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?

(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.”

MoneyNews.com looks at the SEIU’s campaign to “centralize” all retirement plans, including your own 401K, under a new “retirement system”:

The SEIU, which was integral to the election of Barack Obama as president, is working with the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute (EPI), and the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, on SEIU’s plan, called “the Retirement USA Initiative.”

Claiming that the retirement system in place now has “failed most Americans,” EPI vice president Ross Eisenbrey, told a labor union publication that “account balances have fallen by a third since late 2007, leaving many older workers unable to retire just as our economy is shedding millions of jobs.”

“The failure is broad and deep. It’s not just a few people falling through the cracks: most of us already are in the ravine. Three in 10 have only a 401(k) or similar savings plan, and the rest of us are totally out of luck,” said Eisenbrey.

Eisenbrey said that the median 401(k) account balance was $25,000 in 2006, and the median for workers near retirement was $40,000.

“Half of those who had a 401(k) were nearing retirement with less than $40,000 in their account,” said Eisenbrey, who is trained as a lawyer and was a Clinton administration appointee from 1999 through 2001.

The proposed retirement system would be operated under the following parameters:

• Benefits that move with you, even if you change jobs

• Payouts only at retirement

• Shared responsibility among employers, the government and employees

• Pooled assets, controlled by professional investment managers

“The financial crisis and the economic recession have shone a spotlight on the inadequacies of today’s system,” said Stephen Albrecht, director of benefits for SEIU.

With the uncertainty in today’s global economy, creating a whole new federal entitlement for American workers may not be easy to accomplish for these groups or their allies on Capitol Hill and in the Obama administration, as America’s creditors are already getting nervous.

Chinese Premier Wen Jinbao is telling U.S. policymakers that he is concerned about the “safety” of his country’s already huge holdings of U.S. debt.

“We have lent a huge amount of money to the United States,” said Wen, according to a report in the Financial Times. “We are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am a little worried. I request the U.S. to maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China’s assets.”

(Source: January 2010 NRTWC Newsletter)

In November, the U.S. House of Representatives narrowly adopted one version of President Obama’s health-care “reform” (H.R.3962).

And last month, exactly 60 (the minimum number necessary) U.S. senators voted to cut off continuing  debate by opponents of another version (H.R.3590). The Senate then rubber-stamped H.R.3590 while most Americans were nestled snugly in their beds early on Christmas Eve morning.

President Obama has already endorsed both H.R.3962 and H.R.3590, and is pressuring the House and Senate to get one of these measures, or more likely, a “compromise” blend of the two, to his desk for his signature within the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, the National Right to Work Committee and its growing base of 2.5 million members and supporters are fighting furiously to prevent the White House and Congress from making health-care “reform” a Trojan Horse for more forced unionism.

Granting New Special Privileges to Big Labor Could Disrupt Health Care

Tucked away in the two enormous bills now headed to a conference committee are new special privileges for Big Labor that, if granted, could have serious consequences for health-care employees and employers and the American economy as a whole.

For example, both H.R.3962 and H.R.3590 open the door for institution in all 50 states of forced-unionism schemes like those pursued by former Big Labor Govs. Rod Blagojevich (D-Ill.) and Gray Davis (D-Calif.).

Both governors repaid tremendous political debts to Service Employees International Union (SEIU) czar Andy Stern by reclassifying state-reimbursed in-home health-care contractors as state employees — and forcing them to pay union dues in order to continue receiving reimbursements.

And the more radical of the two bills, H.R.3962, grants Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, a longtime union-boss ally, tremendous discretionary authority to impose a new labor-relations regime on doctors and nurses treating “public-option” patients.

Ms. Sebelius could quickly make submission to union monopoly bargaining and payment of compulsory union dues required standards for “public-option” health-care workers across the country, resulting potentially in hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses being corralled into unions.

History Shows That Monopoly Bargaining Encourages Strikes, Both Legal and Illegal

Another H.R.3962 provision would either exacerbate the horrendous national debt or foist an additional burden on taxpayers by furnishing $10 billion in bailout money for mismanaged union health-benefit funds.

“As long as ObamaCare retains such Big Labor special-interest provisions, including above all the provisions promoting the forced unionization of the health-care industry, Right to Work supporters will remain determined to defeat it,” said Committee President Mark Mix.

“Monopoly bargaining inflicts serious harm on employees, employers, and customers even in cases where it doesn’t, for one reason or another, result in disruptive strikes.

“And history shows that, even if a final ‘public-option’ scheme adopted by Congress putatively bans strikes, union bosses will nevertheless gain the power to shut down medical facilities with sick-outs and other such tactics.

“Doctors, nurses and other health-care workers will come under enormous pressure to abandon their patients at Big Labor’s behest, even if strikes are theoretically illegal.

“The Committee will do everything possible to prevent Big Labor from hijacking health-care reform.

“We are now prepared to launch a full-scale lobbying blitz, including TV ads targeting key senators if necessary, to defeat all the new special privileges for union bosses tucked away in pending health-care legislation.”

Right to Work Supporters Must Keep Turning up the Pressure on Capitol Hill

Mr. Mix expressed “cautious optimism” that the new special privileges for union bosses hidden in H.R.3962 and H.R.3590 can be defeated, but warned that the battle would be difficult:

“Right to Work supporters everywhere must keep turning up the pressure on Congress, or a health-care ‘reform’ that is really a Trojan Horse for forced unionism will indeed become the law of the land.

“Forcing people into a union in order to get reimbursed for caring for their sick children or elderly parents isn’t health-care reform. Nor is funneling additional billions of tax dollars into mismanaged union benefit funds health-care reform.

“Over the next few weeks, Congress needs to hear that message — over and over again.”