Big Labor Boss Trumka Pledges ‘Aggressive’ Electioneering

Boasts AFL-CIO Operatives Will Be Playing Hard For Joe Biden

As everyone expected him to do, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is thumbing his nose at the millions of forced dues-paying unionized workers who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and plan to do so again this year.

In late May, Mr. Trumka announced that the massive political machine he and his lieutenants control would wage, as Washington Post presidential campaign correspondent Sean Sullivan characterized it, an “aggressive effort” to make Joe Biden the next President of the United States.

Mr. Trumka is specifically pledging to spend millions and millions of dollars in union treasury money, much of it derived from dues and fees employees are forced to pay, or be fired, to “educate” unionized employees about how they should vote.

Lies Help Union Bosses Grab Compulsory-Dues Dollars For Electioneering, Lobbying

Federal law grants union officials extraordinary power over individual workers.

Except in Right to Work states, where now roughly half of America’s private-sector employees earn their livings, federal labor law authorizes Big Labor to get front-line employees in practically every private-sector industry fired for refusal to fork over union dues or fees.

But in theory, Big Labor shouldn’t be able to get away with using a worker’s forced-dues money to cancel out his or her own vote, or to help one candidate in a race when the worker favors none.

Under court precedents won by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, compulsory dues-paying employees who never joined or resigned from a union have the right to pay a forced, but reduced, union fee rather than full compulsory dues.

And objecting workers’ forced fees are not supposed to be spent on politics or lobbying.

However, as countless Foundation cases show, union bosses routinely lie to workers. Workers are falsely told that they must join the union, or that they can’t automatically resign.  

Time and again, workers are tricked by such falsehoods and pay full union dues to save their jobs.

“By exploiting its legal privileges and intimidating workers, Big Labor can be expected to pour more than $2 billion into electioneering and lobbying in the 2019-20 campaign cycle,” noted National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix. (Mr. Mix is also president of the Right to Work Foundation.)

‘The Road to the White House Goes Through the [Organized] Labor Movement’

Mr. Mix pointed out that Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, is openly acknowledging that her non-AFL-CIO-affiliated union alone will spend $150 million this year, its largest political investment ever, to get out the vote for Joe Biden and other union-label candidates.

Mr. Trumka is so far being less forthright about how much money his union conglomerate will spend on 2020 electioneering but doesn’t hesitate to say his favored candidates could never win without Big Labor’s forced-dues machine.

According to Mr. Trumka, “the road to the White House goes through the [Organized] Labor movement.”

Mr. Mix explained: “First and foremost, union bosses are determined to elect and reelect politicians who oppose Right to Work protections for employees.”

To secure Big Labor’s backing, Mr. Mix added, “Joe Biden is vowing to sign, as soon as he gets a chance, legislation effectively destroying all state Right to Work laws and authorizing the extraction of forced union dues and fees from employees across America.”

Mr. Biden has taken this outrageous stance even though the vast majority of current union members, unlike top union officials, support the Right to Work.

This June, a nationwide scientific poll conducted by SurveyUSA for the National Institute for Labor Relations Research found that 85% of current union members agree that workers “should never be forced, or coerced, to join a union or pay dues to a union as a condition of employment.”

“That’s right in line with the 87% support for Right to Work SurveyUSA observed among all registered voters,” said Mr. Mix.

“There’s no conceivable way union members would want Organized Labor to back Joe Biden simply because he plans to destroy Right to Work. Mr. Biden’s obvious aim is to please union bosses, not workers.”