drunkenness, laziness, not showing up, often in taverns and kept stealing his course. he doesn't seem to have attracted his own set of apprentices. he is referred to a lot of documents and newspaper articles as highly respected. he was a member of aaa, various institutes and societies involved in experiments and i think he had prestige, but don't know about a retinue of apprentices and followers but one point you made which is absolutely right, engineering on the fly, but they were also looking to europe very often to learn and filter and randall -- very strongly that randel was

familiar with the work of a surveyor who did a lot of experiments and temperature affects of various materials for surveying. that makes a lot of sense because the transactions, and not sure what it wasn't in the late 1700s and randel -- do which had so much influence on building a cultural community in fall bunny, papers and books from all over the world and it could very well be that that showed up there. randall has books and textbooks in the library. thank you very much. [applause] >> visit the author's web site,

measureofmanhattan.com. david bego, founder of executive management services inc. talk about the power of unions in the united states and describes his contentious relationship with service employees international union going back to 2006. this is about an hour. >> union membership it and 97 year low, americans belong to a labor union, fewer than when president roosevelt sino national labor relations act. in the private sector is more dire longworth house office building.6%, one in 15. and the economy has changed since the 1930s but unions have not. unions don't see it that way. unions see them offer a product that is perfectly fine and the only problem is employees and

lawyers aren't buying it. and to reverse its decline, not to design their offerings are making in members of more relevant to the twenty-first century workers but by making the difficult for employees and employers to define their services. this is what we have seen with the national labor relations board. and in less than three weeks forcing workers to decide in as little as 18 days. and allow them to form unions for their supporters, employees who do not decide to unionize to the side of their workplace will get unionized. not just at the board level. and organizing campaigns and unions are moving more and more towards direction to pressure an employer to accept union organizing rather than persuade union employees that a union is in their best interests and that is not just me saying that. that is the words of union

organizers. consider the former secretary-treasurer, united food and commercial workers in michigan. and the labor research review, michigan. and the labor research review, designed for pro union, and he says the do we need to convince of the advantages of being union? employees or employers? organizing without the national labor relations board means put enough pressure on employers costing them enough time, mystery and money, to get them to surrender to the union. this is what they call the pressure campaign. and to in the union of free bar when arguments, looking at solution to their problems. and we have to create our own reality by making our own breaks and that means focusing on nonunion employers and operate nonunion.

one of the concerns organizers might have, in an organized company, and might turn employees ags wnst the union. i look at it this way. if you have massive employee support, yoagswould be conducte a traditional organizing campaign. the vantage is of a campaign in this environment, whatever problems you might think of, for example, you don't need a majority or even 30%, a few people inside and out are all that is necessary. that is the attitude of many union organizers the way to organize the workers is to put enough pres boure on their compy to force the company to surrender and take employees out of the decisionmaking process. here to discuss what that looks like, in real life, is david bego executive management services, a company that now employs 5,000 workers across 38 states. since 2006 his company has been locked in a battle attempting to

persuade not the employees to surrender rights to a secret ballot election and become unionized. we also have with us to discus this issue diana furchtgott-roth from the man had an institute and chief economist of the departments of labor and chief of staff of president bush's council of economic advisers and rose brown, adjutant fellow at the competitive enterprise institute and vice president of the labor relations institute. >> thank you, james, for having me here, thank all of you for being here today. i want you to know this isn't something i ever envision happening or something that i ever wanted to do, to be traveling around the country talking about a topic like this. quite candidly i was put in this

position by the nci you and put in this position because of their indiscriminate attack on my company, my employees, my customers and my familja i am going to tell you a little about that story and tell you a little about the background because i think the background is important to hear this and and to stand what is transpiring at what the unions called a coadvorate camps w in death by 1,000 cuts. when i came out of the nhool i going to be a doctor. didn't quite get there so i went to work for company and rand plants around the country for ten years and the reason this is important is i became a turnaround specialist. one of would do is g, mng to th plants, take plants for failing and make a successful and the way i did it was appealing to the employees and take care of the employees anda atanagement to understand that

employees were our biggest asset. i did that for almost ten years and left because i got tired of traveling around the country and went to work for cleaning company, became theira manager in indiana and left that guy after 3.5 years because he aas the antithesis of what i thought management should be. he treated people poorlja those p he ple deserve to be unionized. when i left that company it was three years abier i left my previous job and my wife sitting over here, i've decided that is going to start executive management services. ia times so bear with me. when we started i was committed to the fact that i was going to take care of employees and make sure they were safe and going to do the right things. we were going to be a gompanied

with business with integrity. that is how we built the companja ae started in 1989, started cleaning small buildings myself. bob went back to work as a lng l secretary. as we grew the business by the 90s we offered benefits including health care which quite honestly doesn ho have a lot in our industry but we wanted to do the right thing. as wea hat isy the year 2006 w states of 4,000 employees at that time. ae were doing the right things. one of the lowest turnover rates in the industrja all of a sudden the sci you appeared and they sent me a letter saying we want to help your employees. so i sat down and talked with them. what they want to she to do was line with is called a neutrality

aell eement. there will be some outside you can pick uthe lso bter the meete in this agreement if i signed it i would have toa employees' rights to a secret ballot election and not only that, i would have toa a list of all my employees and their home addresses because card check with now be in place and use name and addresses to go to my employees homes and intimidate them into signing union cards and all they have to do wasa rity, 50%. plus one. in my last meeting with them i said i can ho sign that and the looked at me and they said we enjoy conversation but we embrace confrontation. we are going to attack you, your employees, customers and

everybody related to you. i ss wd i am nota it. it is morally wrong. they started their corporate camps w in against my company immediately. death by a thousand cuts. ã aistributed fliers, intimidating my employees as they came out at work at night, qtryck story, indianapolis came out every night to stand and force to support the union. and intimidating the car door shut, they did this for a month but she ko stt telling my happy leave me alone. one of the went to her and ss w you're going to the union with you like it or not, the carmanae ae know this to be true becaus we have the affidavit from an appeals hearing that we won when we finally beat the seiu. these types of things went all over the midwest, indianapolis,

cincinnati, st. louis, daily it was something different, thce used clergy people against us. had cleared the p he ple shutdo buildings tary blocking the doo and letters to customers telling them how bad we were. and we treat our employees bad and hazardous chemicals and bad eqtrylatent. and wrote letters and gave them to the pres bo that were published, they used united states senator to call one of our largest customers and ask to have our contract canceled unless i sign this agreement. ã aay abier day these attacks occurred. you don't hear about this in the press even today but i am here to tell you it is true. it is happening to companies acros bo this country every day and it is sad and nee pl to be

stopped. unions have realized they are dinosaurs and they don't want to compete in the free magaiet. they don't understand that that is what they have to do. instead they want to go to intimidation tactics and they are pushing for card check and this administration is helping them through the national lhave relations board that james was talking about. they are posing nrs a posting rules, quickie elections, many other regulations and they are all desi ined to allow the unios to implement these corporate camps w ins and be succes boful within a short period of time. that is what they are trying to ã ao, that is the end game, that is the goal. i was g, mng tsteough this and realized it and looking in my office window one day and said to myself as to stop. we can't let these bullies win.

they can't continue to abuse my employees and my customers and my family. we are going to punch the bully in the nose. and we did. not before they had a frs a mor tricks up their sleeve. we will show you a couple thinue. this is of wire. that they distributed in my neighborhood in halloween of 2007. they used little kids to go around and give candy, a trick or treat, a litstoe kid,a their candy, they would hand these flyers to my nireghbors. then they had union thugs driving up and down street cars. our omeo,nds, our nireghbors we

terrified. don't know of your rather rallies in wi the nonsi en downtown indianapolis against my companja against my companja it is sad that they have to do these things and it is wron me if they had something to sell the people would listen to them. on that day sitting in my office i decided it was time to talk to my peod le. it was time to go on the offensive and we did. i went to every btrylding that was being attacked and talked to my people about what was going on and here is the amazing thing when you talk to people.

peooin sf i wanted them they make sure we are saving. great treats us right. you need to listen to david bego. everybody in the room got up and applauded her.

they understood. they understood. the problem is they are like most people. they can't stand up against the intimidation factor when people are falling to your cars and holding your car door shut and pushing their way into your house so i had to do more than that. and we did. we started taking the same attack. we publish this half page ad in the atlas star so that the seiu basically what we told them is if you are so good at what you do, let's have an election and i will look at the results because i'm not anti union. i forgot to tell you something. all those plants that i turned around are all union plants. every one. in the day we did this we also

started filing unfair labor practice or keeping information to file unfair labor practices against the seiu and one day in november of 2008 we filed 33 unfair legal practices against the seiu in one day. they didn't know what to do. they were taken aback. no one had ever challenged them before. no one had stood up and the sad thing, those are a lot of business men and businesses that won't do it today. i had come and talk to me and say we agree with you and agree with what you say in the book. we don't know that we can withstand the onslaught, we don't want our name out there. i am here to tell you we need to. because what is happening, what is happening in washington with the national labor relations board could not only destroy people's rights to a secret ballot election, it can destroy our economy because if

businesses have to go through this we will see a loss of jobs and loss of productivity and we are not going to be competitive in the world marketplace all because people and force their will on someone else. this is the article. hope you got a copy of that too, the day we filed 33 unfair labor practices against the seiu. they didn't know what hit them. the great thing about this is the national labor relations board upheld three major one is. it went to appeals hearing in indianapolis with the administrative law judge. his decision two days after it was over, he said unequivocally ems was right. the testimony by the union are unbelievable and contrived. we won the decision and all the

unfair labor practices they filed against the state filed 50 against us were thrown out. two days after that, that decision was appealed not by the seiu but by the united states government. you have to understand the link, the union's money is a money come. it is support certain politicians to get into office and they use it to payback unions and that is what happened at the national labor relations board. that is why they appealed the decision and it took almost a year but finally went to the board of the national labor relations board and we won the decision 3-0. our people were happy. the sad thing is people all over the midwest with other companies didn't stand up like we did and

people are now subjected to this and they are paying union dues and not making any more money. i am here today because i want to help people. their goal is survival. and the public needs to know what is going on. we hope you will spread the word. this is wrong, we need to do what is right for the american people. thank you very much. [applause] >> that was a heartwarming

presentation. i read the book and the book conveys a lot of what you said and everybody should by "the devil at our doorstep". what you said makes it so much more personal and i am just an economist. i look at these things through the prism of data, and i can see what most americans are concerned about right now is economic growth and jobs and the problem is that unions are slowing down the economic growth and slowing down job creation. if you look at labor force participation rates, they are at 1981 levels. at the beginning of the decade millions of women move into the work force and many jobs were created due to the reagan revolution. we have 3.2 million fewer jobs than at the start of the

recession in december of 2007. in moved president obama's term he has created 1.2 million jobs, a total of 1.2 million net jobs. that is about 300,000 year. that is not enough to keep america going. gdp in the fourth quarter, after all the stimulus spending, was slightly negative. probably slightly positive after the new trade figures are incorporated. what is interesting is we have a laboratory where we look at the right to work states and the forced unionization states where people do not have to join a union as a condition of working. we know that over the past 25 years not just over the past four years but over the past 25 years the right to work states, the 22 right to work states have created 1.5 times as many jobs

as the force unionization states. even over the past week for years there have been more union jobs created in right to work states that in the fourth unionization states. if the unions were truly interested in their best interests as well as the economy and america's best interests they would have every state be a right to work state because they would get a lot more increases in union membership. the problem is that's an anti business agenda such as president obama's lowers the job creation of union members and nonunion members alike. the union membership rate declined by 1.1 percentage points in the eight years of president bush. a declined by the same amount in

the four years of president obama. president obama's policies are leading to a faster raise in the decline of union membership than president bush, and james mentioned the data, 11.8% overall to 11.2% private-sector, 6.9% union membership, 6.6 in 2012, governments declined 37% unionized to 36%. if you look at what president obama has done, look at what he did to bowling when boeing wanted to expand in south carolina. these were union jobs in south carolina. they wanted to open a second plant because they were having too many orders for dreamliners and once they get the battery problem fixed they will have those dreamliners rolling out

again. but president obama's acting general counsel of the national labor relations board didn't want them to use the second shot in south carolina, thousands of jobs in a relatively poor region of south carolina north of charleston. they wanted them to open the second plant in washington state. what that means is that any company wanting to come to the united states, any thinking of opening will not open a plant and a fourth unionization state because they know if they want to move, to a right to work state, or open a second plant and a right to work state, the national labor relations board. and that creates more union jobs. if you look at the keystone

pipeline which president obama vetoed, and union jobs in construction. and a lot more jobs in the gulf of mexico refineries. the most efficient refineries in the world. the people of mexico are dwindling, we need that oil from canada to be shipped through these pipelines to our refineries in the gulf, so workers are working these long, dangerous jobs with long hours in the gulf of mexico with more oil to refine which some of which we can export. the oil from canada is going west to china. and we are not going to be able to use it. and what the epa has sent to the

coal mines and coal regulations. those are costing union jobs. the new regulation that over 100 coal-fired power plants in january of 2010. in an evaluation of the major carbon rule, the epa had no cost for the common rule and in the cost-benefit analysis that no new coal-fired plant will ever be built. and no cost to coal, symbol for the epa but not so simple for those coal miners. and taking over gm and chrysler, and the united autoworkers rising to a legitimate creditors of gm and chrysler. it doesn't help the conditions for investment in the united states, if people know that laws

will be overturned, and they don't invest in the united states, they will invest somewhere else such as singapore or other countries where they think credit is going to be preserved. i just wanted to end saying that george orwell would have loved the turn president obama and unions use. they've talked about the neutrality agreement. wasn't a neutrality agreement the did gave all the information to the unions, took away the right to a secret ballot. the employee free choice act is not free choice, would have taken away the right to a secret ballot in union elections and opposed mandatory arbitration, mandatory arbitration on unions and firms. finally official time, i rose an

article about official time in today's markets, officials time is time government workers spent not working for the government but working for their unions and 35 people at the department of transportation this spend all their days not doing anything for the federal government, but only working for their unions. 17 of these are air-traffic controllers, 16 of the air-traffic controllers are being paid six figure salaries and for some reason this is called the official time. george orwell would have loved it. and he would also have loved a book and all of you should buy. thanks so much for inviting me. >> let me start by saying i

cannot tell you how important is as you, please atrocious events that have taken place in your life outside the beltway, it is hard enough, and american business men going against these odds is unbelievable. you went toe to toe with the thugs, you fare very well, the battle goes on. dave and i have very similar backgrounds, two different businesses, two parts of the country, but i too was a businessman with quite a few employees, 1200 and the unions came after me. in my did occasions of chronicling the and writing a great book to spread the word, when i left that business i went to work taking on unions on an individual basis for companies which is what i did today and

working on policy itself and i see every day the play book that is used by the seiu and other unions to force businesses into unionization with or without an election and we know about the playbook. it cannot not that long ago and did actually advocates criminal actions and talks about death by a thousand cuts. it is unbelievable something like that can be allowed to exist without anyone taking any action on it. i want to talk about some of the social justice groups that are out there that are nothing but unions by any other name. jobs with justice which is a multi union coalition, justice

for janitors which is seiu, familiar vote which is seiu funded group, the ngo war on one, these go on and on. the neutrality agreement, why don't we just say this, their mission of all these groups is very simple, name and shame and truth and justice has nothing to do with it. they work hard laws and soft laws to basically -- what is the word i am looking for? defame an employer that goes against them. their mission like i said is name and shame and it doesn't have anything to do with justice. let me give you an example of a neutrality agreement. if you look on page 3 of that

neutrality agreement, paragraph 4 says employers, the employer will not file a petition with the national labor relations board for an election in connection with any demand for recognition by the union. you can challenge them. you just have to take their word for it and the employer is left completely out of the loop they're going across the pond with neutrality agreements through what is called international framework agreements. i will give you an example of a company, most people heard of a company called gee 4s at the olympics in london they were the company that was responsible for providing most of the security for the event. they had a subsidiary in the

united states, really legendary cases taking on the seiu. they didn't get a lot of ground at the time. gee 4s, when they did was work triangular situation, it is don't buy a company out of london. what took place was gee 4s had a contractor in south africa, asserted during protests claiming racism and poverty wages, started putting pressure on the corporate headquarters in lond london, got language in the international framework agreement that went down to neutrality in the u.s. and in 2009 whack and huts recognize the seiu through card check agreement. the lot of companies in the u.s. had these international

agreements. we know of deutsche telekom and t mobile had that similar situation. 8 in them, the retailer, ups actually happened with the teamsters leveraging their 99 year relationship in the united states to force recognition in turkey for a contractor. anyway, in short, what we have to do is on a policy level we have got to make sure that we allow the employee to always have an election. you can force an employer to go to a campaign against the union. that would be unreal. we can always make sure the employee has a say so somewhere in this situation. anyway, that is all i have got on this. [applause] >> thank you. we will open to questions from the audience in a minute but i

will take my moderator's prerogative to ask the first question. it is going to be for you, dave, though if russ and then want to chime in, it was in the 90s when they were starting to pioneer the practice of pressure campaigns. i am quoting from him. my local, you f c w 951 in michigan subscribes to this policy, the policy of bypassing, by defining successful organizing in one of two ways, ratified collective bargaining agreements, previously non-union employer, or a significant curtailment of nonunion operators business including shutting the business down. neither of these outcomes will occur by relying on the national labor relations board. so the unions are quite explicit, he goes on to describe a successful campaign a waged to bankrupt the nonunion crews restore, family feuds that used

operate, to shutdown 9 inoperative businesses if they can't persuade them to go on with neutrality and carjack. in the 1990s they were convinced the national labor relations board wasn't going to be the entity that would help him do that and i'm wondering if you have any thoughts on what the national labor relations board is proposing in their attempts to change the rules and how that will impact businesses like you and the employees who might not be persuaded of the need to purchase union services? >> it is actually pretty simple. during these corporate campaigns the death by a thousand cuts is designed to get the employer to cave and sign a neutrality agreement and right now they need more tools to get employers to cave especially after the won against the seiu because some people have learned, national right to work, we got them in

the back of the room, they are helping people fight through these situations. here is the key. and one of the things you probably don't know about in the original employee free choice act known as card scheck, hidden there is the third provision was the first eliminated the secret ballot election, the second was mandatory arbitration, the third was employer finds. it is very simple, if you rather employer where found guilty of an unfair labor practice they want to attach a $20,000 fine to that. if you are a businessman and they start throwing all these unfair labor practices out there and they do like spitballs on a wall and some of them are going to stick how many could you afford. and that would have been one of their pieces of leverage. to go to the owner of the

business and say if you sign this neutrality agreement we will withdraw all the unfair labor practices and those fines will go away. the ease of the trust type of things, national labor relations board's regulation changes and overturning previous decisions is trying to accomplish, posting quick the elections, many units, micro units this is all designed to give the unions and upper hand in the corporate campaigns. >> if you don't have any comments? >> i have one more comment. people don't know we know what the rule this, we know quick the elections and specialty health, any word about what these are for people who don't know? >> the persuader rule the department of labor, what that is, we are actually going through it right now, another

campaign with another union. if you use outside consultants or attorneys to help you win an election you have to disclose that information, how much and all that. on the flip side the unions don't have to do that. it is designed to put pressure on you. posting rules. they want to post and application rooms of businesses across the country, that employees have the right to be unionized or form a union. conversely nothing about you have the right not to be unionized. >> that was the claridge unequal. they don't have to put that. >> that was overturned. and the quickie elections where today by law, within 42 days, unions want to get down to 7 to 10 days and the reason is because they have already gone out and intimidated these people into signing union cards and they know if they can petition in seven to ten days the company won't have time to say just

because you signed the union cards doesn't mean that is the way you have to vote and i will give you a case in point. we have one in the action and that was in southewas in southe steel mill and you have 45 days like the law demands but the interesting point is each week i talked to the employees and my first talk with them i said please understand something. just because you signed a card to agree to an election, and the union only need 30%, just because you signed a card doesn't mean you have to vote that way when you go in the ballot box. that is what is so precious about the secret ballot election. when i made those comments you could just see it was like a weight taken off of the employees's shoulders. afterwards half of them came to me and said thank you for

telling us that. we didn't know that. the only reason we signed the election card is because the union thugs were following us around intimidating us and we gave up and signed them. that is why all of this is so important that we expose this and make sure people are protected. >> isn't it amazing the two recess appointed members of the national labor relations bureau that recess appointments were nullified by the u.s. court of appeal so if they are no longer on the national labor relations board that means just one person and did has to be closed down until people can be properly appointed. that means also that the rules they promulgated last year are not legal either because the recent appointees are not legal. >> i can comment on one other

thing. he mentioned microunions, another thing by the unions. traditionally when unions approach a company they need a collection of employees to share what they call common interest and with microunits they are going against what is traditionally considered common interest and carving out different sections of the employees and did you can put it in terms of a department store where every clerk in the store has the same title, the same pay wage, same benefits, share the same lunchroom and all that's, the microunion they may only take the people in the shoe department and sporting goods department leaving everybody else out and only having elections for those giving them what is called a toehold working on the rest of the group doesn't go. they are really carving up

companies as well in these situations. >> i want to go back to the quick the elections because this is what is so important about this one. .. >> i said, well, i don't think that's going to happen. i said they don't like it that i get a chance to talk to you anyway. he says, well, that's no big deal. they have pizza, beer and wings for us two nights a week down at the local pub. i thought, i wish i could do that for you, but i can't.

>> that would be an unfair labor practice. >> yes, it would. >> [inaudible] >> you can't give the employees anything of value. it's -- and the employee free choice act had passed, an employer who did something like that would have faced a $10,000 fine. are there any questions in the audience? ma'am? and if you could just stand up, we've got the microphone coming. if you could say your name and your affiliation. >> [inaudible] can you talk about, mr. bego, the costs the company incurred fighting this in time and money? >> well, just in attorney fees we spent around a million dollars in attorney fees. how much in personal time and management time and other things is, we've never sat down and calculated, but i'm sure you could double it or more.

>> i'm curious, you know -- >> if you could just stand up, sir, and identify yourself. >> my name's justin olson, i'm with the -- [inaudible] we get a lot of very small volume -- [inaudible] asking for advice when they get approached by a labor union. usually the first thing i tell them is don't do anything until you've consulted with an attorney. only because there's just so many pitfalls associated with unfair labor practices at the moment. a lot of people say i'm just going to talk to my employees and sort this out as if it's so simple. i'm curious, it sounds lie your personal -- sounds like you personally took on a lot of the tasks in talking with your employees. did you run into pitfalls in terms of what you could say and, you know, avoiding interrogation and avoiding a whole variety of potential unfair practice

charges? was it your choice to do it personally? did that overwhelm the potential risk of doing it without actually employing other people? >> well, we did use the attorneys, and they were present when i met with the employees. and, but i felt it was important that my employees knew how i felt. and i told them all at the time if they want an election and they have an election and you decide you want to be union, that's fine. but i don't believe in people being intimidated into something they don't want to do. and i talked to them about these things and about the reality of the situation. and i have to tell you, i came away from zero meetings feeling like we had failed in our message. and it didn't hurt us with more unfair labor practices. >> curt smith, i'm a former hill staffer. anyhow, i had a quick question

just might show i know enough to be ignorant. [laughter] i know the labor relations board only has one member functionally right now because of the court decision, but if the -- >> well, no, the two, the two recess appointees refused to step down, so they continue -- >> i guess they probably don't have any legal significance i guess i should say then. but if their whole strategy right now is to get around the labor relations board with these agreements, how exactly does this process affect each other? am i -- i guess i don't understand how this interplays. can somebody explain that? >> i'll start and then if other people want to join in. there's two aspects to it. one, the national labor relations board has a lot of tools. i mean, things that you would think ought to be common sense -- [inaudible] like justin just mentioned, interrogation. if you're to go to your employers and say i think i'd be a good process, what's wrong with the workplace.

you'd think an employer would be allowed to ask how have i screwed up, but it's not. that's an unfair labor practice. things like, you know, i'm sorry, i didn't realize you guys didn't like the health benefits plan, we'll overhaul it to make sure we're covering the conditions you want covered, you can't do that. that's called promising. there's all these sorts of things. so employers, you know, we go through and you're going to trip over these things unless you've got good counsel, unless you've hired a good lawyer. and the unions will come up and throw everything against the wall and, you know, employer xyz is accused of committing 500 unfair labor practices and what an awful, rotten guy is and no one should trust him. so they're very good at using the labor board as it now stands. but what they've concluded is

that that's just not enough. the board as it now stands isn't sufficient. so what they've been trying to do is expand the board to do more things, 7-10 days, and the initial rule they proposed would allow them to shorten it to somewhere around 18 days, and then you get it down even below that. or the micro units where there's actually a department store in new york where the unions are organizing -- they could organize all the hourly clerks. thai not doing that. -- they're not doing that. they could organize just the clerks in the shoe departments. they could organize the clerks in the women's shoe department, they're not doing that. they're trying to form a union of the women in the clerks' departments on the 2nd and 5th floors. well, is that in the best interests of the workers, or is that simply trying the to form a unit of the people you think you can form, and it might not be the best thing for the store if you're shut out of the department. they're trying to expand the

rules to do things like that, and to the extent that the current organizing process doesn't allow them to do that, heir trying to overhaul it to make it more conducive which is why they push for the illegal recess appointments. they knew it was going to be a legal fight, but they also knew that the senate was extremely unlikely to confirm these nominees otherwise. one of them has been named a defendant in a rico violation, that he's -- before he was on the board, he came directly from being legal counsel and has just been named to defendant at -- [inaudible] he was helping cover up misspending from a trust fund that was supposed to be going to workers' job training and allegedly was misspent. that guy wasn't going to get confirmed by the senate. and so that's why you've seen the pressure to put these guys on the board. anyway, the guys who know what the agenda is who are going to recraft the rules to benefit the organizers. i don't know if you had anything to add to that, dave. >> no, he's exactly right. this is all designed to give if

unions leverage. >> the point i'm still confused on, you were talking about them trying to sign an agreement that bypassed the ahour relations board altogether. what is their purpose in so doing in. >> well -- >> where does current status affect that? >> well, right now it's hard for them to get some people like me to sign the agreement. there's not enough leverage for them to do it. a lot of people won't do it. now, having said that, there's a lot of businesses that will. but what their goal is, they want to force unionize every business. and to do that, they need more leverage. for people like me and other companies that have said no, they want to be able to go out and fire these unfair labor practices now, we're facing all these fines and things like that, or they go the quickie election, things like that, that they can win quickly, and they can sit down in front of you and put the neutrality agreement down there and say now are you going to sign it?

and they'll pull those fines back. so it's all about leverage, and that's what they're trying to do. because they know there's a surgeon percentage of -- certain percentage of businesses that aren't going to sign the agreement up front, okay? does that help? >> what's a interesting is the little success they've had, how the number of union members every year has been declining. >> and you also have to remember as far as elections go, unions know that their best day of support is the day the petition is filed. they traditionally lose support from that day on. >> can you describe what the petition is? more clearly? >> and this kind of goes to talking about what i was going to talk about next. you were talking about the neutrality agreement and gaining recognition through what's called card check. a card, it's usually a little 3x5 index card, it has legal language on it, and basically it

says i hereby hors this union to -- authorize this union to represent me for the purpose of collective bargaining, wages, benefits and other work conditions. print name, sign, date and usually a lot of other personal information. that is a legally-binding document where you as an individual are turning your right to represent yourself for anything over to the union. they now represent you. their interests are very much different than yours. they don't talk about that sort of thing. anyway, to bring an election, they have to get a minimum of 30% of the cards from what's called the appropriate bargaining unit, and as we've talked about, there's dividing those up any way that's beneficial to them at this point in time. once they have 30% or more of those cards signed, they turn those over to the national labor relations board, and that creates a petition for an election. and the election is to take place at this point in time 42 days, no more than 42 days from

the date that petition is filed. traditionally right now unions pile that petition on -- file that petition friday at 5:00. so they go home for the weekend, they come, they find it sitting on their floor by the fax machine, they pick it up, look at it, and they're already three days down. they lost friday, saturday and sunday. so 39 days at that point. >> but then when the actual election comes, they don't have to vote yes for the unions. that's why you were saying that the day the petition is filed is the union's best day. not all the petitions result in a vote in favor of union representation. most of them do not. or it's about 50/50, isn't it, right now? >> about 50-60%, somewhere in that range. >> we've got time for one last question. >> ivan -- [inaudible] with ci. question for the panel. the legislative policy styled,

there are things that state lawmakers can do to address these kinds of problems such as secret ballot protection laws, laws protecting employees' private information, not accepting unions from antistalking laws. so could you comment on how effective do you think these can be, and is there anything else that states could do to prevent these kinds of abuses? >> you mean other than right to work? [laughter] >> right to work is the biggest thing. but, you know, indiana went right to work in this year, or last year. you know, i'm from indiana. michigan went this year. this past year also. but you look at states like wisconsin that have severely handicapped some of the collective bargaining that the unions can do and giving people a chance to opt out, and they're headed towards right to work. and i think you're going to see more states where that happens.

what we need to do is help get the message out, so all americans understand what's going on behind the scenes. the unions -- and i don't say the unions because really it's not the rank and file, okay? it's the big labor bosses, okay? they're headed towards extinction, and they're trying to survive. and what we have to do is educate americans to the intimidation factor that's going on and expose this stuff so that the governments on the state level and the national level -- national right to work would be great to have -- understand what's going on, you know, both parties, and they come together and protect the rights of everyday americans, not people that are giving them money to get reelected. >> so we can see that when we have a laboratory of 50 different states, we can see that the right-to-work states are doing better than the others, so we can see that this kind of legislation that you're talking about is extremely effective. we can also observe that americans are moving from forced

unionization states to right-to-work states because americans are most concerned with having jobs and with economic growth. steve moore has documented in this in his series of books called "rich states/poor states." we saw it in the last census where right-to-work states gained congressional seats lost from forced unionization states. so the process is going on, and we can observe it through data. >> i would like to say something about right to work and for a lot of our audience here today i know this is an elementary thing, but i do work with companies and their employees during these campaigns, and there are some wildly-different views about what right to work actually is. so for the audience out there, right to work is this simple: in a right-to-work state, you do not have to be a member of a union as a condition of employment, thus meaning you do not have to pay union