Avelo employee Kim Howard believes all the firm’s flight attendants should get to vote on continued AFA rule. Credit: WTNH-TV (ABC, New Haven, Conn.) How Eight Pro-Union Votes Put 244 Workers Under a Union Monopoly One of the key flaws…
Flight Attendant Triumphs Over TWU Union and Southwest in Suit About Illegal Firing; Jury Awards $5.1 Million in Damages TWU union and Southwest retaliated against employee for speaking out against political stances and activities of union leadership that violated her…
States have no power to stop airline and railroad union bosses from getting employees fired for refusal to fork over money to their organizations.
— From the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation: Southwest Airlines Flight Attendant Files Federal Suit Challenging Transport Union Discrimination Union…
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation released a special advisory for Indiana workers. Click here to go to the Foundation’s post: Special Legal Notice to…
Principled U.S. House Leadership Can Thwart Big Labor Power Grab (Source: September 2011 NRTWC Newsletter) Over the next few weeks, the U.S. House will have the opportunity to turn back a Big Labor-inspired bureaucratic rewrite of the procedures through which union officials acquire monopoly-bargaining privileges under the Railway Labor Act (RLA). If self-avowedly pro-Right to Work House leaders and rank-and-file members blow this opportunity, another one won't come for a long time. In June 2010, President Obama's two appointees on the three-member National Mediation Board (NMB) instituted an RLA rule change making it far easier for airline and railroad union chiefs to acquire monopoly power to negotiate employees' pay, benefits, and work rules. NMB members Harry Hoglander and Linda Puchala, the two Obama-selected bureaucrats favoring the rule change, are both ex-union bosses. They overturned decades-old procedures previously supported by GOP and Democratic presidential administrations alike. Union Monopoly Bargaining Hurts Employees and Businesses Federally-imposed "exclusive" (monopoly) union bargaining undermines efficiency and productivity by forcing employers to reward equally their most productive and least productive employees. The damage is compounded when the employees already hurt by being forced to accept a union bargaining agent opposed to their interests are then forced to pay dues or fees to the unwanted union.
After trying to eliminate the secret ballot election in the workplace, Big Labor is now demanding a secret ballot election. From the Heritage Foundation: Secret ballots protect voters from intimidation. As long as a vote remains private, no one can retaliate against individuals for voting the “wrong” way. The leadership of the union movement wants to replace secret ballot union elections with “card-check”—a system where workers would unionize by signing union cards in the presence of union organizers. Publicly, union leaders insist that union organizers would never intimidate workers if they knew how they voted. But it turns out union bosses know full well that without secret ballots, union organizers would intimidate workers. Two unions, the International Association of Machinists (IAM) and the Association of Flight Attendants–Communications Workers of America (AFA–CWA) are vying to represent workers at the newly merged United–Continental airlines.
The Daily Caller notes that Congress will be asked to protect workers from the National Mediation Board which decided that labor bosses now have the ability to forcibly unionize workers in the airlines and railroad industries: And with…
President Obama's overarching labor policy seems to be, "The more union monopoly bargaining, the better." Credit: L.A. Times (Source: June 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) Right to Work Fights For Independent Transportation Employees Over the past three-quarters of a century, federal labor policy has done enormous damage to employees and businesses by authorizing and promoting monopolistic unionism. Federally-imposed "exclusive" union bargaining undermines efficiency and productivity by forcing employers to reward equally their most productive and least productive employees. The damage is compounded when the employees already hurt by being forced to accept a union bargaining agent opposed to their interests are forced as well to pay dues or fees to the unwanted union. Fortunately, Right to Work laws in 22 states, where nearly 40% of the private-sector work force is employed, prohibit the collection of forced dues from the vast majority of employees. (Both the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Congress have recognized states' freedom to protect employees' Right to Work.) However, in 1951, when Congress first foisted forced union dues and fees on employees covered by the Railway Labor Act (RLA), Big Labor senators and representatives opted to deny states the option to protect employees' Right to Work. Ever since, Big Labor has had the government-granted power to get airline and railroad employees fired for refusal to bankroll a union in all 50 states, including Right to Work states.