21 Feb 2008

Stars and Stripes Forever?

Posted in Blog

The American flag will now fly at election sites where employees vote over whether or not to unionize, according to a recent announcement by the National Labor Relations Board. How ironic, considering that union officials are pressing to eliminate secret ballots over whether to unionize in favor of the coercive "card check" process, where employees are often pressured individually.

Unfortunately, the secret ballot election process is not without fault either. If 1,000 employees vote overall, and 501 vote to unionize, the other 499 must accept unwanted union "representation" over their wages and working conditions, and in 28 states pay dues or be fired. Such tyranny of the majority has no place over such fundamental choices as the Right to Work in a country that prides itself on individual freedom to choose.

20 Feb 2008

Editorial: Coercion a Power Union Officials “Never Should Have Enjoyed in the First Place”

Posted in Blog

And speaking of which, a Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial today highlights the National Right to Work Foundation’s recent work at the U.S. Supreme Court.

19 Feb 2008

National Right to Work Foundation Makes 14th Trip to U.S. Supreme Court

Posted in Blog

Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme to take up the National Right to Work Foundation’s Locke case on behalf of employees marks the Foundation’s 14th trip to the High Court. Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason summed up the case this way:

“No one should be compelled to pay union dues just to get or keep a job. But where union officials have obtained this special
privilege from the legislature, they still have no legal authority to
make non-union public servants in Maine pay for union activity across America.”

The National Right to Work Foundation’s most recent victory at the High Court came in 2007, under Davenport v. WEA, a crucial defensive victory. In that case, the Court ruled that union officials do not have a "constitutional right" to spend employees’ forced union dues on political causes that they oppose.

19 Feb 2008

U.S. Supreme Court to Re-Examine Scope of Union Dues Compelled from Non-Union Workers

Posted in News Releases

Washington, D.C. (February 19, 2008) — The U.S. Supreme Court has today granted a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys for a group of twenty Maine state employees objecting to the misuse of their compulsory union dues.

The case, Daniel Locke et al. v. Edward Karass et al., will directly address whether non-union employees can be forced to pay for litigation activities far removed from their workplaces. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling may provide much-needed clarity to the criteria it had established previously that determine what union activities employees can be lawfully forced to fund.

Unions spend billions of dollars each year on activities such as politics, organizing, litigation, lobbying, and a wide range of other ideological and non-bargaining activities. Yet, union officials often claim that non-union members must foot the bill for these activities or be fired from their jobs.

“No one should be compelled to pay union dues just to get or keep a job,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “But where union officials have obtained this special privilege from the legislature, they still have no legal authority to make non-union public servants in Maine pay for union activity across America.”

Locke is the 14th case brought by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

14 Feb 2008

Top SEIU Official Resigns Executive Post Objecting to “growth at any cost”

Posted in Blog

Sal Rosselli, a top official in the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) recently resigned an executive committee position with the union to protest power consolidation by the union’s chief Andy Stern, according to the Chicago Tribune. As head of a 150,000-member SEIU local in California, Rosselli boasts real sway within SEIU.

Rosselli told the Tribune:

"Over the past two years, a stark difference has evolved between SEIU’s projected image and its real world practices," he wrote to Stern. "An overly zealous focus on growth, growth at any cost, apparently has eclipsed SEIU’s commitment to its members."

Most representative of this sentiment is the way the SEIU hierarchy has stepped up in-your-face "card check" unionzation drives. The National Right to Work Foundation is helping workers across America fight back.

Ironically, Rosselli’s using the same freedom to disassociate himself from the SEIU executive committes that union officials deny workers in the form of a Right to Work law which makes union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary.

 

13 Feb 2008

Union Officials Stonewall Religious Objector’s Right to Divert Forced Dues to Charity

Posted in Blog

In Washington State, Susan Wiggs, a teacher with a religious objection to paying union dues, fought tooth-and-nail against the Vancouver Education Association (VEA) over her right to divert those dues to charity. VEA union officials refused time and again to accommodate the teacher’s wishes.

Citizenlink.com has the story:

“[Union officials] absolutely don’t want a precedent of religious objectors being able to choose their own charity," Wiggs said.

After the seemingly never-ending battle, a labor board ruled last week in favor of the teacher, but the VEA won’t give up and still refuses to approve Wiggs’ choice.

For more information on your rights as a religious objector, read the Foundation’s pamphlet entitled, “An Employee’s Guide–To Union Dues and Religious Do Nots.” The guide describes how to obtain as accommodation of an employee’s religious beliefs against joining or financially supporting a labor union.

12 Feb 2008

Video: Union Officials Threaten Nurses with Arrest, Jail, and Fines

Posted in Blog

Here’s a new video detailing how the National Right to Work Foundation is helping a group of nurses in Pomona, California, fight back against a hostile union hierarchy:

11 Feb 2008

New Jersey Union Official Gets Caught Playing Tony Soprano

Posted in Blog

News of a 170-page federal indictment handed down over the weekend could’ve come straight out of The Sopranos. According to The Jersey Journal:

The business manager of a Jersey City labor local is among
more than 80 people charged by federal and New York
officials this week in a massive sweep they say also netted
key leaders of the Gambino crime family.

The indictment details how the union official helped "Fat Joe" Agate get fraudulent union credentials and access to a union job site. The indictment was part of a mob crackdown that reached as far away as Italy.

What a slap in the face to workers in New Jersey forced to pay union dues that they have to pay the salaries of union officials charged with such crimes.

8 Feb 2008

Washington Teachers Union Bosses Convicted of “Seven Year Orgy of Greed”

Posted in Blog

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit affirmed a district’s court ruling to sentence local union bosses Gwendolyn Hemphill and James Baxter to jail.

The court called their case a “seven-year orgy of greed.”

Between 1995 and 2002, the conspirators stole millions of dollars from Washington Teachers Union (an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers union). As a result, a federal judge convicted two union bosses of multiple counts, including embezzlement, money laundering, false pretenses, and conspiring to commit such crimes.

Here are some of the expensive goodies these union bosses bought using money from the union dues treasury:

  • A $50,000 Tiffany silver set
  • A wedding reception for Hemphill’s son
  • $29,000 in dental work for Hemphill and her spouse
  • $19,000 in Washington Wizards tickets
  • Car insurance
  • Art décor for their homes
  • Personal checks to themselves ($18,805 for Hemphill and $31,000 for Baxter)

According to court documents, in 2001, these union bosses stole so much money (using union dues) that the WTU union paid $925,000 to cover the credit card bills. By 2002, the union went broke and could not pay its membership fees to the AFT union.

In the end, Hemphill was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Baxter 10 years. Barbara Bullock, WTU union’s president during this period, and her chauffeur, Leroy Holmes, both pled guilty before trial.

This astonishing example of union boss greed is exactly why forced association with unions breeds corruption. Unfortunately, heinous crimes like these are sure to continue until compulsory unionism ends.

7 Feb 2008

Kennedy Vows “Card Check” to Become Law of Land

Posted in Blog

At a United Auto Workers (UAW) conference yesterday, Senator Teddy Kennedy (D-MA) – chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee – told attendees that he wouldn’t give up trying to push the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” down the throats of America’s workers.

The Daily Labor Report highlighted:

"We’re going to bring it back again and again, until we prevail,” Kennedy said. “And I guarantee this: we get a Democrat in the White House and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will be the law of the land.”

Meanwhile, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) released a report today entitled “Card-Check Forced Unionism Would Hurt Employees and Employers” that details the economic devastation that would result from increased union monopoly power.

The detailed 13-page research report highlights how Big Labor’s number one legislative priority (you guessed it, EFCA) will exacerbate forced unionism and expand unions’ monopoly bargaining privileges over employees.

NILRR’s report points out some of the following about card check organizing and forced unionism:

  • “Card-check” organizing empowers union officials to force a business’s employees to accept a union as their monopoly-bargaining agent solely through the acquisition of signed union authorization cards.
  • Key provisions in the legislation would effectively ban employee secret-ballot elections over unionization in the private sector and replace such elections with so-called “card checks.”
  • Private sector job growth is nearly three times as fast in low union-monopoly states.

To read all the facts, download the full NILRR report on the card check forced unionism bill here.