Dick Trumka's Vaults

Just how deep are the secret deals between the Obama Administration and Big Labor?

Seventeen months after the Foundation filed a lawsuit against President Obama’s Labor Department (DOL) to find out, we're in federal court closing in on the answers.

Obama’s political operatives at DOL and other agencies are scared to death that you and I will expose their backroom dealings to the light of day.

They stonewalled as soon as the Foundation requested disclosure of their suspect entanglements with union bosses, and they’ve fought tooth-and-nail in federal court to keep their secrets hidden.

That’s why I vitally need your help today -- right now!

You and I can only guess at what the Obama Administration is trying to hide, but their secrets must be big if Obama’s operatives would force the Foundation to drag them into federal court rather than comply with a standard disclosure request.

With your help, we’re going to blow their scheming sky high!

In the two years since the Obama Administration formally took office, it has become clear that Big Labor operatives and Barack Obama’s appointees are working together hand in glove to expand union boss powers.

In fact, many of President Obama’s top officials were taken straight off Big Labor’s payroll, including:

* Hilda Solis, now Secretary of Labor, was an officer at “American Rights at Work,” a Big Labor front group funded by the AFL-CIO and the radical SEIU union specifically to counter the National Right to Work organization... us!

* Deborah Greenfield, now a high-ranking Labor Department official, worked as a top attorney at the AFL-CIO before she parachuted into DOL during the Obama transition period.

* Craig Becker, installed by Barack Obama at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), over the bi-partisan objections of Senators, after a career as a union lawyer and chief legal strategist for the SEIU and AFL-CIO.

I’ll tell you more about Solis, Greenfield, and Becker in a moment, but first I want to be sure you understand what is at stake for America and for the Right to Work cause right now.

After the midterm elections dealt a critical blow to the union bosses and their ability to ram through job-killing legislation, union officials have stepped up their attempts to impose forced unionism through regulatory fiat.

Our efforts to expose their secret dealings are more important than ever now that forced unionism partisans in the White House, at Obama’s Labor Department, and at the Obama NLRB work to aggressively expand monopoly unionism behind closed doors.

It has been said that sunshine is the best disinfectant. I believe that, and that is why we must expose what is happening.

If the American people learn the truth about these hidden union boss power grabs, they will be outraged!

And they will rally to our cause to STOP these schemes.

But the American people can’t take action unless they know the facts, and that’s why the Foundation strategy of demanding full disclosure is so crucial.

If we don’t act, I shudder to think what could be next. Just consider who we’re dealing with.

Before President Obama made Deborah Greenfield a top official at DOL, Greenfield was an attorney for the AFL-CIO, where she led a lawsuit against the Bush Administration’s attempt to require a modest increase in the information required on financial disclosure forms unions and union officials file.

Foundation attorneys worked hard to strengthen these weak disclosure rules so that employees could learn how union officials are spending their forced-dues money.

The Big Labor bosses, of course, will do anything to keep their spending on expensive trips, fancy hotels, fat restaurant tabs, personal luxuries, and the like (not to mention forced-dues political spending) hidden from rank-and-file workers who are forced to foot the bill.

So one of the first actions taken by Obama’s Labor Department, under the control of Hilda Solis and Deborah Greenfield, was to STOP these reforms - the very reforms Greenfield had been trying to kill as an AFL-CIO litigator.

Seeing what looked like an obvious conflict of interest, the National Right to Work Foundation filed a straightforward Freedom of Information Act request demanding any communications between Greenfield and her former Big Labor employers.

The Foundation also made specific requests for the following items:

* ALL documents showing exchanges between Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and union bosses;

* ALL documentation of policy enforcement concerning Big Labor, the pro-compulsory unionism group American Rights at Work, and the notorious left-wing pressure group ACORN.

The response from the Obama Administration was NOTHING -- a big fat ZERO. Meanwhile, media reports indicated that the Administration’s delays might be a deliberate effort to conceal its extensive ties to Big Labor.

So, Foundation attorneys filed a lawsuit in federal court, demanding ACTION - and over sixteen months later we’re still battling in court for the information.

I hope you can see how important this lawsuit is and why I am prepared to authorize Foundation attorneys to file MANY MORE such lawsuits to put the secret deals and forced unionism power grabs on the public record.

For example, Foundation attorneys continue to make legal challenges that EXPOSE Craig Becker’s refusal to recuse himself from critical “card check” and other cases before the NLRB in which he has serious conflicts of interest - even moving to reconsider one case he lost as a union lawyer!

However, these lawsuits could prove costly at a time when the Foundation is already fighting many other crucial legal battles trying to roll back the forced unionism tide. And remember that as taxpayers, you and I are also footing the bill for the Obama Administration’s lawyers who are opposing us.

That’s why - as important as these lawsuits are - I can only launch them if I know that you and other Foundation supporters will provide the financial support to carry them forward while maintaining the Foundation’s entire strategic litigation program.

With your support today, the Foundation can file more lawsuits that expose what Big Labor and the Obama Administration are conspiring to do behind closed doors.

And we will hammer them in our current federal lawsuit until we expose the corruption of Obama’s union boss appointees.

With Big Labor demanding “card check” and other forced unionism schemes by executive fiat, this is no time to be complacent.

That’s why I am asking for your help to shine a light on ALL the favors the Obama regime is doing for the union bosses - all the corrupt conflicts of interest that Barack Obama hopes no one will learn about.

So please act today.

Sincerely,