Labor Unions want to gut Right To Work laws

From The National Right To Work Committee:

The Obama Labor Board just declared a full-scale assault upon all 25 state Right to Work laws.

As you know, in March, Wisconsin became the third state in three years to adopt Right to Work. The worker freedom movement is growing, and momentum is on our side.

Now the former union lawyers on Barack Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) are taking revenge and moving forward with a scheme to gut all 25 state Right to Work laws.

From the outrageous persecution of Boeing for creating jobs in Right to Work South Carolina to ambushing workers with quick-snap unionization elections, the Obama Labor Board has rammed through one union-boss power grab after another.

I've been warning concerned citizens like you for two years that the worst may be yet to come, now that Barack Obama is no longer accountable to the American people.

Thanks to the surrender of a few weak-kneed Republicans in the U.S. Senate in 2013, Barack Obama has a fully-stocked NLRB stacked with a gaggle of union lawyers to do Big Labor's bidding.

And now the Obama Labor Board is seizing that opportunity and preparing to overturn over 60 years of precedent and ignore the plain language of federal and state law.

National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys identified this threat over a year ago.

United Steelworkers (USW) union bosses in Florida have asked the NLRB for permission to charge fees to workers who exercise their right under Florida law to cut off financial support to a union they don't support.

Foundation staff attorneys filed a brief in the case last June, arguing that this scheme would effectively eviscerate by administrative fiat Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which authorizes state Right to Work laws.

Under the union lawyers' twisted logic, unions in Right to Work states should be able to require independent-minded workers to pay "contract grievance fees."

But by seeking and gaining monopoly bargaining power, union bosses have taken away the individual worker's freedom to represent himself or herself in dealing with the employer.

Not only that, the union controls the entire "contract grievance" process, and individual workers cannot seek any remedies without the union's permission and involvement.

The worker never agreed to the process or the rules -- the union imposed all of it.

Adding insult to injury, union bosses forbid nonmembers from voting on the contact, meaning workers have zero opportunity whatsoever to change the rules or process.

Everything about this system is coercive, and coercion is precisely why Right to Work laws are necessary to protect workers.

Earlier Boards and federal courts have correctly interpreted the law in case after case since 1953, holding that Right to Work laws mean exactly what they say.

Independent-minded workers in Right to Work states don't have to pay a single penny to an organization they did not ask for and do not want.

The Obama NLRB has already signaled its intent to overturn all those precedents and ignore the law's plain language.

"When this board is asking for an amicus brief on the reconsideration of a rule, the majority's already decided that it wants to change the rule," one labor law expert commented.

Foundation staff attorneys are already working on a new brief to dismantle the union lawyers' contrived arguments for this scheme.

But the real battle is likely to be in federal court.

In fact, Foundation staff attorneys are providing free legal aid to an independent-minded worker in Texas in a similar case.

We could be in for another years-long legal battle against this outrageous power grab.

Your Foundation needs an influx of financial resources to help combat this scheme and any others the Obama NLRB cooks up while it still can.

I hope I can count on your continuing support today to help us fight back against the Obama Labor Board's direct assault upon all 25 state Right to Work laws.

Make no mistake, they're trying to undo everything the worker freedom movement has accomplished in recent years.

We can't back down. Please act at once.

Sincerely,

Mark Mix

P.S. The Foundation relies completely on voluntary contributions from our supporters to provide free legal aid.

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