63 Charles W. Baird, “How Bad Can It Get?” The Freeman 59, no. 1 (January/February 2009), http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/pursuit-of-happiness/how-bad-can-it-get/, accessed January 2012.
64 To avoid arbitration altogether, government officials can sign so-called consent decrees with unions—essentially a settlement agreement. These decrees are used frequently by liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union to lock in funding for, say, a certain number of beds in homeless shelters in a city, into the future. But government employee unions can also use consent decrees to preserve spending on government employees that they represent. For example, a teachers union or related pro-education group can sue a district to require a certain teacher-student ratio, say 1 to 12, to prevent “school overcrowding.” Once the city signs a consent decree over the matter, future mayors will be bound by the decree and can be brought to court if they don’t hire enough teachers to keep the agreed upon teacher-student ratio. In this way, teachers unions protect against future reform-minded mayors coming in and changing hiring practices that could adversely impact the union. These decrees are great for the union, but terrible for voters and the taxpayers. Because consent decrees are such an effective way to keep government spending high into the future, we can expect unions to make more and more use of them in the future.
65 PATCO president Robert Poli told this to Businessweek at the time of the PATCO strike in 1981. It was quoted in Richard Reeves, President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), p. 63.
66 The Employee Rights Act, which was introduced in Congress in 2011 by Orrin Hatch in the Senate and Tim Scott in the House of Representatives, would give union members the right to vote before their union calls a strike. James Sherk, “Employee Rights Act Empowers Workers,” Backgrounder #2667, Heritage Foundation, March 19, 2012, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/03/the-employee-rights-act-empowers-workers#_ftnref19, accessed April 2012; see also the Employee Rights Act website, http://employeerightsact.com/.
67 Petro, p.80.
68 “Domestic Policy: Labor & Workplace,” Issues 2012, Heritage Foundation, http://www.candidatebriefing.com/labor-workplace/, accessed January 2012.
69 Jason Miller, “TSA Workers Granted Collective Bargaining Rights,” FederalNewsRadio.com, February 4, 2011, http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=697&sid=2259846, accessed January 2012. Collective bargaining over agencies related to national security is generally prohibited under Section 16 of President Kennedy’s Executive Order No. 10,988, which provides: “The order (except section 14 [giving rights to employees prescribed by the Civil Service Commission]) shall not apply to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, or any other agency, or to any office, bureau or entity within an agency, primarily performing intelligence, investigative, or security functions if the head of the agency determines that the provisions of this order cannot be applied in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations.” This order can be found at https://www.flra.gov/webfm_send/563.
70 States were granted permission to pass right-to-work laws by the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which added this protection to the National Labor Relations Act, Section 14(b). Note that state right-to-work laws generally only protect private sector workers in those states from being forced to pay dues or fees to a union. In practice, though, most government workers are also protected against being forced to pay dues to a union in right-to-work states. The right-to-work laws of Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, and Virginia explicitly cover state and local government employees in addition to private sector workers. The right-to-work laws of Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, and South Dakota have been interpreted by state courts to also cover government employees. The right-to-work laws of Georgia, Indiana, and North Carolina explicitly exclude government employees from their coverage. Both Georgia and North Carolina ban public sector monopoly bargaining, so there is no forced-dues issue in those states. But in Indiana, the nation’s newest right-to-work state, state troopers, public college employees, and non-teacher public school employees can be forced to pay union dues and fees. The right-to-work laws of Alabama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Wyoming have been construed by courts or the attorney general not to cover public employees. But of these states, only Tennessee has any type of monopoly bargaining laws for some public employees, and so some limited forced-dues issues may arise there. The right-to-work law of Mississippi is silent on whether it covers government employees, and no court has ruled on it.
The right-to-work states are mostly found in the South and West, and are: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming. In addition, the U.S. territory of Guam and federal workers have right-to-work protections. Some states have right-to-work protections granted under their state constitutions instead of their laws.
Chapter 2. The Union Fist
1 U.S. v. Larson, et al., May 2007 Grand Jury Superseding Indictment, http://www.nrtw.org/files/nrtw/IUOE17INDICTMENT.pdf; see also U.S. v. Larson, 07-CR-304S, NYLJ 1202511598699, at *1 (WDNY, Decided August 10, 2011); Carl Horowitz, “Buffalo Local Members Arrested for Conducting Reign of Terror,” National Legal and Policy Center, April 21, 2008, http://nlpc.org/stories/2008/04/21/buffalo-local-members-arrested-conducting-reign-terror, accessed March 2012.
2 U.S. v. Larson, et al., May 2007 Grand Jury Superseding Indictment; Alan Farnham, “How Nasty Can Union Violence Get and Still Be Legal?,” ABC News, September 22, 2011, http://abcnews.go.com/Business/nasty-union-violence-legal/story?id=14572790#.Txyfg6VPssY, accessed January 2012; NRTW Committee Staff, “Hobbs Act Loophole Legitimizes Union Violence,” National Right to Work Committee (blog), February 14, 2012, http://www.nrtwc.org/hobbs-act-loophole-legitimizes-union-violence/, accessed March 2012.
3 U.S. v. Larson, et al., May 2007 Grand Jury Superseding Indictment, pp. 37-38; Horowitz, “Buffalo Local Members Arrested.”
4 Gerald Friedman, “Labor Unions in the United States,” EH.Net Encyclopedia, ed. Robert Whaples, February 1, 2010, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/friedman.unions.us, accessed January 2012.
5 Samuel Gompers, Address to the American Federation of Labor Convention, 1924, quoted in National Institute for Labor Relations Research, Coercive Union Power in Union Officials’ Own Words (1985), on file with the authors. Gompers said further, “The rules and regulations of trade unionism should not be extended so that the action of a majority could force a minority to vote for or give financial support to any political candidate or party to whom they are opposed.” Note that the American Federation of Labor later joined with the Congress of Industrial Organizations to become the powerful AFL-CIO.
6 American Federationist, February 1913, quoted in Samuel Gompers, Labor and the Employer, ed. Hayes Robbins (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1920), p. 267.
7 Burton Folsom, New Deal or Raw Deal? paperback ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008), p. 121.
8 Steven Greenhouse, “Labor Board Drops Suit Against Boeing After Union Reaches Accord,” New York Times, December 9, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/10/business/labor-board-drops-case-against-boeing.html, accessed May 2012.
9 FDR and his allies criticized the 1930s Supreme Court decisions overturning New Deal policies. Historians hold differing opinions over whether Justice Owen Roberts’s sudden change to supporting New Deal policies starting in March 1937 was the result of intimidation. This was the fabled “switch in time, saved nine” because it ended FDR’s efforts to add additional Justices to the Supreme Court in order to get a Court that would uphold his New Deal legislation. For a brief, even-handed account of the ongoing controversy, see Christopher Shea, “Supreme Switch: Did FDR’s Threat to ‘Pack’ the Court in 1937 Really Change the Course of Constitutional History?” Boston Globe, December 4, 2005, http://www.boston.
com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/12/04/supreme_switch/, accessed January 2012.
10 Amity Shlaes, The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, paperback ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), especially p. 310.
11 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment and Earnings, United States, 1909–75, (Washington, D.C., Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1976). From 1937 to 1938, the unemployment rate skyrocketed from 14.3 to 19.0 percent. Manufacturing dropped by 37 percent; industrial production plummeted 30 percent.
12 Sean J. Savage, Roosevelt: The Party Leader 1932–1945 (Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1991), pp. 89–90. In 1936, 10.2 percent of the Democratic National Committee’s campaign cash came from labor unions; by 1940, it came to 16 percent. And this is just recorded cash. “Throughout Roosevelt’s presidency,” writes Savage, “organized labor steadily strengthened its position as a major source of Democratic campaign funds and thus strengthened its position in national Party affairs, solidifying the Party’s commitment to social welfare and labor reform legislation favored by labor unions.”
13 Federal Times, April 2, 1979, quoted in Coercive Union Power in Union Officials’ Own Words.
14 William W. Winpisinger, president, International Association of Machinists, Richmond (Va.) News Leader, September 4, 1978, quoted in Coercive Union Power in Union Officials’ Own Words.
15 On August 16, 1937, President Roosevelt wrote to the National Federation of Federal Employees, a labor union that later joined the International Association of Machinists. In his letter, he supported the rights of federal employees to unionize, but clarified that collective bargaining and strikes are impermissible in the government sector. “All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service… The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress… Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. Upon employees in the Federal service rests the obligation to serve the whole people, whose interests and welfare require orderliness and continuity in the conduct of Government activities. This obligation is paramount. Since their own services have to do with the functioning of the Government, a strike of public employees manifests nothing less than an intent on their part to prevent or obstruct the operations of Government until their demands are satisfied. Such action, looking toward the paralysis of Government by those who have sworn to support it, is unthinkable and intolerable.” See Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Letter on the Resolution of Federation of Federal Employees Against Strikes in Federal Service,” The American Presidency Project, August 16, 1937, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=15445#axzz1igz8J9XP, accessed January 2012.
16 Executive Order No. 10,988, available at the Federal Labor Relations Authority website, https://www.flra.gov/webfm_send/563, accessed January 2012.
17 Ibid.
18 “About NTEU,” National Treasury Employees Union, http://www.nteu.org/NTEU/, accessed January 2012.
19 “About AFGE,” American Federation of Government Employees, http://www.afge.org/Index.cfm?Page=AboutAFGE, accessed January 2012.
20 “What Is AFSA?” American Foreign Service Association, http://www.afsa.org/what_is_afsa, accessed January 2012.
21 These protections were first granted in the Executive Order and then were codified into law. See 5 U.S.C. § 7102 (2011) (federal employees generally); 39 U.S.C. § 1209(c) (2011) (postal employees).
22 Unions still earn plenty of dues from federal employees and state and local employees in right-to-work states who join the union because of union control over their workplaces.
23 Daniel DiSalvo, “Storm Clouds Ahead: Why Conflict with Public Unions Will Continue,” Issue Brief no. 13, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, November 2011, http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ib_13.htm.
24 The key to monopoly bargaining is not that these states allow unions to engage in it, but that they require the government to bargain “in good faith” with the certified or recognized monopoly and exclusive bargaining representative. In thirty-four states, the government employer is required to negotiate in good faith with unions representing government workers. This means basically that the government employer cannot walk away from the bargaining table and is forced to continue negotiating and continue offering concessions until a deal is reached. In nine other states, unions can and do collectively bargain on behalf of at least some state and/or local government workers, although not all the other states require the government to bargain in good faith with unions. In contrast, seven states either expressly forbid unions from engaging in collective bargaining over state and local workers or don’t accept it. These states are Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.
25 While the twenty-seven states that are not right-to-work states don’t prohibit forced-dues provisions, a few of them do not currently have forced-dues provisions in their contracts with government employee unions. Wisconsin, for example, now prohibits most public sector forced-dues contracts. Several other states that are not right-to-work states may or may not have forced-dues contracts but don’t prohibit them. This leaves twenty-two states that specifically permit forced-dues contracts over state and/or local government employees.
26 Joseph C. Goulden, Jerry Wurf: Labor’s Last Angry Man (New York: Atheneum, 1982), pp. 14–17.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid., pp. 18–24.
29 Wagner ultimately delivered on his promises to Wurf, but it took him several years. In 1958, Wagner issued Executive Order 49, which extended collective bargaining over about 100,000 city employees. See Ken Auletta, The Streets Were Paved with Gold (New York: Random House, 1975); Goulden, pp. 45–47. And in 1977, state and local employees under collective bargaining agreements were forced to pay union dues as a condition of their employment. “New York’s Gov. Carey Signs Agency Shop Bill,” National Right to Work Newsletter, September 28, 1977.
Government payrolls shot up even as private employment declined. “By the end of 1975,” write E. J. McMahon and Fred Siegel, “the city directly employed an astonishing 340,000 workers, an increase of 100,000 since 1959 alone. And that didn’t include the 80,000 people who worked for the state Metropolitan Transportation Authority (which had absorbed the city-run transit system in 1969) or the bi-state Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, or the bevy of private firms supporting themselves almost solely on government contracts.” In 1975, New York stood on “the brink of ruin,” with “city politics (and politicians)… dominated by extraordinarily large municipal unions.” E. J. McMahon and Fred Siegel, “Gotham’s Fiscal Crisis: Lessons Unlearned,” Public Interest 158 (Winter 2005), pp. 96–110.
30 Reed Larson, Stranglehold (Ottawa, Ill.: Jameson Books, 1999), chapter 1. AFSCME’s own website acknowledged how the union relies on political activity to further its own activities: “In the 1970s and 80s, AFSCME members increased their efforts politically in order to win collective bargaining laws, organize new members, and wield clout on behalf of existing members. All across the country, at every level of government, candidates for public office learned they had to pay attention to AFSCME’s political muscle.” “AFSCME: 75 Years of History,” AFSCME, http://www.afscme.org/union/history/afscme-75-years-of-history, accessed January 2012.
31 Goulden, pp. 142–143.
32 Morris Thomson, “In Memphis, Progress and Poverty,” Washington Post, April 4, 1988; Goulden, p. 147.
33 Goulden, p. 143.
34 “Coming: Unionized Government,” U.S. News & World Report, September 26, 1966.
35 According to Goulden, the sanitation workers went on strike for two reasons. On January 30, 1968, two black sanitation workers had been crushed to death in trash compactor trucks, after the workers had warned supervisors about defective “off-on” switches on the trucks. The next day, the b
lack sanitation workers were told to go home because of rainy conditions and received only their two-hour “call-up pay,” while the white supervisors waited until the rain cleared and went out for a full day’s work (and pay). After they complained to the city without redress, the consensus among the black sanitation workers was that “the city’s actions had been racist, and that the sanitation men had had enough of it.” Goulden, p. 147.
36 Goulden, p. 149.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., p. 169.
39 See, for example, Paul Moreno, Black Americans and Organized Labor: A New History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006), especially pp. 259–276.
40 Goulden, pp. 169–170.
41 Ibid., pp. 173–175.
42 See Hampton Sides, Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin, Kindle ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2010), locations 1548–1563, 1579–1610, and 1760–1900.
43 Goulden, pp. 176–177.
44 “Rahm Emanuel: You Never Want a Serious Crisis to Go to Waste,” video, YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeA_kHHLow, accessed March 2012.
Shadowbosses: Government Unions Control America and Rob Taxpayers Blind Page 30