Worker Advocate Urges Labor Board to Affirm Right to Object to Subsidizing Union Politics in Languishing Cases

Numerous cases before NLRB lay dormant as workers suffer from union policies designed to discourage objections to paying full union dues

Washington, DC (January 13, 2011) – The National Right to Work Foundation is urging the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to promptly resolve four cases almost identical to one decided last year by the Board as independent-minded workers wait for a resolution.

The Foundation – the nation’s premier advocate on behalf of workers who suffer from the abuses of compulsory unionism – scored a legal victory in August 2010 for workers who were subjected to a burdensome machinist union boss policy requiring employees to annually renew their objection to supporting union politics and other non-bargaining expenses or be converted back to paying full union dues.

The NLRB in Washington, DC determined that the machinist union’s annual objection requirement for workers who choose to refrain from union membership is illegal under Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court precedent upheld in Communications Workers v. Beck (1988). Under Beck, nonmember employees in states without Right to Work laws cannot be compelled to pay for union politics, lobbying, and member-only events.

In a letter penned by Foundation Vice President & Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse to the NLRB, the Foundation asks that the Board apply their August 2010 decision to four virtually identical cases still pending before the Board.

In the pending cases individual employees, represented by Foundation staff attorneys, are challenging annual objection policies of the United Steelworker (USW), United Autoworker (UAW), International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), and Communications Workers of America (CWA) unions. The case involving the UAW union has been languishing in the NLRB bureaucracy for eight years.

Additionally, NLRB Regional Directors are withholding action on other similar cases awaiting the national Board’s actions.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Given that the NLRB decided the key legal issues last summer, their refusal to swiftly apply the precedent to other unions is shameful.”

“While the Board delays, independent-minded workers across the country continue to be abused by burdensome requirements and restrictions from union hierarchies they want nothing to do with.”