On the way out the door, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver (D) gave his final gift to Big Labor – a 6% pay raise for government workers during a recession — a raise that will now cost taxpayers nearly half a billion dollars. Culver rewarded his political friends and taxpayers are left with the tab.
Right to Work Makes Major Gains in State Legislative Contests
It takes a lot to convince Iowa citizens to oust a sitting governor. Until this fall, the last time a Hawkeye State chief executive failed to get another term after seeking one was in 1962! But over the past four years, Big Labor Democrat Gov. Chet Culver wore out Iowans’ considerable patience.
On November 2, he was one of 13 incumbent governors on the ballot across America. Eleven of these incumbents won, but Mr. Culver lost by a hefty 53% to 43% margin.
What had Chet Culver done to receive such a harsh rebuke from normally amiable Midwesterners? He tried to gut Iowa’s popular Right to Work law — and he was sneaky about it.
After saying nothing about the Right to Work issue during his successful 2006 gubernatorial campaign, Mr. Culver announced, almost as soon as the votes were counted, his support for legislation imposing forced union dues and fees on Iowa workers as a condition of employment.
Since Mr. Culver’s fellow Democrats controlled substantial majorities in both chambers of the Iowa Legislature that greeted him upon his inauguration in early 2007, it seemed Big Labor’s stealthy scheme to bring back forced unionism to the state six decades after it had been banned would succeed.
For four years, Gov. Culver tried to help union bosses extract forced fees from workers who choose not to join. But freedom-loving Iowans first thwarted him legislatively and then defeated him at the polls.
But the National Right to Work Committee and the Iowans for Right to Work Committee were already mobilizing resistance.
Pro-Right to Work Iowan Stopped Forced-Union-Fee Schemes in 2007 and 2009
Even before the new Legislature convened in January 2007, the National Committee began sending out a series of statewide and targeted mailings to members and supporters in Iowa, with a focus on selected House and Senate members in vulnerable seats. (more…)
Forced-Unionism State Employment Down by 1.9 Million Since 1999
Recently, millions of Americans have been dismayed by reports, based on official U.S. Labor Department Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, that from 1999 through 2009 our country endured a “lost decade” in private-sector employment.
In this context, the term “lost decade” refers to annual BLS statistics showing that in 2009 there were 107.95 million private-sector jobs nationwide, roughly 370,000 fewer than in 1999, when there were 108.32 million.
This marks the first time since the Great Depression that an entire decade has gone by with negative net growth in private-sector employment across the U.S.
However, some of the 50 states have fared far better than others over the past 10 years. And a review of how each state’s job market performed suggests that the U.S. Congress could dramatically improve America’s employment prospects for the next decade by adopting one simple change in federal labor policy.
Private-Sector Employment in Right to Work States up by 1.5 Million Since 1999
Current federal labor law authorizes and promotes the payment of compulsory union dues and fees as a condition of getting or keeping a job.
Under pro-forced unionism provisions in the 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the 1951 amendments to the Railway Labor Act (RLA), an estimated 6.6 million private-sector employees must pay dues or fees to their Big Labor monopoly-bargaining agent, or face termination from their jobs.
At the same time, thanks to many years of vigilant efforts by freedom-loving Americans, federal labor law continues explicitly to recognize states’ option to protect employees from forced union dues and fees by adopting Right to Work laws.
Currently, 22 states have Right to Work laws on the books prohibiting the firing of employees simply for exercising their right to refuse to join or bankroll an unwanted union.
A huge majority of the 22 Right to Work states actually experienced net gains in private-sector employment from 1999 through 2009. Overall, private-sector employment in Right to Work states is up by roughly 1.5 million since 1999.
Meanwhile, the 28 forced-unionism states collectively endured a “lost decade” in employment growth far more bleak than that of the nation as a whole. In these states, private-sector employment is down by 1.9 million since 1999. (more…)
New Forced-Fee Scheme Directly Attacks State Right to Work Law
(Source: March 2010 NRTWC Newsletter)
For years, the climate for private-sector employees and business owners in Right to Work Iowa has been far superior to that of neighboring forced-unionism Illinois.
For example, from 2003 to 2008, the latest year for which annual U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data are available at this writing, the number of private sector jobs grew by 6.2% in Iowa, more than double Illinois’s 2.7% increase.
Over the same period, inflation-adjusted U.S. Commerce Department data show personal income in Iowa grew by a healthy 11.1%, more than half again as much as it did in Illinois.
Right to Work Iowa has also made it through the recent severe national recession in considerably better shape than forced-unionism Illinois. Preliminary data put Iowa’s December 2009 unemployment rate at 6.6%, far below Illinois’s 10.8%.
So how are Quad City Area AFL-CIO operative Tracy Kurowski and other union bosses proposing to give Hawkeye State employees a “jolt,” as Ms. Kurowski put it in a recent commentary she penned for the pro-Big Labor “Blog for Iowa”? By making Iowa more like slow-growth, high-unemployment Illinois, of course!
‘Forced Union Fees Are The Last Thing’ Iowa Employees and Firms Need
Ms. Kurowski and other union bosses are twisting the arms of state legislators in Des Moines to adopt H.F. 2420, legislation that would force roughly 18,000 state government employees who have chosen not to join a union to fork over an estimated total of roughly $5.3 million a year in forced union fees, or be fired.
In her “Blog for Iowa” commentary, Ms. Kurowski characterized this power grab as a “start” towards the union hierarchy’s goal of corralling all kinds of front-line public and private employees into unions.
And she freely admitted that Illinois, where roughly 800,000 workers are currently forced to fork over union dues or “agency” fees as a job condition, was Big Labor’s role model for Iowa.
Ms. Kurowski quickly brushed aside concerns that Illinois’s net private-sector job and personal income growth are far slower than Iowa’s, and that its unemployment rate is much higher. The “sky hasn’t fallen,” she sneered.
“Tracy Kurowski’s screed makes it plain that, despite their sporadic and half-hearted denials, union bosses see H.F. 2420 as a major step towards complete destruction of Iowa’s popular, 63-year-old Right to Work law,” commented Matthew Leen, vice president of the National Right to Work Committee.
“Ms. Kurowski has also made it plain that Iowa and national union bosses care nothing about the human consequences of their plans. All they care about is increasing their personal and political war chests by making union fees mandatory.
“But forced union fees are the last thing hardworking Iowa employees and firms need.”
Big Labor Knows Its Iowa ‘Window of Opportunity’ Will Likely Close Soon
It’s now been more than three years since freshly-elected Iowa Democratic Gov. Chet Culver, after saying nothing in public about the forced-unionism issue during the 2006 campaign, suddenly declared his support for gutting Iowa’s Right to Work law.
“Mr. Culver’s almost nonstop pandering to Big Labor, perpetuated this winter with a new executive order promoting anti-taxpayer, union-only ‘project labor agreements’ in public works, is a major reason for his gully-low poll numbers,” remarked Mr. Leen.
“So far, stiff opposition from freedom-loving citizens, mobilized by the National Committee and its allies in the state, has denied Mr. Culver the opportunity to sign legislation forcing Iowa employees to bankroll a union in order to work.
“But before Iowa voters can replace Mr. Culver with a pro-Right to Work governor, union bosses seem determined to use every trick in the book to at least get a ‘start’ on overturning Iowa’s ban on forced union dues and fees.
“Knowing their forced-unionism ‘window of opportunity’ will likely be closed after November’s elections, union bosses will fight furiously to ram through H.F. 2420 early this year.”