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.

The full article is published in the Texas Review of Law & Politics Vol. 14, No. 2.

It appears Big Labor will stop at nothing to impose card check forced unionism on American workers and job-providers. Public opposition from energized Right to Work supporters and other concerned Americans to the draconian card check bill -- which eliminates the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives, opens up workers to intimidating "home visits," and allows government bureaucrats to impose contracts on workers -- has thus far stalled the legislation in the Senate.

On Tuesday, in what may have been a test vote on card check, the Senate rejected an attempt to move President Obama's nomination of radical union lawyer Craig Becker to a seat on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the quasi-judicial agency that administers federal labor law.  Becker's writings indicated a willingness to impose the card check forced unionism mechanism through NLRB rules, without even a Congressional vote.

But despite this setback union officials aren't giving up on card check, and neither are the forced unionism proponents in the Obama Administration.  The Daily Caller reports that White House staffers are considering a new executive order that could effectively require all federal contractors to submit their workers to coercive card check campaigns:

Critics say the proposals would heavily favor unionized companies and significantly increase the cost and amount of time needed to award contracts. Estimates have the potential cost increase at 20 percent, adding about $100 billion a year to the federal budget.

“Making contracting decisions based on political or ideological litmus tests will waste taxpayer dollars and limit economic growth at a time when we can least afford to do so. The administration’s new rules amount to a backdoor attempt at card check. The last thing our small businesses need is to be saddled with new rules that effectively say ‘unionize or die,’” said John Hart, communications director for Senator Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican. Coburn and four other Senate Republicans sent a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag last week asking for a briefing on the proposals; they have yet to receive a response.

...

Now the administration is facing increasing pressure to go around Congress and implement pro-labor policies via executive order. The Service Employees International Union, one of the groups lobbying the White House to adopt the new labor policies, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

No surprises here: SEIU czar Andy Stern was the most frequest visitor to the White House in Obama's first year.

Yesterday in Roll Call, Bret Jacobson noted the importance of today's Senate hearings on President Obama's nomination of Service Employee International Union General Counsel, Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

Thus, we have today’s hearing for Becker, a longtime strategist and lawyer for organized labor. If they can’t get “card check” through a broad, participatory legislative process, they’ll push to grab a similar victory through the federal board’s ability to regulate without approval of the people’s Representatives.

As such, this hearing — demanded by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who is troubled by Becker’s blatantly anti-employer views — signals that we have officially hit plan B on the administration’s strategy for pandering to the organized labor lobby. This new course will focus on the quiet job-killer of regulation and card check by fiat.

But the real problem isn't that Becker is anti-employer -- it's that his career as a diehard union boss apologist reveals an extreme hostility to the very employees the union bosses claim to represent.  Last October, National Right Work president Mark Mix took to the pages of the Washington Times to make this very point:

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.

Contrast Craig Becker's radical, pro-coercion views with the words of Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor: "No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion."

For more on Becker, see this post from the National Right to Work Committee's blog and visit their action center here.

Last week, AFL-CIO union czar Richard Trumka (download the Foundation's Fact Sheet on his history of condoning union violence and corruption) made headlines by predicting that the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill will pass in early 2010.  The heated debate over the health care overhaul legislation has kept the public eye off this other union boss power grab for a few months, but Trumka's prediction makes it clear Big Labor's high command haven't forgotten about their highest priority.

The Card Check Forced Unionism Bill would effectively eliminate workers' right to a secret ballot in workplace unionization drives and replace it with overt union intimidation:

Under the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that refer to the secret ballot election would be rendered a dead letter, even though they are not technically stricken from federal law.

Big Labor spin artists can claim all they want that the workers can still "choose" to have a secret ballot election, but there simply is no way by which workers can force union bosses to file for a secret ballot election -- and it is union bosses, not workers, who are in possession of the cards.  Reporters who repeat this union boss talking point owe their readers a correction.

Read the full analysis here.  Union bosses prefer card check instant organizing because it puts all of the power in their hands -- free from the meddling interference of government election supervisors and the workers themselves.  

Fortunately, we already know what card check campaigns look like.  Unfortunately, we only know this because hardworking Americans have been subjected to harassment, intimidation, and coercion by union bosses to get them to sign cards.  In the video below, Dana Corporation employees in Albion, Indiana, shared their stories with the National Right to Work Committee.

The National Right to Work Committee warns to beware of any bogus compromises under the guise of protecting the secret ballot.  One of the most dangerous aspect of the "compromise" talks is the lack of focus on the other toxic provision of the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill: mandatory binding arbitration.

Under the bill, workers won't just lose the right to a secret ballot when deciding whether or not to form a union.  Even those who choose to join a union's ranks may see their voting rights severely limited, as mandatory binding arbitration would allow government bureaucrats to impose contracts on workers.  That means union members may not even be able to vote to ratify their contracts: Whatever the government says... goes.

Even Far Left icon George McGovern knows this is a terrible idea.   And as Reason Foundation analyst Shikha Dalmia detailed in the Wall Street Journal, states' experiments with mandatory binding arbitration and public sector unions have led to atrocious results -- including out of control budgets and fiscal mismanagement.

Here at Freedom@Work, we've covered the so-called Employee Free Choice Act (more accurately called the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill). The job-killing bill would effectively eliminate the secret ballot in union certification elections and open up workers to intimidation and dirty tricks by union organizers in coercive card check organizing drives.  Moreover, the bill's mandatory binding arbitration provision would allow federal bureaucrats to impose terms and conditions of employment on workers and employers -- which even Far Left icon George McGovern opposes.

Shikha Dalmia, senior analyst at the Reason Foundation, wrote in the Wall Street Journal this weekend -- echoing what National Right to Work has been documenting for years -- that mandatory binding arbitration has been occurring in government employment in numerous forced unionism states with atrocious results.

In 1969, the Wolverine State embraced a form of compulsory arbitration nearly identical to the one proposed in EFCA to resolve disputes with its police and firefighters. Years later, Detroit mayor Coleman Young -- who had authored the original law as state senator -- rued what he had done. "We now know that compulsory arbitration has been a failure," he lamented to the National Journal in 1981. "Slowly, inexorably, compulsory interest arbitration has destroyed sensible fiscal management and has caused more damage to the public service than the strikes it was designed to prevent."

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A 2006 task force convened by Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who supports compulsory arbitration, found that local government costs in arbitration states are 3%-5% higher compared to nonarbitration states. "While small in percentage terms, the impact in dollar terms is huge," the task force concluded. Given that local governments in Michigan alone spend over $23 billion annually, this works out to over a billion in extra spending for them.

Michigan's experience is hardly unique. Former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis also tried to limit public-sector compulsory arbitration during his first term. In 1977, Mr. Dukakis argued that compulsory arbitration "has removed legitimate management prerogatives in the area of staff assignments, (and) transfers from the control of municipal officials at a time when they are under severe pressure to improve their management and make savings." Mr. Dukakis failed to stop compulsory arbitration, but two years later Massachusetts voters approved a ballot initiative that effectively scrapped it.

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Businesses are not the only losers in compulsory arbitration. Currently, any contract negotiated by union officials has to be ratified through a vote of rank-and-file members. Under compulsory arbitration, workers do not get this vote. In other words, EFCA will take away the right of workers to vote to form a union, and then binding arbitration will take away their right to vote on a contract.

The only clear winners under this law would be the union bosses, who will obtain new powers without any new accountability. If Michigan's experience suggests anything, it's that rank-and-file workers, businesses, and the American economy will suffer. Sen. Lincoln and her colleagues should bear this in mind before they make their final decisions.

[Emphasis added]

Read the whole thing here.

Click here to watch an urgent video message from Senator Jim DeMint, Steve Forbes, and National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. 

In the latest of a litany of Big Labor political paybacks, President Barack Obama nominated union lawyer George H. Cohen to Director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). 

According to the Peggy Browning Fund’s biography of Cohen, "he joined the National Labor Relations Board in 1960 as an Attorney Advisor for Board Member [Gerald] Brown where he helped shape the progressive, union [boss]... friendly agenda of the 'Kennedy Board'…  In 1966, George left the Board to begin his 40 year stint as a union-side labor lawyer."

Cohen’s past efforts on behalf of union chiefs clearly indicates that he brings years of forced unionism bias to what is a very coveted position for Big Labor.

Under the mandatory binding arbitration provision in the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, the FMCS bureaucrats would take over employer/union boss contract negotiations 90 days after a card check forced organizing campaign.  The forced arbitration provision that is triggered at 120 days not only snatches the power of contract negotiations away from the people it actually affects; but it also, as the Wall Street Journal notes, emboldens union bosses "to run out the 120-day clock and let an arbitrator impose a contract that is bound to include much of what unions demand."  The federally-imposed contract would be binding for two years.

If Big Labor's Card Check Forced Unionism Bill passes, the Cohen-led FMCS would become a defacto rubber stamp for union boss coercion, doing Big Labor's dirty work during negotiations and empowering them to browbeat employers into forcing more workers into forced-dues-paying union membership.

Obama's nomination of yet another union hired gun, this time for the vital post of FMCS Director, is just another example in a long list of union stooges who clearly do not have the best interests of independent-minded workers at heart.