Big Labor’s Billion Dollar President

Posted on February 22, 2012 by WFI Staff

PAYBACK ALERT: Big Labor Bosses Spend Nearly One Billion In Favor Of Obama:

Unions Gearing Up To Spend Big In 2012 Election

“Unions say they are gearing up to spend more than $400 million to help re-elect President Barack Obama and lift Democrats this election year in a fight for labor’s survival … With increased spending planned by other labor groups, including the powerful Service Employees International Union and the AFL-CIO, unions are likely to top the $400 million they spent to help elect Obama four years ago.”

DNC: National Big Labor Bosses Vs. North Carolina Small Business Owners:

Big Labor’s Democratic Convention

“Local businessmen in the least-unionized state in the country are worried that organizers of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., are putting the Democratic Party’s alliance with organized labor ahead of local businesses – as well as state law…”

States Continue To Lead On Labor Issues:

Labor Pact For Dulles Metrorail Opposed

“A Northern Virginia delegate has inserted language into the House’s proposed budget to effectively negate a proposed incentive for firms bidding on Phase 2 of the Dulles Metrorail project to use a labor agreement that many say favors unions.

“The move was made by Delegate Timothy D. Hugo, a Fairfax Republican helping lead the charge against the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority board of directors’ efforts to mandate the so-called project labor agreement. The agreements set the terms and conditions between contractors and labor groups…”

We Should Learn Right-To-Work Lessons From Hoosiers

“For a while now, Indiana’s neighbors have been scratching their heads, wondering ‘how do they do it?’ … Now, those same neighbors are asking themselves, ‘How in the heck did they get a right-to-work law passed in the face of hostile opposition committed to compulsory unionism?’

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Enzi on Senate floor: ‘Ensure Fairness for Employees’

Posted on February 17, 2012 by WFI Staff

Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, Ranking Member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (otherwise known as “HELP”), offered remarks on the Senate floor yesterday spotlighting the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) rule encouraging union “ambush” elections.  “The current system does not disadvantage labor unions at all,” argued Sen. Enzi.  “But, it does ensure that there is fairness for the employees, whose right it is to make  that decision of whether or not to form a union, to pay union dues and to have some of that sometimes go into political campaigns.”  Enzi contends that the rule only frays communication between employers and workers, and forces employees to join unions against their will as dictated by Big Labor chiefs.

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Letter of Support for Employee Rights Act

Posted on February 17, 2012 by WFI Staff

The Workforce Fairness Institute (WFI) is an organization committed to educating workers, their employers and citizens in general on important issues affecting the workplace. We write in strong support of S. 1507, H.R. 2810, the Employee Rights Act (ERA).

This legislation protects employees in several important ways including the following: it guarantees a secret ballot for all union elections; it protects employees from having to pay for the union‟s political activities with which they may disagree; it remedies the Board‟s recently enacted “quickie” election rule; and it gives employees, many of whom are new to the employer and never voted in the union election, the right to consider whether they want continued union representation.

Protecting The Secret Ballot

The secret ballot and the workplace democracy it ensures is the cornerstone of American labor law. Historically, organized labor supported the secret ballot election. In recent years, however, with the continuing decline of unionization in the private sector, Big Labor has pushed for the passage of the Employee „Forced‟ Choice Act, which would have eliminated the secret ballot election in favor of card check. The reason is not hard to find. Union organizers win more elections by counting cards executed in public than they do by counting ballots executed in secret because card check can subject workers to peer pressure, even intimidation and coercion.

Protecting Employees’ Right To Oppose The Union

Under Section 8 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) employers face penalties if they “interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees” in exercising their rights to organize and support a union. Under that same section of the NLRA, labor organizers are punished only if they “restrain or coerce” employees who do not support or oppose the union. The standard for a union violation is far less stringent permitting labor bosses to interfere with employees who oppose the union or seek its decertification. Each side – management and labor – should be held to the same standard concerning the protection of employees.

Protecting Employees’ Right To Cast An Informed Vote

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has aggressively advanced a partisan union agenda. It recently promulgated a “quickie” or “ambush” election rule designed to allow labor bosses the time to tell their story to employees, but limiting the time an employer has to express his/her views on unionization. The rule deprives employees of their right to hear the other side of the union question and make an informed choice. It also stacks the deck in favor of a union outcome even when there is evidence that the vote was not the free and un-coerced choice of the employees.

Protecting Employees First Amendment Freedoms

In non-right to work states, labor bosses use forced union dues to elect politicians that will pay them back when they win election. Big Labor spent half a billion dollars to elect Barrack Obama and other favored politicians in 2008. While union bosses continue to spend record amounts of member dues on political campaigns, studies show a significant percentage of union members disagree with labor‟s political activities. And these expenses are being incurred while many union pension funds are underfunded, even insolvent. In 2010, only 62% of union pensions had the resources necessary to cover their obligations to participants. One of the country‟s largest unions, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has had its pension fund put into “critical status.” While union bosses claim their agenda is to help the working class, it is, in fact, to increase their power by buying a seat at the political table.

Conclusion

The Employee Rights Act is a needed piece of legislation and, in some respects, long overdue. We commend Senator Orrin Hatch and Congressman Tim Scott for sponsoring it. The bill responds to the union abuses that have developed under existing law, which are inconsistent with, and trample upon, employee rights and cause enormous damage to the economy and America‟s job creators and businesses. Unions have a role to play in our free enterprise system but, as with management, that role must at all times respect the principles of workplace democracy and employee choice.

WFI urges all Members of Congress who value workforce fairness to support this legislation. It places the authority where it belongs, with hardworking American employees.

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Prominent Law Professor Slams Obama Administration’s Recess Appointments

Posted on February 16, 2012 by WFI Staff

We’ve always said that it’s odd for a President who used to be a Constitutional law professor to outright defy the Constitution.  It sounds like we’re not the only ones.

Jonathan Turley, a nationally recognized legal scholar at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. believes the Obama Administration created an “extreme” slippery slope by pushing its recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board.  Turley writes in a recent USA Today column that the brazen move “dangerously tips the balance of power.”  He adds:

“[F]or the Constitution that political point comes at too high a price. Replacing an intransigent Congress with an imperial president is no bargain for those who value our constitutional system. While there can be debate over the precise meaning of Article II’s reference to ‘vacancies that may happen during the recess,’ it was not intended to mean this.”

Turley joins a chorus of critics – on both sides of the partisan aisle – that have grown increasingly nervous about the future implications of President Obama’s illegitimate recess appointments.  What’s more is that Turley actually expressed support for Richard Cordray, the controversial head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who was also a recent Obama recess appointments.  However, Turley takes exception with the way Cordray was forced into his position:

“For the record, I support Cordray, a well-qualified nominee who has been treated poorly by the political system. However, in a nation committed to the rule of law, it is often as important how you do something as what you do. This is not the way to win a fight with Congress over a nomination.”

To have Turley write such a stinging rebuke of the president’s undemocratic recess appointments to the NLRB is very significant.  It’s something that the White House should not ignore.

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Congress Soon Will Soon Voice Stance On “Ambush” Elections

Posted on February 15, 2012 by WFI Staff

Fred Wszolek
February 14, 2012
Townhall

Toward the end of last year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) finalized a rule for “quickie” or “ambush” elections. The final rule significantly diminishes the amount of time for workplace elections and threatens the unionization of workplaces without labor having secured the employees’ un-coerced majority support.

The Obama labor board majority, formed in April 2010, waited until June 2011 to propose a rule which would make startling changes in Board law and procedures. While the NLRB claimed the reason for the rule was delay in Board elections; that was in stark contrast to an earlier report of the acting general counsel who described the elections as taking place in a remarkably short period of time.

The unstated goal of the rule was to give organized labor the next best thing to card check: limiting, if not eviscerating, the time an employer has to express its views on unionization and its employees’ right to hear those views and make an informed choice. The predominant, perhaps only, story the employees would hear is Big Labor’s and there are few limits on a union’s ability to make promises that cannot reasonably be kept.

The proposal was so controversial that the NLRB received more than 65,000 comments, the vast majority of which were opposed the rule change. Since the Board is legally required to carefully consider each of the comments it receives and address the issues they raise, there was insufficient time for it to do so before labor radical Craig Becker’s term ended. As a result, the NLRB’s two member majority issued a final rule that was pared back from what had been originally proposed.

The rule nevertheless limits employer free speech by cutting the amount of time for NLRB elections at least in half. And the rule stacks the deck unfairly in favor of unionization by pushing board review of pre-election issues such as the appropriateness of the bargaining unit and voter eligibility until after the election, issues that can determine whether an election should have taken place at all. The changes were designed to pressure employers to accept the results of elections even if the business has evidence that the election results do not reflect the un-coerced majority support of the employees.

The Board emphasized in its announcement of the new rule that this was only the beginning, that it anticipated the next Obama NLRB would complete its work and promulgate the balance of the proposed rule. Only a few weeks ago, the new chairman, a former union lawyer, Mark Pearce announced his intent to do just that. He chillingly stated, “We keep our eye on the prize.”

According to news reports, the final rule “would expand on sweeping regulations approved in December that speed up the process for holding union elections at work sites.” By adopting additional and original elements of the proposed rule, Obama’s labor board could limit the amount of time for union elections to as little as 10 to 14 days. This would complete organized labor’s goal of minimizing – to the maximum extent possible – the employer voice in a Board election.

The “quickie” election rule is only one element of the Obama labor board’s extreme partisan union agenda. Coupled with other actions it has taken, unions will have easy access into any workplace they target. For example, last August, the NLRB turned 76 years of American labor law on its head and announced that unions could petition to represent “micro-units,” essentially collective bargaining units with as few as two or more employees doing the same job in the same location. Its unstated reason: it is easier to organize two or four employees than it is 20 or 40.

This change in the law threatens to balkanize the workplace, increase discord not harmony among employees as different unions with conflicting goals represent various small groups of employees, and it will dramatically increase an employer’s labor relations costs.

Recognizing the deleterious impact the NLRB’s quickie election rule will have on workplace democracy and employee free choice, Senator Mike Enzi, the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which has oversight over the regulatory agency, announced that he would use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to undo the “ambush” election rule.

According to the Senator’s Web site, “[t]he CRA allows either the Senate or the House to introduce a joint resolution of disapproval with the full force of law to stop a federal agency from implementing a recent rule or regulation. A resolution of disapproval introduced under the CRA cannot be filibustered and needs only a simple majority in the Senate to pass if acted upon during a 60-day window.”

It is our hope and expectation that both houses of Congress will have the opportunity to vote on the CRA to demonstrate their support for or opposition to this misguided “quickie” election rule.

There is simply no need to expedite the union election process as most already take place in about a month, but this is about “payback” to union bosses, not good policy making or standing up for workers. As a result, members of the House and Senate should enthusiastically support Enzi’s CRA and send a message to Obama’s labor board that this Congress will use every tool at its disposal to end the job-killing giveaways to Big Labor.

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FAA Shot, Chaser

Posted on February 14, 2012 by WFI Staff

SHOT:

“Obama Signs $63B FAA Funding Bill Into Law”:

“President Obama signed a $63.6 billion funding bill for the Federal Aviation Administration Tuesday, bringing to an end a years-long fight over aviation funding that became engulfed in labor disputes.  After a year of debate – and a two-week partial shutdown of the FAA – the House and Senate approved a multi-year funding bill for the beleaguered agency for the first time since its last authorization expired in 2007, and the White House said Tuesday that Obama signed the measure.” (Keith Laing, “Obama Signs $63B FAA Funding Bill Into Law,” The Hill, 2/14/12)

CHASER:

Presidential Signing Ceremony:

cid:image003.jpg@01CCEB3C.D9048920

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In Boeing Plant Trip, White House Hypocrisy On Full Display

Posted on February 14, 2012 by WFI Staff

President Obama plans to visit a Boeing plant this week despite the explosive standoff that was created by his National Labor Relations Board when it issued a complaint against the company for building a facility in the right-to-work state of South Carolina.

The hypocrisy demonstrated in scheduling and participating in the event on the part of the White House is stunning considering the actions of its handpicked acting-General Counsel to attack the aircraft maker was roundly denounced by Republicans and Democrats alike as a “job killer.”

The President can pretend that he had nothing to do with the Boeing complaint by discussing the economy in Washington State, but job creators will not forget the administration’s actions which chilled business investment and hiring across the country.

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KEEP Secure Act Will Prevent Big Labor From Handling Your Personal Information

Posted on February 14, 2012 by WFI Staff

With workers increasingly concerned about Big Labor prying into their personal lives, Congresswoman Sandy Adams (R-FL) has taken a stand on the issue by introducing the Keep Employees’ Emails and Phones Secure Act or KEEP Secure Act (H.R. 3991). The bill seeks to keep employee telephone numbers and email addresses out of the prying hands of union bosses who are eager to coerce or harass workers during workplace elections.

Adams introduced the bill in response to a June 2011 National Labor Relations Board ruling that mandates all businesses relinquish their employee’s contact information.  The new rules expanded regulations from 1966 in which employers were required to provide basic contact information for what’s called an “Excelsior” pre-election voter list turned over to the NLRB regional manager.  The information was then turned over to union bosses.
This time, the NLRB wants to expand the rule to include e-mail addresses and telephone numbers.

“From their decision against Boeing, Inc. in South Carolina to their decision to implement ambush elections, the NLRB has clearly overstepped its authority and has imposed the president’s job killing agenda into the private sector,” said Rep. Adams in a statement.  “Forcing an employee to hand over this personal information is an intolerable invasion of privacy.”
The bill has already gained support from thirty-three co-sponsors in the House of Representatives.  Others are certain to follow.

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