Home-Care Providers Take State To Federal Court

Home-Care Providers Take State To Federal Court

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Press Release: Home-Care Providers Take Case Challenging State Unionization Scheme to Federal Appeals Court Right to Work Foundation assists home-based personal care providers pushed into union ranks against their will Chicago, IL (December 13, 2010) – A group of home-based personal care providers have filed a federal appeal against Governor Pat Quinn and union officials for their agreement to force Illinois’s home-based personal care providers under unwanted union boss control. With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, the personal care providers filed their appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit after a district court judge ruled against them. The appeal stems from a class-action lawsuit filed by the providers after Quinn signed an executive order designating 4,500 home-based personal care providers who care for individuals with disabilities as “public employees” and susceptible to unwanted union boss political “representation.” Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union bosses have been competing to force their monopoly control over the workers, even having out-of-state union organizers making “home visits” attempting to organize the providers through coercive “card check” unionization tactics. Not coincidentally, Quinn received the SEIU union bosses’ political endorsement and support during his closely-contested primary campaign earlier this year. Quinn’s executive order mirrored one issued by disgraced former-Governor Rod Blagojevich, later codified, in which over 20,000 personal care providers were designated as state workers for the purpose of granting union bosses monopoly “representation” and forced dues privileges over them. Quinn’s executive order expanded Blagojevich’s to cover the additional 4,500 providers who were not included in the first executive order.
Job Losses Increase Pressure For Reform

Job Losses Increase Pressure For Reform

(Source: August 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) Grass-Roots Right to Work Efforts Expanding in Midwestern States Pro-forced unionism politicians like Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-Mich., shown here with former Vice President Gore and President Obama) have lost credibility due to the extraordinarily poor economic performance of forced-unionism states. Credit: Radiospike.com All across America, Right to Work states have long benefited from economic growth far superior to that of states in which millions of employees are forced to join or pay dues or fees to a labor union just to keep their jobs. But over the past decade, the contrast between Right to Work states and forced-union-dues states has been especially stark in the Midwest. Four Midwestern forced-unionism states -- Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana -- suffered absolute private-sector job declines over the past decade that were worse than those of any of the other 46 states. Midwestern forced-unionism states (the four just mentioned, plus Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota) lost a net total of 1.88 million private-sector jobs. Combined, these seven forced-unionism states had 8.1% fewer private-sector jobs in 2009 than they did back in 1999. Meanwhile, the five Midwestern Right to Work states (North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa and Kansas) experienced an overall private-sector job increase of 2.3%. Moreover, from 1999 to 2009, real personal income in Midwestern Right to Work states grew by 17.3% -- an increase two-and-a-half times as a great as the combined real personal income growth in Midwestern forced-unionism states. State Right to Work laws prohibit the firing of employees simply for exercising their right to refuse to join or bankroll an unwanted union. At this time, 22 states have Right to Work laws on the books. However, because of intensifying grass-roots efforts in many of the remaining 28 forced-unionism states, the number of Right to Work states could be on the rise over the course of the next few years. Recession's End Won't Suffice to Revive Big Labor-Controlled States

‘Nowhere to Flee’ For Young Job Seekers?

 Forced-Unionism Expansion Bill Would Kill Prospects For Millions (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.

Right-to-Work Laws = Liberty, Prosperity, and Quality of Life

Right-to-Work Laws: Liberty, Prosperity, and Quality of Life By Professor Richard Vedder (Condensed from the original 10-page Article appearing in the Cato Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Winter 2010). Produced by the  Cato Institute.   Richard Vedder is Edwin and Ruth Kennedy Distinguished Professor of Economics at Ohio University.) The most essential ingredient embodied in the liberty championed by the classical liberal writers of the Enlightenment and beyond is individual choice and right of expression—the right of persons to say what they think, decide for themselves what groups that want to join, what religion that want to profess, what person they want to marry, what goods they want to buy or sell, and what persons they want to represent them where necessity requires collective decision making. One important economic dimension of individual liberty is the right to sell one’s labor services without attenuation—that is, without limits on the terms of the agreement (e.g., wage rates and hours of work), or who will represent the worker in reaching those terms.  The eroding of employment liberty in the United States had begun before the 1930s … legislation in the early 1930s such as the Davis-Bacon Act and, to a lesser degree, the Norris-LaGuardia Act began to chip away at bargaining freedom, but it was the National Labor Relations Act of  1935 (Wagner Act) that dramatically revolutionized employment contracts, severely restricting the freedom of workers and employers to reach individual bargaining arrangements.