LaborPains.org

Mike Reitz over at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation has written up a worrying little story on EFF’s blog, Liberty Live. The Seattle Education Association has gone to court to prevent the release of public records, in this case union-related e-mails sent using the Seattle school district’s network. The judge has sealed the e-mails, unfortunately, because the school district effectively cooperated with the union’s obstruction by not seriously contesting the union’s move.

As Reitz puts it, the teachers union (with the aid of the district) is undermining open government:

This provides a blueprint for all those who love government secrecy. A citizen requests specific documents. An interested third party sues to prevent disclosure. The government entity throws up a weak defense, and the records are sealed by the court. Unless a private citizen has thousands of dollars to intervene, the cause of open government is subverted.

In its rush to collect money from people not yet unionized, Working America, the AFL-CIO’s “community affiliate,” employs some shady characters. As a report from The Independent in Ohio indicates, the group appears to flagrantly disregard laws designed to protect public safety. Wayne C. Christopher, 48, was arrested in Canal Fulton in eastern Ohio for soliciting Working America memberships in a residential area without a permit, having apparently violated a law “meant to protect residents from criminals who may be casing homes and neighborhoods.”

So what threat did this Working America canvasser present? Well, he faces two open arrest warrants in Cleveland, “has convictions for rape, felonious sexual penetration and pandering obscenity and is a tier-three registered sex offender.”

Worst of all, even the notice Working America did give to police seems to have selectively omitted any mention of its criminal canvassers: “Canal Fulton police were notified Monday afternoon that a group from Working America was coming down to do canvassing. A faxed list of names did not include the three people with criminal histories, [Officer Douglas] Swartz said.”

Perhaps Working America has taken a page out of the handbook of another union-backed organizing group — ACORN, which can’t seem to keep its own canvassers out of trouble.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign is crying foul over alleged voter intimidation in Nevada, after two workers reported that the Culinary Workers Union — one of the most powerful unions in the state and a division of UNITE HERE — intimidated them to vote for Obama.

That got former National Economic Council Director Larry Lindsey thinking that maybe Clinton would come to terms with her endorsement of the terribly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act. Lindsey wrote in this morning’s Washington Post:

I wonder if, having seen such voter intimidation, the Clinton campaign will change its position on doing away with government-supervised secret-ballot elections for union representation. Under the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act, secret-ballot elections to decide whether a plant is unionized would be replaced with a public “card check” system, under which both employers and union organizers would know how each worker voted. Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama and former senator John Edwards all support this bill.

But a card-check system would offer even more room for intimidation of workers. A union card can be signed by workers at any time during an organizing campaign, which can take many months. Union organizers can pursue workers in their homes, at churches and civic clubs, and at watering holes after hours. Workers’ family members can also be intimidated during this process. So much for a “free choice” for employees.

The bill assaults workers’ rights in other ways, too. For example, it would make it a crime for management to raise pay or improve working conditions while a plant is being organized. So the only way to get a raise would be to get the campaign over with and bring the union in. Such an arrangement might strike some as government-mandated intimidation.

Yesterday, employees at Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Connecticut testified that the UAW intimidated them to vote for the union. TheDay.com reports:

Several dealers testified this morning that they had been intimidated by pro-union employees before a union vote at Foxwoods Resort Casino. Others said they were either told directly or overheard union supporters telling dealers prior to the election that their jobs were in jeopardy if they voted against unionization.

While the article itself is interesting, a apparent union supporter made a precient comment to the article:

It’s a secret ballot, how can anyone be intimidated.

Exactly. The trouble is that unions are trying to do away with the secret ballot by pressuring Congress to pass the terribly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act.

European unions are always good for a chuckle:

Doing nothing for a living is not as easy as it looks. That was the militant message from Italy yesterday where artists’ nude models climbed back into their clothes and went on strike for better pay and conditions.

Federal prosecutors have re-filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations suit against the International Longshoremen’s Association, after the judge asked the government to make its original suit, filed in 2005, more clear. As the Bureau of National Affairs reports (subscription required):

[T]he wide-ranging government lawsuit alleged that the union, several of its top officials, and various labor-management benefit plans were controlled by organized crime as part of a “waterfront enterprise” in the ports of New York and New Jersey, Miami, and elsewhere. Co-defendants in the suit were several criminal figures associated with the Genovese and Gambino crime organizations.

In case you missed it: Over the weekend, the Center for Union Facts landed an opinion piece in The Arizona Republic, the Grand Canyon State’s largest newspaper. As with our last foray into Arizona opinion journalism, this article concerns the United Food and Commercial Workers union’s questionable attempts to unionize Bashas’ supermarkets:

Bashas’ has accused the UFCW of planting outdated baby formula in the company’s stores, a claim that echoes the union’s conduct in a similar pressure campaign against the non-union Food Lion supermarket chain. The UFCW’s “story” of food mishandling and unfair labor practices at the chain was fed to ABC News for a 1992 story, which cost ABC a major lawsuit after a judge found no evidence of wrongdoing by the company.

James Sherk over at the Heritage Foundation has an interesting rundown of the number of Americans that would be disenfranchised by the deceptively-named Employee Free Choice Act:

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would disenfranchise 105 million American workers. For union organizing elections, the legislation would replace the secret ballot with a system of “card checks,” where union organizers pressure workers to publicly sign a card stating they want to join a union. Workers would never have the option of voting against union membership, and millions of workers could be forced into a union without ever getting the chance to vote on the matter. Congress should preserve a worker’s right to vote in privacy on union membership.