But Big Labor Retains Hold Over U.S. Senate, Key State Assemblies

Not just on November 2, but throughout this past election year, voters across most of the country sent two clear messages to Big Labor politicians on Capitol Hill: They are dismayed by what the politicians have done at union lobbyists’ behest, and determined to stop them from doing more of the same.

One major object of voters’ ire was the controversial “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” (ARRA), otherwise known as the “stimulus” package. In early 2009, AFL-CIO and Change to Win union lobbyists twisted arms to secure majorities in both chambers of Congress for this $800 billion legislation.

Since it became law, ARRA has bilked taxpayers of hundreds of billions of dollars to ensure that bloated, unionized government payrolls stay bloated, but furnished no detectable net benefit for America’s private sector.

Another key source of voters’ displeasure was ObamaCare.

More even than President Obama or any other elected official, top union bosses and their arm-twisting union lobbyists are responsible for Congress’s narrow votes to reconstruct America’s enormous health-care system in late 2009 and early 2010.

November 2′s exit polls clearly indicate that voters across the country punished vulnerable U.S. representatives and senators for doing what Big Labor told them to do.

Undoubtedly compounding the woes of many of the politicians who had voted for the government union boss-crafted “stimulus” package and ObamaCare was that they were also on the record in support of forced-unionism initiatives that, due to stiff Right to Work opposition, have yet to be enacted.

Millions of freedom-loving citizens were furious with their incumbent politicians for having backed Big Labor’s now-moribund “card check” forced-unionism bill and its so far-stalled scheme to federalize government union monopoly bargaining over state and local public-safety employees.

Big Labor Appeasers in GOP Were First Casualties Of Voter Backlash

While it was overwhelmingly Democrat politicians who paid the price on November 2 for having kowtowed to union bigwigs, the earlier casualties of the voter backlash against President Obama’s forced-unionism agenda were mostly Republicans.

For example, roughly 18 months ago, Republican Arlen Specter (Pa.) decided he had no choice but to abandon his efforts to obtain the 2010 GOP nomination for the U.S. Senate seat he had held for three decades.

Mr. Specter was no doubt correct in calculating that his long record of appeasing Big Labor, including a 2007 vote to shut down a Right to Work filibuster and ram the “card check” scheme through the Senate and an early 2009 vote for government union bosses’ ARRA, had become unpalatable to primary voters.

With the help of the Obama Administration, Mr. Specter tried unsuccessfully to do a quick pivot and capture the Democrat nod for his seat. Finally, on November 2, former GOP Congressman Pat Toomey, who has pledged to support Right to Work 100% on Capitol Hill, became Pennsylvania’s senator-elect by defeating the Big Labor Democrat who had defeated Mr. Specter in his new party’s primary.

The following spring, a second union boss-”friendly” GOP U.S. Senate primary candidate fell so far behind due to his avowed support for ARRA and his shiftiness on other key issues for Right to Work supporters that he dropped out and declared he would run as an independent.

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s maneuver to capture his state’s open U.S. Senate seat was no more successful than Mr. Specter’s. On November 2, 100% pro-Right to Work Florida Republican Marco Rubio was elected to the Senate.

Blanche Lincoln and Russ Feingold Ignored Constituents For Too Long

The fact that several establishment incumbent Republicans like Mr. Specter, and establishment favorites for open GOP seats, like Mr. Crist, went down to defeat in congressional primary contests during the 2009-2010 cycle is clear evidence that issues, not party label, drove November’s results.

On Election Day, union-label incumbent Senate Democrats Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) and Russ Feingold (Wisc.) were ousted not because of their partisan affiliation, but because of their voting records. Both had voted for the “card check” bill in 2007, ARRA in 2009, and ObamaCare in 2010. Both also had repeatedly voted to federalize union monopoly bargaining control over public-safety employees.

As their poll numbers plummeted, Ms. Lincoln and Mr. Feingold adopted contrasting strategies.

Ms. Lincoln tried to backpedal from her past votes for the “card check” measure and other employee-coercing, economy-crushing schemes. Mr. Feingold dug in his heels and lectured voters that mandatory “card checks,” ARRA, and ObamaCare are all actually good policy.

Neither strategy worked. Voters weren’t fooled by Ms. Lincoln’s election-year “conversion,” nor were they persuaded by Mr. Feingold’s harangues. Republicans John Boozman and Ron Johnson, both of whom are pledging to support Right to Work consistently, will be the new senators from Arkansas and Wisconsin, respectively.

Despite significant setbacks for Big Labor in U.S. Senate primary and general elections, and despite steep losses for Big Labor in U.S. House and state-level contests (see pp. 3 and 6 of this Newsletter, respectively, for details), the 2009-2010 election news was not all bad for the union bosses.

Union Bosses’ Forced Dues-Fueled Machine Churns Out A Harry Reid Victory

In Washington State and in Colorado, the union political machine, which runs on dues and “agency” fee money extracted from millions of workers as a condition of employment, helped pro-forced unionism incumbent Democrats fend off strong challenges from candidates who vowed to support Right to Work.

But the biggest federal victory for the union brass was the reelection of their pet Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. As the head of a 53-member caucus in a 100-member chamber, Mr. Reid will continue to hold the Senate reins in January.

Another positive for the union hierarchy is its retention, despite experiencing very substantial losses in state races overall, of complete control over the legislatures and the governorships in California and Illinois, and possibly (pending recount results) in New York as well.

With the ample executive power of the Obama Administration (see p. 4 for more information), the Senate, and the governments of some of the largest states in the country still at their disposal, the union bosses are already plotting their comeback. Right to Work supporters must also prepare for the coming battles.

A new Web site targeting the tea parties is a part of a complex network of money flowing from the mountainous coffers of the country’s biggest labor unions and trickling slowly into political slush funds for Democratic activists.

A seemingly grassroots organization that’s mounted an online campaign to counter the tea party movement is actually the front end of an elaborate scheme that funnels funds — including sizable labor union contributions — through the offices of a prominent Democratic party lawyer.

A Web site popped up in January dedicated to preventing the tea party’s “radical” and “dangerous” ideas from “gaining legislative traction,” targeting GOP candidates in Illinois for the firing squad.

“This movement is a fad,” proclaims TheTeaPartyIsOver.org, which was established by the American Public Policy Center (APPC), a D.C.-based campaign shop that few people have ever heard of.

But a close look reveals the APPC’s place in a complex network of money flowing from the mountainous coffers of the country’s biggest labor unions into political slush funds for Democratic activists.

The most recent backers of the Patriot Majority and Patriot Majority West, which helped fund the APPC and thus the Tea Party site, form a veritable Who’s Who of the country’s top labor unions: the Service Employees International Union, Change to Win, the Communications Workers of America, the National Education Association, the Teamsters Union, the United Food & Commercial Workers Union and others besides.

But by far the largest donations have come from a collection of unionized government workers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) — which in 2008 alone donated $5.8 million to Patriot Majority and another $4.1 million to Patriot Majority Midwest.

Using this arrangement, Varoga and Rakis are managing what NPR called a “never-ending pot of union money” that they dispense among the 527s they run, which in turn pay for ads in hotly contested election districts.

That means that taxpayer dollars, sent up as union dues, have been going to fund a host of Democratic causes and help quash the tea party movement.

What’s more, Varoga and Rakis are not actually present in Suite 1102. That is the office of their lawyer, Joseph Sandler, a longtime general counsel to the Democratic National Committee.

Sandler, whose firm and trust account raked in over $500,000 in Democratic party money in 2009 alone, told Fox News that there was nothing irregular in their setup.

It is not clear whether TheTeaPartyIsOver.org is the start of a larger campaign run by Varoga and Rakis to target tea party activists. Additional attempts to reach Varoga at a California number were unsuccessful. A staffer answering the phone in Varoga’s Oakland office last week told FoxNews.com that he was unavailable for comment and hung up.

Barack Obama and his closest allies have a message for America, and that message is: “Shut up.” 

Obama himself is famous for telling his critics to shut up: “I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking,” he said while defending his so-far ineffective economic-recovery agenda. “I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.” The president used the State of the Union address to hector, in a most unstatesmanlike fashion, the justices of the Supreme Court for upholding the First Amendment right of nonprofits and businesses to make their voices heard before elections, and demanded that Congress pass legislation to shut them up. Endlessly described as “articulate,” the president apparently desires to monopolize the conversation. But Craig Becker, his nominee to the powerful National Labor Relations Board, surpasses the president in that he has made an entire legal and political philosophy out of “shut your trap.”

The NLRB is one of our most defective public institutions. Charged with policing unfair labor practices in general, and with overseeing union-organizing votes in particular, the NLRB is far from a neutral referee — it acts principally as an organ of the unions themselves, and it bristles with hostility toward business owners who are not eager to have their operations organized by the likes of the Teamsters or the ACORN-affiliated Service Employees International Union. 

Becker, a lawyer for the AFL-CIO and SEIU, in many ways fits the mold of a typical Democratic pick for the agency, but there are three reasons to have serious reservations about putting him in such a powerful position. First: His opinions are extreme. He has argued that workers should be allowed to choose only between unions, not between a union and no representation, and he wants employers to be banned from even attending NLRB hearings about union elections. On the subject of the NLRB itself, he has gone so far as to write that “employers should have no right to be heard in either a representation case or an unfair labor practice case, even though Board rulings might indirectly affect their duty to bargain.” In other words: “Shut up.” Second: He is affiliated with ACORN, a corrupt enterprise that works the intersection of Big Labor and politics for its own benefit. Third: He has lied to Congress about his relationship with ACORN. On all of those grounds, his nomination should be opposed, vigorously.

Becker’s various legal opinions share a peculiar theme: That of restricting the choices of both workers and business owners who do not wish to be affiliated with a labor union. There are many good reasons for both workers and owners to oppose unionization: Workers know from experience that the union bosses frequently prove more abusive and meddlesome than the worst of employers; and the history of the union-choked American automobile and steel industries, to take just two examples of many, suggest that the long-term consequences of union interference often include sector-wide bankruptcy and the loss of domestic jobs to more flexible (not necessarily cheaper — those Japanese steelworkers who outperformed their American counterparts weren’t exactly working for minimum wage) foreign competitors. Given a choice, many workers will elect not to join a union. Becker’s relentless support of “card check,” which in effect strips workers of their right to a secret ballot when voting on whether to organize a union, is one indicator of his hostility to letting workers and businesses choose for themselves, but there are even more troubling signs. …

Becker has worked for the SEIU, which has ties to ACORN, whose vote-fraud shenanigans and other dodgy activities are well known. Asked about his ties to ACORN by Sen. John McCain, Becker said that he had never done any work for “ACORN or ACORN-affiliated groups.” But we have a very good source confirming that the SEIU is ACORN-affiliated: ACORN, which listed various SEIU locals as affiliated groups on its website until that fact was noted by the Washington Examiner. (The uncensored page is available for your inspection here.)

ACORN’s usual modus operandi is to obscure its relationships to the greatest extent possible, but they are clear enough: sharing the same address with SEIU locals, millions of dollars in cozy financial relationships, etc. As the Examiner notes: “U.S. Department of Labor LM-2’s (financial disclosure forms) point to over $600,000 in transactions between these same SEIU locals and other ACORN operations. A 2007 LM-2 form shows SEIU Local 880, which is active in Illinois and Minnesota, donated $60,118 to ACORN for ‘membership services.’ Organized labor has kicked it back in the form of gifts and grants to ACORN totaling $2.4 million, the LM-2’s reveal.” SEIU, in turn, poured millions of dollars into the elections of Barack Obama and other Democrats — with $42 million in political expenditures in 2008, it ranked only behind the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee as a big political spender. Whatever one makes of ACORN and SEIU, Becker’s statement that he had never advised ACORN or any “ACORN-affiliated groups” is indefensible, and that alone should be grounds for opposing his appointment. 

There is good reason to be worried about the intersection of Big Labor and Big Government. The majority of American union members do not work in the private sector, laboring on assembly lines or in steel mills: More than half are employees of the government, where payrolls are swelling, and where the admixture of union power and government power is particularly noxious. It’s all good and fair that President Obama and his allies should attempt to tip the scales in their own favor, but violating the secret ballot — and the rights of Americans to make themselves heard and be represented in the political process — is wrong. “Shut up” is not much of a motto for a free country, or its leaders.

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Harry Reid, Roland W. Burris, Tom Harkin, Debbie Stabenow, Dianne Feinstein, Benjamin L. Cardin, Bill Nelson, Al Franken, Barbara Boxer, Amy Klobuchar, Mark Begich, Byron L. Dorgan, John D. Rockefeller IV, Edward E. Kaufman, Daniel K. Akaka, Sheldon Whitehouse, Sherrod Brown.

Please contact your Senators today and tell them to vote NO on cloture and NO on SEIU/AFL-CIO* union lawyer Craig Becker’s confirmation to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

*SEIU = Service Employees International Union AFL-CIO = American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations labor union

In this issue:

• Right to Work Sues Obama Administration, Demands Info on Big Labor Ties
• Big Labor Moves to Roll Back Sweeping Foundation Precedent
• Right to Work Combats Sneak Attack on Railway/Airline Workers
• Supreme Court Asked to Halt UAW Religious Discrimination
• Grocery Clerks Fight to Free Themselves From Union Ranks

In addition to to reading Foundation Action online, you can sign up to receive a free subscription by mail here.

Mr,. Carpenter reminds readers that ”there is a new federal lawsuit involving a union with a history of corruption even worse than that of the UMW.

It cites officials of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) and the Teamsters Union, which represents some PTC employees.

The lawsuit says PTC Chairman Mitchell Rubin, two other PTC officials and Teamsters official Mark Rowe had PTC employee Donald Kovac fired because Kovac violated an ”unwritten rule” that union employees ”had favored political connections” and ”would be afforded favorable treatment” in grievance cases.

In this case, Kovac acted against a toll collector who assaulted a motorist, in full view of a video camera.

When Teamsters Local 77, based in Montgomery County, challenged Kovac’s action, the suit says, Kovac was ordered by a PTC manager to reinstate the toll collector; when he balked, it was Kovac who got fired — with Rubin’s approval.

One peculiarity was the way Kovac was fired on Nov. 20. He was driving a PTC vehicle as part of his duties, the lawsuit says, when a Pennsylvania state police trooper was sent to pull him over on the road and tell him he was fired.

So it seems that if a Teamsters member beats up a motorist, it will be the guy who bothers the bully who winds up fired — and it is now a function of the state police to enforce the rules of the union goons.

A PTC spokesman said he could not comment on the litigation, even though I asked general questions about whether the PTC had ”unwritten rules” to coddle politically connected union people. I also contacted Teamsters Local 77, repeatedly, but the people there did not get back to me.

Described as a “new New Deal,” Big Labor, with the support of the new president, is pushing an infrastructure spending package. Of course, the package will inevitably allow union-only companies to get the work and would extend Davis Bacon laws — causing the taxpayers to spend more than necessary.

As they say on the TV ads, “but wait there’s more.”

Forbes reports:

Stimulus aside, Big Labor’s got a handful of other issues on its legislative plate early next year. The American Federation of Government Employees says it’s planning an “unprecedented effort” to recruit Transportation Security Administration workers and obtain a collective bargaining agreement for them. The Teamsters union continues to push for a moratorium on the foreign outsourcing of aircraft maintenance, citing security concerns.

Change to Win wants to see greater financial protection for pension plans. Unions are also urging Congress to toughen free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea and Panama before approving them. They don’t think these deals, negotiated by the Bush administration, contain adequate labor or environmental standards.

Big Labor spent hundreds of millions of dollars getting Barack Obama elected president–SEIU [Service Employees International Union] members alone contributed about $85 million–and they’ll expect to be rewarded once his administration sets up shop at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. There’s a theory that Congress and the new administration will address some of these issues, putting aside for a while the most controversial items–health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act, the bill that would make it easier for unions to organize.

Be prepared for a long fight against the biggest Big Labor power grab in decades. It will come in many shapes and forms, but inevitably it will be bad for workers and the economy.

* Tom Balanoff from Illinois SEIU

* NEA President Reg Weaver

* AFT President Randi Weingarten

* Change to Win’s Anna Burger

* AFL-CIO President John Sweeney

Indeed, Big Labor is launching its largest political campaign in its history, and this year, more than ever, Big Labor means Big Money. The two largest union coalitions — the AFL-CIO and the “Change to Win” Federation, a coalition of labor unions formed in 2005 as an alternative to the AFL-CIO — admit that they will spend at least $300 million on federal elections alone. When combined with political action committees, local unions and other union funders, at least $1 billion of pro-union money is being dumped into electioneering. You can bet the union bosses expect a lot of “change” from Obama next year on labor law. An Obama administration — possibly coupled with a filibuster-proof Senate — will feel a real sense of obligation to repay Big Labor that supported them.

As reported in the Baltimore Sun:

“We do think it is time to bring this nomination process to a close,” said Anna Burger, chair of Change to Win, an umbrella group that [claims] to represents seven unions with 6 million members. Burger made the comment during a conference call with reporters to announce the group’s endorsement for Obama.