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PAGE 9
THE CASE FOR FREEDOM
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PRO Act has the distinct odor of a payback for Biden’s allies in organized labor
On March 9, the self-proclaimed “party of unity” drove yet another wedge into the partisan divide of our country with the passage of HR 842.
The legislation, dubbed the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, should be recognized as potentially one of the most economically damaging bills to ever be considered in the U.S. Congress.
Cloaked behind a façade of protecting American workers, the measure is nothing more than a neatly wrapped gift to Big Labor, cashing in on the tens of millions of dollars organized unions poured into Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.
HR 842 is a veritable laundry list of bad policies designed to empower labor unions at the expense of individual choice.
Among other bad outcomes, the bill would:
n institute heavy-handed union organizing, including impeding secret-ballot elections on unionization; n limit management’s ability to refute union campaign messages during organizing drives; n truncate the union election process so employees have less time to seek information for informed decision-making; and, n require employers to provide unions with employees’ personal contact information.
Perhaps the most sinister provision of the bill would be to repeal right-to-work laws in the majority of states.
Currently, 27 states have right-to-work laws that protect employees’ choice to pay union fees or not. If the PRO Act makes it to Biden’s desk and becomes law, it would require the approximately 938,000 private-sector workers currently represented by unions but choosing not to be union members to pay full union fees or risk losing their job.
Just last week, Biden addressed this very issue when speaking about an ongoing effort to unionize Amazon workers in Alabama. Biden declared, “Let me be really clear: It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union. But let me be even more clear: It’s not up to an employer, either. The choice to join a union is up to the workers. Full stop.”
The PRO Act, however, takes that decision away from millions of Americans and puts it in the hopelessly incapable hands of Congress.
The next particularly alarming provision of the legislation concerns employee privacy. The PRO Act would mandate that employers turn over a list of employees names and “home addresses, work locations, shifts, job classifications, and, if available to the employer, personal landline and mobile telephone numbers and work and personal email addresses” to the union within two days of the election being approved.
That’s personal, private contact information of employees, many of whom want nothing to do with a union, being handed over to labor bosses.
Richard Trumka, president of the nation’s largest union, the AFL-CIO, made clear his intentions to harass people into signing up for membership during congressional testimony last year when he said, “It is essential to be able to communicate with them … we may have to meet with them at a grocery store, anyplace else where you can get them. The most efficient place, the best place for them to be able to be able to talk is at their home setting, at their home.”
Legislation like this should be of no surprise to those of us who have been paying attention.
Unions have been grappling with historically low membership. Why would labor waste time making membership appealing so employees want to sign up, when they can simply rely on their new bought-and-paid for congressional majorities to mandate membership? While the elements of the PRO Act do quite a bit, the one thing the bill certainly does not do is advance the interest of American workers. The PRO Act takes away workers’ rights in order to empower unions — which is exactly what the party in power wants.
By JASON DUDASH, Oregon Director
There’s nothing heroic about taking my money and giving it to causes I don’t support
“We do the essential jobs that keep Oregon working. We’ve been called ‘heroes’ during the pandemic. We risk our lives during wildfires. We provide lifelines to families hit by the recession.”
This was the beginning paragraph of an email I received from SEIU 503. Every time I read those words, I become more highly disgusted and disturbed, and I feel more cheated than I did before.
I became a personal support worker (PSW) for a disabled child at the age of 20, a young person working in a union-represented position for the first time. Thankfully, I entered the arena after the pre-Janus age, where I was not required to pay “fair share” dues to the union, who hides behind the pretense of being on the ground and actively working homecare workers but is really an organization full of bureaucrats who are in it only for the money and power, and who do absolutely nothing but play politics.
There’s no disputing the union is a political entity. This past election cycle, SEIU 503 started doing a lot of teleconferences. It would either email us in the morning that the calls would take place, or they wouldn’t give any notice at all.
But they would also automatically dial you into the meeting. It didn’t matter if I was busy, there was no way to avoid being called into these meetings. (I once got a call while at the dentist).
Generally, I hung up on these calls without listening to anything they had to say. I already knew the union was liberal, anti-gun and pro-abortion, which are the exact opposite of my beliefs.
But one time I actually stayed on the call because I was curious about what they were discussing and what was going on in the union, what they claimed to be doing for us. And they started telling us all to vote for Joe Biden.
Not only that, but they told us they were organizing groups of people to volunteer to campaign for Biden, encouraging us to contact them to volunteer and get started.
One time, I got an email from them entitled, “Why we need to be political.”
In it, I was told that “…(O)ur advocacy can’t stop at members’ personal interests. It means that we work with coalitions like Fair Shot to raise the minimum wage, extend paid sick leave to all workers and continue to fight for life-improving changes like more affordable housing and paid family leave.”
What does that really mean? Controlling its members isn’t enough for a union. They need more power. If they’re able to reach outside of just their members, they are better able to destroy the capitalist market and destroy the very foundations of what America stands for.
Now SEIU, to address your claim about being “heroes.” You’re not.
That’s my glory to claim, along with other frontline and essential workers. You didn’t do anything to earn that title. You’re actually the antagonist. And thanks to the Freedom Foundation, people like me have an advocate who fights for our rights and holds you accountable for your political schemes.
By GRACE HELLAND, Paralegal
Oregon
Update
Oregon AG does the right thing — when forced to
It isn’t often you see Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum doing the right thing, but earlier this month she filed her second set of legal objections with the state Employment Relations Board (ERB) arguing that the proposed unionization of the state’s Legislative branch is not allowed under Oregon law.
Whether coincidentally or not, the action came just days after Rosenblum received a letter from the Freedom Foundation urging her office to stand firm.
In recent weeks the Legislature has become the target of a unionization push by the Washington-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 89, which filed a petition in December asking the ERB to certify it as the “exclusive representative” for more than 100 staff assistants who work for individual Oregon state legislators.
If successful, IBEW would have become the nation’s first legislative union — although it soon became clear why the effort hasn’t caught on anywhere else.
Specifically, the unionization of legislative employees runs afoul of the separation of powers doctrine of the Oregon Constitution, since it would require the ERB — an administrative arm of the executive branch — to order a completely different branch of government (the legislative) to recognize and bargain with a labor union.
To their credit, legislative officials and attorneys within Rosenblum’s Department of Justice were quick to recognize the problem and promptly filed their first set of objections with the ERB in late December.
Along with the constitutional challenge, the state brought a slew of objections to the union’s proposed “bargaining unit” and pointed out that
Oregon’s collective bargaining laws also do not allow for union representation within the legislative branch. IBEW subsequently withdrew its petition. However, the issue was far from resolved. The union soon filed a second petition with a new description of the proposed bargaining unit — and although it solved virtually none of the constitutional or legal problems identified by the state’s attorneys, there appeared to be no guarantee that Rosenblum’s office would take any further action.
Fortunately, the Freedom Foundation stood ready and willing to take action of its own.
A letter, sent on Jan. 29, emphasized the DOJ’s obligation to resolve its original questions of constitutionality and legality — and promised that if it didn’t, the Freedom Foundation would.
Speaking of which, that option is still on the table. Although the DOJ filed its second round of objections on Feb. 4 — shortly after receiving the Freedom Foundation’s letter and on the last day before the ERB’s deadline — the most recent arguments focus entirely on the state’s collective bargaining laws rather than the Oregon Constitution.
That’s not necessarily a problem since, as the Freedom Foundation’s letter pointed out, the issue of constitutionality is better suited for the courts.
But either way, the issue is far from settled. Democratic lawmakers in the Oregon Legislature have now introduced a workaround bill designed to open up a legal path to the unionization, and time will tell whether the DOJ is committed to seeing its legal challenge through to the end.
Rest assured, we’ll be watching closely — and, when necessary, taking action — to ensure it doesn’t happen.
By BEN STRAKA, Policy Analyst
California law enforcement union the subject of probe
During February, the Fair Political Practices Commission (FPPC) — the governmental body which regulates political spending in California — informed us it would be investigating the California Statewide Law Enforcement Association (CSLEA).
The original campaign finance complaint, filed by the Freedom Foundaiton nearly six weeks ago, alleges hundreds of thousands of dollars in political spending were improperly reported over multiple years and that CSLEA has created a dark-money network by continually failing to report the names of its contributors.
You may recognize CSLEA as the parent union for the more than 100 lifeguards the Freedom Foundation helped cease their dues deduction — and the dozens more we filed litigation on behalf of to void their unconstitutional window periods.
While political spending isn’t illegal in California, hiding the donor’s true identity is.
CSLEA is supposed to report the first and last names, street address, occupation and employer for each yearly contributor giving more than $100.
Instead, CSLEA simply wrote in, “From CSLEA as intermediary for individuals under $100,” when making political action committee (PAC) donations on behalf of the union.
How do we know that CSLEA collects more than $100 per person every year? Because the union told us so.
On the CSLEA’s own website, it clearly states that each member has $28 per month taken automatically for political spending and that members must request CSLEA not use this for politics in order for that money to instead be sent to its general account.
That is, its website used to say this. The link, which was used in a previous blog post about CSLEA, has mysteriously stopped working.
Suspicious.
What’s also suspicious is the fact that CSLEA created five different PACs with the hope of spreading out the $336 yearly in political expenditures it makes per member, nearly $1.7 million in total, to various political enterprises across the state.
Even more strange is the reality that two of these PACs aren’t even registered with the IRS and only seem to exist on paper.
We couldn’t be happier that FPPC has decided to investigate what is clearly a sketchy union.
We will continue to monitor campaign finance violations and protect public em ployees from unions that only view them as an easy way to buy political influence.
By SAMUEL COLEMAN, Outreach Director
FIRST WORD .... SOUNDS LIKE BITES?
KITES? ... MITES? .. SITES?
MIGHTS? ... NIGHTS? ... LIGHTS? .
Spotlight on California
Public officials could incur severe penalties for the crime of advising workers about their God-given rights
Every American has the right to speak their mind without fear of being punished by the government. This protection applies to all of us, no matter our position in society. School children, public workers, and yes, even public officials.
The ability of public officials to speak their minds on important issues is particularly important.
If officials are unable to voice their opinions on proposed public policies (like reigning in massive budget shortfalls due to the operation of public-sector unions), the voters are unable to exercise democratic oversight and make their own preferences known.
So, in the majority of the United States, the free speech rights of officials are recognized and protected.
Unless you live in California.
In this state, the government has made it illegal for public officials to give its employees any information about their own constitutional rights. Not only does this “gag order,” make little sense, but it violates the First Amendment.
In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in Janus v. AFSCME that public-sector workers have a constitutional right not to give any money to a union.
By TIMOTHY R. SNOWBALL, Litigation Counsel
And that if they decide to do so, they are waiving this right, and that waiver must be clearly demonstrated to their employer.
The Janus case overturned 40 years of precedent allowing workers’ pay to be skimmed by the unions and was hailed as a victory for workers’ rights.
But unfortunately for California workers, on the very day that Janus was decided, Gov. Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown signed SB 866 into law. The timing of this bill was no coincidence. SB 866 was specifically designed to prevent employees from knowing about their rights.
Under this gag order, public employers telling employees anything which could “deter or discourage” them from becoming or staying union members (like telling them about their constitutional rights affirmed in Janus), could be accused of a labor violation, and hauled in front of PERB.
As a result, public officials across the state must bite their tongues out of fear that one verbal misstep could land them in legal hot water.
But all is not yet lost. Because the Gag Order distinguishes between one kind of speech it likes (pro-union) and one kind of speech it doesn’t (Janus), it runs afoul of the First Amendment, which forbids the government from making this kind of distinction.
Further, because it discourages speech that public officials would otherwise want to make, it is also unconstitutional.
Hence, the legal grounds for challenging the gag order are strong. What is missing is a group of public officials in California with the guts to push back against this blatant tyranny.
Unless they are willing to fight for the First Amendment, hundreds of thousands of public workers will remain in the dark about their constitutional rights, and the unions in California will continue to reap a windfall in money to be used in pushing leftist politics.
The choice is no choice at all.
