Sen. Jim DeMint -- Pro-Freedom

Sen. Jim DeMint -- Pro-Freedom

The Senate's premiere champion of worker's rights, Sen. Jim DeMint, outlines his support for a balanced approach to labor law.  From Greenvilleonline.com: When people ask me if I’m pro-business or pro-labor, I say I’m neither: I’m pro-freedom. Freedom is the only political principle that cannot be bent to serve special interests. Remember how 7-Up used to call itself the un-cola? Well, freedom is the un-special interest. Freedom, protected by the Constitution and the rule of law, works for everyone. It allows everyone — left or right, young or old, rich or poor — to make their own choices according to their own values. Government’s job shouldn’t be to tilt the field for one team or another, but to guarantee a level playing for everyone. That’s why I’m against forcing workers to join unions, congressional earmarks for favored groups, government bailouts of Wall Street, and energy subsidies — both for oil companies and for green energy. Freedom isn’t perfect, but it is fair. And any time government hands out favors, they’ll be unfair to someone. When Washington picks winners and losers, in the end taxpayers always lose, and Ex-Im is no exception.
Standing up for Workers? Hardly!

Standing up for Workers? Hardly!

For decades, Thomas Sowell has been a voice of reason and that voice continues with his latest column, "The Last Thing Unions Are Concerned About Is Free Choice For Workers." Sowell writes: Labor unions, like the United Nations, are all too often judged by what they are envisioned as being — not by what they actually are or what they actually do. Many people, who do not look beyond the vision or the rhetoric to the reality, still think of labor unions as protectors of working people from their employers. And union bosses still employ that kind of rhetoric. However, someone once said, "When I speak I put on a mask, but when I act I must take it off." That mask has been coming off, more and more, especially during the Obama administration, and what is revealed underneath is very ugly, very cynical and very dangerous. As workers in the private sector have, over the years, increasingly voted to reject joining unions, union bosses have sought to replace secret ballots with signed documents — signed in the presence of union organizers and under the pressures, harassments or implicit threats of those organizers.Now that the administration has appointed a majority of the National Labor Relations Board members, the NLRB has imposed new requirements that employers give union organizers with the names and home addresses of every employee. Nor do employees have a right to decline to have this personal information given out to union organizers, under NLRB rules. In other words, union organizers will now have the legal right to pressure, harass or intimidate workers on the job or in their own homes, in order to get them to sign up with the union.
Right to Work Battles to Rein in Obama NLRB

Right to Work Battles to Rein in Obama NLRB

Mark Mix: President Barack Obama is jeopardizing the very constitutional balance of the United States in order to pay off his union benefactors. But Right to Work officers and supporters are fighting back. Credit: Fox News Legislative Challenge to 'Ambush' Election Scheme Now Pending (source: National Right To Work Committee March 2012 Newsletter) On Capitol Hill, in federal court, and at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), Right to Work proponents are now helping spearhead efforts to stop the Obama Administration and Big Labor from dragooning hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of additional workers into forced-dues-paying ranks every year. President Barack Obama instigated his latest showdown with Right to Work proponents on January 4, when he installed three new members on the five-member NLRB through "recess appointments," despite the fact that the U.S. Senate was manifestly not in recess. "The phony 'recess' appointments to the NLRB that President Obama made at the beginning of this year illegally circumvented at least two sections of the U.S. Constitution," charged National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix. "First, Article II, Section 2 grants to the chief executive the power to appoint 'officers of the United States,' but only 'by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.' "The Constitution makes it clear that only in cases when 'vacancies happen during recesses of the Senate' may the President make temporary 'recess' appointments to offices that normally require confirmation by Congress's upper chamber." President Claims Constitutional Definition of 'Recess' Can't Be Used to Limit His Power "Second, Mr. Obama and his Justice Department have attempted to justify his so-called 'recess' appointments by effectively asserting that it is the President's prerogative to declare that the Senate is in recess at any moment when the chamber is not actually conducting business," Mr. Mix continued. "But the constitutional definition of 'recess' in Article I, Section 5 contradicts this theory. That's why the White House is now contending this provision can't be used to restrict the President's appointment power."