According to Fox News’ Joseph Abrams, 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 are involved in this scheme.

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.

Big Labor Biggest Contributor to Deeds

According to the Washington Post, Democrat candidate for Virginia Governor Creigh Deeds’ biggest group of contributors is forced-dues funded Big Labor:

The Virginia Public Access Project (VPAP) has been working hard to slice and dice finance reports submitted by the campaigns yesterday and has already reported some very interesting findings.

VPAP also shows us that of the $16.95 million Deeds has raised for his campaign committee, he has taken in $9.4 million from Virginians and $7.4 million from outside the state. Broken down by industry, outside of political committees, Deeds has received the most money from organized labor, followed by the legal industry and then real estate and construction.

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Posted in: Forced-Dues for Politics, Legislation, SEIU, Virginia

ACORN's Rathke "Shakes and Bakes" NLRB Nominee

Obama’s Big Labor Lawyer choice for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) received a ringing endorsement from ACORN founder and Chief Organizer S. Wade Rathke.  Rathke wrote:

Here’s a big win no matter how you shake and bake it: Craig Becker being nominated for a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)!

For my money Craig’s signal contribution has been his work in crafting and executing the legal strategies and protections which have allowed the effective organization of informal workers, and by this I mean home health care workers, under the protection of the National Labor Relations Act. The effective organization of informal workers — home health and home day care — has been the great, exceptional success story within the American labor movement for our generation, leading to the membership of perhaps a half-million such workers in unions like SEIU, AFSCME, CWA, and the AFT.

The National Right To Work Committee first brought the Rathke and Becker connection to light in the Committee’s Obama Personnel Alert regarding Becker.

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Posted in: ACORN, Obama Administration, Personnel Alert, SEIU

Obama Meets Bosses

President Obama took time from his schedule to meet a number of union bosses in his effort to enact a government-run health care plan in the United States.  Among those in the room included Andrew Stern of the SEIU — the union intent on organizing the new government health care employees the president will create with his plan.  Others included James Hoffa of the Teamsters and Ron Gettelfinger of the UAW.  The union heads pledged their help in passing health care legislation by the end of the year and the president in turn promised to support forcing millions of Americans into the ranks of the unions thought the Card Check Forced Unionism bill.  This sure isn’t the “hope and change” millions of Americans voted for.

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Posted in: Obama Administration

Another Legal Victory

The legal eagles at the National Right to Work Foundation have once again have achieved victory for workers discriminated against by both employers and union bosses:

Angela Leitzel works as a field technician for Verizon in Tampa, Florida. Because Florida is one of 22 Right to Work states, Leitzel may not be compelled to pay any union dues, although she must accept unwanted “representation” of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 824 union bosses.

In February, Verizon assembled a team of Florida-based technicians, including Leitzel, for a work assignment in California out of a facility “represented” by Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 9588 and affiliates CWA International and CWA District 9. On February 17, Verizon removed Leitzel from the project, and a company representative informed her that she could not work on the project, because she was not a member of IBEW Local 824.

On March 9, Leitzel was again barred from another team going to California to perform work for Verizon. The company informed her that CWA officials would not permit her to work at the California facility because she was not a member of IBEW Local 824.

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, Leitzel filed unfair labor practice charges against Verizon and the unions. Federal labor law forbids employers to discriminate against employees on the basis of non-membership in a union. Moreover, CWA officials committed unfair labor practices by encouraging Verizon to discriminate against her and failing to inform her of her rights in California, which has no Right to Work law, to refrain from union membership and pay reduced fees, rights established in the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court precedent CWA v. Beck (1988).

The NLRB Regional Director in Tampa agreed with the charges and threatened to issue a complaint against the unions and the company, so they sought to settle the case to avoid a costly and embarrassing legal battle. The settlement guarantees Leitzel full compensation for lost income related to her removal from work, and the company and unions agreed to cease all illegal discrimination on account of union affiliation. A notice to be posted at Verizon workplaces in Tampa and Bradenton, Florida, and in Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, and San Fernando, California, will inform other Verizon employees that such union discrimination is illegal.

“California should take a lesson from Florida: no employee should ever be forced to join or pay fees to an unwanted union,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The only way to eliminate collusion between Big Business and Big Labor to discriminate against independent-minded employees is to eliminate forced unionism altogether.”

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Posted in: California, Court Cases, Florida

National Right to Work to Rescue

An AT&T employee has sought and received support from the National Right to Work Foundation over the illegal threats the union made when he expressed his desire not to strike.

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Posted in: Missouri, NRTWLDF, Strike