Obama NLRB Seeks To Gut Right-to-work Laws

Opponents of Big Labor complained to lawmakers Wednesday that the Obama administration's National Labor Relations Board is poised to gut right-to-work laws with a seemingly simple tweak they claim could leave independent workers at the mercy of the unions they rejected.

The board is considering requiring non-union workers who work at unionized companies - something that can only happen in the 25 so-called "right-to-work" states - to pay fees to unions in order to file workplace grievances. That, complained Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee, gives the unions, who control the grievance process, too much power over workers who opted out.

"History has shown that union officials all too often initiate on-the-job discrimination, which forces a worker into the grievance process the union bosses control, in order to punish him or her for not joining the union in the first place,” he said.

In addition to the potential for union workers to initiate a grievance with non-union colleagues, forcing them to seek and pay for union representation, the "fee-for-grievance” scheme could allow for fees that exceed regular dues, warned Mix, who called the NLRB proposal a "deceptive assault" on right-to-work laws.

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