LaborPains.org

Credit: Crazy George

Every Senate Democrat voted against a Republican measure to nullify the National Labor Relations Board’s controversial ruling in favor of “quickie” or “ambush” votes on unionization.

Labor experts believe the NLRB rule will slash the time between calling and holding an election from 40 days to as few as 14. There has been an outcry from Republicans who believe that “the new rules will lead to ‘ambush’ elections that barely leave company managers enough time to respond or counsel against forming a union.”

Senate Democrats gave the impression that they’re unafraid of the consequences at the ballot box for their stand. Though Republicans had little chance of passing the amendment in the Democratic-controlled Senate, it forced some Democrats who face tough re-election bids to take a stand on an issue important to business groups. While the chances of the amendment passing were slim, President Obama still threatened a veto on the measure.

Newt Gingrich recently wrote the column below for Human Events:

Big Labor asserts that workers have rights to a workweek capped at 40 hours, a certain amount of paid vacation, and unsustainable pension programs. Rights, in fact, to lots of things—but not to leave the union or to stop funding their political activities. The Employee Rights Act, introduced last year by Sen. Orrin Hatch and Rep. Tim Scott, seeks to change that.

We all know the feeling of quiet resentment upon opening a paycheck, only to find that a quarter of what we’ve earned has been hijacked by a federal government everyone knows is extravagantly wasteful. But, however much of our income we may suspect is going to finance public employees’ “planning” excursions to Las Vegas, at least we know that much of our money does go to important purposes.

Some Americans, though, find in each paycheck a void more unpleasant than tax withholding. For those workers whose jobs require them to be members of a union, they are likely to find that their unions have deducted money, as well, much of it used for political activities—even without their consent.

Few people, given a choice, would wish to donate large chunks of their income regularly to political campaigns, year after year of their working lives. Yet under current law, unions can make it difficult—if not impossible—for employees to opt out of contributing to such activities. And if they even try, members could face intimidation, or worse.

This shakedown is a fundamental violation of employee rights. Its sole purpose is to protect the political power of union bosses. And for many union members, the money their so-called leaders are skimming from their paychecks goes to advance political causes to which the employees themselves are opposed.

We know that the biggest unions dropped well in excess of $100 million on the 2010 elections, and that 93 percent of union spending was on behalf of Democrats. Yet the same year, more than 40 percent of voters in union households reported casting their ballots for Republicans.

That means millions of union members had money taken from their paychecks and used to support candidates of the party they were voting against—and they scarcely had a choice about it.

What’s more, only a tiny minority of employees in a union today ever had a chance to vote whether they wanted their workplaces to be unionized in the first place. Less than 10 percent have voted for a union in their workplace, according to National Labor Relations Board and Census data. Even for many of their own members, unions are unwelcome and entrenched organizations everyone but the union bosses would be better off without.

The Employee Rights Act seeks to correct these genuine injustices.

It would transform the outdated labor law to protect workers’ paychecks from union deductions for political purposes, providing instead that they could opt in to such contributions. Of course, the unions oppose this change not for reasons of principle or for the well-being of their members, but because they know few of those members would choose to give them the money on which the bosses’ political power depends.

In addition, the bill would require unions to be recertified in workplaces every three years, to confirm that employees actually want to be in a union. Many companies today are unionized because employees voted decades ago to join—and there has never been another vote since. The barriers to decertification are very high, and again, serve only to protect the union bosses, not the employees, who could always vote to keep their union representation. The reason they oppose these rights is because they know many of their members would vote to decertify them if they had the chance.

The bill would also give workers the right to a secret ballot regarding questions of union certification and union strikes. There are no free or fair decisions about workplace representation when union organizers can pressure employees, individually and in groups, into signing union authorization petitions. But in 2009, workers were denied a secret ballot in nearly 40 percent of union authorizations.

Finally, the bill would criminalize threats of violence by unions in an attempt to intimidate employees.

Each of these provisions is supported by large majorities not just of Americans at large, but of union households as well.  Polling shows 78 percent of union households support the bill, and 80 percent of non-union households.  Americans can see there are simply no arguments against recognizing these employee rights.

Practically the only people who oppose the bill are the union leaders and the politicians who depend on their largesse. As Richard Berman of the Center for Union Facts, which conducted the polling, put it, “I have yet to hear any responsible objection to the ERA provisions. With 80 percent public support all politicians should embrace these changes to a law that hasn’t been substantially modified since 1947.”

It’s a frightening commentary on what unions have become that we need legislation to protect employees’ rights, not from abuse by their employers, but by Big Labor itself.

A federal court blocked the NLRB from issuing a rule requiring employers to display posters explaining workers’ collective bargaining rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ordered an emergency injunction on the rule, pending appeal. The poster rule, set to go into effect on April 30, will now be delayed until the appeal is decided.

“The facts in this case and the law have always been on the side of manufacturers, and we believe that granting an injunction is the appropriate course of action for the  court. The ‘posting requirement’ is an unprecedented attempt by the board to assert power and authority it does not possess,” said Jay Timmons, National Association of Manufacturers president. (The Hill, 4/17/12)

On Friday, a federal judge for the U.S. district court in Charleston, S.C. struck down the NLRB poster rule. The ruling is a victory for business groups.

“We would hope they would suspend the regulation until all these legal uncertainties can be sorted out,” said Randel Johnson, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s senior vice president for labor issues. (Wall Street Journal, 4/16/12)

The poster created by the NLRB informs workers of their right to join a union or not join, but has no information on the decertification process–leading business groups to claim that the posters are one sided in favor of unions.

As unions are finding out, there’s nothing quite like being on the unpopular side of an election year issue. A fresh round of polls shows that, unlike unions, right-to-work legislation is very favorable in the Midwest.

Credit: A. Michael Simms

In Ohio, a new report by the Buckeye Institute shows that “[i]ncome, job numbers and capital investment is growing faster in states that have enacted right-to-work laws than in those that haven’t.” The Institute fingered mandatory union membership and dues payments as a culprit.

In the traditional union stronghold of Michigan, meanwhile, a new poll shows voters broadly support measures unions oppose. As Michael Barone notes, Michigan voters support right-to-work legislation by a wide, 58-to-37-percent margin.

Furthermore, voters “support the state’s Emergency Financial Management law which authorizes the governor to appoint an emergency financial manager to take over bankrupt local governments with the power to void union contracts,” by a 52-to-35 percent margin.

“EFMs, have been appointed in four cities and two school districts, including Detroit, so far; Snyder has tried to get Detroit Mayor Dave Bing to take actions that will avoid an EFM for the city government, so far unsuccessfully.” (The Washington Examiner, 3/30/12)

Unions have argued in court that Gov. Snyder’s move would violate their collective bargaining rights. But now, U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Tarnow has thrown out the unions’ request for a temporary restraining order, clearing the way for Snyder and Detroit to resolve the city’s crisis. With union obstructionism on such prominent display, it’s not shocking that union popularity is on the downturn even in Michigan.

In Minnesota, however, the disorganized state GOP is backing away from right-to-work legislation out of fear of a Democratic backlash. Politico reports that “[n]o state party may be in worse shape” than the Minnesota Republican party—and the trouble shows in its unwillingness to risk a fight with unions even when other factors are on its side.

Still, at the state level, unions seem to recognize that protests and demonstrations can only go so far in cowing legislators who lack confidence. They’re pouring an unprecedented amount of money and energy into influencing the 2012 race for the White House:

Unions spent over $400 million on elections in 2008, and nearly every penny went to Democrats. They spent over $200 million in 2010, and the single largest donor in that election was the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which spent $87.5 million. AFSCME has already pledged $100 million for the upcoming election. As AFSCME is a public employee union, that means the largest funder of Democratic campaigns is you, the taxpayer. Once upon a time Democrats—and even the AFL-CIO’s former president John Sweeney—opposed this kind of public sector union campaigning on principle. (The Weekly Standard, 3/26/12)

Faced with the rise of principled, practical right-to-work legislation, unions won’t change their tune anytime soon. At this rate, 2012 could be their make-or-break year.

According to President Obama, striking down the Affordable Care Act would be unforgivable judicial activism. According to his grassroots base, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision was an unjustifiable vote in favor of unbridled corporate power. But according to one union, Citizens United is proof that Indiana’s right-to-work law unconstitutionally infringes unions’ free speech rights—by preventing unions from extracting dues from workers on the pretext that they are bargaining on workers’ behalf.

“Attorneys for the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 argue in a court brief that Indiana’s new law, which allows workers to not pay union dues even if a union bargains on their behalf, interferes with the union’s free speech rights and ‘impinges on this fundamental right of union membership.’” (Associated Press, 4/9/12)

It’s strange enough to see the President’s union allies hang their hopes for the status quo on a ruling slammed by his base. But the logic of the union’s case gets even stranger.

Local 150 claims that it “legitimately utilizes dues money collected through agency shop provisions in its collective bargaining agreements” in order to “finance political speech,” among other things. Since Indiana’s right-to-work law bans agency shop agreements, it “restricts a channel through which speech-supporting finance might flow.”

It’s so crazy, it just might work—at least in the minds of the union’s imaginative attorneys. Even if it’s true, as Local 150 attorney Dale Pierson observes, that the courts require workers to pay unions “the costs of representing them’—and federal law mandates that unions represent all the workers—it’s quite a stretch to claim that union-selected political expenditures count as ‘representation.’

The recognized purpose of unions is to represent members’ interests inside the workplace in bargaining with employers—not to represent them outside the workplace by pushing whatever they consider their members’ best political interests to be.

It would appear that the Occupy movement is now being co-opted by labor unions. For unions, the freshness, energy, and publicity surrounding the movement is a rare opportunity to make news for reasons other than declining membership rolls.

Union leaders are wrapping themselves with the Occupy banner both rhetorically and literally. SEIU President Mary Kay Henry casts the Occupiers as natural allies reading from a script the unions wrote long ago.

“We have been talking about the increasing inequality in this country for a long time,” she said last October. “I think what’s wonderful about the Occupy movement is that they captured this with…’We are the 99 percent.’ I feel like what we are doing is echoing a very smart thing that the occupiers began with.”

Unions are more than echoing. As Townhall.com details, they’re organizing Occupy protests and voicing official support for demonstrators—using the movement as a springboard for their own efforts and agenda. In Chicago, Boston and Orange County (Calif.), area affiliates of the AFL-CIO organized protests for Occupiers and union members.

This is more than a casual relationship forged by fellow travelers. While labor leaders tout the Occupy movement’s economic themes, they quietly allow front groups to do the dirty work of collaborating with Occupiers on disruptive protests. As The Daily Caller reports, Occupy groups are connected to unions across the country by personnel and funding.

Last November, an SEIU front group, Good Jobs LA, joined with Occupy LA in demonstration against Bank of America. (Twenty protestors were arrested.) In Pittsburgh, the local Occupiers hooked up with another SEIU-linked group, One Pittsburgh, to protest against Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.).

The demonstration was billed as an anti-Wall Street event, but with SEIU’s influence it became a protest against Toomey’s “no” vote on advancing President Obama’s American Jobs Act legislation — a failed bill that would have benefited unions. (The Daily Caller, 3/8/12)

Meanwhile, one Seattle-based group, Working Washington, that mentions nothing about its ties to SEIU was co-founded by union executives and organizers and incorporated by an inside-the-beltway law firm tied to the union. In a logical next step, unions have now arranged to start training Occupiers in so-called “direct action” tactics.

Whatever sort of radical change Occupiers seek, most must never have imagined that they’d be facing assimilation into stale old union hierarchies.

Rather than an American manufacturer leading the way, Volkswagen has forged ahead with non-union labor at its busy plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The company has created over 2,700 jobs.

It may sound like a success story, but to the UAW, it’s grounds for action.

“The United Auto Workers union,” The Tennessean reports, “has begun passing out cards to employees of the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga to determine whether there is enough support to hold a union representation election.”

Despite the UAW’s fast reflexes, workers at the Chattanooga plant show little sign of discontent with their contractual arrangements:

Some employees said they had seen the cards or were aware of the union’s interest in organizing the plant, but there seems to be no clear consensus on whether there would be enough support to force a union election, much less on whether the UAW could win that vote if it occurred. (The Tennessean, 4/2/12)

The Huffington Post’s David Kiley writes that the outcome of the initiative will be “perhaps the biggest single decider on whether the union ever organizes any of the foreign-brand factories in the U.S.”

Tennessee, moreover, is a right-to-work state. And, Kiley notes, the UAW has already failed to catch on with workers at American plants run by Honda, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Toyota.

It all adds up to a lot on the line for the UAW if they get their foot in the door with Volkswagen. Kiley’s visited several foreign auto plants in the South, including the VW plant in Tennessee. He’s talked “freely” with line workers in “a few cases” — and his takeaway from those conversations ought to give the UAW a great deal to think about.

What I observed is an attitude of gratitude for the work, the opportunity for a career, and the investments in these local areas. It’s a very different atmosphere and attitude than I have observed in northern union plants where you commonly find a lot of third- and fourth-generation union workers who were sold a long time ago on the idea that they could retire at 48 on full pension and benefits, and are frustrated that the game changed on them. (The Huffington Post, 3/23/12)

Gratitude, opportunity, investment; if that’s a game change, it’s hard to see how that’s anything but a change for the better — especially for Volkswagen’s nonunion workers.