National Right To Work Committee releases new report re: Obama appointed union financial reporting overseer

 Sign-Up For NRTWC’s Free Daily E-mailed Update Summary John Lund Former SEIU and IUOE Official, Big Labor Consultant, Former Pacific Northwest Labor College Director, and Former University of Wisconsin School for Workers Director (currently on unpaid leave from the School for Workers) (Download the full Report) APPOINTMENT: U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) Director Current Responsibilities:  Overseer of labor union financial reporting and disclosure, union officer conflict-of-interest reporting, and certain employer activities; he is responsible for criminal investigations regarding issues under his oversight such as labor union financial irregularities and embezzlement. Past and current non-DOL employers:  Lund is currently on unpaid leave from his other employer, University of Wisconsin’s School for Workers. The School for Workers is a taxpayer-supported institution with its primary function is to serve as a training center for union officials, such as the union organizers who ginned up the tension in Madison, Wisconsin and across the U.S. It is reported that, from 2004-2007, Lund worked closely with the AFL-CIO “on [union] financial accountability and transparency issues.” These are the issues Lund currently controls at DOL. He has been a consultant for the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, BLET , and IUOE, to name just a few. In his position of union trainer and consultant, Lund worked directly with many of the union officials who has recently rewarded with reduced reporting and disclosure regulations that he has instituted during his tenure at DOL. Lund is also in charge of the DOL office which investigates embezzlements and union election fraud, giving Lund the conflicting responsibility for making decisions about union officials he has trained and advised. In addition, Lund oversees union audits and he is now privy to DOL’s labor union auditing and criminal investigation techniques. Soon he will be back teaching these same union officers how to navigate around DOL audits.

Government by Decree for Big Labor

The Obama Adminstration's penchant for issuing executive orders and decrees that benefit their political allies is creating a backlash. From National Review: The dispute can be traced back to the Railway Labor Act, a 1926 law that made it relatively difficult for railroad workers to unionize — the idea being that without serious limits on union power, labor organizations could hold the nation’s crucial transportation infrastructure hostage to unreasonable demands. The following decade, none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt expanded the law to cover America’s emerging airline sector as well. One limit the law puts on airline unions is that in order to unionize, they need consent from “the majority of any craft or class of employees.” Note that there’s a difference between the “majority . . . of employees” and the majority of employees who choose to vote in a union election. The way the law is written, if a “craft or class” — say, flight attendants or customer-service workers — has 100 members, and only 80 cast votes, the union still needs 51 votes, not 41, to win the right to represent the workers. This puts the onus on the unions to get the word out and increase turnout. The National Mediation Board — which has decided RLA disputes since 1934 — interpreted the law this way for its first 75 years. But then, Obama took office and changed the composition of the board to 2–1 Democrat. In 2010, with no deliberation by Congress whatsoever — but with urging from the unions — the NMB simply changed course, declaring that from now on, a majority of voting employees is all that’s needed to unionize a work group. The board made several smaller changes as well, all of which favored the unions. The unions immediately began exploiting this rule change. In the case of the Delta-Northwest merger, the unions already had filed election applications before the rule change, but withdrew them and then re-filed so that the elections could take place under the new rules.
Capitol Hill Showdown Looms Over TSA Takeover Bid

Capitol Hill Showdown Looms Over TSA Takeover Bid

(Source: March 2011 NRTWC Newsletter) Committee Calls on U.S. House Leaders to Block Union Power Grab On February 4, President Barack Obama's handpicked head of the Transportation Security Administration publicly announced he would help government union bosses grab monopoly-bargaining control over more than 40,000 airport screeners and other TSA employees. John Pistole, who was sworn in as TSA chief in July 2010, made the move shortly after Republican John Boehner (Ohio) replaced Big Labor Democrat Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) as speaker of the U.S. House. The changing of the guard at the House made it impossible, in all probability, for union lobbyists to ram through Congress legislation mandating union monopoly bargaining at the TSA. Therefore, in order for the Obama Administration to hand federal union officials what they wanted, Mr. Pistole had to act administratively. Agency Would Likely Become 'Less Efficient and Flexible' As a consequence of the Pistole edict, the honchos of one of two large government unions, either the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) or the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), could grab so-called "exclusive" representation power at the TSA within the next few weeks. If this happens, the already much-reviled federal agency will likely become even "less efficient and flexible," as National Review Associate Editor Robert Verbruggen pointed out in a February 11 commentary.

Ready for Unionized Airport Security?

Kimberly Strassel makes the point -- as payback for big labor union support, the Obama administration greases the wheels for the largest federal organizing effort in history: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker made some progress this week in rescuing his state from the public-sector unions holding it hostage. Ever wonder how Wisconsin got into trouble in the first place? Washington is providing an illuminating case study. Even as state battles rage, the Obama administration has been facilitating the largest federal union organizing effort in history. Tens of thousands of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners are now casting votes to choose a union to collectively bargain for cushier personnel practices on their behalf. Liberals are calling it a "historic" vote. It is. Henceforth, airport security will play second fiddle to screener "rights." Here's the fundamental problem with public-employee unions: They exist to compete with, and undermine, public priorities. The priority of Wisconsin citizens is a state that can provide basic services, encourage private-sector jobs, and pay its bills. Wisconsin public-employee unions, by contrast, were formed to, and exist to, erect a system that showers members with plump pay and benefits, crowding out state services and private jobs. The same disconnect is on display with the TSA. On Sept. 11, 2001, more than 3,000 Americans died after terrorists turned airplanes into missiles. It was a colossal security failure. Congress responded by creating the TSA. The merits of federalizing airport screening were always questionable, though at least the public priority was clear. Back then, a bipartisan majority of Congress agreed that a crack airport security service was incompatible with rigid unionization rules. Yet by 2008, Democratic presidential candidates were betting that security worries had receded enough that they could again pander for union votes. Candidate Barack Obama sent a letter to American Federation of Government Employees boss John Gage, vowing that his "priority" was giving Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) "collective bargaining rights and workplace protections."