Union thugs protesting outside the homes of their targets has become a weapon more and more unions have added to their already-large arsenal. Now that the State of Georgia may become the first state to outlaw the offensive tactic, oddly enough, unions are getting support from an unlikely source–the Tea Party Patriots.

Last year, when 45,000 union members struck telephone carrier Verizon, IBEW union radicals showed up outside the home of Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam’s House causing a disturbance in McAdam’s neighborhood (see video below). In another incident, up to 3,000 CWA protesters conducted a mock funeral outside the home of Verizon’s chairman.

Though it shouldn’t be necessary for any legislature to even have to consider the protection of private residences from protesters, these incidents (and others like it) have drawn the attention of Georgia’s legislature, which has moved to pass Senate Bill 469 to prohibit the targeting of individuals at their private residences.

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For all of the pro-union leanings of President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board appointees, the NLRB is, unwittingly, about to do something that those of us in the preventive labor relations field have been doing for years: Educate employees that they don’t need to pay dues to a union in order to exercise their rights.

In 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act.  The cornerstone of the law, which applies to most private-sector workplaces with two or more employees, is what is known as employees’ Section Seven Rights.

Section Seven is as follows [emphasis added]:

Sec. 7. [§ 157.] Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3) [section 158(a)(3) of this title].

What many employees (and employers) don’t realize is that employees without a union have the exact same rights as they do with a union and, often times, even more. As a result, every year, thousands of employees get duped into unionization and paying union dues when, if they knew their already-existing rights, they might never entertain the thought.

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“Rudy Lazano and I worked closely together to try and build a relationship between Latino and African American activists and union types. We called ourselves progressives.”

Congressman Danny K Davis, Feb. 26, 2012.

A longtime ally of President Barack Obama, Congressman Danny K. Davis [D-IL] was in Chicago recently accepting the Social Justice Award from People’s World, a Communist-based website.

The editorial mission is partisan to the working class, people of color, women, young people, seniors, LGBT community, to international solidarity; to popularize the ideas of Marxism and Bill of Rights socialism. The websites enjoy a special relationship with the Communist Party USA, founded in 1919, and publish its news and views. [Emphasis added]

[Ironically, the staff members of People's World are members of the Newspaper Guild, CWA, AFL-CIO.]

The award was given to the Congressman at the Chicago headquarters of the Communist Party USA—a location that the Congressman seemed to be perfectly comfortable at accepting his award as you can see by this video [via BigGovernment]

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On Friday, Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson approved the union-dominated National Labor Relations Board’s mandate on nearly all private-sector companies to post so-called “union rights posters.” Additionally, Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, declined to hear a challenge to Obama’s recent NLRB appointments.

In the union rights poster ruling, Berman Jackson ruled that the NLRB did not exceed its statutory authority to require private-sector employers that fall within the scope of the NLRB to post notices to employees advising them of their right to unionize. This means that most companies with two or more employees (outside of the airline or railroad industries) will be required to post the union rights posters (see PDF copy here) on April 30, 2012.

In a small bone threw to employers, Jackson did rule, according to the Hill, that the failure to post a notice would not be an automatic Unfair Labor Practice, as the NLRB originally proposed in its ruling:

She did rule, however, that the NLRB cannot “make a blanket advance determination that a failure to post [the notice] will always constitute an unfair labor practice,” though it can be considered in individual cases.

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Andrew Breitbart‘s passing has left many of us stunned and stricken with grief.

As a contributor at both RedState and BigGovernment, I knew Andrew only through discussions at conferences, texts, and an occasional telephone call. However, this morning, like so many, the news of his untimely death struck like a blow to the gut.

Andrew Breitbart was one of a kind. He was an ordinary man who, in his short 43 years on earth, did extraordinary things.

He was, first and foremost, a husband and a father. Andrew was also a warrior and, as many know, a general in a cultural and philosophical war for America’s future. His leadership in that war, his ability to get into the trenches (and under the skin of the Left), is how so many of us came to know and admire him.

Like those of us who have spent time on the dark side, Andrew understood the Left more than most and, more importantly, he was not afraid to confront the Left head on—and he did it with joyous zeal. 

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A reader sent the following mailer (see below) from the Democratic National Committee targeting Florida’s female population.

The DNC’s large, two-sided mailer reads like an Obama campaign piece (because it is one) and refers readers to a federal government website healthcare.gov.

Interestingly, on one side of the mailer, the DNC tells the story of how Barack Obama was motivated to pass Obamacare by the passing of his mother who, living in Jakarta, suffered from violent abdominal pain and was misdiagnosed with appendicitis.

It wasn’t until she flew home to the U.S. from Jakarta to have her appendix removed that she was properly diagnosed. Apparently, Jakarta’s doctors failed to recognize ovarian cancer. Mr. Obama’s mother, the DNC mailer explains, succumbed to the illness “a short time later.”

Oddly, by using Obama’s personal story as the foundation (and despite the fact that Obama’s mother was properly diagnosed in the U.S.), the DNC ad seems to want readers to tie the failings of Jakarta’s health system to the failings of the U.S. health care system when it states [emphasis added]:

…He carried the memory of that pain in his heart every single day when fighting for real health insurance reform.

President Obama will not stop fighting until every American has access to quality, affordable health care when they need it. The lives of millions of people facing similar challenges as his mother did depend on it.

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Well, it only took four years for Machinists’ union boss Tom Buffenbarger to warm up to Barack Obama, whom the union boss once compared to Janus, the two-faced Roman god.

On Friday, as it reluctantly dutifully did four years ago, the International Association of Machinists endorsed Barack Obama and his bid for a second term.

In so doing, the Machinists’ union again joins the ranks of the ‘latte-drinking, prius-driving, Birkenstock-wearing, trust fund babies,’ those Obama supporters Buffenbarger once poked fun at. [Of course, while Buffenbarger may not wear Birkenstocks, he does get to fly around in his own private jet which is paid for by his union's members.]

In Friday’s endorsement, Machinists’ boss Buffenbarger stated (emphasis added):

“We’re convinced the job growth we’re now seeing, particularly in the critical manufacturing sector, is a direct result of President Obama’s policies and leadership and we want that growth to continue.”

This is quite a departure from Buffenbarger’s past rhetoric.

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In Delsea, New Jersey, the teachers’ union (a sub-chapter of the NEA) has been fighting over the amount of their pay increases (not decreases) since 2010.

On Valentine’s Day, according to NJ.com, the union teachers decided to make their grievance personal by protesting in front of the Delsea school board president’s home.

Unfortunately, the school board president was not home—but his children were, including his daughter whose teachers were among those protesting outside her home.

via NJ.com [emphasis added]:

While the group of teachers, support staff and aides – who have been in contract negotiations since 2010 – were demonstrating within the boundaries of the law, school board members are “appalled and disgusted” with the union’s call to picket in front of Mario Christina’s home while his children were present.

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One of the biggest problems with the process known as card check (a major component in the union-backed and misleadingly-named Employee Free Choice Act) is that unions are legally allowed to mislead workers into signing their rights over to a union.

Under various NLRB decisions that span decades, the federal agency that enforces most of America’s private-sector’s labor law has refused to interfere with union organizers’ ability to use pressure tactics and deceive workers into unionization.

Now, an employer in the Northeast is challenging the Service Employees International Union’s allegedly deceptive tactics as it attempts to get union authorization cards signed in an ongoing unionization campaign.

Fellowship Health Resources runs about a dozen group homes around Cape Cod and, according to the Cape Cod Times, has become a target of the SEIU.

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When discussing the National Labor Relations Board and its pro-union slant these days, few realize that the staff within the NLRB is also unionized.

In fact, according to the National Labor Relations Board Union, the union represents over 950 NLRB attorneys, examiners and support staff. It is these individuals, along with their bosses within the NLRB, who are charged with remaining neutral in employer-union disputes—which makes it all the more interesting when the NLRB’s union charges NLRB management with “trying to destroy their employees’ union.”

According to a flyer distributed by the NRLBU, NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce (a union attorney) and Acting General Counsel Lafe Solomon have declared war on NLRB attorneys.

The NLRB Union claims NLRB bosses are demanding that the union permit management to unitlaterally cut performance incentives “at a whim,” as well as an 85% cut in “official time” (which is the time spent to conduct union business at taxpayer expense).

The Acting General Counsel’s and Chairman’s attack on official time is the federal sector equivalent of an attack on a private sector union security clause.

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