Right to Work Legal Foundation battles for truck driver’s rights against Teamsters and wins

Right to Work Legal Foundation battles for truck driver’s rights against Teamsters and wins

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation battles for truck driver’s rights against the Teamsters and wins legal victory. Allyson Bird of the Charleston Post and Courier: A state judge has ruled that a Teamsters union local discriminated against a North Carolina trucker and owes the driver $55,500 in back pay for preventing him from working on the television series "Army Wives." The Lifetime cable drama currently is filming its fifth season locally. The labor dispute arose during the show's third season, which left a makeup truck driver from Wilmington, N.C., named Thomas Troy Coghill out of work. "Army Wives" typically uses 15 to 20 drivers daily when filming, according to a court filing. Coghill began working for the show during its second season, when many drivers with the South Carolina-based International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 509 had committed to working on the movie "The New Daughter," also shot locally. Local 509's business agent, L.D. Fletcher, threatened to picket, according to the court filing, unless "Army Wives" cut all drivers who were not members of his organization. "Army Wives" transportation coordinator Lee Siler told Coghill that he should move to South Carolina and join Local 509 if he wanted to work the third season, the court filing says. Coghill testified that he wrote and called the local -- even while in India -- but months passed without a response. Eventually, Fletcher told him the union was closed but that he would add Coghill to a "B list." Fletcher later admitted that no such list existed, according to court documents.
Change in Wisconsin

Change in Wisconsin

 Newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is not backing down from a fight to protect taxpayers.  Walker has proposed reforming the state's collective bargaining laws to protect taxpayers.  The Wall Street Journal takes note:  Wisconsin Governor-elect Scott Walker has laid out an ambitious agenda, such as turning the department of commerce into a public-private partnership and lifting the cap on school vouchers. But his boldest idea may be rescinding the right of government employees to collectively bargain. Mr. Walker floated the idea last week in response to union opposition to his modest proposal to require employees to contribute 5% of their pay to their pensions and to increase their health-care contributions to 12% from as low as 4% today. Even along the Left Coast most state workers contribute 10% of their salary to pensions. The Republican estimates that these changes would save the state $154 million in the first six months. Over two years they'd reduce the state's $3.3 billion budget gap by nearly 20%. The ability of public workers to form unions and bargain collectively is a phenomenon of the last century when state and local governments were relatively small. But it has proven to be a catastrophe for taxpayers, as public unions have used their political clout to negotiate rich deals on wages, pensions and health care. California governor-elect Jerry Brown greased the wheels for his state's long fiscal decline when he allowed collective bargaining during his first stint in the statehouse in the 1970s. Republican Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana and then Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri rescinded collective bargaining by executive order in 2005, and the change made it easier to cut spending and restructure government services. In Wisconsin, the legislature would have to rewrite the Employment Labor Relations Act, but Republicans will control both the assembly and senate and have the political incentive to go along with Mr. Walker.Rescinding public collective bargaining rights restores a better negotiating balance between taxpayers and government employees who ostensibly work for them. Political officials are no longer on both sides of the bargaining table—representing taxpayers in negotiations with the unions while seeking union cash and endorsements when running for re-election.
Police-Fire Union Scheme Prepped For Floor Vote

Police-Fire Union Scheme Prepped For Floor Vote

Bill Would Herd Now-Independent 'First Responders' Into Unions (Source: May 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has sent out an unmistakable signal that he is dead set on pushing through a bill that would undermine state Right to Work laws and soak state and local taxpayers for billions of dollars in additional goverment costs. On April 12, Mr. Reid reintroduced as S.3194 the Police/Fire Monopoly-Bargaining Bill, which was already pending in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee as S.1611. Mr. Reid's clear purpose in carrying out this tactical maneuver was to make it possible for him to bring up this federal government union power grab for a Senate floor vote at any time, with as little as 48 hours public notice and with no HELP Committee action whatsoever in advance. Harry Reid and his cohorts cynically mislabel their legislation, also introduced in the U.S. House as H.R.413 by union-label Congressman Dale Kildee (D-Mich.), as the "Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act." States' Bitter Experiences Illustrate Dangers of Harry Reid's Scheme But that moniker has nothing to do with reality. S.3194/H.R.413 would institute a federal mandate foisting union "exclusive representation" (monopoly bargaining) on state and local police, firefighters, and other public-safety employees nationwide. Reid-Kildee would force countless policemen, firefighters and EMT's to accept as their monopoly-bargaining agent a union they never asked for or voted for, and want nothing to do with.

‘Nowhere to Flee’ For Young Job Seekers?

 Forced-Unionism Expansion Bill Would Kill Prospects For Millions (Source: March 2010 NRTWC Newsletter) According to a scientific poll conducted by the respected Research 2000 firm, 81% of Americans who regularly vote in statewide elections believe workers in unionized workplaces who don’t want a union should “have the right to bargain for themselves.” Unfortunately, for three-quarters of a century, federal labor law has actively promoted what Americans, according to the Research 2000 poll and many others, overwhelmingly oppose. The 1935 National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and the 1934 Railway Labor Act (RLA) amendments hand union officials the power to force millions of workers, union members and nonmembers alike, to accept a union as their “exclusive” (monopoly) bargaining agent in their dealings with their employer. Attack on Secret Ballot Only One Trick in Union Monopolists’ Playbook And this year Congress is very likely to bring up for floor votes legislation that would help Big Labor corral millions of additional workers into unions. Until recently, union strategists’ primary vehicle for expanding private-sector union monopoly bargaining in the current Congress was S.560/H.R.1409, the cynically mislabeled “Employee Free Choice Act.” This legislation is designed to help union bosses sharply increase the share of all workers who are under union monopoly control by effectively ending secret-ballot elections in union organizing campaigns.