Kudos Go to NLRB Members For ‘Encouraging’ Monopolistic Unionism

The four current members of the powerful National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), all appointed or reappointed by President Barack Obama, are poised to make a series of major decisions expanding forced unionism over the next few months.

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO union conglomerate, is licking his chops at this prospect — and it’s no mystery why he and other union kingpins are eager to see the Obama NLRB reinvent the federal rules for unionization campaigns.

Chairman Wilma Liebman, an NLRB veteran first appointed to the agency in 1997 by then-President Bill Clinton and elevated to the leadership position by Mr. Obama in 2009, is an ex-Teamster union lawyer. And Obama appointees Craig Becker and Mark Pearce both come out of union legal ranks.

More important, Ms. Liebman, Mr. Becker, and Mr. Pearce have all already demonstrated a willingness to go well beyond the pro-forced unionism letter of federal labor law to make it as difficult as they can for independent employees and businesses to avoid union monopoly control.

Federal Labor Law Itself Tramples Freedom of Independent-Minded Workers

Only one current NLRB member, former GOP Senate staffer Brian Hayes, has shown any real reluctance to rewrite the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) whenever they turn out to be inconvenient for union organizers.

But Mr. Hayes is evidently destined to be perpetually outvoted by the three forced-unionism zealots who now sit with him on the Board. (The fifth NLRB seat remains vacant as this month’s Right to Work Newsletter goes to press.)

Even were it implemented as it is written, the decades-old NLRA would be an inveterate enemy of the American employee’s freedom to make personal decisions about unionism.

The NLRA explicitly provides that, when one more than half of employees, among those expressing an opinion, favor unionization, all employees may legally be forced to accept a particular union as their “exclusive” (monopoly) bargaining agent with regard to terms and conditions of employment.

Monopoly bargaining, sanctioned under the NLRA, denies employees who don’t want any union (or at least one particular union) the freedom to negotiate directly with their employer (or through another union).

This is not a case of “majority rule.” The fact is, when a majority of workers oppose unionization, the NLRA as interpreted by federal courts permits the minority of workers who want a union to select a union to negotiate contracts for members only.

But workers who oppose unionization are, when they are in the minority, denied the freedom to remain free of monopolistic unionism.

The NLRA also empowers union officials, except those whose coercive privileges are checked by a state Right to Work law, to browbeat employers into agreeing to fire employees who refuse to join or pay dues or fees to a union they don’t want.

However, as biased as federal labor law is, it hasn’t, especially in recent years, helped Big Labor acquire and maintain monopoly control over nearly as many private-sector workers as union officials and their political allies deem sufficient.

That’s why Mr. Trumka and company are now looking to the NLRB to grease the skids for thousands of additional Big Labor workplace takeovers.

‘Electronic’ Voting Would Facilitate ‘Card Check’-Style Abuses

On January 19, the AFL-CIO czar explained why he is so looking forward to seeing the Obama NLRB in action:

“We are seeing a President who supports collective bargaining [i.e., monopolistic unionism] and is doing what he can to have the National Labor Relations Board perform its function of encouraging that process.”

One significant way in which the NLRB may go about “encouraging” monopolistic unionism is through promotion of so-called “electronic” voting in workplace unionization campaigns.

Last June, the NLRB put out a request for information about “electronic voting services for both remote and on-site elections.”

The request has been widely interpreted as a step toward mandating the routine use of remote Internet or telephone balloting in union organizing campaigns.

Under current law, when a unionization election occurs, employees normally cast their votes in private ballot booths, except when circumstances make the use of ballot booths very difficult or impossible.

If the Obama NLRB dispenses with ballot booths, and instead makes it the norm for workers to cast their votes over unionization from, say, their home computers, that will greatly intensify the process’s bias in favor of union organizers.

National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix pointed out: “Federal labor policy already authorizes professional union organizers to target individual workers by visiting them at their homes, a privilege of which the union hierarchy regularly takes advantage.

“Forcing employees to vote at home would greatly exacerbate the abuses that already occur during such ‘home visits.’ Union organizers would visit workers’ homes to ‘make sure’ they had voted electronically, and even offer to ‘help’ them cast their votes.

“In fact, the potential for Big Labor abuses generated by mandatory electronic balloting may be just as great as if Congress had replaced secret ballots in unionization campaigns with mandatory ‘card checks.’

“Because of overwhelming public opposition, mobilized largely by Right to Work members, Congress declined to heed Big Labor demands to mandate ‘card checks’ in 2009 and 2010.

“But NLRB bureaucrats could, even without Congress’s help, do just as much damage by mandating intrinsically insecure off-site electronic balloting.”

Mr. Mix added that the NLRB is far from the only federal bureaucracy that Obama appointees appear to be using as a prod to corral workers into unions.

Another major example is the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). A DOL “strategic plan” made public early this year actually states that “many” of the agency’s “outcome goals are furthered by high rates of [compulsory] union membership.”

Committee President Pledges To Work With Capitol Hill Allies to Thwart Power Grab

But Mr. Mix vowed that the Committee would work closely with Capitol Hill allies to block Obama bureaucrats from the NLRB, the DOL, and other agencies from using regulations to steepen federal labor law’s slant against the individual employee’s freedom.

“Enactment of budgetary or other legislation reining in NLRB and DOL abuses will be a tall order this year and next, given Big Labor Sen. Harry Reid’s [D-Nev.] continuing control over Congress’s upper chamber and President Obama’s continued veto power,” acknowledged Mr. Mix.

“But it’s a battle Right to Work supporters can’t afford to pass up. Committee members and supporters and their allies fought too hard during the first two years of the Obama Administration to block the ‘card-check’ scheme legislatively to now stand back and let it be imposed, effectively, by bureaucratic fiat.”

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(Source: July 2010 NRTWC Newsletter)

Under both federal and state law, union officials have always had the option to negotiate “members-only” contracts with employers that do not affect the terms of employment of workers who do not wish to join or pay dues to a union.

But from the early 1960′s until recently, Big Labor rarely if ever tried to exercise its members-only option.

Current Law Authorizes Monopolistic Unionism

Instead, union organizers have focused their efforts on imposing monopoly bargaining on all the employees in a so-called “bargaining unit.”

(The National Labor Relations Board, or NLRB, vaguely defines a “bargaining unit” as “a group of two or more employees who share a ‘community of interest’ and may reasonably be grouped together for collective bargaining purposes.”)

Monopoly bargaining in the private sector is authorized and promoted by both the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the Railway Labor Act (RLA), and in the public sector by numerous state laws.

Under monopoly bargaining, employees lose the individual right to bargain for themselves over their wages, benefits, and work rules, and must allow a union agent to negotiate in their stead, like it or not.

Monopoly Bargaining Serves As Big Labor Pretext For Forced Union Dues

And once union officials have rejected their members-only option and exploited NLRA, RLA, or state labor law provisions to seize monopoly power, they then use that power as an excuse for demanding that the employer acquiesce to a contract forcing union nonmembers to pay union dues or fees just to get or keep a job.

Of course, Big Labor propaganda has long obscured the fact that union bosses have a members-only option that they scorn because they prefer to wield monopoly power over workers.

Over the past few years, however, forced-unionism propaganda has run foursquare into reality.

More and more officials of AFL-CIO-affiliated and other unions now admit the fact that members-only bargaining has always been permissible under both federal and state laws.

But they also want a new twist.

Three years ago, the bosses of seven large AFL-CIO-affiliated unions filed a petition asking the NLRB to rule that any business without a monopoly union must honor any union’s request for bargaining on a members-only basis — even if most employees don’t want a union.

“For years, union officials brazenly claimed that they should have forced dues because, supposedly, they are forced to represent nonmembers,” commented Matthew Leen, vice president of the National Right to Work Committee.

Hoary Excuse For Forced Union Dues Obliterated

“But in August 2007, the bosses of seven large unions finally admitted in writing that members-only bargaining is permissible under current law and declared that they wanted their members-only bargaining power expanded,” he continued.

“The following winter, lawyers for the entire six million-member ‘Change to Win’ union conglomerate, which had broken off from the AFL-CIO conglomerate, filed their own NLRB petition asking for more such bargaining power.

“Finally, just last month, a group of 46 pro-forced unionism labor law professors sent an unsolicited brief to the NLRB prodding the agency to mandate members-only collective bargaining.

“Like the AFL-CIO and ‘Change to Win’ petitions that preceded it, the union-label academics’ brief admitted that ‘long-standing case law has expressly validated both the process and the product of employers’ recognizing and bargaining with . . . unions for their members only’ (emphasis in original).

“Neither the union bosses nor their academic apologists want Big Labor’s current monopoly-bargaining power diminished one bit, even though the evidence is clear and compelling that that power is detrimental to the interests of workers who don’t want a union.

“And union bosses, with their academic apologists’ support, also want to retain the power to force workers, as a condition of employment, to pay dues or fees for unwanted monopoly bargaining. But what’s their rationale for retaining the forced-dues option?

“In cases where union bosses refuse to exercise their members-only bargaining option, that’s obviously no excuse for forcing workers to pay for an unwanted monopoly union.

“These recent developments will inspire Committee members to fight even harder for enactment of national Right to Work legislation barring all forced union dues and fees.”

(Source: March 2010 NRTWC Newsletter)

According to a scientific poll conducted by the respected Research 2000 firm, 81% of Americans who regularly vote in statewide elections believe workers in unionized workplaces who don’t want a union should “have the right to bargain for themselves.”

Unfortunately, for three-quarters of a century, federal labor law has actively promoted what Americans, according to the Research 2000 poll and many others, overwhelmingly oppose.

The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the 1934 Railway Labor Act (RLA) amendments hand union officials the power to force millions of workers, union members and nonmembers alike, to accept a union as their “exclusive” (monopoly) bargaining agent in their dealings with their employer.

Attack on Secret Ballot Only One Trick in Union Monopolists’ Playbook

And this year Congress is very likely to bring up for floor votes legislation that would help Big Labor corral millions of additional workers into unions.

Until recently, union strategists’ primary vehicle for expanding private-sector union monopoly bargaining in the current Congress was S.560/H.R.1409, the cynically mislabeled “Employee Free Choice Act.”

This legislation is designed to help union bosses sharply increase the share of all workers who are under union monopoly control by effectively ending secret-ballot elections in union organizing campaigns.

However, the National Right to Work Committee and its allies have mobilized massive public opposition to S.560/H.R.1409, greatly lowering its prospects for passage in its current form.

In response, Big Labor Capitol Hill politicians and union lobbyists are now concocting new legislation designed to accomplish the same objective through somewhat different means.

Monopoly Unionism Negatively Correlated With Private-Sector Growth

“The Committee and its 2.5 million members have led the opposition to S.560/H.R.1409, because this scheme would greatly exacerbate the harm caused by the forced-unionism provisions in the NLRA and RLA,” commented Committee President Mark Mix.

“The ‘Plan B’ forced-unionism expansion legislation now being crafted by Big Labor Sen. Tom Harkin [D-Iowa] and a handful of his cohorts could be even more harmful.

“And experience indicates enactment of either S.560/H.R.1409 or a ‘Plan B’ alternative would drastically reduce employment opportunities in addition to taking away the freedom of now-independent workers.

“For example, as a group, the 10 states that had the highest shares of their private-sector employees under union monopoly bargaining in 2003 experienced barely more than half as much real economic output growth over the next five years as did the 10 states with the lowest private-sector unionization.

“An even more compelling illustration of how Big Labor monopoly snuffs out economic dynamism is the mass movement of young adults out of the states where union bosses wield the most power.”

Mr. Mix noted that U.S. Census Bureau data show that, in states that had private-sector unionization of less than 6.5% in 1998, the total number of 25-34 year olds in 2008 was 12.304 million, an increase of 17.8% over these states’ aggregate population in that age bracket a decade earlier.

Were It Not For ‘Safety-Valve’ States, National Unemployment Would Be Even Worse

Over the same 10-year period, the 25-34 year-old population increased by just 3.7% in states with 1998 private-sector unionization of 6.5% to 11.0%, and decreased by 1.1% in states with 1998 private-sector unionization of more than 11.0%.

By 2008, the 25-34 year-old population of the states where private-sector union bosses wield the least monopoly-bargaining power was higher by 1.28 million than it would have been had it increased at the national average rate over the previous decade.

And other Census data show these states’ outsized growth in their young-adult population was overwhelmingly the result of migration from other states, not higher 1974-1983 birth rates or immigration from abroad.

“Up to now, low-union-density states like Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina have furnished a ‘safety valve’ for Big Labor strongholds like New York, New Jersey, Michigan and California,” commented Mr. Mix.

“Young adults who can’t find decent job opportunities in heavily unionized states simply pick up and leave for states like Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina, where they routinely fare much better.

“As bad as unemployment is today in union-label New York, New Jersey, Michigan and California, it would be far worse were it not for the ‘safety-valve’ states.

“Incredibly, the avowed goal of S.560 lead sponsor Tom Harkin and other Big Labor politicians in Congress is to eliminate these pockets of long-term job growth! Of course, the vast majority of them are Right to Work states.”

Union Bigwigs Calculate ‘Plan B’ Can Muster Necessary 60 Senate Votes

Mr. Mix continued: “Rewriting federal labor to make Texas’s private-sector unionization rate as high as California’s is today would certainly be a radical move.

“But Tom Harkin and union bigwigs like AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka believe that, by dropping the ‘card-check’ provision in S.560 and modifying others, they can muster the 60 votes they need to bring up this power grab for a final Senate roll call so that it can be passed and sent to the White House.

“There are a number of fence-sitting senators like Blanche Lincoln [D-Ark.] and Ben Nelson [D-Neb.] who, even though they voted for ‘card-check’ forced unionism in the past, are having second thoughts on backing S.560 in its current form.

“However, Ms. Lincoln, Mr. Nelson, and several other key senators in both parties have left the door open for supporting ‘Plan B’ when it emerges in its final form and arrives on the Senate floor.

“Even recently elected GOP Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, who has commendably expressed his opposition to S.560’s ‘card-check’ provision, has yet to say how he would vote on a modified version of this legislation that promoted union monopoly bargaining by tampering with workplace election rules.”

Right to Work Supporters Must Not Let Their Guard Down

“That’s why I think Right to Work supporters would be wrong to brush off Richard Trumka’s recent prediction that the so-called ‘Employee Free Choice Act’ would pass, in one form or another, before this summer,” Mr. Mix observed.

“However, as long as Right to Work members and supporters keep turning up the heat on Congress with their postcards, phone calls, letters, signed petitions, and personal visits, I’m optimistic Mr. Trumka will be proven wrong.

“Now is no time for Right to Work supporters to let their guard down.”