Making Texans pay for the right to work

Roddy Stinson:

The conflict between the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott just got hotter:

"Union officials are trampling the employee freedoms provided under Texas law. ... The time has come for Attorney General Greg Abbott to take aggressive action to stop union officials from thumbing their noses at his state's Right to Work law."

—Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix, quoted in a July 9 news release

The release's subhead expressed the foundation's growing frustration with Abbott:

"Workers' rights group once again urges the Texas attorney general to prosecute statewide pattern of illegal forced unionism."

The "once again" growl is a reference to the attorney general's foot-dragging in the case of a "trampled" El Paso worker, Juan Vielma.

...

At the center of the latest confrontation between the right-to-work foundation and the attorney general is the case of a Corpus Christi security guard, Carlos Banuelos, who was given a choice to (a) join the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America, Local 207 or (b) face dismissal from his job as a guard at the federal Port Isabel Detention Center.

"It's not about the $30 a month I have to pay. It's the way it was being demanded by the union," Banuelos told a reporter for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times last spring when his case first became news.

To date, the Texas attorney general hasn't involved himself in the case, leaving the heavy lifting to the Virginia-based right-to-work foundation, which offered to represent Banuelos after learning of his desire to assert his right to work without being forced to join a union.

...

Without the involvement of the Right to Work Foundation or intervention by the Attorney General the unions have a built in advantage, because the cost of litigating is so much higher than the fees that have to be paid to the union trolls. A Texan's right to work just does not appear to be a high priority for our current AG.