Top 10 Obama Paybacks to Big Labor for $1 Billion Plus In Campaign Contributions

Top 10 Obama Paybacks to Big Labor for $1 Billion Plus In Campaign Contributions

In “The Audacity of Hope,” Barack Obama wrote: 

“I owe those unions. When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don’t consider this corrupting in any way.”

Big Labor spent nearly $1 billion on the Obama’s 2008 Campaign. In return, Obama has paid the unions back with Presidential Big Labor paybacks as follows:

Top 10 Obama administration Big Labor Presidential paybacks (based on an article by Mark Mix is the president of National Right to Work. (see http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/30/barack-obamas-top-10-most-outrageous-big-labor-paybacks/#ixzz25ArGMynV):

1. Obama appointed forced-unionism partisan Hilda Solis to run the Department of Labor. Solis, utilizing numerous Obama executive orders, rolled back progress in union boss transparency and disclosure of the prior eight years, making it more difficult for workers to know where their forced dues dollars are being spent.

2. Obama’s first budget slashed funding for the Office of Labor and Management Standards (OLMS), the federal agency that enforces union disclosure laws. It’s one of the few areas of the budget that Obama has proposed cutting.

3. Obama appointed union lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that administers and enforces federal labor law. Becker was never confirmed by the U.S. Senate because of bipartisan opposition to his nomination. Obama appointed him to the NLRB via recess appointment.

4. Becker was a key vote in striking down any protections workers had against card-check union organizing drives, despite the fact that he previously participated as a union lawyer in the very case that established those worker protections. 

5. The Obama NLRB pushed new rules to make union organizing campaigns as one-sided as possible by ambushing workers into union membership and dues payments. The new rules dramatically shortened the time frame individual workers have to share information with their coworkers about the adverse effects of unionization and to hear their employers’ views on the subject.

6. The Obama NLRB pushed new rules requiring job providers to post pro-union notices in their facilities. No new requirement was made for unions to post notices informing workers of their right to refrain from union activities or throw out an unwanted union.

7. Obama-appointed NLRB Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon used the federal agency to punish Boeing for locating production of its 787 Dreamliner jets in right-to-work South Carolina over non-right-to-work Washington State. The frivolous persecution of Boeing eventually fizzled, but only after the company guaranteed future jobs would go to Washington State, where union bosses get to collect forced dues as a condition of employment.

8. Earlier this year, Obama subverted the U.S. Constitution and installed two pro-forced unionism lackeys onto the NLRB as “recess” appointments even though the U.S. Senate was not in recess. The NLRB continues to churn out lopsided decisions in favor of union bosses.

9. Obama’s appointments to the National Mediation Board (NMB), the federal agency that administers labor law in the railway and airline industries, changed the election procedures of unions organizing under the Railway Labor Act (RLA). The two Obama-appointed NMB members who approved the new rule, Harry Hoglander and Linda Puchala, are former union officials with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) unions, respectively.

Both unions are a major part of an American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) union-led coalition that urged the three-member board to discard its election policy of 75 years. The new procedure stacks the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over railway or airline industry workers if the union acquires support from just a bare majority of eligible workers in an election, no matter how few actually vote. This means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss “representation” on the whole group rather than having a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.

10. The effects of Obama’s pro-forced unionism agenda will be felt long after his stay in the White House ends. Obamacare is full of sweetheart deals aimed at placating union bosses. For example, nonunion medical facilities are basically ineligible to participate in Obamacare’s professional-development grant program for healthcare workers. Obamacare is full of these sorts of provisions — provisions that further unionize the healthcare industry.

The Supreme court recently ruled in favor of workers opposed to unfair union practices (see http://reason.com/archives/2012/06/29/supreme-court-upholds-fairness-in-union).

By a 7-2 vote, the high court slapped down the union for deducting money from its employees’ paychecks and using it to fight against California campaign initiatives—without giving its nonmembers a chance to opt out of these political campaign contributions.

What if their money were deducted by force from their paycheck and used to support conservative tax-limiting initiatives? 

“Public-sector unions have the right under the First Amendment to express their views on political and social issues without government interference. … But employees who choose not to join a union have the same rights.”

Non-members, who must pay union dues in union-shop states such as California to cover the portion of union efforts used to negotiate salary and benefit matters on all workers’ behalf, have a chance to opt out of those portion of the collected dues used for political purposes. The idea is they shouldn’t be forced to subsidize political activities that may fly in the face of their own beliefs. But the SEIU concocted a scheme to evade that requirement in order to, ironically, battle a statewide ballot initiative that would have limited their ability to unilaterally take such dues from members in the future.