**Charlotte, NC (November 10, 2006)** – Five employees of Daimler-Chrysler subsidiary Freightliner, LLC are considering an appeal of a federal judge’s cryptic and illogical dismissal yesterday of their federal racketeering lawsuit against the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and Freightliner. The employees filed the lawsuit in January with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation.
“To get the company’s help in coercing thousands of workers into union ranks and to obtain at least $1 million in annual dues revenues, UAW officials sold out the very workers they sought to represent,” said Foundation vice president Stefan Gleason. “The ruling uses circular reasoning, is incorrect as a matter of law, and is ripe for an appeal.”
Filed in the U.S District Court for the Western District of North Carolina under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Practice Act (RICO), the class-action lawsuit challenges an agreement intended to install a sweetheart “company union,” alleging a pattern of violations of longstanding federal law that bars employers from delivering “things of value” to unions in an effort to co-opt the union.
The autoworkers’ complaint outlines a secret quid pro quo arrangement between Freightliner and the UAW in which union officials agreed in advance to significant bargaining concessions at the expense of the Freightliner workers at its nonunion facilities in North Carolina in exchange for valuable company assistance in organizing those workers.
Specifically, Freightliner and the UAW union expressly agreed to limitations on wages, cancellation of employee profit sharing bonuses, an increase in health care costs shouldered by employees, and other concessions before union officials even had the right to bargain for employees. UAW officials outlined their lengthy list of concessions in a once-secret document titled “Preconditions to Card Check Procedure.” In a related case, the National Labor Relations Board’s general counsel found the preconditions to be illegal.
In return, Freightliner promised to provide valuable organizing assistance outlined in a document titled “Card Check Procedure,” including holding compulsory “captive audience” meetings during which union organizers could propagandize employees, granting wide access to employees at home and at work, and not making any negative comments about unionization. Freightliner also denied employees secret ballot elections to choose whether to unionize. The “Card Check Procedure” also required Freightliner to automatically recognize the union when presented with the requisite number of signed authorization cards. In such Top Down organizing drives, employees are frequently coerced, browbeaten, or misled into signing such cards, which are then counted as “votes” in favor of unionization. Workers have also complained that signed cards are difficult to revoke.
Yet, the district court dismissed the suit in a cryptic and illogical four-page order in which the secret quid pro quo agreement is somehow equated with card check agreements that occur without such sweetheart provisions. Additionally, the ruling illogically suggests that finding such a quid pro quo arrangement reached prior to the negotiation of an actual collective bargaining agreement to violate criminal prohibitions of federal labor law would be tantamount to “criminalizing all collective bargaining agreements.”
The suit lists four counts of RICO violations regarding the enforcement of these corrupt arrangements against the employees of certain Freightliner facilities. The employees seek financial restitution to all employees at the Mount Holly, Gastonia, and Cleveland, North Carolina facilities in the form of treble damages for all dues seized and earnings lost as a result of the unlawful pact. Additional Freightliner plants known to be covered by the secret agreement are located in High Point, North Carolina and Gaffney, South Carolina.
Visit the Foundations Freightliner Top Down Organizing page for more information.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.
