The movement to protect workers and free them from the yoke of big labor’s power is gaining momentum in Michigan, the Washington Times reports: In this historic stronghold of the American labor movement, the phrase “right to work” is seen by…
The Longshoremen’s union (ILA) continues to be on the Big Labor bad-boy list at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Inspector General’s union racketeering division. While a union officer, Frank Rago, who was president of Local 1604 and an ILA international…
In the battle for worker rights, amazingly, the voice of workers if often ignored by the media. Barbara Ivey won’t be ignored. A worker from forced-unionism Oregon, Ivey and her colleagues were subjected to totalitarian actions by the…
AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka apparently has never seen a group of radical leftists he didn’t like. With members of the Communist Party and other socialist organizations protesting Wall Street for the past few weeks, Trumka hailed those who “occupy” Wall Street.
Despite a judge’s order to end the illegal strike tactics and violence, union bosses and activists from the Longshoreman’s union in Washington state have…
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.
Shooting Victim's Workers, Firm Have Long Been Big Labor Targets (Source: September 2011 NRTWC Newsletter) Having grown over the course of several decades into one of the largest union-free electrical contracting businesses in the Toledo, Ohio, area, King Electrical Services and its employees are seasoned in dealing with Big Labor harassment, threats and violence. John King started the firm during the 1970's, after first working for a unionized electrical contractor and serving a stint in the military. In his business's early days, Mr. King recalls, "it was nothing to have to regularly buy a new set of tires. The ice pick was the weapon of choice." During a mid-eighties strike, King Electrical, which then had just eight or nine employees, was picketed by more than 50 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW/AFL-CIO) union militants. One employee had his car trashed and was also beaten up by IBEW thugs. The harassment and violence have never stopped. Just during the first half of this year, goons hurled rocks through King Electrical's shop-front windows, and smashed the windows and slashed the tires of the company's trucks in separate incidents. But somehow none of this prepared Mr. King for what happened to him on the night of August 10, while his wife was away with their grandchildren. After waking up at his home in Monroe County, Mich., 2.5 miles from Toledo, Mr. King noticed that the motion lights in his driveway had come on. He then looked out his front window and saw a man who appeared to be breaking into his SUV. 'It's Not So Surprising That Union Militants Think They're Above the Law' As a resident of a neighborhood where violent crime is practically unheard of, Mr. King unhesitatingly walked out his front door to yell at the apparent thief. So confident was Mr. King that his home was his "safe haven" from the Big Labor thuggery he and his employees have often faced on the job, in fact, that, prone and bloodied in front of his house a few seconds later, he didn't realize he'd been shot.
Shooting Victim's Workers, Firm Have Long Been Big Labor Targets (Source: September 2011 NRTWC Newsletter) Having grown over the course of several decades into one of the largest union-free electrical contracting businesses in the Toledo, Ohio, area, King Electrical Services and its employees are seasoned in dealing with Big Labor harassment, threats and violence. John King started the firm during the 1970's, after first working for a unionized electrical contractor and serving a stint in the military. In his business's early days, Mr. King recalls, "it was nothing to have to regularly buy a new set of tires. The ice pick was the weapon of choice." During a mid-eighties strike, King Electrical, which then had just eight or nine employees, was picketed by more than 50 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW/AFL-CIO) union militants. One employee had his car trashed and was also beaten up by IBEW thugs. The harassment and violence have never stopped. Just during the first half of this year, goons hurled rocks through King Electrical's shop-front windows, and smashed the windows and slashed the tires of the company's trucks in separate incidents. But somehow none of this prepared Mr. King for what happened to him on the night of August 10, while his wife was away with their grandchildren. After waking up at his home in Monroe County, Mich., 2.5 miles from Toledo, Mr. King noticed that the motion lights in his driveway had come on. He then looked out his front window and saw a man who appeared to be breaking into his SUV. 'It's Not So Surprising That Union Militants Think They're Above the Law' As a resident of a neighborhood where violent crime is practically unheard of, Mr. King unhesitatingly walked out his front door to yell at the apparent thief. So confident was Mr. King that his home was his "safe haven" from the Big Labor thuggery he and his employees have often faced on the job, in fact, that, prone and bloodied in front of his house a few seconds later, he didn't realize he'd been shot.
New York Times Pundit: Reckless Obama NLRB 'Paralyzing' Economy (Source: September 2011 NRTWC Newsletter) For years, New York Times commentator Joe Nocera has been one of the most relentless champions of government regulation of business and "stimulus" spending in the American media. When even Mr. Nocera starts agreeing with critics of a presidential administration that it has gone "too far" in interfering with the decision-making of businesses and their employees, that administration clearly has a serious problem. Therefore, Mr. Nocera's August 23 Times column about the ongoing effort by Acting National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Lafe Solomon to dictate where businesses may or may not expand should have set off alarm bells at the White House. Mr. Solomon's immediate target is Boeing and its employees in Right to Work South Carolina. In April, he filed a complaint against the company, America's biggest exporter of manufactured products, for initiating a new 787 Dreamliner assembly line in North Charleston. As Mr. Nocera observed in his column bemoaning this Solomon power grab, "Boeing's aircraft assembly has long been done by its unionized work force in Puget Sound, Wash." Indeed, seven Dreaminers will still be assembled each month in Puget Sound. "The South Carolina facility," Mr. Nocera explained, "is a hedge against the possibility" that International Association of Machinists (IAM) union kingpins will order unionized employees in Puget Sound out on strike, and thus "shut down production of the Dreamliner." A 'Mind-Boggling Stretch' To Characterize Boeing's Strategy as 'Retaliation'