Damn Our Union Members, “There’s Bigger Fish to Fry”

On January 25, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

Why Right To Work Laws Are Important

While Big Labor Bosses continue to pour forced-union dues into campaigns to stop Right To Work freedom, they also continue to shower Barack Obama with forced-dues money even-though Obama just killed a pipeline project that would have created jobs for 20,000 workers, many of which would be union members. If most of their members had the Right To Work, they could stop paying dues and force union officials to pay attention to union member jobs rather playing politics with union families’ income.

From Lachlan Markay’s post:

The Obama Administration’s decision to forego the Keystone pipeline has forced the country’s labor groups into a bitter civil war. At issue is the central purpose of the labor movement: those who feel it should represent workers in the workplace generally oppose the administration’s decision; those who see unions as primarily political organizations have generally supported it.

Unions that had a stake in the Keystone decision were livid that the administration abandoned it, and equally angry at their fellow union members who had supported that decision, according to a Friday report from Politico Pro ($):

“People are p****d,” said one U.S. labor official who supports the proposed TransCanada pipeline. “The emotions are really, really raw right now. This is a big deal.”

“It’s repulsive, it’s disgusting and we’re not going to stand idly by,” Laborers’ International Union of North America General President Terry O’Sullivan told POLITICO. “The rules have changed. So we’ll react accordingly.”…

But other top figures in the labor movement defended the decision. Their argument: re-electing President Obama is a higher priority than preserving union jobs, and to that end, unions had to prevent Republicans from gaining the upper hand on the top political issue of the day. (more…)

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Payback, Economics, Obama Administration, Political Activity, Right to Work
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Obama Illegal NLRB Appointee Receiving Hefty Union Pension

On January 24, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

The Heritage Foundation has discovered that financial disclosure documents from President Obama’s illegal appointees to the National Labor Relations Board “show that one will continue to receive payments from a major labor union during his time on the board.”

From Heritage:

Richard Griffin, the former general counsel for the International Union of Operating Engineers, will receive regular payments under two different IUOE pension plans. The payment amounts are not listed on the disclosure form. He will also receive a single lump sum payment equal to three weeks of salary (one week for each of the three years since he enrolled in the plan). Griffin’s annual salary as the IUOE’s general counsel was $376,778, according to the disclosure form.

In his capacity as general counsel, we have noted, Griffin advanced policies that helped insulate corrupt union leaders from challenge.

Both Griffin and Sharon Block, who was also illegally appointed to the NLRB, filed ethics agreements with the U.S. Office of Government Ethics stating that they will not, in their capacity as NLRB members, participate in matters that might affect their personal finances. Assuming that agreement is adhered to, Griffin’s continued compensation by the IUOE is licit.

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Posted in: Big Labor Payback, NLRB, Obama Administration, Personnel Alert, Political Activity
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NRTW files first legal challenge against Obama’s Unconstitutional NLRB scheme

On January 13, 2012, By NRTW Committee Staff

From The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation press relase:

Worker Advocate Challenges Constitutionality of Obama’s Controversial Labor Board Recess Appointments

Case over controversial NLRB posting becomes first legal challenge to Presidential attempt to make “recess appointments” without actual recess of the Senate

Washington, DC (January 13, 2012) – Today, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed a motion in federal court challenging the legality of President Barack Obama’s recent purported recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The legal challenge is part of a larger case attacking controversial new NLRB rules that require every employer to post incomplete information about employee rights online and in the workplace, even if they’ve never violated or been accused of breaking federal law. The NLRB’s posting rules do not require union officials to issue information about workers’ rights to refrain from union membership or opt out of union dues. Currently employers can only be required to post notices if the Board has ruled that a violation of labor law occurred.

The Foundation’s case has been consolidated with other legal challenges to the biased NLRB notice posting rules brought by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW), and two small businesses. Those parties filed the joint motion today raising the issue of the NLRB’s lack of authority to implement the rule given the unprecedented recess appointments.

The new filings in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia case comes after NLRB lawyers notified the court that President Obama’s recent recess appointees were now parties in the ongoing legal battle. Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s New Process Steel decision, the NLRB needs three members to act. However three of the five current NLRB members were installed by unilateral Presidential appointment earlier this year, despite the fact that the Senate was not in a self-declared recess.

In the motion papers, Foundation attorneys argue that the controversial appointees to the Board are not legitimate because the U.S. Senate is still in session per the body’s rules, so there was no “recess” for the President to make appointments without Senate confirmation. Therefore the NLRB lacks the necessary quorum to implement the new posting rules. Foundation attorneys are asking the judge to rule on the constitutionality of the three recess appointees.

“President Barack Obama has already shown time and again that he is willing to abuse his executive authority to force more workers into union-dues-paying ranks,” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Now Obama’s executive abuse jeopardizes the constitutional balance our country holds very dear, all in the name of paying back his Big Labor benefactors.”

The implementation of the NLRB’s new posting rules, originally supposed to be in August of last year, has been twice delayed due to the legal challenge in the Foundation’s case. The rules are currently scheduled to be effective on April 30, 2012.

The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is also a party in the case, but is not party to the Foundation’s motion.

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.

 

 

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Posted in: Big Labor Payback, Forced-Dues for Politics, NLRB, Obama Administration, Personnel Alert
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Fred Barnes “Is there anything Obama won’t do for unions?”

On June 26, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

 

Former murdered Mineworkers International presidential candidate “Jock” Yoblonski’s campaign manager and Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes reminds us that Obama has created more Big Labor Boss paybacks than just the NLRB v. Boeing case.

Besides the Obama National Labor Relations Board’s assault on Boeing’s South Carolina employees and workers in Right To Work states in general, Barnes mentions the recent new regulations proposed by DOL to hamper employees getting to hear both sides of the story during union organizing campaigns.

But, the main focus of the article is the Obama Administration’s repeated attempts to overturn multiple defeats of unions to organize DELTA airlines. If you want to get more outraged at the Obama administration for its continuous assaults on free enterprise and individual employee choices, then read Barnes’ America’s Labor Party, Is there anything Obama won’t do for unions? Here are a few quotes to whet your appetite:

How far will President Obama go to advance the interests of organized labor? Awfully far. We know this not only from the effort to keep Boeing from building a plane in a right-to-work state, South Carolina, but also from the way Delta Airlines is being railroaded into recognizing unions its employees have repeatedly rejected. (more…)

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Payback, DOL, Government Grants to Unions, Intimidation Tactics, National Mediation Board (NMB), NLRB, Obama Administration, Organizing, Political Activity, Right to Work, Right To Work States, State Right To Work
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President Obama: Union Owned and Operated

On June 23, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer has hit the nail on the head — the president is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Big Labor:

In this year’s State of the Union address,[President Obama] proclaimed a national goal of doubling exports by 2014.

One obvious way to increase exports is through free-trade agreements. But unions don’t like them. No surprise then that for two years Obama has been sitting on three free-trade agreements — with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea — already negotiated by his predecessor.

Nothing new here. In 2009, Obama pushed through a federally run, questionably legal bankruptcy for the auto companies that robbed first-in-line creditors in order to bail out the United Auto Workers. Elsewhere, Delta Air Lines workers have voted four times to reject unionization. A federal agency, naturally, is investigating and, notes economist Irwin Stelzer, can order still another election in the hope that it yields the answer Obama’s campaign team wants.

But Democratic fealty to unions does not stop there. Boeing has just completed a production facility in South Carolina for its new 787 Dreamliner. Why? Because by choosing right-to-work South Carolina, Boeing is accused of retaliating against its unionized Washington State workers for previous strikes.

It jeopardizes the economic recovery, not only targeting America’s single largest exporter in its attempt to compete with Airbus for a huge global market, but also threatening any other company that might think of expanding in any way displeasing to unions and their NLRB patrons. (more…)

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Payback, Economic Development in RTW States, Economic Impact of Unionization, Economics, Elections, Exclusive Representation, Forced Dues, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Intimidation Tactics, Legislation, Monopoly Bargaining, NLRB, Obama Administration, Political Activity, Right to Work, Right To Work States, South Carolina, Union boss power, Wisconsin
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Right To Work = Jobs

On May 20, 2011, By NRTW Committee Staff

BMW plans to expand in Right To Work state of South Carolina

As politicians are seeking jobs through stimulus programs, spending sprees, welfare, food stamp programs and bureaucratic mandates, many ignore the upshot enactment of a Right to Work law can have on job creation for fear of angering their big labor benefactors. But the evidence continues to compound that giving workers a choice in joining a union is not only a civil rights issue but an economic growth issue. The Washington Examiner gets it:

“Danaher’s closing,” said Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., lamenting the loss of a plant that had employed 330 people in his state. “Now those jobs are going to Arkansas and to Texas.”

It was April 2005. Neal was taking the opportunity during a House committee hearing on competition with China to complain instead about how Massachusetts was losing jobs to states with less-hostile business climates.

The Ways and Means Committee chairman in 2005, California Republican Bill Thomas, mildly rebuked Neal’s deviation from the topic, saying Massachusetts had shot itself in the foot with high taxes and compulsory union membership.

“At some point perhaps the good citizens of Massachusetts will pick up the drift,” Thomas said. (more…)

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Posted in: Bailouts to Unions, Big Labor Payback, Economic Development in RTW States, Economic Impact of Unionization, Economics, Forced-Dues for Politics, Government Grants to Unions, Legislation, Massachusetts, NLRB, Obama Administration, Political Activity, Right to Work, Right To Work States, South Carolina
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