Meet Big Labor's New Enemy -- Their Own Members

Meet Big Labor's New Enemy -- Their Own Members

Deep in the heart of big labor country, Crain's Chicago Business reports of the battle going on between big labor and their members.  With help from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, these union members have found support in exercising their rights: Multinational corporations have a new ally in their battles with organized labor: unionized workers. As organized labor loses leverage in a race-to-the-bottom global market, some workers are becoming so disillusioned by what their unions can, or rather can't, do for them that they want out. The disaffected include dozens of machinists at Caterpillar Inc.'s plant in Joliet who crossed the picket line during a strike last summer and are planning unfair labor practices complaints against the union. Organized labor's slippage is most acute in the manufacturing sector, which has lost 4.7 million jobs and seen membership shrink by almost a third since 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, private-sector union membership stands at just 6.9 percent nationally and 10.6 percent in Illinois. “Unions lack sufficient power to get their way,” says Mike Zimmer, a law professor at Loyola University Chicago. “It is a period of concession bargaining.” Many rank-and-file employees have opposed unions all along, of course. Despite organizing drives, workers have turned down collective bargaining at automobile plants across the South. Legislatures in 23 states have enacted “right-to-work” laws that allow employees to opt out of dues-paying membership at union shops; Indiana joined this camp early this year. Now some workers in union-friendly states are turning on their brethren over strikes. In Kansas City, Mo., a Honeywell Inc. employee filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board this year against an International Association of Machinists local for imposing a $7,361.36 fine for working during a strike, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an organization backed by businesspeople and individuals who oppose labor contracts mandating membership. In Los Angeles, three employees at a Boeing Co. plant brought complaints against the United Auto Workers in 2010 after it tried to discipline them for refusing to give up their jobs during a strike. The three claimed to have resigned from the union before the walkout. Similar charges have been filed and settled in Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, New Jersey and Connecticut, with unions including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the United Steelworkers of America named in complaints. In Illinois, the latest intra-union conflict—and potentially the biggest yet—is in Joliet. Last May, after contract negotiations stalled, nearly 800 IAM-represented employees walked off the job at Caterpillar's hydraulic-parts factory. After a few weeks, more than 100 returned to work, fed up over the lack of progress in the talks and pinched by the union's $150-a-week strike pay, some workers say.
Court Allows Union Bosses to Ignore Identity Theft Laws, Harass Employees

Court Allows Union Bosses to Ignore Identity Theft Laws, Harass Employees

Washington Examiner, Mark Mix is president of National Right to Work OpEd:. One November day in 2007, 33 AT&T workers in central North Carolina found out that their Social Security numbers and other private information had been posted for the world to see -- exposing them to identity theft and credit fraud. [media-credit name="The National Right to Work Committee®" align="alignright" width="227"][/media-credit]There has never been any doubt about who posted the workers' private information, but the perpetrators have now escaped justice. All the employees whose names and personal information were posted had exercised their freedom under North Carolina's Right to Work law to resign from membership in a labor union -- the Communications Workers of America, or CWA -- and cease paying union dues. In retaliation, the union bosses of CWA Local 3602 proved that they know no bounds when it comes to making workers toe the union line. When these workers exercised their right to refrain from union affiliation, they were subjected to an extended union campaign of workplace harassment and intimidation. After the workers exercised their Right to Work, CWA union official Judy Brown emailed a spreadsheet that contained the employees' personal data (including their Social Security numbers) to other CWA officials with instructions to "forward this information to your affected locals." CWA Local 3602 union president John Glenn posted the spreadsheet on a public bulletin board. Other CWA union officials likely disseminated the information through email and other means.
42 GOP Senators Challenge Obama's So-Called NLRB "Recess" Appointments

42 GOP Senators Challenge Obama's So-Called NLRB "Recess" Appointments

Forty-Two United States Senators have joined with the National Right to Work Legal Foundation in protesting President Obama's illegal appointment to the National Labor Relations Board: [media-credit name=" " align="alignright" width="150"][/media-credit]Forty-two Republican senators filed an amicus brief this week in the case of Noel Canning Div. of Noel Corp. v. NLRB, D.C. Cir., No. 12-1115, arguing that the Board lacks a quorum because President Obama's January 2012 recess appointments were invalid. Employer Noel Canning has petitioned the Court of Appeals to deny enforcement to a Board decision by a three-member panel. Among their arguments, the employer asserts that panel members Sharon Block and Terence F. Flynn were not confirmed by the Senate and that Congress was in session at the time of their purported recess appointments.
42 GOP Senators Challenge Obama's So-Called NLRB

42 GOP Senators Challenge Obama's So-Called NLRB "Recess" Appointments

Forty-Two United States Senators have joined with the National Right to Work Legal Foundation in protesting President Obama's illegal appointment to the National Labor Relations Board: [media-credit name=" " align="alignright" width="150"][/media-credit]Forty-two Republican senators filed an amicus brief this week in the case of Noel Canning Div. of Noel Corp. v. NLRB, D.C. Cir., No. 12-1115, arguing that the Board lacks a quorum because President Obama's January 2012 recess appointments were invalid. Employer Noel Canning has petitioned the Court of Appeals to deny enforcement to a Board decision by a three-member panel. Among their arguments, the employer asserts that panel members Sharon Block and Terence F. Flynn were not confirmed by the Senate and that Congress was in session at the time of their purported recess appointments.

Union Bosses Press for Court-Imposed Bailout

Union bosses in Indiana are pressing for a judicially imposed bailout, arguing that the state's new Right to Work Law will reduce revenues to the union since membership is no longer compulsory.  The LibertyLawSite looks at the lawsuit and the impact the law has had on job creation in the state:   Amidst a series of setbacks at both the ballot box and the court house, the fate of the compulsory union movement may depend in large measure on the outcome of two lawsuits currently pending in Indiana.  In early 2012, Governor Mitch Daniels signed into law a bill that made Indiana the nation’s twenty-third right-to-work state.  Unions have filed two challenges to that law, one each in state and federal court.  The outcome of those lawsuits will help to determine whether Indiana remains a right-to-work state and whether other states follow Indiana’s lead. In its first few months of operation, the right-to-work law has, by almost any measure, helped to attract new businesses to Indiana.  Indiana has only 2.2 percent of the nation’s population.  In April, the first full month after the law took effect, more than one in eight jobs created around the country were created in Indiana – more than in states several times the size of Indiana.  According to the state’s economic development arm, almost fifty out-of-state companies cited the right-to-work law as one reason that they were considering opening a location in Indiana.
NRTW Lawyers Win Big at Supreme Court; SEIU & Big Labor Lose Another Forced Politics Scheme

NRTW Lawyers Win Big at Supreme Court; SEIU & Big Labor Lose Another Forced Politics Scheme

National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys lead by W. James Young fought to stop SEIU abuses of Dianne Knox and her fellow employees right not to be compelled to "subsidize a [SEIU] political effort designed to restrict their own rights."  The U.S. Supreme Court 7-2 Opinion written by Justice Alito sets back another Big Labor easy political money scheme right before the 2012 elections.  This decision should lead to new challenges to Big Labor's compulsory actions in the future. Two of the Justices, Breyer and Kagan, who opposed the right of individuals to voluntarily spend their own money on politics in the Citizen United case, both supported the notation that unions could compel people to unwillingly support politics that they oppose. From the Opinion: .... When a State establishes an “agency shop” that ex- acts compulsory union fees as a condition of public employment, “[t]he dissenting employee is forced to support financially an organization with whose principles and demands he may disagree.” Ellis, 466 U. S., at 455. Because a public-sector union takes many positions during collective bargaining that have powerful political and civic consequences, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 48–49, the compulsory fees constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a “significant impingement on First Amendment rights.”
NRTW Lawyers Win Big at Supreme Court; SEIU & Big Labor Lose Another Forced Politics Scheme

NRTW Lawyers Win Big at Supreme Court; SEIU & Big Labor Lose Another Forced Politics Scheme

National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys lead by W. James Young fought to stop SEIU abuses of Dianne Knox and her fellow employees right not to be compelled to "subsidize a [SEIU] political effort designed to restrict their own rights."  The U.S. Supreme Court 7-2 Opinion written by Justice Alito sets back another Big Labor easy political money scheme right before the 2012 elections.  This decision should lead to new challenges to Big Labor's compulsory actions in the future. Two of the Justices, Breyer and Kagan, who opposed the right of individuals to voluntarily spend their own money on politics in the Citizen United case, both supported the notation that unions could compel people to unwillingly support politics that they oppose. From the Opinion: .... When a State establishes an “agency shop” that ex- acts compulsory union fees as a condition of public employment, “[t]he dissenting employee is forced to support financially an organization with whose principles and demands he may disagree.” Ellis, 466 U. S., at 455. Because a public-sector union takes many positions during collective bargaining that have powerful political and civic consequences, see Tr. of Oral Arg. 48–49, the compulsory fees constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a “significant impingement on First Amendment rights.”