6. Compelling employers to promote unionism. The Obama NLRB pushed new rules requiring job providers to post pro-union notices in their facilities. Tellingly, 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. Persecuting job providers. 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. Constitution out on “recess.” 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. Not surprisingly, the NLRB continues to churn out lopsided decisions in favor of union bosses.
9. Runaway (unionism) train. 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. Obamacare(s) for union bosses. 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. The funds in this program must be administered jointly with a labor organization — much like the Department of Labor’s grants for construction apprenticeship programs, which have turned into a cash cow for construction industry union officials on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Obamacare is full of these sorts of provisions — provisions that further unionize the healthcare industry.
Mark Mix is the president of National Right to Work.
