Desperate to Take a Right to Work Scalp
Silver State’s 68-Year Ban on Compulsory Union Dues in Jeopardy
While Big Labor clearly remains by far the most powerful special-interest lobby in 21st Century American politics, the union hierarchy has suffered a series of setbacks in recent years.
Just since the beginning of 2012, five states have, with National Right to Work Committee members’ assistance, adopted and begun enforcing Right to Work laws that prohibit the termination of employees for refusal to join or pay dues to an unwanted union.
And in 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME, a case successfully argued by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Staff Attorney Bill Messenger, that extraction of compulsory union dues or fees from public workers as a condition of employment violates the First Amendment.
Politicians’ Fear of Union Political Machine May at Last Be Beginning to Erode
But the worst setback of all from Big Labor’s perspective may be its failure, so far, to punish at the ballot box legislators in states like Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin who helped pass Right to Work laws.
As a consequence of this failure, politicians’ fear of the union political machine may be beginning to erode nationwide.
National Right to Work Committee Vice President John Kalb commented:
“Today, roughly half of U.S. private-sector workers are still employed in Big Labor-controlled states and are either potentially or immediately subject to a forced-dues regime.
“But union bosses from AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on down know that states like Montana, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania are likely to go Right to Work in the relatively near future unless they can convince lawmakers in those states that it’s still too dangerous to buck them.
“And Organized Labor calculates it can achieve this objective by wiping out, in the near future, at least one of the 27 current Right to Work laws.”
Nevada is a prime union-boss target. Along with Virginia, it is one of only two Right to Work states at this time in which Big Labor-backed politicians hold both the governorship and majority leadership positions in both chambers of the legislature.
In the Silver State, Democrat Gov. Steve Sisolak and majorities of the Senate and the Assembly in Carson City already demonstrated they are willing to tighten union officials’ stranglehold over the provision of public services in a state where Right to Work has been on the books for nearly 70 years.
National Union Bosses Have Already Collected on One ‘IOU’ in Nevada
Under S.B.135, a scheme rubber-stamped by the General Assembly and signed by Mr. Sisolak last June, government union bosses were handed monopoly-bargaining privileges over roughly 20,000 state employees.
The National Right to Work Committee and other citizen groups mobilized intense public opposition to S.B.135, which will raise the annual cost of state government to Nevada taxpayers by an estimated $500 million.
But politicians adopted it anyway, making only cosmetic changes, soon after a UNITE HERE union honcho personally visited Nevada to, in his words, collect “on an IOU.”
“Expanded monopoly-bargaining priv-
ileges were just an appetizer for the union hierarchy,” said Mr. Kalb.
“The next step is to pass legislation gutting, or flat-out repealing, Nevada’s Right to Work law. But to accomplish that objective union bosses may need first to tighten their control over Carson City.”
In 2019, union lobbyists’ campaign to reinstate forced unionism in Nevada apparently fell short as a consequence of reluctance among small contingents of the Democrat majorities in both legislative chambers to flout flagrantly the wishes of their overwhelmingly pro-Right to Work constituents.
In this year’s elections, Big Labor will aim either to replace politicians who refused to acquiesce to Right to Work destruction with union-boss puppets, or intimidate them into submission.
But the Right to Work Committee will fight back by making Nevada an important part of its nationwide state Survey 2020 program.
Grassroots Efforts Defend Employees’ Right to Work
“Thanks to the Committee’s state Survey 2020,” said Mr. Kalb, “by Election Day this fall, tens of thousands of Right to Work supporters in Nevada will have been notified about where their legislative candidates stand on compulsory unionism, and urged to contact them regarding this issue.
“Right to Work supporters will be mobilized to keep increasing the pressure on their candidates.
“Union-label candidates will have a choice. They can choose to renounce Big Labor bosses’ support and pledge to support Right to Work in the future. Or they can ignore Right to Work supporters’ pleas, and face the potential political consequences.”
If you have questions about whether union officials are violating your rights, contact the Foundation for free help. To take action by supporting The National Right to Work Committee and fueling the fight against Forced Unionism, click here to donate now.
In 2018, federal records show that government union boss Witold Skwierczynski was banned from federal offices for alleged gross misconduct. Nevertheless, he continued to get paid by taxpayers to conduct union business!
A key part of the Biden program to redefine tens of millions of independent workers as “employees” so they could be corralled into a union was his Labor Department’s overturning of independent-contractor standards adopted during the first Trump Administration.
“Idaho prospects are better this year than in 2021, thanks to significant turnover in the Republican primaries last year in both chambers of the Idaho Legislature,” said Mr. Kalb.