Employees Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Reinstate RICO Case against UAW Union Organizing Scheme

National Right to Work Foundation urges High Court to allow enforcement of longstanding labor bribery statutes against increasingly common union schemes

Washington, DC (April 21, 2009) – Today, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with the United States Supreme Court to uphold workers’ challenge to a secret quid pro quo agreement intended to install the United Auto Workers (UAW) union at Freightliner plants in North and South Carolina.

With free legal aid from the Foundation, five employees at three plants operated by Daimler Trucks subsidiary Freightliner filed a class-action federal racketeering lawsuit in 2006 challenging an illegal scheme in which union officials agreed in advance to significant concessions at the expense of the Freightliner workers at its non-union facilities in North Carolina in exchange for valuable company assistance in organizing those workers.

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Click here to read the full release.  Download a PDF copy of the petition.  For additional background information about the case, click here.

Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember the Foundation's recent identity theft case in North Carolina, where Communication Workers of America union bosses posted nonunion AT&T employees' social security numbers on a public bulletin board. Not only was this an open invitation to fraud and identity theft, it also violated North Carolina's newly-enacted Identity Theft Protection Act. Foundation attorneys have slammed CWA bosses in state court, seeking damages for affected AT&T employees.

The union lawyers' response, however, can only be described as absurd. Instead of working to ensure other workers' confidential information is kept safe, CWA union operatives filed a counter-suit, alleging that the very act of removing workers' social security numbers from the bulletin board and warning other workers that their confidential information had been made readily available at a public location itself violated the Identity Theft Protection Act. Naturally, the court dismissed the union's frivolous claims and will now resolve the Foundation's original lawsuit. The text of the decision is available here (.pdf). You can also watch the Foundation's video on union identity theft in North Carolina:

In June, Foundation staff attorneys filed suit against Communications Workers of America (CWA) union officials on behalf of several North Carolina citizens. 16 current and former AT&T employees from Burlington, NC alleged that union operatives intentionally displayed their confidential information - including social security numbers - in a public forum, leaving them vulnerable to identity theft and fraud.

Union lawyers responded by filing a motion for dismissal, but the judge wasn't buying it. Although Judge Albert Diaz dismissed the invasion of privacy complaint filed against the union, he did not dismiss the Foundation's main charges under the North Carolina Identity Theft Protection Act and the the Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

Diaz's ruling was the first ever published decision issued under the North Carolina Identity Theft Protection Act. For a more in-depth description of the case, check out this entry from the North Carolina Business Litigation Report. The Foundation's original press release can be found online here. To watch the Foundation's video report on union identity theft in North Carolina, click here.

Foundation attorneys have filed an unprecedented lawsuit in North Carolina state court on behalf of 16 AT&T employees against local union bosses who illegally released their confidential personal information (including their social security numbers) as retaliation for exercising their right to refrain from union membership. Two of the workers explain their battle in the latest Right to Work video report...

For more background information on the case, the Foundation's press release is available online here. The Burlington Times-News' coverage of the lawsuit is available online here.

Be sure to subscribe to the Foundation's YouTube Channel for more Right to Work video reports.