Marathon Pundit: NLRB overreach: Michigan edition

White Pigeon, St. Joseph County

Michigan can surprise. Who would have thought after its near-record breaking season for losses in 2003 that three years later, the Detroit Tigers would win the American League pennant.

Now the heavily-unionized Great Lakes State is a battleground against Big Labor.

But first, courtesy of the National Right To Work Legal Foundation, is a report of SEIU overreach in the Sunshine State.

An Osceola Regional Medical Center housekeeper has filed federal charges against a major healthcare union for repeatedly violating federal law by refusing to allow her to exercise her right to refrain from dues-paying union membership under Florida's popular Right to Work law.

With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, Imaculada Camara of St. Cloud filed the charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

On December 8, 2011, Camara sent a letter notifying Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Healthcare Workers East officials that she was exercising her right to resign from union membership. Instead of acknowledging her request, SEIU officials rejected her letter because it was not sent via registered mail. On December 28, Camara sent a second letter, which SEIU officials again rejected, this time for not being timely.

In both instances, the SEIU officials' refusal to allow Camara to exercise her right to refrain from union membership clearly violates federal law because any worker has the right to resign from full-dues-paying union membership at any time and is not required to notify the union she is resigning via certified mail.

Camara's federal charge also challenges the legality of the union hierarchy's dues deduction authorization – a document used by union officials to automatically collect dues from employees' paychecks – which restrains a worker's ability to exercise their right to resign from union membership.

Eduardo Lopez, a colleague of Camara, filed a similar charge in January. The charges will be investigated by the NLRB Regional Office 12 in Tampa.

"SEIU officials are just making up excuses to prevent workers from exercising their constitutionally-protect right to refrain from union membership," said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. "Schemes like this show that the ultimate goal of union officials is to collect more forced dues from workers, even when rank-and-file employees want nothing to do with the union."

Back to Michigan. From AP:

A bill that would block unionization efforts by graduate student research assistants at the University of Michigan or other public universities is headed to Gov. Rick Snyder.

Seney National Wildlife Refuge

The bill was given final legislative approval Wednesday in the Republican-led Legislature along party lines, 26-12 in the Senate and 63-47 in the House. It was sent to Snyder over the objections of Democrats, who say Republicans violated procedural rules and the state constitution in order to avoid a procedural vote in the House to give the bill so-called "immediate effect."

Spokesman Ken Silfven says Snyder plans to sign it.

The unions don't care about these grad students--they just want to collect dues money from them. Speaking of dues, here's another story from Michigan Public Radio:

The Michigan legislature has passed a bill to prohibit public schools from automatically collecting union dues from the paychecks of teachers and other employees.

Republican Representative Joe Haveman says the bill's intent is to focus schools on educating children.

"The focus of our school administration has to be on teaching the kids. Let's get out of the business of collecting bills for other people," says Haveman.

Project labor agreements make expensive public works projects even more expensive. From MLive.com:

The fight over project labor agreements isn't over.

Ann Arbor

Gov. Rick Snyder is appealing a U.S. District Court judge’s ruling that a Michigan law banning governmental units from requiring project labor agreements for state-funded construction projects is unconstitutional. Attorney General Bill Schuette filed a notice of an appeal on behalf of Snyder on Tuesday.

The issue is one of several debates between lawmakers and labor groups over whether and how union labor should be regulated. The state says it shouldn't discriminate based on whether a contractor is unionized, while certain labor and trade groups contend project labor agreements ensure fair wages and use of skilled, trained workers.

The legal disputes come as the debate over right-to-work heats up.

But not all is well in Michigan. Big Government: Michigan Republicans are backing the SEIU's bilking of parents of disabled children. And they're getting paid to do it.

Twitchy.com: Obama really needs the UAW cash, so he's increasing subsidies on alternative fuel vehicles
New York Daily News: 400-pound ex-union prez seeking big fat break from judge on embezzlement
The Jersey Journal: Jersey City man to serve 4 months in halfway house for embezzling funds while union official.

Despite the most pro-Big Labor president in history occupying the White House, some Democratic senators, realizing where so much of their campaign contributions come from, aren't happy. So they are proposing something called the RESPECT Act. Get a load of what Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), who nominally represents me in the upper chamber, has to say about unions: “Millions of hard-working men and women, both in Illinois and across America, lack the basic right to discuss the terms of their working conditions."

Really? Really???

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