Big Labor Gets What Its Forced Dues Paid For

Union Boss-Backed President Begins Destroying Blue-Collar Jobs

On the very day he was inaugurated, barely two-and-a-half months after narrowly winning the presidency thanks to ample forced union dues-funded support from Big Labor, Joe Biden killed thousands of union rank-and-filers’ jobs.

Mr. Biden consigned good-paying opportunities for forced dues-paying welders, laborers, heavy equipment operators and others to the graveyard by cancelling construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. 

He simultaneously imposed a 60-day moratorium on new oil and natural gas leases and drilling permits on federal lands.

‘Going to Hurt a Lot of People, a Lot of Families, A Lot of Communities’

Many unionized workers who had hoped construction of the pipeline could go ahead after project managers promised it would be built with net-zero new carbon emissions expressed their bitter disappointment.

For example, Neal Crabtree, a welding foreman from Alabama who was on the job in Nebraska when it was reported that the Canada-U.S. crude oil project had been killed, posted on Facebook about how the news left him with “a sick feeling in my stomach and an aching in my heart.”:

“We’ve got guys who haven’t worked in months, and in some cases years, and to have a project of this magnitude canceled, it’s going to hurt a lot of people, a lot of families, a lot of communities.”

Big Labor Bosses Sell Out Workers in Exchange For More Forced Dues

Of course, Mr. Biden would never have had the opportunity to cancel Keystone XL and halt natural gas and oil drilling across the huge swaths of lands owned by the federal government if he had not narrowly won a handful of battleground states in the 2020 presidential contest.

This would almost certainly not have been possible without the manpower and money of union bosses — including bosses whose members’ jobs depend, directly or indirectly, on a flourishing oil-and-natural gas market.

For example, Terry O’Sullivan, general president of the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA/AFL-CIO), and his lieutenants poured more than five million dollars in reported contributions alone into the Biden campaign itself and into other organizations backing Mr. Biden.

National Right to Work Committee Vice President John Kalb noted that, without a doubt, the cash value of the paid campaign “volunteers,” mailings, and other LIUNA “in-kind” support for Mr. Biden was even greater than the union’s cash contributions.   

“Boss O’Sullivan knows full well, and has even publicly acknowledged, that the man he helped put in the White House, in significant part with dues money workers are forced to pay to keep their jobs, ‘put thousands of union workers out of work’ on his first day in office,” said Mr. Kalb.

“Obviously, Joe Biden’s avowed support for expanded privileges for Big Labor, including the evisceration of all 27 current state Right to Work laws, is more important to union bosses like Terry O’Sullivan than protecting and expanding good job opportunities for the workers they purport to represent.”

Right to Work Is Standing With Workers and Against Big Labor Union Bosses

Mr. Kalb vowed that the Committee would do everything possible to help workers fight back against union bosses who don’t have their best interests at heart and only pretend to “represent” them. 

“Committee members and leaders are striving to pave the way for passage, within the next few years,” he said, “of the National Right to Work Act, which would eliminate all the current provisions in federal law that authorize and promote forced union dues and fees as a job condition.

“Once this legislation, introduced in the current Congress as S.406/H.R.1275, is adopted, employees in all 50 states will be able to protest the actions of self-serving union bosses like Terry O’Sullivan by cutting off all financial support for them, without losing their livelihoods as a consequence. 

“The Committee is also working to increase in the very near future, perhaps as soon as this year, the number of state Right to Work laws.

“Just since the beginning of 2012, freedom-loving citizens, largely mobilized by the Committee, have expanded the number of state Right to Work laws from 22 to 27.”

As this Newsletter edition goes to press in early March, Right to Work legislation is being actively considered in several of the 23 remaining compulsory-dues states, notably including New Hampshire.

Future Newsletter editions will report on the outcome of this state legislative battle.