Last week, the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel — acting at the behest of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union — filed a complaint against Boeing. According to the complaint, the company decided to locate a new production line for the Dreamliner 787 airplane in South Carolina (a right-to-work state) instead of Washington (a state in which unions are powerful and strikes have cost Boeing billions of dollars) out of anti-union bias. Should the general counsel convince the board that Boeing violated the law, the company could be forced to operate the line in Washington.

Thus far, the conservative response has held that it is ridiculous for the federal government to tell a business where to expand its operations. Itis ridiculous. It’s also unprecedented. But thanks to the fact that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) is poorly written, as well as the fact that the board and the courts haven’t made the law much clearer via interpretation, this move actually has a chance of holding up.

That’s because Maine Gov. Paul LePage said Saturday he would push forcefully ahead with right-to-work legislation in his state, even if it means a Wisconsin-style fight with unions.

LePage is a leader who is not intimidated by threats and is willing to stand on principle for the right value and ideals — even if it means upsetting the Big Labor apple cart.

S.B. 11 would also make it illegal to force most Wisconsin public sector workers to join a union or pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment.

Of course, these workers would still have the right to join or support a labor union, but  it would be each individual employee’s decision to make.

Unfortunately, the bill does not give the Right to Work to Wisconsin’s public safety employees.  S.B. 11 would be significantly strengthened by an amendment to give Wisconsin’s first responders the same basic rights as the rest of the public sector workforce.

Nevertheless, this is an important first step towards economic freedom and fiscal responsibility in Wisconsin, and I encourage any readers in Wisconsin to contact their legislators, urging them to support it.

In state after state, as Big Labor increases its monopoly bargaining powers, costs skyrocket while quality of service declines, and, ultimately, Big Labor becomes the most powerful force in state politics.

Wasteful work rules, job featherbedding and more work disruptions guarantee all citizens of Wisconsin pay more taxes but get less from their dollars in return.

No American should be required to join a labor union just to keep a job, and no Wisconsinite should be compelled to pay dues to an organization he or she does not believe in.

And no private entity such as a union should have so much unchallenged power over the public purse.

Naturally, the government unions are apoplectic.  The tantrum they’re throwing demonstrates beyond words just how necessary this reform is.

To see results in your state, click on a State from the drop-down menu: 

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A nationwide poll of private and government sector union members demonstrates the stunning disconnects between union members and the union bosses who claim to represent them. The National Right To Work Foundation commissioned pollster Frank Luntz to conduct this scientific survey.

Eighty percent (80%) of union members support the Right To Work principle that union membership and dues payment should be voluntary and not required as a condition of employment. Nearly ninety percent (90%) of union employees surveyed favored more union hierarchy disclosure and accountability.

Sixty percent (60%) of union members oppose their union bosses’ political spending on the 2010 midterm elections, and they view it as a wasteful use of their union dues to pour money into campaigns to protect incumbent Democrat politicians in Washington, D.C.

Nearly sixty percent (60%) of union members would rather have money spent working with employers to create new and better jobs than on Big Labor’s 2010 political spending spree – led by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union bosses’ $87.5 million “incumbent protection program.”  In fact, a majority of union members believe that union boss political spending should be used to “throw the bums out.”  Fifty percent (50%) support replacing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with someone else and only thirty percent (30%) want her to remain Speaker.

If allowed a secret ballot election, fifty-nine percent (59%) of union membership would actually vote to replace their own “union leadership.”

“As top union officials are pouring an estimated one billion dollars into re-electing Democrats into Congress, a large majority of union members actually oppose the union bosses’ political agenda” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “That’s why it comes to no surprise that union members would like to replace their own union leadership, and overwhelmingly support the Right to Work principle for all of America’s workers.”

For more, read the 2010 National Right To Work Foundation – Frank Luntz Union Member Attitude Survey.

October’s issue contains the following headlines:

Right to Work Poised to Gain Senate Strength – Survey Results in, Committee Members Put Heat on the Candidates

Committee’s Goal: Pro-Right to Work Congress – Survey Presses Candidates to Pledge to Roll Back Forced Unionism

Forced Unionism vs. Private Health Insurance – Big Labor Bastions See Steep Decline in Job-Based Benefits

Pennsylvania Worker Fights Union-Only PLAs – Obama Executive Order Denies Union-Free Workers a ‘Fair Shake’

Right to Work Close to Securing Historic Win – Voters Reject Pro-Union Monopoly Politicians in Alaska, Delaware

As Big Labor has realized it won’t get “card check” legislation through Congress, it is turning to its secret weapon inside the Obama Administration—labor lawyer Craig Becker. And as many Senators feared when he was nominated, Mr. Becker is using his position on the National Labor Relations Board to bypass the will of Congress.

President Obama gave Mr. Becker a recess appointment in March after Senate Democratsrefused to confirm him to the NLRB, the agency charged with fairly overseeing union elections. As a top lawyer for the Service Employees International Union, Mr. Becker had suggested that the NLRB has the legal authority to impose card check—which eliminates secret ballots in union elections—without the approval of Congress. And lo, at the end of August the NLRB dropped the bombshell, when, in a 3-2 decision, it decided to revisit its important 2007 Dana Corp. ruling.

Card check is a top labor priority because it allows a workplace to be organized if 50% of workers at the site sign a union card. Without a national law, unions have tried to persuade individual businesses to allow card check rather than secret ballots, and some have gone along.

When a workplace is organized after a secret ballot, workers are barred from a vote to “decertify” the union until after the first negotiated contract expires. In its Dana decision, however, the NLRB recognized that card check was an inferior substitute to secret ballots. It therefore held that when a company recognized a union via card check, workers had the right to force an immediate secret vote on whether they really wanted to join that union.

The Dana ruling is about protecting workers from union harassment. And if card check is as popular as unions claim, labor leaders should have no problem letting workers vote to ratify or reject a card-check process. As NLRB member Peter Schaumber, a Bush appointee, noted in his dissent to the NLRB decision to revisit the case, the Dana ruling has in no way chilled the current card-check process. [click to read more at the Wall Street Journal]

Harris, who attends for her special needs son, receives a small stipend from the state will now be forced to give SEIU 880 union bosses a chunk of her stipend as result of Blogo’s deal.

She provides another example of a growing list of people being forced against their will into unions by the tens of thousands under a scheme that was in part devised by ACORN and an SEIU lawyer and current-NLRB Board member Craig Becker.

Under a deal that former Gov. Ron Blogovich  signed, Harris is essentially forced into  a bargaining unit of one and she is required to pay union dues.  This is nothing more than another shameless assault on personal liberty by feckless politicians who are more concerned with payback to Big Labor bosses than citizens’ rights. Click the triangle on the bar following to hear her interview.

“Why is the state of Illinois forcing Pam Harris to unionize…herself? All she wants to do is take care of her special needs son, and recieve funds from the state for assistance, but with those funds comes the requirement to join a union? Is that a fair decision? Should all home-care providers be forced to be a part of the SEIU? Pam Harris spoke with Cisco Cotto about all these things – [go to WLS web site to] download the podcast to hear her story.”

Visit the The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation’s website for more information regarding its multiple cases filed on behalf home-care and childcare across the country.

Michelle Malkin has the run-down and the effort by workers to fight back against the union power grab.

Obama and his Secretary of [Big] Labor Hilda Solis will participate in an AFL-CIO Labor Day “celebration and rally” in Milwaukee on Monday and confirm the president’s participation in another big labor event:  Laborfest.

Mark Mix, the president of the National Right to Work Foundation, takes to the pages of the Washington Examiner to ask, ” What’s next for the Washington Teacher’s Union Chief?”

Their desperation is a function of two realities: First, only 7 percent of all private sector employees are union members. Fewer members means less dues revenue, which in turn reduces how much campaign cash the leaders have to give, thus slashing their political leverage. Second, labor finances are in bad shape. The SEIU, for example, owes $156 million, including $94 million to Bank of America and other corporate lenders tapped to finance its 2008 political contributions to Obama and congressional Democrats.

Thus, card check, which union leaders think would enable them to recruit new members, is critically important to labor’s future. Big Labor has spent an estimated $400 million since 2006 seeking to elect enough Democrats to assure that card check becomes law. Just last month, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees’ Gerald McEntee said his union would spend another $50 million trying to protect Democratic incumbents in 2010. Here’s to hoping card check opponents in every congressional district in America make ‘em flush it all.

In March, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision struck down campaign finance limits on political expression by individuals working through corporations and unions as a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. A cry ensued among liberal Democrats predicting doom if they and their special interest allies were required to follow the Constitution. Big Labor’s bosses promised to spend millions to protect the Democratic majority if it would speedily pass legislation to circumvent the decision (and thus the Constitution), but restore limits on their corporate foes.

The resulting DISCLOSE Act, according to its backers, will ensure transparency in campaign ad funding. Thursday, the House of Representatives approved the bill 219-206, with 36 Democrats and 170 Republicans in opposition to the measure, which was written by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee this year, and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who led the Senate Democrats’ campaign panel in 2008.

The bill is full of draconian restrictions on individual political speech expressed via corporations, but gives privileged status to the Democrats’ union masters. A provision pushed by Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Bob Brady, for example, allows unions to transfer unlimited funds among affiliated groups to pay for political ads with no disclosure whatever. That makes campaign funding more transparent?

Then there’s the ban on advocacy for or against a candidate by any company that received Troubled Asset Relief Program funds. That silences General Motors’ white-collar workers, but not the United Auto Workers union, which, oh by the way, got, among other things, $6.5 billion in preferred GM stock, paying a government-guaranteed 9 percent cash dividend. Could the fact the UAW gave more than $2 million to Democrats in 2008 explain why Democratic leaders pushed a proposal that so blatantly favors the union?

Similarly, DISCLOSE curbs political speech for employees of companies receiving more than $7 million in government contracts. Public sector unions that spend millions of recycled tax dollars electing Democrats have no such restrictions. By thus outlawing business funding for or against candidates, DISCLOSE will encourage more funding for corporate lobbyists and marketers targeting government contracts and earmarks.

As usual, DISCLOSE was rammed through the House after being introduced with only a few hours’ notice and too little debate allowed. Because Democrats have abandoned doing a federal budget for the year, couldn’t they find a little more time to allow Congress and the people it is supposed to represent to read and discuss this measure at greater length? Next we will see if Senate Democrats are as determined to throw out the First Amendment as were most of their House colleagues.

Union chiefs prefer the power that comes with managing huge pension investments—even if they’re failing. They are now counting on Mr. Casey to preserve their power by making taxpayers pick up the tab for years of pension mismanagement. With the union priority of “card check” stalled, word is that the Casey bailout is Big Labor’s consolation prize. Taxpayers should let Congress know they don’t want to pay.

The Congress and the White House have worked together to give union bosses bailouts and handouts to the extent we have never seen.  But there appears to be no end in sight.

Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) has introduced legislation for taxpayers to bailout troubled union pension funds, legislation that will cost taxpayers another $165 billion.  Perhaps rather than spending a billion dollars a year in political ads and campaigns, the money would be better suited to ensure union workers retirement funds are secure.

You know that the union bosses were asking for too much when a New York state Senate Committee voted down their effort to unionize family farm workers.  From the New York State Farm Bureau:

Farmers from across New York applauded the Senate Agriculture Committee’s “No” vote on the Omnibus Farmworker Labor bill that would have cost the state’s struggling family farmers millions of dollars. This bill would have placed family farms squarely in the crosshairs of big money corporate unions seeking to increase their membership by driving agriculture out of the state….New York Farm Bureau was at the forefront of a furious grassroots lobbying effort to defeat the bill and to educate the public, countering defaming rhetoric of the self appointed advocacy groups that included well-funded big labor groups from New York City.

In March, dozens of farmers testified at a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, urging legislators to defeat the Omnibus Farmworker Labor bill. Following the hearing, farmers hosted a rally on the Capitol steps. The theme of the rally was“Don’t plow us under!”

The Farmworker legislation would have driven up costs and labor regulations to a level that would rank New York second only to California, a state with a much a larger agriculture industry, better growing degree days and significantly larger farms.

New York already is a high cost labor state, recognizing that workers are valuable and critical to the farm’s success. For every $100 in food produced, New York farmers paid $13.82 to farm workers on average – compared to the national average of $8.88.