-By Warner Todd Huston
The lesson: if you are a union member, better to sit on your rear-end and do nothing than find gainful employment.
A poor Chicago-area carpenter who was sick and tired of waiting for his useless union to find him work struck out on his own and got a job with a non-union shop. Big mistake. Once the Chicago Regional Council of Carpenters found out they tried to fine him $300,900 for having the gall to find work on his own.
Carpenter Nathaniel Musser is not sitting around and taking this outrageous treatment handed him by the feckless union, either. He’s filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the union with the National Labor Relations Board which will come up in mid-August.
If were Mr. Musser, though, I would not hold my breath that Obama’s union-sold NLRB will side with the poor, put upon worker here. This is the same regulatory board that extra-constitutionally decided that it had to power to prevent Boeing from opening up a new plant in any U.S. state it wanted to merely because the NLRB thought a few union jobs in Washington State might be at risk.
Mr. Musser is a member of the union but the union was offering him no work, so in 2009 he worked for a while with a non-union company. Th union then tried to fine the young man $300,900. Musser appealed the decision and the fine was lowered to a much easier to pay amount… a mere $200,850!
In explanation, Musser says that the union has a policy that members cannot resign from the union and he would have quit to work in a non-union shop if there was a way to do so.
Isn’t that just like the un-American unions? How is it possible in America that once you join an organization there isn’t a way to quit it? How the heck is that Constitutionally justified? What legal or moral compulsion makes you part of the union from the day you join until the day you die?
I hope Mr. Musser wins his case, but with Obama’s union bought and paid for presidency it isn’t likely.
(HT LaborUnionReport.com)
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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