Today, House Republican leader John Boehner called on President Barack Obama to veto any controversial legislation that passes during the post-midterm election lame-duck Congressional session. One of those controversial bills is the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill.

As Right to Work Foundation legal director Ray J. LaJeunesse details in the Spring 2010 issue of the Texas Review of Law & Politics journal, this draconian bill's three primary provisions contain many injustices toward American workers and job providers.

Regarding the bill's provision to strip workers of their rights to a secret ballot election and opening them up to intimidating "home visits":

...the absence of a formal election process works an obvious unfairness, facilitates intimidation and deception of workers, and runs contrary to the American tradition of secret ballots and the freedom to vote in privacy. The United States Supreme Court has already spoken to the issue, recognizing that “secret elections are generally the most satisfactory—indeed the preferred—method of ascertaining whether a union has majority support.”

There also is a serious question whether EFCA will unconstitutionally deny employers and employees their free speech rights... Because there would be no open campaign leading up to a secret-ballot election, EFCA would eliminate open debate, thus curtailing the speech rights of employers and individual employees opposed to the union.

As for the unconstitutational, government-mandated binding arbitration provision:

Mandatory governmentally-imposed binding interest arbitration... runs afoul of various provisions of the U.S. Constitution.

Moreover, in requiring governmentally-imposed arbitrators to dictate contract terms, EFCA would unconstitutionally take the property of employers and give that property to their employees (as wages, for example) for a non-public use, in violation of the takings clause...

And finally, regarding the lopsided nature of the penalties imposed on job providers:

These drastic new penalties for unfair labor practices that apply to employers but not to unions raise concerns under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and may violate the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.

These one-sided changes in the NLRA’s remedial scheme would adversely affect employees as well as employers. With the Damoclean sword of punitive remedies looming, employers faced with union organizing campaigns will be more likely to gag themselves to avoid unfair labor practice charges by unions, thus depriving employees of the “information opposing unionization,” which they have an implicit “right to receive” under NLRA section 7, and which is necessary to make an informed and free choice about whether to support unionization or not.

As LaJeunesse clearly explains, the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill certainly "presents serious legal and policy issues" indeed.

As reported in today's Washington Examiner, the National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix sent a letter to the U.S. Senate opposing Elena Kagan's confirmation as a Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court for misrepresenting her views regarding the use of forced union dues for union boss political activity.

From the Examiner:

(Mark Mix argues) Kagan should not be confirmed because when she was asked by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, about a 1996 email she wrote while serving in the Clinton administration, she falsely claimed she was merely repeating the chief executive's views, not her own.

In his letter to the senators, Mix quoted Kagan's email in which she said:

"It is unfortunately true that almost any meaningful campaign finance reform proposal raises constitutional issues. This is a result of the Supreme Court's view - which I believe to be mistaken in many cases - that money is speech and that attempts to limit the influence of money on our political system therefore raises First Amendment problems."

Kagan could not have simply been echoing somebody else's view in that email, Mix argued, because a memo later in 1996 from her and other White House staff members to then-White House chief of staff Leon Panetta "incorporated Ms. Kagan's argument that the First Amendment does not protect the right to spend money for political activities. In short, in 1996 Ms. Kagan both suggested and endorsed that crabbed view of the First Amendment."

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has repeatedly fought to protect workers who are forced to pay union dues and fees as a condition of employment to also support union boss political activities with which they disagree before the U.S. Supreme Court and various other courts across the country.

Mark Mix's letter also noted that Kagen expressed opposition to the Foundation's Supreme Court victory in Communications Workers v. Beck in which the Court affirmed the right of private-sector workers to exercise the same freedom from coerced support of union boss politics under the National Labor Relations Act:

(Ms. Kagan) recommended that President Clinton oppose any legislation protecting the right of workers not to be forced to subsidize union politics, despite the First Amendment’s guarantee of that basic worker freedom of speech and association.

...

Ms. Kagan emailed… her recommendation that (the Administration)… “state strong opposition to Beck legislation, no matter what it is attached to.”

Ms. Kagan… disagreed with the well-established legal principle that underlies the long line of Supreme Court decisions recognizing the constitutional right of workers not to be compelled to subsidize union political activities as a condition of employment… (putting) her far outside the judicial mainstream and (demonstrating) a disdain for the rights of independent-minded American workers.

To read Mark Mix's letter, click here.

Today, National Right to Work President Mark Mix was published in the Investor's Business Daily exposing how General Motors (GM) and United Autoworker (UAW) union bosses colluded to use taxpayer dollars to "pay back" the taxpayers for the government bail out it received last year:

...GM leaders and the UAW officials who colluded with them to extract $43 billion out of taxpayers in exchange for arguably worthless stock are now patting themselves on the back for paying back on April 21 the balance of a $6.7 billion loan they took out from taxpayers as part of the 2009 bankruptcy package.

In a weekly radio address to the nation late last month, President Obama suggested that the fact that taxpayers have now recouped 14% of the taxes he diverted into GM coffers on their behalf vindicates his decision to bail out GM and the UAW brass.

But ordinary Americans, with whom the GM and Chrysler bailouts have become overwhelmingly unpopular over the past year, are unlikely to agree. Especially not if they learn that GM was able to "pay back" the loan only because it had not yet spent all of the other $43 billion in taxpayer money it raked in last year.

But, as Mix further notes, the mirage that GM and UAW officials are being fiscally responsible with the taxpayer's money is just part of their plan to ask for even more money from the government:

...[T]he apparent motive of Obama-selected GM CEO Ed Whitacre and UAW officials in repaying the $6.7 billion now is to pave the way for the company to secure a new $10 billion loan from taxpayers at an interest rate of just 5%, two points lower than the previous rate, to pay for the retooling of its plants to meet the government's new, stricter fuel-economy standards.

If the GM/UAW "zombie" corporation obtains the new $10 billion government loan, it will end up even more deeply in hock to taxpayers than before, after having gotten good PR and kudos from the president for having paid off its original loan "in full."

Fortunately, the American people are not as easily bamboozled as President Obama and his cohorts in the GM and UAW union hierarchies seem to think they are.

Mix concludes that "the president's fork-tongued reassurances that all is going well with the bailouts are likely to make Americans angrier and angrier as time goes on" because his special deals and political paybacks to his Big Labor buddies are more than American families can bear, and serves no purpose other than to enrich Big Labor’s coffers.

Today, the Denver Post questioned President Obama's recess appointment of radical SEIU union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board, noting how Becker's biases against workers' rights:

From the Denver Post:

We question Becker's ability to be an arbiter enforcing fairness in union elections...Becker served as counsel to both the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO. It was [SEIU] president Andy Stern who visited the Obama White House 38 times (at last count), and his union spent a reported $66 million to help the president win election.

The Post continues:

He not only supports so-called "card check," the Employee Free Choice Act that which would effectively eliminate secret ballots and strip away worker privacy when forming a union, he also advocates for the elimination of the "no union" option from workers' ballots. And he thinks employers should have no "role in union organizing campaigns and in union representation elections."

How can Americans expect Becker will exhibit impartiality?

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, for instance, already has asked Becker to recuse himself from 12 cases because "his prior writings demonstrate a bias against the group."

Read the whole Denver Post editorial here.

Last month, the Senate rejected an attempt to confirm President Barack Obama's nomination of pro-compulsory unionism radical Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The Wall Street Journal reports that with the Senate now taking it's Easter recess, Becker could be appointed via a recess appointment "as early as today."

As the Journal notes, a Craig Becker NLRB appointment resurrection would be disastrous to employee rights:

Mr. Becker has written extensively about the National Labor Relations Act, the law that the NLRB interprets and enforces. In a 1993 Minnesota Law Review article, he said that the "core defect in union election law . . . is the employer's status as a party to labor representation proceedings" and that "employers should be stripped of any legally cognizable interest in their employees' election of representatives."

In other words, you can forget about employees getting truthful and non-coercive information about the downsides of unionization.

But there's more.  Becker has publicly argued union goons should have the privilege to repeatedly harass workers at home until the workers sign "card check" union authorization cards; advocated allowing government arbiters impose contracts on workers without even allowing the workers to vote on the contract; and has even compared union organizing elections to US Congressional elections, stating that the only question decided in such elections should be which union gets monopoly control over workers, not whether they wish to remain independent and union free. 

Or as the Journal puts it, "the modern union movement is bloody-minded about the will to power and Mr. Becker is one of its fiercest partisans."

Meanwhile, Mark Mix, President of National Right to Work, expressed some additional concerns regarding Becker's extreme forced unionism record in this morning's Washington Times:

Mark Mix of the National Right to Work organization reports that in 2007 alone, Mr. Becker's lawyering forced 63,000 California workers to pay union dues even after rejecting union membership. He [encouraged] repeated "home visits" for union backers, designed to pressure workers to sign public union-organizing petitions. Unions were "formed to escape the evils of individualism and individual competition. ... Their actions necessarily involve coercion," Mr. Becker once explained.

To view more information on Big Labor sycophant Craig Becker's radical views, check out this National Right to Work Committee special video report:

FEC Fails to Investigate Teachers’ Complaint of NEA Union Money Laundering Scheme

Employee rights advocate weighs federal lawsuit

Washington, DC (January 5, 2010) – Apparently without conducting a field investigation, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) dismissed a complaint against one of the most politically active unions in America after evidence surfaced that union officials deposited illegally laundered dues money into its political action committee (PAC).

Citing in part lack of sufficient funding to enforce the law, the FEC junked a complaint filed by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and two Alabama teachers who discovered a union scheme to divert convention reimbursements into the National Education Association (NEA) union’s PAC.

When attending the NEA’s 2004 national convention, Daphne Middle School science department chair Claire Waites was deceived into supporting the NEA’s PAC and was determined that it would not happen again. However, Waites and Assistant Principal Dr. Jeanne Fox, both members of the Baldwin County Education Association (BCEA), Alabama Education Association (AEA), and NEA unions, discovered the practice continues.

Click here to read the full release.

True to form, compulsory unionism advocates are exploiting a serious situation to try to force more workers into union monopoly control. In this case, union bosses have long set their sights on forcing America's airport screeners into union ranks. From the Wall Street Journal:

The notion that unionized airport baggage screeners in Detroit could have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane in Amsterdam or Lagos doesn't make much sense. But sure enough, some in Congress are using the thwarted Christmas Day terrorist attack to argue that a new leader for the Transportation Security Administration could have saved the day.

Rahm Emanuel's famous declaration that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste seems to have become a way of Washington life.

That's the meaning of the political and media beatdown now being visited on Republican Senator Jim DeMint for the high crime of putting a hold on the nomination of Erroll Southers to head TSA, which runs the 50,000 airport screeners. Mr. DeMint objects because Mr. Southers has refused to say whether he would reverse current policy and back collective bargaining for baggage and passenger screeners, which the Obama Administration and Democrats on Capitol Hill support.

...Mr. DeMint's objection is rooted in a substantive concern that union practices and work rules will compromise security. TSA uses a performance pay system that tries to reward ability and effort, with the goal of recruiting and retaining the best employees. Unions prefer seniority-based pay that puts a premium on time served rather than performance.

TSA also needs to be able to change its procedures or move personnel to high-risk locations on short notice. Agency managers now have the ability to do that, but under union work rules they might need to get the permission of union leaders, who won't want to upset the rank-and-file.

In other words, Congressman Thompson has it exactly backwards. If the goal is to have a "nimble, responsive" TSA, a non-union work force makes more sense.

The Journal correctly points out that union boss work rules can hamper TSA's efforts to keep our skies safe. But also, union bosses often put the expansion of their forced unionism empire before the safety of the public and even the very employees they claim to represent.

But it doesn't stop at airport screeners, Big Labor is actively pushing to subject America's first responders to union monopoly control as well. 

President Barack Obama's efforts to transition the Department of Labor into a giant, taxpayer-funded extension of Big Labor's organizing and political fund-raising machine just hit another milestone. President Barack Obama's January 30, 2009 executive order, aimed to help union bosses seize more forced dues revenue to fund Big Labor’s political agenda, was just printed in the Federal Register -- making it official. 

In a nutshell, the EO tears down posted notices to employees of federal contractors which explain they can actually refrain from paying forced union dues spent for union electioneering and the like.

Obama's directive intends to ensure millions of workers do not learn of their rights and revokes former-President Bush's February 2001 executive order which required federal contractors to post notices in the workplace simply informing employees of their right to refrain from formal, full-dues-paying union membership and pay only the documented cost of collective bargaining.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys won these rights in their precedent-setting U.S. Supreme Court victory in Communication Workers v. Beck (1988).  

Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember Obama's edict was one of the first in a long line of political paybacks to Big Labor for their use of over a billion forced-dues dollars in 2008 to elected him and his pro-compulsory unionism allies in Congress.  View some other Obama paybacks to Big Labor, including his picks on who controls the Department of Labor and the NLRB, rolling back union disclosure guidelines and reducing union boss accountability, and using taxpayer dollars to fund their forced dues operations and bail out union boss pension funds.

Union Watchdog Files Second Disclosure Request to Investigate Obama Labor Department Stonewalling

Media report indicates Department of Labor officials are “in a tizzy and freaking out” over federal lawsuit

Washington, DC (December 2, 2009) – The National Right to Work Foundation has filed new disclosure demands on the heels of its lawsuit to compel the Department of Labor (DOL) to release information related to high-ranking officials’ connections to powerful union lobbying interests.

A media report indicates DOL officials have deliberately ignored disclosure laws, and Right to Work attorneys are seeking internal DOL records backing up the report.

National Right to Work originally lodged a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request last April citing concerns about Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, who previously held a key leadership position at the Big Labor-front group “American Rights at Work,” and Deborah Greenfield, who was a lawyer for the AFL-CIO involved in a lawsuit challenging DOL union disclosure regulations that she now oversees as an administration appointee.

For the last seven months, the Obama Administration has stonewalled the Foundation’s FOIA request seeking disclosure of the high-ranking DOL officials’ contacts with union operatives. Late last month, Right to Work attorneys filed suit in federal court to force the Obama Administration to fulfill its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.

Subsequent media coverage has revealed DOL officials apparently decided to ignore the Foundation’s FOIA request, but facing the lawsuit and negative publicity is now reconsidering. Additionally, one media report cited a high-placed source stating that panicked DOL officials “are in a tizzy and freaking out” because of the Foundation’s lawsuit.

(Read the full press release)

Today, President Barack Obama's nomination of pro-compulsory unionism radical Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is scheduled to be taken up in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

National Right to Work President Mark Mix warns in today's Washington Times of the grave dangers Becker's possible confirmation will pose to workers' rights:

When the union bosses have the NLRB in their fold, workers who try to exercise their legal rights to dismiss unwanted union monopoly bargaining agents - or even to stop their forced dues from being used to elect handpicked Big Labor candidates - are denied even the most basic protections.

That's why, especially considering Mr. Becker's record, it's not a stretch to believe that - should he be confirmed by the U.S. Senate - Mr. Becker wouldn't think twice about rubber-stamping even the most abusive forced unionism schemes cooked up by union militants.

In fact, as a former AFL-CIO and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) lawyer, Mr. Becker is solely responsible for forcing tens of thousands of workers under union boss control.

In one case, reports from a Los Angeles SEIU local union revealed that almost 63,000 people rejected membership in the union in 2007, but thanks to Mr. Becker, were still forced to pay dues.

And Mr. Becker's own words explain why. He was even so bold as to say unions were "formed to escape the evils of individualism and individual competition ... their actions necessarily involve coercion."

With that kind of anything-goes attitude, it's no surprise Mr. Becker supports "home visits," in which union militants repeatedly harass workers at home until they sign union-authorization cards, and even advocates letting Mr. Obama's handpicked arbiters impose contracts on workers, without even allowing the workers to vote on their own contract.

In fact, Mr. Becker is so extreme he actually believes the only choice workers should have is which union they should be forced to join and pay dues to!

In Mr. Becker's view, if an independent worker refuses to pick, he and the rest of Big Labor's lackeys on the NLRB should be able to choose a union for that worker. This kind of Big Labor kowtowing is not only outrageous, but it's also dangerous.

To read all of Mark Mix's op-ed in the Washington Times click here.