ARE WE TRULY CELEBRATING AMERICA’S WORKERS ON THIS LABOR DAY, 2008, OR IS THIS A CELEBRATION OF THE LABOR UNION BOSS CABAL?

“LIBERTY IS UNOBSTRUCTED ACTION ACCORDING TO OUR WILL…LAW IS OFTEN BUT THE TYRANT’S WILL, AND ALWAYS SO WHEN IT VIOLATES THE RIGHT OF AN INDIVIDUAL”
-- Thomas Jefferson, 1819
           
 
    With the most recent union officials’ political activity to eliminate all workers’ rights to a secret ballot vote on union membership and to force private sector employers into binding arbitration if they don’t agree to union demands, their goal is clear.  What better way is there to control the nation’s workforce than to pass a law wiping out an individual’s freedom of choice for union membership in the workplace?  The truth is that passage of the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” – better named “card-check bill” – would do just that.
 
    It’s not only the private business sector that is the goal of the union boss cabal.  Government sectors as well continue to be targeted at every level across the nation as union officials mount political election campaigns to install and solidify their power over individual employees.
 
For example:  “The SEIU union adopted a new amendment to its constitution…requiring that every local contribute an amount equal to $6 per member per year to the union’s national political action committee…in addition to regular union dues.  Unions that fail to meet the requirement must contribute an amount in ‘local union funds’ equal to the ‘deficiency’ plus a 50% penalty.” (Wall Street Journal, 7/28/08)
 
    At their May 2008, House of Delegates session, the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA) adopted a new negotiation strategy with forced dues from all non-PSEA teachers the priority.  If PSEA succeeds, the forced dues requirement for all employees captured by PSEA contract would be 100%.  This is a major change in that union’s collective bargaining “goals” and it would be one more inexcusable blow to a teacher’s liberty at the hands of union officials.  How can we expect teachers, who are charged with TEACHING liberty, to do so if they are not free to decide which private organizations they want to support?
 
    A Pennsylvania House bill proposed by Representative Eddie Day Pashinski (D-121) giving lay teachers and employees of private religious schools the right to join collective bargaining units was debated at a recent State House Labor Relations Committee hearing.  The school board would be prohibited from issuing decisions that define or interpret a religious school doctrine or change a religious school’s organization structure.
                                                         (Scranton Time Tribune, 8/19/08)
 
    The political power of today’s labor unions is not new.  It’s just a much bigger threat.  For example, “Seven unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA), have stepped in to help the Democratic National Convention in Denver…While Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee are refusing contributions from registered lobbyists, that ban does NOT apply to the convention.”  (EIA Communique’ Education - Intel@aol.com, 8/18/2008)
 
    Labor union bosses are clamoring to own and control America’s businesses of every kind and government at every level.  How can they do that?  They’ve figured that one out; just demand financial support from every person who works for a living in the private sector or in a government job by massively funding the politicians who make our laws.  This is wholly inconsistent with the vision of our nation’s founders who were clear and unambiguous in our Constitution. They said that the liberty of the individual MUST be placed above that of any collective or of government at ANY level.  
 
Bent on running and owning business and government by default, union officials intend to do it by wiping out the individual freedoms cherished and promised to all Americans.  The truth is, if you own a business in this new world of labor union officials’ dreams of grandeur, you don’t – or won’t – run it.  If you work at a job you’re good at and feel lucky to have, you don’t or won’t have the freedom you dreamed of to make your own personal work-related choices, if “card check” becomes law.
 
    This state must return individual freedom of association with respect to union membership, union dues requirements, or union so-called “benefits” to those who freely choose them.  We could do this in Pennsylvania.  Representative Daryl Metcalfe (R-12) and Senator Mary Jo White (R-21) have introduced the legislation with 46 total co-sponsors.
 
    The twenty-two states with the strongest jobs and growth performance have Right to Work laws.  Pennsylvania could be number 23 if our 253 legislators would summon the political will to do something genuinely significant for liberty and jobs.  Every seat in the State House will be decided on November 4, as will one-half of the State Senate.  Every Pennsylvanian should ask his or her candidates where they stand on a Right to Work Law for Pennsylvania.
 
    Pennsylvanians for Right to Work is asking every one of them!