The claim that “this presidential election is the most important election ever” is an enduring political cliché, and it’s almost always wrong. Consider this year. It’s likely the 2012 race for the White House won’t even be the most important contest of this year, much less of all time.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is currently the target of a recall effort spearheaded by national public employee unions. If his opponents get enough signatures by Jan. 17, Wisconsin will hold a gubernatorial election this summer. The outcome is crucial to the future of the country.

Wisconsin has emerged as a central battleground in the fight over the outsized political role played by, and the enormous privileges enjoyed by, public employee unions. The collective bargaining entitlement enables public sector workers to extract excessive compensation, benefits, and pension packages at the expense of taxpayers.

In March, Walker signed what is now nationally famous legislation that reformed public employee collective bargaining. The bill was crucial to putting Wisconsin on a sustainable fiscal path.

Guess what? It’s working

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which opposed Walker’s collective bargaining reforms, recently noted, “The governor did balance the budget … he did reduce the structural deficit significantly; he did put a lid on property tax increases; he did give schools and municipalities more control over their budgets than they’ve had in years.”

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was Walker’s opponent in the 2010 election and later attacked his proposals to reform collective bargaining. But with the reforms on the books, Barrett used some of the bill’s provisions to help reduce the city’s health care bill, saying that the alternative was to cut 300 to 400 city jobs.

If they can knock off Walker, they send a powerful signal to other reform-oriented governors not to target collective bargaining.

As political scientist Daniel DiSalvo notes in a recent issue of National Affairs, ”public-sector unions have significant advantages over traditional unions. For one thing, using the political process, they can exert far greater influence over their members’ employers — that is, government — than private-sector unions can. Through their extensive political activity, these government-workers’ unions help elect the very politicians who will act as ‘management’ in their contract negotiations — in effect handpicking those who will sit across the bargaining table from them … Such power led Victor Gotbaum, the leader of District Council 37 of the AFSCME in New York City, to brag in 1975: ‘We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss.’ ”

Collective bargaining reform is also needed to enable genuine education reform.

In a recent discussion, Walker told me that “collective bargaining in the public sector is not a right; it’s an expensive entitlement.” The struggle to rein in and reform expensive entitlements will define American politics for the next generation. A key front line is in Wisconsin.

Minnesota State Senator Mike Parry (R-Waseca) recently caused a stir with strong accusations against Governor Mark Dayton. “It’s no secret that the labor unions helped buy the Governor’s Office for Mark Dayton… he began to return the favor, most recently by trying to help unionize some of Minnesota’s in-home, private child care providers,” said Parry in a fundraising letter.

Sen. Parry’s allegations elicited a strong reaction from Dayton, who called it “inaccurate and deeply offensive.” A review of the facts, however, shows that the real reason the governor is so upset: the truth hurts.

Since 2005, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have been trying to organize child care providers Minnesota. Associated Press found that AFSCME wrote a $125,000 check to Gov. Dayton’s Recount Fund once restrictive campaign contribution limits ceased. Combined AFSCME and SEIU PACs contributed $14,000 to Dayton during his campaign. The Minnesota Family Council calculates that Big Labor stands to gain up to $3.3 million a year in dues from unionizing child care providers.

On November 15, Gov. Dayton issued Executive Order 11-31, calling an election to unionize all licensed, registered, and subsidized child care providers in the state. In defense of his order, the governor claimed that holding a union election would ensure that union membership would be “voluntary” and that child care providers not eligible to vote for unionization would be unaffected. Opponents countered that union dues will be compulsory and costs will rise.

For the most part, child care providers are self-employed. So how could they be unionized? Dayton and the unions have a simple solution: declare them state employees because they receive state aid to serve needy children. Under their view, anyone who receives any form of state aid qualifies as a state employee.

To push back against this power grab, on November 28, a group of 11 child care providers sued to block Dayton’s executive order, arguing that it violates state and federal laws. The National Labor Relations Act and Minnesota Labor Relations Act do not allow employers to form, join, or assist labor organizations.

The Minnesota Labor Relations Act indicates that a union cannot gain exclusive representation of workers, unless a majority of workers choose union representation. Dayton’s mandate blatantly violates that provision, as it excludes a majority of child care providers from the voting process. Only 4,300 government-subsidized providers will cast ballots, but a vote for unionization could also force the state’s 6,700 non-subsidized child care providers into a union.

As a result of the suit, Minnesota District Court Judge Dale Lindman issued an injunction to postpone the union election. He stated that laws must be passed by the legislature and remarked that the order “strikes me as being very harmful to the parties that are involved.”
However, Judge Lindman’s injunction has not dampened Governor Dayton’s commitment to unionize Minnesota child care providers. Gov. Dayton vowed to continue his effort to unionize child care providers and to challenge the court injunction.

As it stands now, child care in Minnesota is among the least affordable and most heavily subsidized in the nation. The National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies study shows it can cost up to $12,900 to care for one infant per year in Minnesota.

Becky Swanson, a child care provider for 18 years and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, commented, “Despite the talking points from the governor and union organizers, unionization will affect all childcare providers, but only a select group of providers is being allowed to vote. Since Minnesota is a ‘fair share’ state, non-members can still be required to pay a portion of union dues.” The concerns raised by child care providers have not been answered by either the governor or the unions.

Dayton’s order and succeeding measures led federal officials to ask him to refrain from becoming involved in a labor dispute between American Crystal Sugar and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union.

On December 5, Governor Dayton wrote to Crystal Sugar and the Minnesota AFL-CIO, offering to mediate. Union officials immediately responded positively, while American Crystal Sugar has yet to respond to the offer. The company would be wise to decline.

American Crystal Sugar had little choice other than to lock out employees on August 1, after union officials rejected its contract offer. The final proposal gave workers a 17-percent wage increase over the life of the contract and retained defined benefit pension plans, which are becoming increasingly rare in the private sector. The company also said it was willing to add a clause protecting unionized employees from losing their jobs to outsourcing.

The only concession the company asked of the union was to increase employee health care contributions to help cover increased costs. The average cost of family insurance plans has risen by 9 percent since 2010, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The union to date has rejected every offer and has yet to offer a counterproposal. Instead, it filed four unfair labor practice charges against American Crystal Sugar with the National Labor Relations Board for failing to bargain in “good faith.” The Board dismissed all four charges.

Dayton’s offer to “mediate” the American Crystal Sugar labor dispute gave the union even more reason to stonewall, given the expectation of a resolution favorable to it based on the governor’s transparently pro-union record. Federal officials made the right call in asking him to stay out of it.

So, the next time Governor Dayton fumes publicly over Senator Parry’s accusation, it’s worth keeping in mind the old saying: When you start catching flak, you’re over the target.

The Washington Post reports:

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees voted Tuesday to officially endorse President Obama in the 2012 election.

Union officials have already said they planned to spend upwards of $100 million to help Obama win reelection, so the endorsement itself is not a surprise.

Tuesday’s vote was so important to Obama’s team that campaign manager Jim Messina attended the meeting. He told the AFSCME board the union’s backing “demonstrates that its workers know President Obama is the only one willing to make the hard choices.”

We should send out another big tip of the hat to Mark Flatten at the Goldwater Institute for yet another piece of investigative journalism where he discovers some of the rather shocking collisions which take place at the intersection of public employee unions and taxpayer dollars. (A pause here, while I realize that it’s probably no longer shocking at this point.) This incident takes place in Phoenix, Arizona at the offices of AFSCME Local 2960, where one of their trustees – charged with monitoring the prudent spending of union funds – apparently exercised the poor judgement to ask if she should be auditing where some of that money goes, specifically in the handling of a large insurance fund.

Natasha Nimer had a simple question: As a trustee in a local labor union representing City of Phoenix employees, did she have a duty to check the books of a taxpayer-funded insurance account it managed?

So she asked the executive board of AFSCME Local 2960. The response was an emphatic “no.”

She dropped the matter and thought it would end there.

She was wrong.

 

In the months that followed, union officials tried to strip Nimer of her duties as a trustee and steward. They tried twice to force her out of AFSCME, only to have the international headquarters order her reinstated.

Eventually union executives went after Nimer’s job as a civilian employee in the Phoenix Fire Department. They demanded her city phone records, personal and work-related emails, disciplinary files and performance evaluations; even a list of all of the Web sites she had visited. They wanted her computers seized and the hard drives searched for evidence she was doing something wrong.

Oh, she was doing something wrong, alright. She was asking questions about how the massive insurance scheme was being administered and whether she should be seeing if everything was being run in a proper and efficient manner. The result was a series of attacks where her own union tried on multiple occasions to force her from her position as a trustee and even launched an investigation to see if they could force her from her regular, full time job. After the better part of a year she finally gave up and resigned from her position as trustee, saying she felt “beaten down” by the constant pressure and attacks.

Keep in mind that we’re not talking about funds representing dues paid by (mostly) willing members of a private labor union. These are taxpayer dollars. They have people such as Ms. Nimer in place not simply for internal housekeeping, but also to supposedly ensure that taxpayer dollars aren’t being wasted or worse. Apparently that’s all well and good… unless someone actually attempts to do their job.

(Source: June 2011 NRTWC Newsletter)

Five years ago, bosses of two AFL-CIO unions, the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), teamed up to acquire forced-unionism control over home-based day-care providers in Michigan.

The UAW/AFSCME joint-venture union, known as “Child Care Providers Together Michigan” (CCPTM), was set up with the express aim of unionizing “all home-based child [day] care providers in Michigan.”

Then-Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a Big Labor Democrat, was ready from the beginning to pull as many strings as necessary for the CCPTM union. In July 2006, Granholm-appointed bureaucrats helped establish a shell corporation known as the “Michigan Home Based Child Care Council” (MHBCC).

The sole genuine purpose of this venture was to act as the entity against which the CCPTM union was supposedly organizing.

Many of the 40,500 day-care providers targeted by CCPTM organizers report that they never even heard of this outfit until after it had prevailed in a low-turnout “mail ballot” election.

In 2008, forced union fees began being siphoned out of the reimbursement checks day-care providers receive from the government for serving needy families who are unable to pay their own way.

With Right to Work Attorneys’ Help, Michigan Home Day-Care Providers Fought Back

In Michigan as in other states, home day-care providers negotiate pay with parents and set their own hours and working conditions. Even assuming they had wanted to, CCPTM union bosses had no legal power to do anything that might even theoretically justify their forced-fee extractions.

Carrie Schlaud, a wife and mother of four who runs a “play based” pre-school out of her family’s home in North Branch, Mich., was one of many day-care providers who were outraged by the shakedown.

As Ms. Schlaud pointed out last year, clients and taxpayers as well as providers were victims of the collusion between UAW and AFSCME union bosses and Michigan politicians:

“I’m frustrated with the fact that I was forced to join the union — I feel that’s wrong. This is money that should be earmarked for low-income families but is now going to union officials as part of a political payback.”

With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, the National Right to Work Committee’s sister organization, Ms. Schlaud and four other providers filed a class-action suit against Gov. Granholm and her union collaborators a year and a half ago.

Ms. Schlaud and her coplaintiffs charged that the child-care forced-unionism scheme violated their federal constitutional rights to free speech, freedom of association, and freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances.

In the summer of 2010, the home child-care providers won two preliminary procedural victories in federal court.

Settlement Guarantees Providers Will Never Again Be Forced Into Union Ranks

Finally, last month, the administration of GOP Gov. Rick Snyder, who replaced Ms. Granholm in January, decided to abandon completely the pretense that the state of Michigan has the legal power to designate home-care providers as state employees and force them to pay union fees.

“It is good news that the state of Michigan, in order to reach a settlement with the Right to Work plaintiffs, has now guaranteed Michigan home-care providers will never be corralled into a union again,” commented Committee President Mark Mix.

“It’s also good news that, earlier this year, the Michigan Legislature heeded the pleas of pro-Right to Work citizens by defunding the MHBCCC, the bureaucracy Jennifer Granholm had set up for the purpose of extracting forced union fees from people like Carrie Schlaud.

“But unfortunately, for now at least, UAW and AFSCME union bosses are still holding on to roughly $4.5 million in forced fees that they were able to grab from providers while the MHBCCC was still in business.

“The state of Michigan has now dropped all efforts to defend the constitutionality of the scheme through which union kingpins were able to collect these forced fees. Right to Work supporters will not rest until they are required to give the money back.”

The plaintiffs and their Right to Work attorneys are continuing to pursue their class-action lawsuit against the CCPTM union hierarchy in order to reclaim all the forced fees collected from child-care providers.

Funds gained through a confiscatory scheme that does not give workers a choice or a say in the matter gives the union bosses the ability to spend an almost unlimited about on political campaigns — and spend they will. Big labor spent over $1 billion in politics in 2010 and will break all spending records in 2012. Larry Scanlon, the political director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, says their spending alone will top the $90 million they spent last year.

The arrogance of Big Labor never ceases to amaze. No wonder taxpayers, including private sector union members, have turned against the greed and entitlement mentality of government unions.

Wisconsin needs Right to Work law to protect workers from forced unionism abuses

Milwaukee, WI (March 16, 2011) – A U.S. Bank customer service and support employee has filed federal charges against a local union after AFSCME union officials illegally attempted to force him and his colleagues into full-dues-paying union membership.

Peter Quinones of Milwaukee filed the charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Tuesday with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

After American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 777 union officials were granted monopoly bargaining privileges over approximately 300 U.S. Bank employees, Quinones sent a letter to union officials stating that he was exercising his right under National Right to Work Foundation-won Supreme Court precedent in Communication Workers v. Beck to refrain from full dues paying union membership.

Because Wisconsin is a forced unionism state, workers who refrain from formal union membership can still be forced to pay a certain amount of union dues, but cannot be compelled to pay the portion of union dues used for the union’s political, lobbying, and member-only activities.

Despite his letter, AFSCME Local 777 union officials continued to extract full union dues from his paycheck. After Quinones filed an unfair labor practice charge, union officials still refused to honor his request to exercise his legal rights.

Quinones’ latest charge seeks to prevent the AFSCME union hierarchy from requiring him to pay forced union fees by automatic deduction from his paycheck in violation of federal law.

“As we have seen in recent weeks, AFSCME union officials will stop at nothing to collect forced union dues from workers – whether they are in the public or private sector – to pay for their political activism,” said Patrick Semmens, National Right to Work Foundation legal information director. “Wisconsin’s workers desperately need Right to Work protections to protect them from the very union bosses that claim to care about workers’ rights while violating workers’ rights.”

If enacted, a Wisconsin Right to Work law would end compulsory union dues by making union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary. Polls consistently show that 8 in 10 Americans support the Right to Work principle, that no worker should be compelled to join a union or pay union dues to get or keep a job. Twenty-two states have already passed Right to Work protections for their workers.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, is assisting thousands of employees in nearly 200 cases nationwide. Its web address is www.nrtw.org.

New Nationwide Poll Shows Union Members Support Right to Work

A scientific survey of union members nationwide, conducted the week before the November elections by well-known pollster Frank Luntz for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, shows that Big Labor bosses are out of touch with the people they purport to represent as well as the public at large.

The poll gauged the opinions of both private- and government-sector union members regarding key aspects of the agenda Big Labor bankrolls with union treasury funds, which consist primarily of dues and fees that workers are forced to fork over as a condition of employment.

In the 2009-2010 campaign cycle, union officials funneled forced dues and fees extracted from an estimated nine million union members and forced union fee-paying nonmembers into what appears to have been their largest ever federal mid-term electoral war chest.

Top bosses of the AFL-CIO-affiliated American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union openly admit to having spent a total of nearly $87.5 million, mostly union treasury money, on mid-term electioneering.

Service Employees International Union (SEIU) bosses acknowledge pouring $44 million, primarily forced-dues money, into 2009-2010 politics. National Education Association (NEA) teacher union chiefs have owned up to siphoning $40 million into politicking over the past two years.

Altogether, it’s safe to say Organized Labor shelled out more than a billion dollars in reported and unreported contributions, including “in-kind” support like phone banks and get-out-the-vote drives as well as cash, to its favored 2010 congressional candidates.

Four Out of Five Union Members Reject Forced Union Membership, Dues

In every election year, union strategists deploy Big Labor’s enormous campaign war chest to defeat pro-Right to Work candidates and elect and reelect candidates who support forced unionism.

Yet the Luntz survey shows that union members agree with the vast majority of Americans who support the Right to Work.

Most (54%) union members “strongly agree” that workers should “never be forced or coerced to join or pay dues to a union as a condition of employment.” An additional 26% “somewhat agree,” whereas only 14% disagree, either “somewhat” or “strongly.”

And the survey results indicate that support for the Right to Work is even stronger among government-sector union members than it is among private-sector union members.

In the 2009-2010 election cycle, Big Labor was also determined to defend politicians who had voted in early 2009 for President Obama’s $800 billion “stimulus” package.

AFL-CIO czar Richard Trumka and other union bigwigs have stubbornly insisted, despite the distinct lack of tangible benefits, that this legislation has been a success.

But the union members who were forced to finance the union brass’s efforts to protect pro-”stimulus” politicians don’t agree at all. They are nearly four times as likely to regard the “stimulus” as “very much a failure” than as “very much a success.” Overall, a 53% to 41% majority of union members see the stimulus as a failure.

While union members are far more likely to vote for the candidates promoted by Big Labor than they are to support Big Labor’s forced-unionism, Tax & Spend agenda, the divide between the union rank and file and the hierarchy on candidates is still wide.

Making, or Not Making, Campaign Contributions Is A Personal Decision

According to the latest accounting, 93% of union federal PAC contributions in 2010 went to Democratic candidates, while more than one in three union household members voted for the GOP candidate in their U.S. House district.

“Regardless of how the individual unionized worker votes, it should be up to him or her to decide which candidates, if any, to support financially,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

“To ensure that what should be a personal decision truly is one, forced union dues must be abolished. And that is pro-Right to Work Americans’ unchanging goal.”

A better idea would be to give all workers in Ohio the right to choose to pay or not pay union dues or fees, rather than being forced to pay dues and fees as a condition of employment.  Ohio needs a Right to Work law to protect all employees.

Reginald Fields of The Plain Dealer wrote:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Public employees who go on strike over labor disputes should automatically lose their jobs, says Gov.-elect John Kasich.

“If they want to strike they should be fired,” Kasich said last week. “I really don’t favor the right to strike by any public employee. They’ve got good jobs, they’ve got high pay, they get good benefits, a great retirement. What are they striking for?”

Kasich has made it clear that dismantling Ohio’s collective bargaining law will be a top priority of his administration.

The 1983 collective bargaining law, which gives public employees a right to unionize, was implemented by a Democratic-controlled legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Richard F. Celeste.

In particular, Kasich is going after binding arbitration rules … “You are forcing increased taxes on taxpayers with them having no say,” Kasich said.

The Middletown City Council recently tabled a resolution asking the Ohio General Assembly to revise the state’s collective bargaining law.

City Councilman Josh Laubach, who authored the resolution, said the city had to dip into reserves to pay police and fire costs this year and is expecting a $2.5 million increase in safety personnel in 2011 despite adding no new positions, according to the Middletown Journal.

The 1983 collective bargaining law, which gives public employees a right to unionize, was implemented by a Democratic-controlled legislature and signed by Democratic Gov. Richard F. Celeste.

The law, and a 1989 Ohio Supreme Court ruling that addresses it, requires cities to automatically enter into binding arbitration when in a dispute with its safety forces and abide by whatever decision that mediator hands down.

Kasich said the current collective bargaining rules can bankrupt cities that have to turn to the state to help bail them out.

Kasich will have an all-Republican legislature to work with on this issue. But it won’t be easy. Police and fire groups that benefit from collective bargaining are also highly engaged in elections, and their support is sought by politicians — Democrats and Republicans alike.

The incoming governor also said that he wants to eliminate prevailing wage rules, which require union-scale wages on public construction projects.

[for the full article click here]

Mark Mix explains the insidious nature of forced-union dues spent by unions on political campaigns.  Big Labor, unlike any other contributor involved in the political process, forces people to pay fees and dues to it as a condition of getting or keeping a job.  Union bosses then use these forced-fees to promote the election of candidates that many who are forced to contribute oppose.

Neil Cavuto, Mike Huckabee, and National Right To Work President Mark Mix discuss President Obama’s double standard and impact of forced-dues in elections.

While the media is bashing outsider conservative groups and the Chamber of Commerce for spending on the elections, guess who are the real big spenders?  Big Labor.

The Wall Street Journal reports that while most attention has been given to the large spending initiatives by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other pro-Republican groups, the public-sector union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, or AFSCME, is “now the biggest outside spender of the 2010 elections” and is spending $87.5 million to boost Democratic candidates. Said the head of AFSCME’s political operations: “We’re the big dog. But we don’t like to brag.”

This $87.5 million is mostly money spent from the general treasury of the union.  Just a small piece, perhaps 10%, is in the form of political action committee donations that are voluntary to union members.  The bulk of Big Labor’s dough comes from dues and fees money collected from workers who may or may not agree with the union bosses choices of issues and candidates. Unlike others who have to request their political contributions, the AFSCME and other unions are fueled by a never ending stream of mandatory forced dues money.

The National Education Association, the largest U.S. teachers union, has independently spent more than $3.4 million that must be disclosed, including ad buys and direct-mail campaigns, for the key electioneering period from Sept. 1 to Oct. 14. The NEA spent $444,000 during the same stretch in 2006.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees has nearly matched its 2006 midterm outlays. It has spent $2.1 million on electioneering since the beginning of last month, according to FEC filings for two campaign committees associated with the union. That is just shy of the $2.2 million spent for that period in 2006.

Unions that represent government workers say this year’s election is crucial to them, given the uproar over public-sector budget issues. Officials elected this year will face tough choices on matters such as further fiscal assistance for the nation’s cash-strapped states and local governments.

The issue of campaign-related spending by public-sector unions has received more attention in recent years, as state and local governments struggle with pensions and other costs. Conservative critics and business leaders have said the unions largely seek to expand their influence at taxpayers’ expense. Some states have approved restrictions on political use of union dues, for example requiring unions to obtain permission from workers before spending dues on campaigns.

The American Federation of Teachers, the country’s other big teachers union, also has stepped up its outlays. The group had spent about $5.5 million this cycle as of the end of August, according to the FEC. The AFT’s total for the same period during 2006 was $4.5 million.

Representatives of AFSCME and the AFT didn’t immediately comment on how their political campaigns are funded. A spokeswoman for the NEA said her organization employed both union dues and voluntary contributions in its outreach to members and the public.

CNBC looks at some of the ways the union bosses are spending forced union dues money this Fall:

The AFL-CIO says it will spend at least $53 million on 400 races in 26 states.

The Service Employees International Union, which broke from the AFL-CIO in 2005, will spend $44 million—up 26 percent from the 2006 mid-terms.

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees will spend $50 million this year, up from $32 million last year.

The union has 300 staff people working full-time until November “out there working with members, making sure they’re registered and informed,” said Larry Scanlon, AFSCME political director for the past 16 years.

(Source: September 2010 NRTWC Newsletter)

Over the past two years, Big Labor bosses have repeatedly succeeded in getting their favored federal politicians in competitive U.S. House districts and states to cast “politically difficult” votes.

Early in 2009, for example, union lobbyists twisted arms to secure majorities in both chambers of Congress for controversial “stimulus” legislation. Since it became law, the “stimulus” has bilked taxpayers of hundreds of billions of dollars to ensure that bloated, unionized government payrolls stay bloated, but furnished no detectable help for America’s private sector.

And, more even than President Obama or any other elected official, top union officials are responsible for Congress’s narrow votes to reconstruct America’s enormous health-care system in late 2009 and early 2010.

As the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics reported March 22, 2010, “in the final push before the vote,” many union bosses and union operatives “displayed their clout through threats to withhold endorsements from lawmakers who failed to back the bill. They also vowed to support primary challenges or third-party bids against incumbents who opposed” ObamaCare.

Now polls indicate that voters across the country are poised to punish vulnerable U.S. representatives and senators for doing what Big Labor told them to do.

Undoubtedly compounding the woes of many of the endangered politicians who backed the government union boss-friendly “stimulus” package and ObamaCare is that they are also on the record in support of forced-unionism initiatives that, due to stiff Right to Work opposition, have yet to be enacted.

Most of all, millions of freedom-loving citizens are furious with their incumbent politicians for having backed Big Labor’s now-stalled “card check” forced-unionism bill and its still-pending scheme to federalize government union monopoly bargaining over state and local public-safety employees.

National Union Boss Vows ‘Massive Incumbent Protection Program’

But despite poll after poll showing the public thinks little of the forced-unionism agenda and the politicians who have helped implement major parts of it, AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka clearly believes he can build on the “achievements” of the 2009 “stimulus” and ObamaCare.

This fall, Mr. Trumka and his cohorts are expected to spend well over a billion dollars, mostly derived from union dues and fees employees are forced to pay as a condition of employment, on electioneering efforts designed to benefit their puppet politicians.

Union kingpins calculate that their forced dues-funded phone banks, get-out-the-vote drives, and propaganda mailings, mostly conducted under the radar, can help dozens of Big Labor politicians who would otherwise go down to defeat this year secure reelection.

American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME/AFL-CIO) union President Gerald McEntee has frankly called what he and other union bosses are up to a “massive incumbent protection program.”

Mr. Trumka and Mr. McEntee know that, if they can show this November that backing Big Labor’s agenda on vote after vote has relatively little political downside, despite that agenda’s unpopularity in the polls, it will be much easier for them to ram through “card check” and more in the 2011-2012 Congress.

But the National Right to Work Committee and its members (now 2.6 million, and growing) are now fighting to ensure that congressmen and senators who have carried water for Big Labor time and again are held accountable this fall.

Right to Work Survey 2010 Can Help Ensure Politicians Are Held Accountable

The principal Committee program for holding politicians’ feet to the fire is the federal candidate Survey 2010.

The ongoing Survey 2010 consists of three phases.

In the first phase, candidates receive questionnaires asking them how they intend to vote on a number of forced unionism-related issues, including mandatory “card checks,” federalized public-safety union monopoly bargaining, and national Right to Work legislation.

“The Committee’s goal is not just to secure enough support to block enactment of forced-unionism schemes like ‘card check’ legislation, but also to forge pro-Right to Work majorities in the House and Senate,” explained Committee President Mark Mix.

“That’s why the Right to Work survey raises the pressure on candidates to oppose the expansion of Big Labor’s forced-unionism privileges, and also to support rolling those privileges back.”

In the second phase of the Survey 2010, Committee members call and write the candidates, asking them to answer their questionnaires 100% in favor of Right to Work.

In the final phase, the Committee, through TV and newspaper ads, e-mails and the postal service, reports back to members and friends at the local level on how their candidates responded. That keeps the heat on non-responsive candidates to take a clear stand on the Right to Work issue.

“The aim of Big Labor’s billion-dollar, forced dues-funded electioneering program is to divert public attention from the damage that union-label politicians have wrought on America over the past two years and the even more severe damage they will do over the next two if they can,” said Mr. Mix.

Public Doesn’t Support Compulsory Unionism

“Big Labor has far more money at its disposal than do Right to Work supporters, but the union bosses have one major problem: The general public, and even the workers they claim to represent, don’t support what they are selling,” Mr. Mix continued.

“Poll after poll shows that nearly 80% of Americans agree that no one should be forced to join or pay dues to a union, simply in order to keep his or her job.

“The Committee survey program works simply by ensuring that the Right to Work issue, which already has overwhelming public support, remains in the spotlight throughout the campaign season.

“With members’ generous support, I’m confident that this fall the federal survey will force candidate after candidate either to pledge to stop attacking employees’ Right to Work, or face serious repercussions at the polls.”

It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes or an Hercule Poirot to deduce that state policies promoting “exclusive” union bargaining and forced union dues and fees in the public sector have played a major role in driving multiple states to the verge of insolvency this year.  All it takes is the willingness to look at, and respect, the facts.

In 2009, according to respected labor economists Barry Hirsch and David Macpherson, 41% of public employees nationwide were subject to a contract negotiated by their employer with a union monopoly-bargaining agent.

However, in 22 states, none of which authorize forced union dues for government employees and most of which don’t authorize public-sector union monopoly bargaining, either, fewer than 30% of public servants were unionized.  Not one of these 22 low public-sector-unionization states was to be found on Business Insider’s list, published just last month, of the nine states “most likely to default.” 

And Business Insider ranked Illinois, California, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Massachusetts and Wisconsin as the worst default risks for a totally objective reason:  Traders who wish to buy protection against the possibility of default by these nine states have to pay higher premiums (technically known as “CDS spreads”) than do traders seeking protection against default risk for any of the other 41.

The Hirsch-Macpherson data show that an average of 61% of public-sector employees in the nine worst default-risk states were under union monopoly bargaining in 2009.  That is, overall public-sector unionization was 20 percentage points higher than in the typical state.  All but one of these states, Nevada, had public-sector unionization at least 15% higher than the national average in 2009.  Nevada was also the only one of the nine not to authorize public-sector forced union dues and fees.

In the nine worst default-risk states, from 1999 to 2009, aggregate private-sector jobs fell by 4.2%, but heavily unionized state and local government jobs increased by 9.0%.  Since annual state and local government employee compensation costs nationwide come to $1.1 trillion, or half of all state and local government spending, it’s not hard to see that the Big Labor-driven, seemingly relentless growth in government payrolls is a fiscal catastrophe for states like California, Illinois, and New Jersey.

But to Gerald McEntee, president of the mammoth American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union (AFSCME/AFL-CIO), even calling attention to the fact that for years government payrolls have grown while private payrolls have shriveled is tantamount to an “assault on public employees.”

In a commentary bearing that heading, prepared last month for readers of the Huffington Post, among other audiences, Mr. McEntee thundered that the only acceptable solution to the intimidating fiscal problems faced by states like California, Illinois, and New Jersey is for elected officials to squeeze even more taxes out of beleaguered private-sector employees and businesses.

For Mr. McEntee, the idea that state budgets might be balanced largely by rolling back unwarranted increases in government payroll expenditures that occurred over the past decade isn’t even worthy of discussion.  But for all his bluster, he can’t keep New Yorkers, for example, from noticing that, while the number of Empire State pupils enrolled in K-12 public schools fell by more than 121,000 between the 2000-01 and 2008-09 school years, schools added 14,746 teachers and 8655 non-teaching professionals to their payrolls.

Gerald McEntee and his government union cohorts can’t prevent the facts from getting out.  Nor can they do much about the fact that public sentiment in state after state is turning strongly against public-sector union kingpins who fight elected officials’ attempts to get government employee compensations costs back under control.

But the government union hierarchy could have the last laugh if fed-up taxpayers and their allies limit themselves to going after bloated public-sector payrolls, unsustainable public pension plans, and other symptoms of monopolistic unionism, rather than the problem itself.

State laws empowering government union officials to negotiate the contract terms for all the front-line employees at a public agency, even those who haven’t joined the union and want nothing to do with it, are behind the messes in Sacramento, Springfield and Trenton.  Closely related state labor laws that authorize the firing of public servants for refusal to pay dues or fees to an unwanted union make matters even worse.

Long-term solutions to state budget crises will require addressing the core problems of union monopoly bargaining and forced union dues in the public sector.

July 8, 2010 Near midnight last Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow forced unionism apologists in the U.S. House of Representatives disgracefully amended a “must-pass” war funding bill to include language that is designed to force police officers, firefighters, and Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) into “exclusive” union bargaining in every state in the country.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that policies expanding public sector monopoly unionism have played a major role in driving many states to the verge of insolvency.

In 2009, according to respected labor economists Barry Hirsch and David Macpherson, 41 percent of government employees nationwide were subject to a contract negotiated by a union monopoly-bargaining agent.

However, in the 22 states which prohibit forced union dues for government employees and most of which don’t authorize public-sector union monopoly bargaining, fewer than 30 percent of public workers are unionized. Not one of these 22 states was to be found on last month’s Business Insider’s list of the states “most likely to default.”

Business Insider ranked heavily unionized California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Wisconsin as the worst default risks. And the Hirsch-Macpherson data shows that an average of 61 percent of public-sector employees in these nine states were under union monopoly bargaining — 20 percent higher than the typical state.

In these nine worst default-risk states from 1999 to 2009, aggregate private-sector jobs fell by 4.2 percent, but heavily unionized state and local government jobs increased by 9 percent. Since annual state and local government employee compensation costs nationwide come to $1.1 trillion, or half of all state and local government spending, it’s not hard to see that the Big Labor-driven growth in government payrolls is a fiscal catastrophe for states like California, Illinois, and New Jersey.

Yet to Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union, even calling attention to the fact that government payrolls for years have grown while private payrolls have shriveled is tantamount to an “assault on public employees.”

In a Huffington Post commentary bearing that heading, McEntee thundered that the only acceptable solution to the daunting fiscal problems faced by states like California, Illinois, and New Jersey is for elected officials to squeeze even more taxes out of beleaguered private-sector employees and businesses.

But for all his bluster, he can’t keep New Yorkers, for example, from noticing that while the number of Empire State pupils enrolled in K-12 public schools fell by more than 121,000 over the last 10 years, schools added 14,746 teachers and 8,655 non-teaching professionals to their payrolls, all of whom are required to pay union dues or fees to keep their jobs.

But government union bosses are expecting to have the last laugh if fed-up taxpayers and their allies limit themselves to going after just bloated public-sector payrolls and unsustainable public pension plans, rather than root of the problem itself.

Laws empowering government union officials to negotiate the contract terms for all front-line employees at a public agency, even for those employees who want nothing to do with the union, are behind the messes in Sacramento, Springfield and Trenton. And laws that authorize the firing of public servants for refusing to pay union dues or fees to an unwanted union make matters even worse.

Long-term solutions to state budget crises will require addressing the core problems of union monopoly bargaining and forced union dues in the public sector.

Until then, hopefully the Senate will spare police officers, firefighters, and EMTs from forced union “representation” that will make budget matters worse for the numerous states that have already rejected it.

Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Committee.