Workers from across the country have received free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation. Now they're speaking out to encourage others to stand up for their rights in this latest Right to Work video:

As always, check back at the Foundation's YouTube channel for more Right to Work video updates. Many of the workers featured in this week's segment have appeared in previous Foundation video interviews describing their stories in greater detail.

Foundation attorneys have filed an unprecedented lawsuit in North Carolina state court on behalf of 16 AT&T employees against local union bosses who illegally released their confidential personal information (including their social security numbers) as retaliation for exercising their right to refrain from union membership. Two of the workers explain their battle in the latest Right to Work video report...

For more background information on the case, the Foundation's press release is available online here. The Burlington Times-News' coverage of the lawsuit is available online here.

Be sure to subscribe to the Foundation's YouTube Channel for more Right to Work video reports.

We've just released a mini video segment on the Foundation's ongoing efforts to hold union officials liable for a campaign of intimidation and harassment against Patricia Pelletier, a Connecticut worker who successfully initiated a decertification election to eject an unwanted union from her workplace. Union hotheads even planted crack cocaine in her work area to try to get her fired. Check it out:

For more background on the case, the Foundation's press release is available online here. The Hartford Courant's coverage of the Foundation's pending lawsuit is available here.

As always, check back at the Foundation's YouTube Channel for more Right to Work video updates.

The National Association of Manufacturer's 'Shopfloor' blog has post up on another oft-repeated card-check myth. The entry starts out with Big Labor's favorite rejoinder to critics of the erroneously-titled "Employee Free Choice Act" (EFCA):

The most-common misleading response from organized labor to the criticism that the Employee Free Choice Act will destroy the secret ballot in the workplace goes like…well, here’s a recent example. It comes from Bill McCarthy, president of the Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation.

. . .

"The EFCA would give workers, not employers, the right to decide how to express the choice about going union: through the card-check process OR through the NLRB election process."

McCarthy is playing the readers for idiots. Theoretically, oh sure, union organizers might, possibly, theoretically, choose an election, maybe. But under what possible circumstance would that be a realistic choice?

Well said. Once union organizers are given license to unilaterally bypass NLRB-supervised elections, there's absolutely no incentive for them to go the less-abusive secret ballot route. Union militants know that card-check drives dramatically increase their chances of warehousing employees into monopoly bargaining collectives by opening the door to intimidation and harassment.

Shopfloor also highlights the excellent congressional testimony (.pdf) of John Raudabaugh, a labor law attorney and former member of the NLRB. Here's his assesment of the EFCA (emphasis mine):

[Big] Labor claims that elevating card-check to secret ballot status does not do away with the ballot box. Their double-speak is a pathetic attempt to "change the subject." To trigger the secret ballot process and NLRB administrative involvement, 30 percent or more of the employees in an "appropriate unit" must sign a petition requesting an election. Should a union garner signatures from more than 50 percent of the unit employees, an employer can voluntarily recognize the union or not to ensure a secret ballot election. Why? To protect the employee-voter from peer pressure and third party overreaching.

[Big] Labor wants card-check with 50+ percent yield to bypass but equate to the ballot box process. Why? To effectively silence the employer by conducting a quick, one-sided campaign without counter-information from the employer. Moreover, without the ballot-box, there is effectively no cure to overreaching and false Labor promises.

[Big] Labor and its funded academics ignore Taft-Hartley specifically protecting a worker’s right to refrain from third-party representation. Were the union to come up short of 50+ percent signed cards, would it really proceed to file a petition for an election? No, the secret ballot would not remain a real option under the EFCA proposal.

And that's the bottom line. The card check bill will almost certainly result in the de facto elimination of all secret ballot protections in the workplace. Suggesting otherwise is simply dishonest.

For a more comprehensive look at the EFCA, check out this (.pdf) National Institute for Labor Relations Research study.

Here at Freedom @ Work, we often discuss card check by citing examples of employees being harassed, misled, or lied to by union organizers.

But simple common sense also says that when (often intimidating) individuals shove a piece of paper in your face, and tell you that it is in your interest to sign, you may well do it -- even if you aren't exactly sure what you are signing.

Case in point are two videos -- both done for television shows -- of people signing absurd petitions. In both cases, the signature collectors don't even lie to the people whose signatures they seek about what they are signing.

In one video, two comedians set up a table at a fair and easily collect dozens of signatures, mostly from women, to "end women's suffrage." Meaning that without even lying, they got dozens of women to sign a petition in favor of eliminating their right to vote.

In another video, shown below, a women collects hundreds of signatures to ban "Dihydrogen Monoxide" -- better known as water -- at a rally of environmentalists. Like, the "end women's suffrage" pranksters, the signature collector truthfully informs prospective signers about the chemical (water) that they want to ban:

As these videos show, just because someone signs a petition or card, doesn't mean they really understand what they are signing. Furthermore, Foundation legal cases have shown outright lies about the meaning or effect of the cards. These realities are something that must be remembered when union bosses or their allies in Congress attempt to impose more card check coercion on workers.

Here's an interesting story (via EIA) from Nevada where teacher union officials are gathering signatures to put a massive tax increase on the ballot in November.

According to the Las Vegas Sun, union political operatives, who need to collect tens of thousands of signatures in order to put the tax hike on the ballot, are having trouble getting people to sign because "blockers" who oppose the tax increase are voicing their opposition to prospective signers during the collection process.

The article quotes one such "blocker" as saying "Say no to the tax grab! Think before you ink!" until the individual who might have signed the union operative's petition decides against it and leaves. Nevada's top teacher union official Lynn Warne denounced the actions as "thug tactics" (which is ironic because according to this website, the tactic was invented by union organizers in Oregon).

Normally there wouldn't be much to add to this story, but a closer look reveals another example of a nasty pattern: Union bosses have realized that absent opposing viewpoints or the privacy of the secret ballot, they have no problem getting anyone to sign anything.

However, when employees or employers insist on providing an opposing viewpoint or demanding a secret ballot election union officials have considerably more trouble selling their power grabs. Rather than persuade workers (or in this case registered voters in Nevada) on the merits, they'd rather hoodwink or pressure them into signing -- while denouncing the presentation of an opposing viewpoint as "thug tactics."

A recent ruling by a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge upheld the right of employees to sign a union decertification petition in the midst of a debilitating strike. More importantly, the ruling also endorsed the employer's refusal to hand over non-striking workers' home addresses and other personal information to union officials bent on harassment and intimidation.

On the advice of Foundation staff attorneys, a substantial majority (77 percent) of non-striking employees at a Tenneco facility in Grass Lakes, Michigan signed a petition in favor of union decertification. Unwilling to relinquish their stranglehold on workplace representation, United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 660 officials filed a complaint with the NLRB, arguing that non-striking employees favored decertification only because of Tenneco's unfair labor practices. The NLRB judge rejected these claims and concluded that the UAW's objections to the decertification process were entirely without merit.

More significant, however, was the stern rebuke delivered to UAW officials for demanding Tenneco hand over the non-striking workers' personal contact information, including home addresses. Union officials claimed they needed the employees' home addresses to "communicate" the benefits of membership directly, but the judge decided that the threat of union intimidation justified Tenneco's decision to withold personal information from UAW militants.

The judge noted that the union's rationale for acquiring the employees' home addresses was suspect, as " . . . the Union had other viable means of communicating with the replacements short of having access to their homes." He also recognized that union operatives had exhibited a pattern of harassment, having previously " . . . traveled to the personal residence of two members, whose address they certainly had access to, and staged a protest of their stance on the strike." The judge further noted the UAW's "venomous" and "disrespectful" attitude towards non-striking workers. So much for fair representation.

Full text of the NLRB ruling is available here. It's a long decision, but you'll find the judge's response to union demands for employees' personal information on pages 62-65. His assesment of the decertification petition's legality is available on pages 74-79.

Strike-related violence is an under-reported aspect of compulsory unionization, and the UAW has a long history of harassment and abuse. In fact, Freedom@Work recently exposed a similar campaign of intimidation against non-striking workers at a Volvo auto plant in Pulaski County, Virginia.