The Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) and Penn Line Service agreed to pay a West Virginia man $10,000, acknowledging that he was wrongfully terminated from his job after refusing to make the political donations.

“Bulldozing someone into contributing to a union PAC that violates their sincerely-held beliefs is unconscionable,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee.  “No worker should ever be forced to pay union dues or fees for a cause in which they disagree.”

Penn Line Service president Paul Mongell refused to comment on the settlement. LIUNA did not respond to requests for comment.

Jeff Richmond of Meadow Bridge, W.V., began working as a truck driver for Penn Line Service, a trucking and construction company, in July 2012. He never joined LIUNA, which represents other employees at the company, but that did not stop the union from deducting dues from his paycheck. The situation came to a head in October when Richmond refused to make “voluntary” contributions to three PACs associated with the union. He was fired from his job shortly afterward.

LIUNA has emerged as a major player in Democratic circles. It spent nearly $5 million on the 2012 election. The union’s political action committee gave nearly $1.4 million to congressional races that year; $184,000 went to Republicans, while Democrats received $1.2 million. The union did not give any money to Republicans running in Senate races.

Richmond challenged the forced dues program enacted by the union and the company before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after his firing with the help of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The NLRB issued a formal complaint against Penn Line Service and LIUNA but did not have a chance to rule on the matter before the settlement.

Richmond was not the only Penn Line Service employee to benefit from the settlement. The company and union agreed to reimburse an unnamed employee $600 for forced dues payments and political contributions he made in 2012.

Richmond was unable to comment on the case at press time.

Mix said the union’s actions are not surprising given the influence of organized labor in West Virginia. He urged lawmakers to change the pro-union atmosphere in the state to avoid future issues with compulsory union dues.

“West Virginia needs to pass a Right-to-Work law making union membership and dues payments completely voluntary,” Mix said.

Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s right-to-work law took effect at midnight, meaning workers who are not covered by long-term employment contracts now have the ability to withdraw from labor unions. The reforms also prevent employers from mandating union dues as a condition of employment.

State Sen. Pat Colbeck (R.), an architect of the law, said the law’s implementation would go a long way toward bringing economic development back to the struggling state.

“We want to give workers the opportunity to make a choice to financially support the union so they have the freedom of association,” he said. “We also want to do everything we can for economic development—this is a giant ‘open for business’ sign for our state.”

Terry Bowman, founder of Union Conservatives and a longtime member of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, pushed for the legislation for years because he said he was “fed up with my dues money being used to advance a political agenda I didn’t believe in.”

He said the implementation of the law would force unions to refocus their efforts on negotiating on behalf of union workers, rather than politicians.

“We are celebrating our independence day as union members,” Bowman told the Washington Free Beacon hours before the law went into effect. “[Union executives] knew workers were forced to financially support them, so there was no incentive for union officials to do a good job for their members; this will make unions accountable to their members.”

Not every worker will be affected by the bill’s implementation. For example, Bowman will remain a UAW member until his existing contract with Ford expires in 2015. Several Michigan unions spent the months following the bill’s passage pushing for long-term contracts to stave off implementation.

Some of the deals have been controversial.

The Taylor School District granted the local teachers union a five-year contract over employee wages and work conditions, but approved a separate agreement that would force all teachers to pay dues to the union for the next 10 years. National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorney Glenn Taubman said the contract is ripe for courtroom challenges.

“They don’t want wages and working conditions locked in for 10 years, but they want to keep the ability to force union dues [on teachers],” he said. “It’s very brazen.”

Linda Moore, president of the Taylor teachers union, received the “outstanding organizer” award from state American Federation of Teachers for shutting down the school system so that teachers could protest right-to-work.

Neither the district nor the union returned multiple calls for comment.

Bowman said lawmakers and activists would not have long to rest on their laurels. Unions have flooded more than just court dockets with challenges to the bill. Labor leaders have hinted at a 2014 ballot push to repeal the legislation.

That gives activists 18 months to maintain positive poll numbers regarding labor reforms.

Bowman has embarked on a multi-city town hall tour throughout the state with Americans For Prosperity’s Michigan chapter to extol the law’s virtues.

“This is not over by any means. We know the union going to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat it,” Bowman said. “We’re never going to come up with that kind of money, but as long as we can educate the public that right-to-work is pro-union worker, we’re going to safely defend this.”

Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation that has spearheaded labor reforms in other states, said the law’s momentum would only build over time. He compared the law to Wisconsin’s labor reform, which inspired initial public opposition before winning over support after implementation.

The popularity of the reforms eventually helped Republican Gov. Scott Walker become the first governor to survive a recall election, he added.

“When it goes into effect, people will realize that the sun will rise in the morning, despite what union bosses have told them,” Mix said. “It will also repair the damage to economic that was done by 60 years of forced unionism. Voters will realize its benefits in creating jobs just like they did in Wisconsin.”

A three-judge panel from the D.C. Circuit Court ordered the board to file a written response defending President Barack Obama’s recess appointments.

The ruling stems from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s (NRTW) appeal to an NLRB ruling that forced non-union employees to pay for union lobbying costs. National Right to Work attorney Glenn Taubman said the board’s decision violates Beck Rights, which allow employees to opt out of union.

NRTW’s appeal, however, relied more heavily on challenging the legitimacy of the board’s composition than it did the “merits of workers being coerced to pay for unions’ partisan political agenda,” according to Taubman.

“This is really just about the recess appointments,” he said. “They have no authority to act, and the courts should forbid them from acting on this case or any others.”

The circuit court order follows a separate D.C. court ruling that declared President Obama’s January 2012 recess appointments of Democrats Richard Griffin and Sharon Block unconstitutional. Numerous appeals have been filed in the D.C. circuit seeking to overturn NLRB decisions issued during that time.

The board has refused to acknowledge the earlier ruling and continues to issue decisions in major labor disputes.

NLRB spokeswoman Nancy Cleeland said the board does not comment on ongoing litigation but noted that the future of many appeals will have to wait for a higher court to decide on the recess appointments.

“[This] is a request for response, not a ruling … an incremental thing that we don’t comment on,” she said. “The D.C. Circuit has been holding a lot of NLRB cases until the bigger question of the recess appointments is resolved in the courts.”

The court’s request for response demonstrates its willingness to take on the board and could have major implications for other parties waiting to appeal NLRB decisions, Taubman said.

“[The order] means the Court of Appeals is taking a serious look at shutting down the board,” he said. “The implication for other cases is clear if they shut down the board in our case.”

The legislation, which would end the longstanding practice of forcing employees to join unions as a condition of work, has stalled several times over the past decade. The bill’s sponsors say new laws in Michigan and Indiana forced the state’s hand.

“The needs of our economy dictate that it must be adopted at some point in time,” said state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe. “The victory of right-to-work in Michigan and Indiana certainly thrust the spotlight on it and made the General Assembly look it more seriously than the past.”

Pennsylvania is one of the most heavily unionized states in the country with more than 700,000 workers belonging to organized labor groups. That is nearly 100,000 more union members than in Michigan.

The advent of right-to-work in the traditionally labor-friendly Midwest and Rust Belt has left policymakers scrambling to catch up, said Nate Benefield, director of policy analysis at the free-market Commonwealth Foundation.

“Indiana and Michigan are states that we directly compete with,” he said. “We’re going to have to evolve to remain competitive and it’s also a great opportunity for us to outcompete the northeast.”

If Pennsylvania passes right-to-work, it will be the first state to do so in the northeast. That could give it an economic advantage over neighboring New York and New Jersey, which lead the nation in union membership as a percentage of the workforce, advocates of right to work legislation said.

“We’re playing catch-up to Indiana and Michigan, but our immediate neighbors, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland are even less competitive than Pennsylvania is,” Benefield said. “I think right-to-work is a big part to improving our business climate.”

Restricting the use of compulsory union dues also could deal a blow to union influence.

Indiana experienced a dramatic decline in union membership after passing right-to-work in February. Nine percent of state workers belonged to union in 2012, down from 11.3 percent in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Supporters of the legislation point out that Pennsylvania also saw union membership drop and blamed this in part to a declining private sector economy.

“We are sitting on all of these resources—natural gas, shale, connection to the great lakes—but history has shown that we’re not creating enough jobs to keep our young people here; they’re going to right-to-work states to find jobs,” Metcalfe said. “The union status quo attitude has hampered our ability to create jobs.”

Pennsylvania lost more than 300,000 net residents between 1990 and 2008. That is one of the worst rates in the country, according to the state’s Commonwealth Foundation. Benefield said improving the overall economy could reinvigorate Pennsylvania’s unions.

“When you have right-to-work, you expect members to leave the union, but when you bleed jobs because of a struggling economy, you bleed union jobs, too,” Benefield said. “Right-to-work states have faster economic growth, higher GDP, and higher job growth—those are good for all workers in the long-term.”

The GOP will have one obstacle in getting right-to-work through, however. Republican Gov. Tom Corbett said in December that he would not pursue such legislation in 2013, adding that the state “lacked the political will.” Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder made similar statements earlier in his term before reversing himself during the lame duck session.

Metcalfe said he believes that Corbett will sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.

“Over the last two years he’s invested himself in very little. He signed good legislation, but only because we’ve had good leadership in the legislature,” Metcalfe said. “He hasn’t used the bully pulpit in too many issues, so he’s leaving this to us as he does with most issues.”

Steven Cook, president of the Michigan Education Association, circulated an email to local unions officials and staff instructing them to monitor revenue streams in light of the right-to-work laws, which are set to go into effect on March 27, 2013. The law allows workers to opt out of union membership unless they have an existing contract with their employer.

“We will use any legal means at our disposal to collect the dues owed under signed membership forms from any members who withhold dues prior to terminating their membership in August,” Cook wrote.

The tone of the message shocked labor reform activists.

“The level to which the MEA appears to be willing to go after its own members—the same ones whose interest they claim to represent—is amazing,” said Mike Van Beek, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center. “When it comes to their revenue, we know where their priorities stand.”

The email is on legally sound footing, however. Nor would it be the first time the MEA has pursued legal action against teachers. The union’s Grand Rapids chapter sued a teacher who refused to pay dues in 2008 because the labor group refused to make concessions during the financial crisis.

“This was something I needed to do based on principle, in hopes of things happening differently in the future,” special education teacher Marjorie Hayward told MLive.com in 2011. “My biggest concern at the time was their insistence of wanting more money and benefits when everyone else in the state was having to make do with less because of the economy.”

Hayward and the other protesting members were forced to pay $100 per month in back dues.

The MEA did not return requests for comment.

Multiple unions are filing lawsuits against the state to block the implementation of the law. However, Cook did not appear confident those lawsuits would succeed.

“The long and the short of it is, the litigation angle should not be relied on to overturn the act,” the leaked memo states.

Glenn Taubman, an attorney with the National Right-to-Work Legal Defense Foundation, said Cook’s fears are well-founded, pointing to Indiana’s recent courtroom victory over unions attempting to block its right-to-work law.

“He recognizes that the courts are not going to strike down right-to-work; it’s been upheld for too long,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they won’t try; they have a lot at stake and plenty of forced dues money, but they have to know that their odds are slim.”

Cook urged the union leaders to put new long-term contracts in place before the March 27 deadline to prevent employees from leaving the union. The union is also attempting to limit the ability of existing employees to leave the union by requiring that members resign “in August—and only in August.”

Wisconsin’s two largest teachers unions were devastated after Republican Gov. Scott Walker allowed educators to opt out of unions. They are now on the brink of merging to counter their reduced membership.

The leaked memo gives a “rare glimpse” into union strategy and its mindset in the wake of successful labor reforms in Michigan as well as Wisconsin and Indiana, Taubman said.

“They’re finally sensing that they lost politically, they lost legally, and that there’s no support for compulsory unionism among the public, legislature, or courts,” he said.

Federal Judge Philip Simon on Thursday tossed out a lawsuit aimed at preventing Indiana from becoming the first right-to-work state in the Midwest. He rejected the union’s contention that Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels and the legislature overreached in pursuing labor reforms.

“None of the legal challenges launched by the union here to attack Indiana’s new Right to Work law can succeed,” he wrote. “The electorate can ultimately decide whether [lawmakers’] judgments are sound, wise, and constitute good governance and can express their opinions at the polls and by other means. But those are questions beyond the reach of the federal court.”

Glenn Taubman, an attorney with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, was not surprised the unions failed to derail the reforms, which allow employees to opt out of forced unionization.

“Since the 1940s, the Supreme Court has upheld right-to-work laws in the face of union attacks, as RTW laws do not infringe on any union ‘rights,’” he said. “It is forced unionism and monopoly representation that infringe on individual employees’ rights.”

Judge Simon’s ruling only applies to federal challenges to the law. Unions have also sued in state court to prevent the law from going into effect. They say it violates an Indiana constitutional provision that prevents the government from denying private organizations their rightful wages.

“Indiana’s own constitution says that you can’t mandate people to act without just compensation,” said Marc Poulos, an attorney challenging the Indiana law on behalf of the Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting (IIIFFC). “Right-to-work no longer allow us to collect the reasonable fees for the representation we provide all employees.”

However, supporters of the law point out that the provision refers to the government honoring its own contracts for services rather than private transactions, such as union dues. Republican state Rep. Jerry Torr, who authored the right-to-work law, said he believes it will survive all legal challenges.

“Right-to-work has passed in more than 20 states and those have all withstood the various challenges and the test of time. Eventually our law will be found to be appropriate,” he said.

Soon after the Indiana ruling, a federal appeals court in Chicago upheld Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s public sector labor reforms, which helped close Wisconsin’s $3.6 billion deficit after its passage in 2010. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the act “in its entirety,” overturning a previous federal ruling that stopped Act 10’s prohibition of automatic union deductions from employee paychecks and recertification.

The labor groups that brought the suit contended that curtailing the ability of unions to automatically collect dues from employee paychecks violated its freedom of speech. The court, however, determined that the system represented a “subsidy” to unions rather than an extension of natural rights.

“While the First Amendment prohibits ‘plac[ing] obstacles in the path’ of speech … nothing requires government to ‘assist others in funding the expression of particular ideas, including political ones,’” the decision says.

Walker welcomed the ruling, hoping it would allow the state to move past the division and at times violent upheaval caused by union members and allies.

“Today’s court ruling is a victory for Wisconsin taxpayers,” he said in a statement. “With this ruling behind us, we can now focus on the next state budget, which will invest in priorities to move our state forward.”

The ruling represented Walker’s second major victory in the fight to preserve the reforms, which took away collective bargaining for public sector employee benefits and pensions, while preserving them for salaries. Walker previously survived a recall election sponsored by the unions.

Act 10 has saved Wisconsin more than $2 billion since its June 2011 implementation.

The rulings come as unions ramp up legal challenges to Michigan’s new right-to-work law. Taubman says the courts have helped to solidify the foothold labor reformers have made in the heavily unionized Midwest.

“Because federal law is so clear, any union efforts to challenge laws that outlaw forced unionism or union bosses’ special privileges are destined to fail,” he said. “This is why the Michigan union bosses realize that any potential legal challenges they may bring to derail that state’s new RTW law are futile and a complete waste of their members’ money.”

The Michigan legislature on Friday pushed through a bill that will limit the ability of interest groups and residents to recall elected officials. Challengers now have 60 days to file recall petitions, down from 90, and recall votes now require opposition candidates rather than up-or-down votes.

Liberal activists have campaigned to recall Republican Gov. Rick Snyder since May 2011. That chorus has gained a few key labor voices since Dec. 11 when Snyder made Michigan the 24th right-to-work state in the nation and the second in the industrial Midwest.

At 17 percent, Michigan has one of the most heavily unionized workforces in the nation. That figure goes a long way to meeting the 25 percent of voters needed to hold a recall election.

However, unions have failed to elect Democrats even in successful recalls.

Michigan became the recall capital of the nation in 2011, representing nearly 20 percent of recall efforts nationwide.

“There are legitimate reasons for recall but there was never any basis for the 2011 recalls other than retaliation from both political parties,” said Bob McCann, spokesman for Michigan Senate Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer.

Dozens of requests were filed, including the successful ouster of state Rep. Paul H. Scott, once considered rising GOP star.

Scott, 30, chaired the House Education Committee. His support for teaching and pension reforms sparked the ire of the Michigan Education Association, one of the state’s largest unions.

“I was totally unprepared for the assault from the MEA,” Scott, now a labor law attorney in his native Grand Blanc, said in an interview with the Washington Free Beacon. “They had unlimited resources and bussed out members; my town had always been quiet, so once they came people figured I must have done something awful.”

The union’s clout was not enough to help a union candidate replace him, however. Republican Joe Graves beat union candidate Steven Losey by 10 points.

“That was a union election all the way but their main problem was the time it took between the recall and the race to replace me,” Scott said. “Once the people saw how disingenuous the union was during the campaign—that my actions did not shut down schools or lay teachers off by the thousands—they turned against the union.”

Timing is everything in these labor-driven referenda, according to Sean Lansing, spokesman for the MacIver Institute, a conservative Wisconsin think tank.

Wisconsin unions angered by Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011 labor reforms successfully forced a recall election in June of this year. Walker won by a wider margin than in his 2010 election. Walker’s success stood in stark contrast to the situation in Ohio where labor reforms championed by Republican Gov. John Kasich were defeated in a November 2011 referendum.

“The timeline plays a major factor,” Lansing said. “Ohio lost because the reforms did not have the chance to work. In Wisconsin, people were able to see the benefits before they went to the ballot box.”

Michigan Republicans avoided the referendum dilemma by classifying the law as an appropriation’s bill—$1 million has been set aside to implement the right-to-work reform of ending forced unionism. Appropriations bills cannot be overturned via referendum.

Labor groups are more likely to focus on the recall route as a result, according to Scott. But the former representative likes the governor’s odds in such a race.

“He’s got time on his side and he has the advantage of the bully pulpit to highlight the benefits,” he said. “If he can force a debate on the intellectual merits of worker freedom, he’ll win.”

The Michigan bill provoked outrage from Democrats.

“We’ve been pushing for recall reform for years but the whole process was offensive,” McCann said. “Instead of owning up to their votes, they shielded themselves. The timelines are so stringent it’s nearly impossible to get through the steps.”

However, residents and interest groups in other states have been able to hold recalls under similar restrictions. A 60-day framework did not stop Wisconsin’s unions from forcing a recall election.

Snyder has yet to sign the legislation but is expected to do so.

“If you look at Indiana, the evidence is very strong that they’ve seen a tremendous increase in economic activity and companies coming to Indiana that previously didn’t look to the state,” Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said in a news conference, pointing to companies relocating in Indiana and thousands of jobs created.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC) said 90 companies have told them that Indiana’s enactment of the right-to-work law will be a significant factor in their decision-making process. Sixty-seven of the ninety companies have already progressed to the “pipeline stage,” an economic term for entering into final negotiations, said Kevin Brinegar, president and CEO of the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.

Thirty-one of the companies have already signed on the dotted line because of Indiana’s right-to-work law, Brinegar said. That accounts for at least 3,700 new jobs and more than $431 million in investment are coming to Indiana.

“The results have far exceeded our expectations and have proven the point that this was well worth the effort to get this enacted,” said Brinegar.

He jokingly said that Indiana would have liked to hold the title of the only state in the Rustbelt with a right-to-work law a while longer.

“I guess imitation is the best form of flattery,” Brinegar said. Indiana also faced backlash from unions in passing its legislation. Brinegar said that approximately 2,000 union workers staged protests.

One union in Indiana said it would now stand with its Michigan counterparts in fighting the law there and in Indiana.

“Hoosiers stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Michigan as we fight to repeal this bad law and to restore the rights of working people. Indiana has passed and repealed it once before, and we will repeal it again. And so will Michigan. The fight has just begun,” Indiana AFL-CIO’s president Nancy Guyott said in a release.

Right-to-work laws do not eliminate unions or workers’ ability to join a union. Workers are instead given a choice in whether they want to join and they are not penalized for declining to join.

Brinegar said that approximately 10 companies per month are entering into negotiations to relocate to Indiana and one of the key reasons is Indiana’s right-to-work law.

However, the AFL-CIO claims those results reported by the IEDC are not true and companies have been pressured to say the RTW law has impacted their relocation or expansion decisions.

“In Indiana, we’ve seen firsthand the pressure put on companies to say this legislation impacted their decisions by state officials who make financial rewards to them when one was brave enough to stand up and deny it played a role. No matter their claims, the truth is that no employer has gone on record saying that such legislation was the determinative factor in a decision to locate to Indiana. Not one,” Guyott said.

The Washington Free Beacon interviewed officials with one company that recently expanded in Indiana and one site selection company that firms hire to assist with relocation. Both said the right to work law was an important factor for companies who are seeking to locate or expand in a state.

AFL-CIO’s claim that “not one” company has gone on the record can now be disputed. Steel Dynamics (SDI) told the Free Beacon that Indiana’s RTW legislation was part of its decision to expand.

“Regarding the right-to-work vote in 2012 and SDI Pittsboro—at the time of the right-to-work legislation the Pittsboro facility was proposing a capital expansion project,” said Barry Schneider, vice president and general manager of SDI, in an email.

“The Steel Dynamics board of directors considered the right-to-work legislation as a positive factor and subsequently it was part of the decision to approve the expansion project for SDI Pittsboro. This expansion will see the mill capacity increase by 50 percent and the addition of up to 50 well-paying jobs.”

Schneider said SDI’s CEO has been vocal about right to work and has voiced his support.

“My personal opinion is that right-to-work is a positive addition to Indiana,” Schneider said. “I believe that by providing the choice to Indiana workers, more companies will compete for access to this excellent labor pool.  Companies like SDI must compete to find and retain the best employees.”

“SDI must provide a safe culture and environment to be successful, our people are our most important asset and they choose to work at SDI,” said Schneider. “Right-to-work ensures that each employee in the state has that same ability to choose. Union representation is every worker’s right in America, right-to-work is how workers can ensure they have a choice in that representation.”

The Free Beacon asked Brinegar why some companies are not willing to speak freely of their desire to locate in a right-to-work state.

“Most companies do not want to be harassed or boycotted by union people,” he said.

AFL-CIO’s Guyott said, “Right-to-work is a lie. It has nothing to do with economic development or jobs. It’s about power and politics.”

However, according to one site selection firm, right-to-work does come into play when companies seek out a state in which to do business.

“It is one of the first filtering criteria in corporate site selection,” said John Bays, vice president, of Site Selection Group. The Dallas-based company is hired by companies to assist in finding the right location for their business.

Bays, who handles manufacturing and distribution, said, “It is very prevalent to consider” the labor climate in a state.

When asked how many projects he handles a year, he said between 60 and 70. Of the companies he deals with, “a vast majority consider right-to-work.”

Bays said he was in Indiana on Thursday—the day before the Free Beacon interviewed him—with a client. That client, Bays said, “would not have been there had it not been a right-to-work state.”

Indiana had already “broken its all-time record for number of deals won” by the end of November, said Dan Hasler, secretary of commerce and chief executive officer of the IEDC in a statement. “This is especially remarkable considering the ongoing concerns over the ‘fiscal cliff’ that have caused many companies to curtail investment plans.”

Harry Beck, a telecommunications engineer and a member of the Communication Workers of America union, challenged in 1966 the union’s practice of using dues for outside bargaining activity, including political activities. The Supreme Court handed Beck a landmark unanimous victory in 1988 when it ruled that unions had to offer employees the option of paying partial dues used exclusively for employer negotiations.

Union members are required to inform the union that they only want to pay for collective bargaining in order to take advantage of their Beck rights. Union members are then assessed an “agency fee.”

However, unions have a bad track record of charging workers their fair share and cooperating with individual appeals of allegedly inappropriate agency fees. Unions have minimized the Supreme Court’s ruling by tying up so-called “Beck rights” in endless red tape.

“The accounting knowledge it would take to understand [the financial records] is on the level of professional tax preparer or accountant,” said David Phippen, a labor law attorney with Constangy, Brooks & Smith.

It does not help that politicians in the pocket of unions have made it so most union members have never heard of Beck rights, said Beck.

“It’s become a political football,” Beck said. “When Republicans take office they mandate that employers and unions tell people about the rules. When Democrats take office they erase them to keep workers in the dark.”

President Barack Obama issued an executive order rescinding the posting of Beck rights in workplaces that receive government contracts just ten days after being sworn in. The Department of Labor put the order into practice in June 2010.

Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee (NRWC), said the federal government’s refusal to safeguard Beck rights has been a major impetus behind the push for right-to-work laws at the state level.

“The pressure the individual workers are up against when they challenge union officials to open the books is immense,” he said. “Right-to-work has helped individual workers because they can vote with their pocketbooks to hold the union accountable.”

Phippen, a labor attorney, agrees that right-to-work enables members to pressure unions without a background in forensic accounting.

“In a right-to-work state, for employees subject to the [National Labor Relations Act] you don’t get into Beck problems because you are free from those bounds; people can resign from union membership and avoid union dues and fees,” he said. “Beck only comes into play when people don’t have that option because of a valid union security clause.”

Reform supporters say employees should not be forced to join a union and pay dues to an organization that finances political agendas which go against their core beliefs.

Marc Poulos, who is challenging Indiana’s right-to-work laws on behalf of the Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa Foundation for Fair Contracting (IIIFFC), said Beck rights provide plenty of protection to employees while ensuring they do not “free ride” on union contract benefits without paying union dues.

“If an individual does not agree with a union’s political agenda, they don’t have to pay for those dues,” he said. “They only have to pay the portion of dues that covers their collective bargaining powers—they’re fully protected by Beck. To say otherwise is rhetoric, rather than reality.”

Beck disagrees, pointing out that Congress has never codified the rule. Democrats have blocked multiple attempts to pass the rule into law. He now says right-to-work is the only way to protect union members from labor bosses.

“I never thought [right-to-work] would be necessary because I thought we’d have a Congress that would put Beck into law,” he said. “I’m proud to see the states taking action to protect individuals when the federal government won’t.”

“We have 64 cases before the [National Labor Relations Board] trying to force unions to open their books,” Mix said. “They will tell a worker they don’t have any records or fudge the numbers to justify [the dues].”

The NRWC’s legal foundation has won several judgments against union officials for overcharging members on agency fees over the last 20 years. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in June that a California government worker’s union charged extra dues to as many as 36,000 non-members to finance four political campaigns against ballot initiatives.

Beck was motivated by similar problems with the Communications Workers of America. He set out “to be a good union man,” but soured on the idea after dealing with union bigwigs.

“Here we are trying to be a voice in the world of union, to have our needs understood during bargaining time and nobody gives a hoot,” he said. “They didn’t have our interests in mind—these guys only thought of one thing: their own power.”

The union’s endorsement of George McGovern in 1972 pushed him to challenge the practice of paying for activities outside of contract negotiations. He had paid thousands of dollars in agency fees—nearly 80 percent of which was spent on non-bargaining activities— by the time his case appeared before the Supreme Court in 1988.

Unions spend tens of millions of dollars every election year campaigning on behalf of labor friendly candidates, the vast majority of whom are members of the Democratic Party. Obama and the Democratic Party benefitted from nearly $200 million in union political activism in 2008 before signing the executive order to scrub Beck.

The House Oversight Committee blasted such political tactics and called on unions to make their financial records accessible online in a February 2012 report.

“Many workers, unionized or otherwise, face barriers to determine how their dues or agency fees are being spent,” the report states. “In addition to the lack of effort on the part of unions to be transparent about the nature of their expenditures, this Administration has significantly weakened their incentive to do so.”

Workers are left with few options, according to Terry Bowman, the head of Union Conservatives, a Michigan advocacy group that championed the state’s passage of right-to-work laws. Bowman has been a member of the United Auto Workers union since taking a job with Ford more than 15 years ago.

“I had two choices: Join the union or pay an outrageous agency fee,” he said. “When you’re a new worker and don’t know your rights the choice is very easy.”

Phippen said the lengthy process of recovering agency fees serves as a major deterrent holding labor organizations accountable to employees.

“Employees may have ultimate recourse with the NLRB or in the courts, and they could get a lawyer to challenge the amount of agency fees, but how many workers would want to spend time and money to hire an attorney and go to court to recover that money?” he said.

Just three years later as governor, he signed into law a bill that will end the practice of mandatory union membership and make Michigan the 24th state to pass such laws.

Snyder’s seeming about-face represents a change in circumstances, rather than a policy evolution akin to President Barack Obama’s position on gay marriage, according to Vinnie Vernuccio, a labor expert at the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

“He has always been consistent in saying that he would sign right-to-work legislation but has been insistent that it was not on his agenda,” he said. “The impetus behind this was Indiana becoming a right-to-work state and adding 40,000 jobs during a time when we lost thousands of jobs.”

Indiana became the 23rd right-to-work state in the nation and the first in the Rust Belt in February. It gained an immediate advantage in attracting business by freeing up companies from onerous union rules and dues, according to Vernuccio.

“Snyder said that we need to be more effective because we now have a right-to-work state on our border that is more attractive to employers than Michigan is,” Vernuccio said. “That put him over the top.”

Snyder has pursued a reform agenda since beating Democrat Virg Bernero 58-40 in the 2010 governor’s race. He pushed for increased teacher contributions to their badly underfunded pension system, revamped the state corporate tax rate, and appointed temporary emergency managers to take over Detroit. Right-to-work was not on the agenda.

Snyder, enjoying majorities in the state legislature, could ill-afford the political showdown that Republican Gov. Scott Walker faced in Wisconsin over public sector unionism, according to Gary Wolfram, president of Hillsdale Policy Group, a taxation and public policy consultancy.

“He originally didn’t want to get engaged in a major political fight, while he had other, more pressing issues on his agenda, in particular, getting rid of Michigan’s business tax system, reviving Detroit and other failing cities, and reforming the pension system,” Wolfram said.

Detroit sat on the brink of bankruptcy when Snyder assumed office. The state had lost nearly 850,000 jobs over the past decade. He achieved many of the reforms he outlined on the campaign trail within his first two years in office without igniting major political disruption in Lansing.

That political strategy reflects Snyder’s background as a business innovator and accountant. He had never held political office before moving into the governor’s mansion in 2011, but he had spent the better part of 20 years managing Gateway into the Fortune 200 at the height of the tech boom and investing in medical and technology companies.

Snyder stayed behind to launch two venture capital funds that turned over eight-figure deals when Gateway decided to move its operations from Michigan to San Diego.

“His background is being an executive in the private sector: you deal with the immediate issues first,” Wolfram said. “Once you’ve dealt with those, the tax issue and Detroit and fiscal problems and pensions, then at some point you can deal with more contentious, long term issues.”

Prior to the right-to-work controversy, Snyder’s conservative reforms may not have caused too much controversy in the state capital, but that has not stopped unions from pushing back against the reform measures.

Unions sought to amend the state constitution to enshrine collective bargaining rights and the forced unionization of family members who take care of disabled relatives. The ballot initiatives lost by large margins, with opposition attracting more votes than Barack Obama. Democrats hoped the union campaign would draw positive attention to the labor movement in Michigan.

Bob McCann, spokesman for Democratic Senate Leader and prospective gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer, told the Washington Free Beacon that the union’s efforts to pass those constitutional amendments would keep right-to-work off the table.

“[The amendments] raised the issue of what’s been happening,” he said. “I hope that just by that issue being out there makes the people realize that our workers are the driving force behind our economy and Michigan is no place for right-to-work legislation.”

The amendments “had the opposite effect,” according to Wolfram.

“The fact that the unions went ahead and brought the right-to-work onto the table with the ballot proposal, that was the instigator,” he said. “The fight’s already being waged you might as well get it done.”

Right-to-work has proved just as divisive as Snyder predicted. Thousands of union members flooded the state capitol on Tuesday, as right-to-work became the law of the land. The protests were loud and at times violent.

Vernuccio predicts Snyder will have the opportunity to quell the dissent.

“The proof is in the pudding,” he said. “Michigan has a long history as a labor stronghold but bringing home Michigan workers who have sought work in other states, creating economic opportunity—that will win support from voters.”