Big Labor Controls White House, House, Senate

Union Czar Aims to Destroy All State Right to Work Laws This Year

Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO, and his lieutenants have billions of dollars at their disposal and formidable political clout because of federal and state labor laws forcing workers to fork over union dues and accept union control over their pay, benefits, and work rules, or be fired. 

The bosses of the AFL-CIO union conglomerate and other union bigwigs have thousands of federal, state and local politicians across the country at their beck and call.  

But for all that, they have been unable over the past decade to stop the spread of state Right to Work laws. 

Union-Boss Bids to Quash Right to Work at State Level Have Failed Miserably

Today 27 states have Right to Work statutes and/or constitutional amendments. These laws protect the individual employee from being fired or denied a job opportunity for mere refusal to join or bankroll an unwanted union.

Just in the past decade, five states — Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, West Virginia and Kentucky — have adopted and implemented Right to Work laws. 

Because of this series of defeats for Mr. Trumka and his cohorts, roughly half of the private-sector employees in America today may not be compelled to pay dues or fees to a union in order to get a job or keep a job.

Union political schemes to repeal Right to Work laws at the state level have failed time and again.

In fact, today Big Labor does not wield operational control over a single one of the 10 legislative chambers for the five states that have most recently enacted Right to Work laws.

Unfortunately, as this Newsletter edition goes to press, top union bosses are calling the shots in both the U.S. House and Senate as well as at the White House.

Trumka-Backed Bill Would Wipe Out Right to Work Laws in One Fell Swoop

And Richard Trumka has already gone on the record saying that he plans to seize the opportunity to ram through federal legislation that would gut Right to Work protections for employees in all the states that already have them and prevent additional states from affording such protections.

His vehicle of choice is the cynically mislabeled “Protecting the Right to Organize” Act, or “PRO” Act.

This omnibus bill is a lengthy wish list for union bosses.

But undoubtedly the most important provision of all for Mr. Trumka is the one that makes private-sector forced union dues as a job condition permissible in all 50 states, including erstwhile Right to Work states.

Last year, after intense arm-twisting by Big Labor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) House of Representatives green-lighted the PRO Act. But it faced opposition from then-President Donald Trump and could not be passed in then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) Senate.

In the 2020 elections, Mr. Trumka was dead set on removing those obstacles to Right to Work destruction from his path.

There Is No Mandate To Push For Union-Label Workplace Transformation

Last November, the AFL-CIO hierarchy got part of what it wanted.

Thanks largely to the efforts on his behalf by the forced dues-funded union machine, which pumps an estimated $2 billion into electioneering and lobbying every campaign cycle, Big Labor Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden garnered slim popular-vote advantages in key states he needed to win. 

The November outcome simultaneously left Ms. Pelosi, a lifelong union lackey, in charge of the House, albeit by a signifcantly narrowed margin. But union bosses were still two votes shy of being able to install one of their puppets as Senate leader.

Then Mr. Trumka deployed his nationwide political army of paid “volunteers” in Georgia, where two pro-Right to Work GOP senators were running to keep their seats in January 5 runoff races necessitated by state law if no candidate receives at least 50% of the total vote.

As a consequence both of Big Labor’s huge, coercion-derived political investment in the pro-union monopoly Democrat challengers and of extraordinary GOP disarray, Mr. Trumka narrowly gained the two seats he needed to take over the Senate.  

National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix commented: 

“The 2020 presidential election was decided by a total of 45,000 votes in three states. The 2020 House elections left Nancy Pelosi with just 51% of chamber seats retained by her party. The 2021 Senate runoffs left that chamber deadlocked 50-50, with ties to be broken by Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Whatever else you can say about these elections, one thing is clear: There is no mandate to push for union-label transformation of the American workplace.

“But Richard Trumka doesn’t care. He will call in every single political IOU he has to push through an effective federal ban on state Right to Work laws, wiping out nearly eight decades of gains for the freedom of the individual employee.”

Vote Against Preserving The Filibuster Is a Vote Against Right to Work

“The outcome of this election in Georgia is about . . . passing the PRO Act . . . ,” declared Mr. Trumka just a week before the Senate runoffs.

To accomplish his objective of Right to Work elimination via the PRO Act with the support of just 50 out of 100 senators, Mr. Trumka will need first to rewrite Senate rules.

Newly-minted Big Labor Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) will gladly go along.

Mr. Schumer has already publicly threatened to deploy, as majority leader, the so-called “nuclear option” to prevent pro-Right to Work senators from using extended debates, commonly called “filibusters,” to block special-interest legislation until an alerted public can defeat it directly.

That would grease the skids for Congress to send the PRO Act to President Biden’s desk. And he has promised to sign it if given the opportunity. 

Mr. Mix vowed to mobilize Committee members and supporters to wage an all-out fight to save extended debates in the Senate this year.

 “By contacting their senators again and again and urging them not to go along with Sen. Schumer’s ‘nuclear option’ scheme, Committee members and other Right to Work supporters can save state Right to Work laws,” he said.

“This winter, every senator must be put on notice by freedom-loving constituents that a vote against the filibuster is a vote against Right to Work.”