bodies” of the national union.

The NLRB Inspector General, David Berry, sided with the Obama appointee, finding that an SEIU local and the SEIU national union were “separate and distinct.” As shaky as this reasoning may be, a case involving the Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center may display ever deeper ethical concerns with Becker participating in NLRB deliberations: The SEIU local at the Pomona medical center wishes to disassociate itself from SEIU. The NLRB has not yet responded to NRWF [NRTW] request for Becker to recuse himself from that case. It notes that his involvement in the Pomona case is even more troubling because Becker personally was involved in SEIU activities to get healthcare workers to join the SEIU.

Wade Rathke, who founded ACORN and was a former SEIU leader, lavished praise on the work that Becker did, stating: “His role was often behind the scenes devising strategy with the organizer and the lawyers, writing briefs for others to file, and putting all the pieces together, but he was the go-to-guy on all of this.” Rathke in further comments made it clear that Becker was much more active than simply a staff attorney representing a client: Becker was actively leading the drive to organize healthcare workers and to organize them as part of the SEIU.

… But it is unlikely that he will or that Attorney General Holder will move to compel Becker to do the right thing. The connect-the-dots unseemliness of Craig Becker on the National Labor Relations Board is too obvious and, sadly, in Washington, all too familiar.

Has Congressman Darrell Issa’s request that White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard explain his failure to report a $37,000 payment from his previous employer SEIU Local 1199 evolved into a cover-up?    It’s beginning to smell like it! 

Rep. Issa’s request refers to the same Patrick Gaspard who while working for a Soros-SEIU political committee employed convicted felons to go door-to-door.  In fact, that same Soros-SEIU committee received one of the steepest fines in Federal Election Commission history ($750,000) because its leadership, in Machiavellian fashion, chose to ignore federal laws and take the risk of paying fines if caught.  So, ignoring a few pesky public disclosure laws is not as unlikely as it may sound. 

Questions:

• How did Gaspard work six days in January for SEIU 1199 ^h while simultaneously working for the “office of the President-Elect” during “January 1-16” of 2009?
• How did Gaspard earn, in those six days of work for SEIU 1199, “$17,238.56 [of] carried over leave & vacation,” in particular, after apparently having already been paid 2.5 to 4 months vacation pay in 2008?
• How did Gaspard earn a 9 week severance payout from an employer (SEIU 1199)? According to available SEIU 1199 financial reports (2000-2009), Gaspard was not paid by SEIU 1199 in years 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2004. For the year 2001, SEIU 1199 paid Gaspard only $3,723.  It appears that in at least 5 of the 9 years Gaspard was not on the payroll or worked only a week or two. 

An investigation by the House Oversight Committee is warranted.  Unfortunately with Democrats so firmly in the pocket of Big Labor, it will take a Republican victory in this year’s elections before Rep. Issa will be allowed to issue a subpoena and begin an earnest investigation. 

It has only been a few decades since the federal government created mandatory monopoly bargaining and granted labor union bosses the power to coerce workers to pay union fees.  But, this coercive power has created huge treasuries that union bosses use to buy political power and turned democracy on its head. 

This undemocratic and coercive political force skews the political process away from legitimate arguments over ideas, towards the raw use of political power to continually expand Big Labor’s power — through legislation, regulation, and government fiats — at the expense of American workers and their freedoms. 

This kind of power breeds an arrogance that allows people to convince themselves that the rules are for the “little people” not the kingmakers – an arrogance easily seen in people who create ethics rules and then fail to live up to those rules.

Let’s face it; Gaspard is in the White House to coordinate SEIU political activities from inside its secured doors.   SEIU and Big Labor do not need to lobby the White House; they own the White House.   Gaspard need not meet secretly with union lobbyists in coffee shops, as others in the White House, because he is the embodiment of Big Labor. 

Compulsory unionism and confiscation of worker freedoms must end to stop  Big Labor-owned politicians and their continuous drive  to erode worker liberties for personal political gain.  After all, this is “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” isn’t it? 

(for the full article click here) 

(Source: April 2010 NRTWC Newsletter)

On February 9, union lawyer Craig Becker, nominated by President Obama to fill one of three vacancies on the powerful National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), turned out to be too radical even for a number of normally pro-Big Labor U.S. senators.

Because of several union-label senators’ defections, union lobbyists and the White House fell eight Senate votes short that day of the 60 they needed to cut off Right to Work debate and bring the Becker nomination up for final consideration.

This vote was a significant victory for National Right to Work Committee members and supporters, who had led the fight against Mr. Becker since his selection was first announced last spring, and their allies.

However, top union bosses were furious that, because of well-mobilized Right to Work opposition, Big Labor Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had failed to ram through the Becker nomination.

Almost immediately, Richard Trumka, chief of the AFL-CIO union conglomerate, publicly demanded that the President circumvent the Senate and install Craig Becker on the NLRB temporarily through a “recess” appointment.

Other union bigwigs like Andy Stern, czar of the massive Service Employees International Union (SEIU), were also cheerleading for Mr. Becker. For years, Mr. Becker has served as counsel for both the SEIU union and the AFL-CIO.

Craig Becker: Union Monopoly Should Be Mandated, Even if Most Workers Don’t Want It

And on Saturday, March 27, President Obama did the bidding of the union hierarchy by recess appointing Mr. Becker, along with the other union lawyer he has nominated to the NLRB, New Yorker Mark Pearce.

“In the past, Presidents have rarely granted recess appointments to nominees who have already come up for consideration in the full Senate, and failed to be approved,” noted Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee

“But President Obama has demonstrated time and again he is extraordinarily eager to please Big Labor bosses. Craig Becker and Mark Pearce are fresh examples.”

While Mr. Becker and Mr. Pearce will very likely almost always agree on the main issues in NLRB cases, Mr. Becker differs in having a long “paper trail” that made it plain for senators and anyone else with eyes to see just how radical he is.

Three of Four Current Board Members Are Veteran Union Lawyers

“Over the years,” said Mr. Mix, “Craig Becker has publicly acknowledged believing that any employee or employer efforts to resist unionization of a workplace are unacceptable.

“For example, in one ‘labor studies’ journal article, Mr. Becker dismissed the notion that workers should have any say whatsoever, whether as individuals or collectively by secret ballot or ‘card check,’ over whether or not they are unionized.

“Federal policy should not acknowledge employees’ ‘choice to remain unrepresented,’ contended Mr. Becker.

“Their only choice, he explained, should be over which set of union officials get ‘exclusive’ power to negotiate their wages, benefits and work rules.”

Incredibly, Craig Becker and Mark Pearce are not the only union lawyers on the current, four-member NLRB.

Wilma Liebman, originally appointed to the Board by union-label President Bill Clinton and elevated to the chairmanship early last year by Barack Obama, is an ex-lawyer for the notorious Teamster union.

“Ms. Liebman, Mr. Becker, and Mr. Pearce are all expected to vote in lockstep to increase Big Labor’s monopoly-bargaining and forced-dues powers over the individual employee whenever they see an opportunity,” commented Mr. Mix.

“And this alarming pattern will continue at least until the Becker and Pearce ‘recess’ terms expire in 2011.

“Meanwhile, Right to Work supporters will do everything they can to contain the damage.

“For example, attorneys for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the Committee’s sister organization, have announced they will ask Mr. Becker to pledge to recuse himself from their clients’ cases because of his demonstrable, virulent anti-Right to Work bias.

“If Mr. Becker refuses to recuse himself, then his record of bias could in itself constitute grounds for judicial appeals of all decisions in which he joins.”

Barack Obama and his closest allies have a message for America, and that message is: “Shut up.” 

Obama himself is famous for telling his critics to shut up: “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking,” he said while defending his so-far ineffective economic-recovery agenda. “I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.” The president used the State of the Union address to hector, in a most unstatesmanlike fashion, the justices of the Supreme Court for upholding the First Amendment right of nonprofits and businesses to make their voices heard before elections, and demanded that Congress pass legislation to shut them up. Endlessly described as “articulate,” the president apparently desires to monopolize the conversation. But Craig Becker, his nominee to the powerful National Labor Relations Board, surpasses the president in that he has made an entire legal and political philosophy out of “shut your trap.”

The NLRB is one of our most defective public institutions. Charged with policing unfair labor practices in general, and with overseeing union-organizing votes in particular, the NLRB is far from a neutral referee — it acts principally as an organ of the unions themselves, and it bristles with hostility toward business owners who are not eager to have their operations organized by the likes of the Teamsters or the ACORN-affiliated Service Employees International Union. 

Becker, a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and SEIU, in many ways fits the mold of a typical Democratic pick for the agency, but there are three reasons to have serious reservations about putting him in such a powerful position. First: His opinions are extreme. He has argued that workers should be allowed to choose only between unions, not between a union and no representation, and he wants employers to be banned from even attending NLRB hearings about union elections. On the subject of the NLRB itself, he has gone so far as to write that “employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practice case, even though Board rulings might indirectly affect their duty to bargain.” In other words: “Shut up.” Second: He is affiliated with ACORN, a corrupt enterprise that works the intersection of Big Labor and politics for its own benefit. Third: He has lied to Congress about his relationship with ACORN. On all of those grounds, his nomination should be opposed, vigorously.

Becker’s various legal opinions share a peculiar theme: That of restricting the choices of both workers and business owners who do not wish to be affiliated with a labor union. There are many good reasons for both workers and owners to oppose unionization: Workers know from experience that the union bosses frequently prove more abusive and meddlesome than the worst of employers; and the history of the union-choked American automobile and steel industries, to take just two examples of many, suggest that the long-term consequences of union interference often include sector-wide bankruptcy and the loss of domestic jobs to more flexible (not necessarily cheaper — those Japanese steelworkers who outperformed their American counterparts weren’t exactly working for minimum wage) foreign competitors. Given a choice, many workers will elect not to join a union. Becker’s relentless support of “card check,” which in effect strips workers of their right to a secret ballot when voting on whether to organize a union, is one indicator of his hostility to letting workers and businesses choose for themselves, but there are even more troubling signs. …

Becker has worked for the SEIU, which has ties to ACORN, whose vote-fraud shenanigans and other dodgy activities are well known. Asked about his ties to ACORN by Sen. John McCain, Becker said that he had never done any work for “ACORN or ACORN-affiliated groups.” But we have a very good source confirming that the SEIU is ACORN-affiliated: ACORN, which listed various SEIU locals as affiliated groups on its website until that fact was noted by the Washington Examiner. (The uncensored page is available for your inspection here.)

ACORN’s usual modus operandi is to obscure its relationships to the greatest extent possible, but they are clear enough: sharing the same address with SEIU locals, millions of dollars in cozy financial relationships, etc. As the Examiner notes: “U.S. Department of Labor LM-2’s (financial disclosure forms) point to over $600,000 in transactions between these same SEIU locals and other ACORN operations. A 2007 LM-2 form shows SEIU Local 880, which is active in Illinois and Minnesota, donated $60,118 to ACORN for ‘membership services.’ Organized labor has kicked it back in the form of gifts and grants to ACORN totaling $2.4 million, the LM-2’s reveal.” SEIU, in turn, poured millions of dollars into the elections of Barack Obama and other Democrats — with $42 million in political expenditures in 2008, it ranked only behind the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee as a big political spender. Whatever one makes of ACORN and SEIU, Becker’s statement that he had never advised ACORN or any “ACORN-affiliated groups” is indefensible, and that alone should be grounds for opposing his appointment. 

There is good reason to be worried about the intersection of Big Labor and Big Government. The majority of American union members do not work in the private sector, laboring on assembly lines or in steel mills: More than half are employees of the government, where payrolls are swelling, and where the admixture of union power and government power is particularly noxious. It’s all good and fair that President Obama and his allies should attempt to tip the scales in their own favor, but violating the secret ballot — and the rights of Americans to make themselves heard and be represented in the political process — is wrong. “Shut up” is not much of a motto for a free country, or its leaders.

for the complete article click here

Harry Reid, Roland W. Burris, Tom Harkin, Debbie Stabenow, Dianne Feinstein, Benjamin L. Cardin, Bill Nelson, Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Begich, Byron L. Dorgan, John D. Rockefeller IV, Edward E. Kaufman, Daniel K. Akaka, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown.

Please contact your Senators today and tell them to vote NO on cloture and NO on SEIU/AFL-CIO* union lawyer Craig Becker’s confirmation to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

*SEIU = Service Employees International Union AFL-CIO = American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations labor union

In addition, Reid is prepared to add radical SEIU & AFL-CIO lawyer, Craig Becker to the list of Obama nominees approved before Senator Brown arrives.

As the new U.S. Solicitor of Labor, President Obama’s nominee M. Patricia Smith will control the largest civilian pool of government lawyers after the Justice Department.

Then New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer appointed Smith Commissioner of the New York State Department of Labor (NYDOL). Having spent her entire working life as a government employee, Smith brings only bureaucratic experience to the table.

As NYDOL Commissioner, Smith used her position and federal funds to override a state hiring freeze to hire a politically connected union organizer as a state employee.

In her former NYDOL position, Smith fostered and named a program “Wage Watch” that created a direct and integral relationship between NYDOL government enforcement agents and the “program’s partners” who are Big Labor organizers and Big Labor front groups.

Then NYDOL Director of Strategic Enforcement and recently withdrawn Obama DOL Wage and Hour appointee, Lorelei Boylan referred to these Big Labor partners as NYDOL “community enforcers.”

In one giddy e-mail obtained by NRTW, Boylan wrote, “the ‘role of the commuity [sic] enforcer’ is where we will have to come up with original material.”

For a real world example of how this works let us take you back to the Clinton Administration’s Labor Department which colluded with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) organizers in an attempt to shakedown an employer to extract an agreement to hand his employees over to labor bosses. Watch the National Right To Work Committee’s interview with Randy Schaber (Link) and read the congressional investigative report (Link) that caused the firing of a Clinton appointee at the Labor Department in the 1990s.

It is past time to stop these political favors and manipulations of federal resources and laws to benefit Big Labor Bosses. And, that is exactly what we can expect with Smith’s confirmation as Solicitor of Labor. She did it in New York, and now she plans to do it across the USA.

… the Senate is again trying to perform as many favors for Big Labor as it can before newly elected Republican Senator Scott Brown is seated and Democrats lose their supermajority. Senate Democrats are now trying to rush through the nomination of Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Becker would be the first union-employed lawyer to be confirmed by the Senate to the NLRB and is very cozy with and has received many paychecks from big politically active unions like the SEIU and AFL-CIO.

We have just learned from our contacts in Washington that the HELP committee [U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions] has postponed other scheduled business and will conduct a hearing on the [Craig] Becker [National Labor Relations Board] nomination next Tuesday at 4 p.m.

– Martin F. Payson

]]> http://www.nrtwc.org/big-labors-top-forced-unionism-lawyer-ready-to-take-seat-on-the-board/feed/ 0 http://www.nrtwc.org/obama%e2%80%99s-labor-department-gives-big-labor-and-its-front-groups-another-gift/ http://www.nrtwc.org/obama%e2%80%99s-labor-department-gives-big-labor-and-its-front-groups-another-gift/#comments Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:32:11 +0000 Post http://www.nrtwc.org/blog/?p=2493 With less than a month left in 2009, President Obama gave Big Labor Bosses, ACORN, American Rights At Work, and other Big Labor-front groups another gift.  This time Labor Secretary Solis’ Department will not require Big Labor to complete labor union trust disclosure documents. 

Big Labor has fought the disclosure of information for thousands of “slush” funds and front groups since 2003.  By 2008, courts grew weary of Big Labor’s excuses for wanting to continue to hide billions in forced union dues that it transferred to groups like ACORN and the AFL-CIO’s American Rights At Work. 

Today, the Department published its intent to rescind these disclosures and to allow union bosses to ignore reporting until the Obama Administration disclosure rescission is final. 

Why did Big Labor want to stop these disclosures, referred to as Form T-1 Trust disclosures?  Because, these reports disclose the finances of every significant union controlled trust or Big Labor-front group.  In essence, this information provides the schematic of Big Labor-forced dues funded political operations.

These reports, if filed, will lead to more disclosures of ACORN financing and reveal more about the Big Labor-Front Group American Rights at Work, a political and lobbying operation, where Obama’s Labor Secretary served as Treasurer while a member of Congress..

Today’s Obama Administration’s notice reads in part:

The Department now seeks comments on a proposal to delay the filing due date of the initial Form T–1 reports, pending the outcome of the Department’s proposal to withdraw the October 2, 2008 rule.

The comment period on this proposal will close on December 14, 2009. [Eleven Days of Comments] Time is running out, to share your comments with the Department of Labor follow this link or click here to comment.

As the old saying goes, birds of a feather seem to flock together.

Last month, I noted the appalling story about the SEIU’s power grab in Illinois to unionize home health care workers.

But you haven’t heard the half of it. It’s an ongoing nightmare you should know about — because it may be coming to your own front door if Big Labor gets its way.

Roughly 3,500 people in Illinois receive state funding to assist someone, usually a family member, at home with a developmental disability. In June, Democrat Gov. Pat Quinn signed an executive order approving collective bargaining by “individual providers of home-based support services” — effectively busting open the doors of private homes for the Purple Shirts of the SEIU and other union competitors hungry for new dues-paying members.

The home-based workers weren’t seeking a collective bargaining agent.

But unions were targeting them.

Over the last month, home-based providers started have been receiving unexpected visits from out-of-state union lackeys trying to recruit them with the promise of health care benefits and more money. Last week, providers began receiving ballots to elect the SEIU or the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees to represent them. Yes, Illinois provided both the SEIU and AFSCME with the names and home addresses of all 3,500 in-home care providers for the purposes of increasing their membership rolls and political clout.

Home-based providers have the right to vote for no union representation at all. But the unions and their water-carriers in political office have done their best to obscure that fact.

Pam Harris of Western Springs, Illinois, the mother of a 20-year-old son with severe developmental disabilities who receives in-home care stipends, questioned the state’s failure to make a no-representation option clear. She and other parents dared to criticize the union effort publicly in a piece published September 3 in the Chicago Tribune. (”I am not an employee of the state,” Harris said. “I work from my home. I don’t want the union in my home. I can Norma Rae with the rest of them.”) Harris and other parents scraped together their own money (no match for Big Labor coffers) and put together an informational flyer to counter-balance the pro-union propaganda and inform home-based providers that they could opt for no union representation.

The union-pandering state government responded by trying to gag parental critics — yet another stark illustration of SEIU president Andy Stern’s “persuasion of power.”

On September 11, home-based providers received this warning from the Department of Human Services informing them that “it is the position of the State of Illinois that service facilitation providers within the Home-Based Support Services Program remain neutral as it pertains to the election covering Personal Support Workers. Your compliance is greatly appreciated:”

So, what has ACORN to do with Big Labor?  ACORN is big labor.  In 2008, Big Labor paid ACORN $3.5 million.  But, that is only the tip of the big labor iceberg.

ACORN controls or significantly dominates several Big Labor unions and organizations.  For many years, ACORN ran SEIU 100 (Gulf Region) and SEIU 880 (a recently expanded SEIU mega-local that covers Chicago, Illinois, Indiana, and Kansas).  SEIU President Andy Stern hand picked ACORN founder S. Wade Rathke to direct SEIU’s nationwide organizing projects.  Rathke controlled Louisiana HERE local 100, was secretary-treasurer of a New Orleans based AFL-CIO labor organization, and served on the board of a hotel employees organizing committee.  

ACORN operates several big labor funded organizations such as the Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now (WARN) and Community Labor Organizing Center (CLOC). 

In addition, Rathke acolytes Stewart Acuff and Mark Splain control the AFL-CIO’s Organizing Department.

According to a 19 March 2009 report filed by Washington Times reporter S.A. Miller:

ACORN provided liberal causes with protest-for-hire services and coerced donations from the targets of demonstrations through a mob-style “protection” racket.  ACORN called it the “muscle for the money” program, according to prepared testimony…

The “unofficial” program collected payments to organize protests. For example, the Service Employees International Union [SEIU] hired ACORN to harass the Carlyle Group, a global private equity firm. Other paid protests targeted Sherwin-Williams, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt and Money Mart, according to the testimony.

And, American workers can expect to see more ACORN orchestrated big labor organizing campaigns if the Card Check Forced Unionism, EFCA, bill is passed as promised by President Obama.

Here’s a big win no matter how you shake and bake it: Craig Becker being nominated for a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)!

For my money Craig’s signal contribution has been his work in crafting and executing the legal strategies and protections which have allowed the effective organization of informal workers, and by this I mean home health care workers, under the protection of the National Labor Relations Act. The effective organization of informal workers — home health and home day care — has been the great, exceptional success story within the American labor movement for our generation, leading to the membership of perhaps a half-million such workers in unions like SEIU, AFSCME, CWA, and the AFT.

The National Right To Work Committee first brought the Rathke and Becker connection to light in the Committee’s Obama Personnel Alert regarding Becker.