In Huntington, West Virginia blood collections were suspended Wednesday as 60 union workers joined a broader coalition of SEIU activists to initiate a strike against the American Red Cross.
On June 3, 2010, By NRTW Committee Staff
On April 22, 2010, By NRTW Committee Staff
Andy Stern is living in a world of delusion. According to the soon-to-be retiring union boss and President Obama confidant, forced unionism “is the greatest middle-class, job-creating mechanism that we have ever had in America that doesn’t cost tax payers a dime.”
Is he kidding? From Project Labor Agreement kickback schemes to bailouts of mismanaged union pension funds, Big Labor has become a drain on taxpayers. Who was it that was rallying in front of the capitol building in Illinois this week chanting for higher tax rates for government union member raises? Public workers union bosses are bankrupting the country. Mr. Stern, who do you think pays their salaries and benefits packages?
On April 14, 2010, By NRTW Committee Staff
‘Recess’ Appointee: Workers Shouldn’t Be Allowed to Reject Unions
(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.”
On August 10, 2009, By Post
Talk about embarrassing. The unionized workers of the Teamsters’ Washington-based national staff are locked in a contract dispute with their own national organization and are threatening to strike against Boss Hoffa and company.
Incredibly, Hoffa is preparing to make contingency plans to operate in case of a strike. Do you think he will cross his own picket line? What happens if Boss Hoffa wants to meet with President Obama or Vice President Joe Biden? What if federal officials are scheduled to meet with Teamsters officials? This could get very confusing for the administration and the Teamsters… Stay tuned.
On December 14, 2007, By Linda Staulcup
Presidential candidate Ron Paul is a champion of workers’ rights. He is an ardent supporter of the right to choose whether to join a union. And he opposes any and all attempts to push Big Labor’s coercive agenda.
Paul was the first Presidential candidate to be condemned by the AFL-CIO.
His crime?
He appeared on the ABC-TV show “The View” — crossing the writers’ picket line to be interviewed by the hosts of the show.
Funny, we didn’t hear the bosses condemning Whoopie Goldberg and the other hosts for interviewing Paul.
On December 10, 2007, By Linda Staulcup
The Northwest Indiana Times reports that “[n]onunion workers at the Hilton Garden Inn construction site . . .” in Hobart, Indiana, “. . . were victims of an attack that went well beyond a union-based picket line.”
Project Superintendent Kim Lackey was cited in the report:
“We were verbally harassed and property was damaged,” she said. “These people acted like a mob of crazy lunatics.”
Lackey said that Friday, the day of the union pickets, workers at the site found evidence of vandalism, including 14 slashed vehicle tires, a cut phone line to the trailer and epoxy glue in the locks on the gate and the framer’s trailer.
Lackey and other workers said the union representatives spewed both racially and sexually biased slurs at them, including targeting Hispanics, blacks and women.
“They were totally out of line,” she said.
Indeed!
As the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Friederich A. von Hayek wrote, “[T]he coercion which unions have been permitted to exercise . . . is primarily the coercion of fellow workers.”
Walter Williams, a respected economist and syndicated columnist, has been more blunt.
“The union struggle is not against employers,” Mr. Williams wrote. “It is against workers. One way you see this is to ask: Who gets beat up or killed during a strike? It’s not the owners or management; it’s workers who’ve disagreed with the union and wish to work.”
The coercive powers union officials wield courtesy of federal labor law not only rob individual employees of fundamental freedoms, but exert a damaging and corrupting influence on work places, the economy, and other aspect of everyday American life.
On November 16, 2007, By Linda Staulcup
Picketing isn’t what it used to be. National Public Radio [NPR] notes that the 30 people picketing in front of a bank in Washington, DC are not from the Carpenters Union, but, are homeless people being paid $8 an hour. Isn’t that a type of outsourcing top union officials at the AFL-CIO rail against?
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