UPS Drivers Sue Teamsters for Forcing Nonmembers to Subsidize Organizing Activities and Union Strike Fund

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys defend employees from compulsory unionism in parallel federal lawsuits

Louisville, Kentucky, and Dayton, Ohio (August 19, 2008) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, three UPS employees in Kentucky and two UPS employees in Ohio filed federal lawsuits Friday and Monday, respectively, against national and local Teamsters officials for illegal extraction of forced union dues.

In the lawsuits, the nonmember employees claim that the national and local unions breached their duty of fair representation and violated the employees’ First and Fifth Amendment rights by charging and collecting fees used for organizing nonunion workers throughout the United States and financing a members-only “Strike and Defense Fund.”

At UPS facilities in Louisville and Dayton, Teamsters Local 89 and Local 957 had been certified as the respective monopoly bargaining agents. With Teamsters officials in place as “exclusive representatives,” nonmember employees lose the right to negotiate with their employer on their own merits, and a compulsory unionism clause in the contract compels them to pay tribute to the union as a condition of employment.

In the Foundation-won Communication Workers of America v. Beck (1988), the Supreme Court allowed certain forced dues but established that objecting employees cannot be compelled to subsidize union activities unrelated to collective bargaining. One in a series of decisions in which the High Court ruled certain expenditures non-chargeable, Ellis v. Railway Clerks (1984) prohibits unions from charging and collecting fees from nonmembers for union organizing and member-only benefits.

Since March 2006, the union charged and collected from the nonmembers compulsory fees greater than 80 percent of the full dues and fees paid by union members. Union bosses failed to provide a required notice of Beck rights and disclosure detailing the basis of the fees until this year. The financial disclosure reveals that Teamsters’ compulsory fees include disallowed expenditures for the national union’s efforts to help organize nonunion employees in both the private and public sectors nationwide. The employees have also been forced to contribute to the “Strike and Defense Fund,” which bars benefits flowing to nonmembers.

Foundation attorneys are asking the U.S. District Courts for the Western District of Kentucky and the Southern District of Ohio to enforce the Supreme Court’s rulings in Ellis and Beck. The District Courts should prohibit the union from collecting fees used for these non-bargaining activities and award damages for the nonmember employees including all such illegal fees collected plus interest.

“It’s bad enough that employees who exercise their right to refrain from union membership are forced to pay fees to a union they do not want,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “But Teamsters bosses are violating the law by compelling nonmembers to fund strikes and organizing activities which seek to corral even more workers into forced unionism.”

Today, the Foundation issued a news release announcing parallel federal lawsuits concerning illegal forced dues:

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, three UPS employees in Kentucky and two UPS employees in Ohio filed federal lawsuits Friday and Monday, respectively, against national and local Teamsters officials for illegal extraction of forced union dues.

In the lawsuits, the nonmember employees claim that the national and local unions breached their duty of fair representation and violated the employees’ First and Fifth Amendment rights by charging and collecting fees used for organizing nonunion workers throughout the United States and financing a members-only “Strike and Defense Fund.”

Read the rest of the Foundation's news release here.

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected the appeal filed by union lawyers in Pichler v. UNITE (read the opinion here), which should result in union liability to pay a multi-million dollar damage award to employees.

The facts of the case are simple: UNITE operatives launched an organizing campaign against the Cintas Corporation, among others. As part of the campaign, UNITE operatives surveiled employee parking lots and recorded license plate numbers of parked cars (as well as cars entering and leaving). "Information brokers" then searched Department of Motor Vehicle records to obtain names and addresses corresponding to the cars.

Union organizers went to employees' homes to pressure employees to sign union authorization cards intended to corral them into union ranks. By obtaining and using personal information from DMV records, UNITE operatives violated the federal Driver's Privacy Protection Act (text here).

This appellate ruling clears the path for the payment of $2,500 plus possible punitive damages for each violation. If the lower court allows class-wide relief to the nearly 2,000 affected employees, friends, and families who had their DMV records illegally accessed, we're talking tens of millions of dollars.

But court records indicate that another 12,000 or so individuals' personal information was obtained in violation of the DPPA -- and these people are entirely unaware of this invasion of their privacy. That's why Foundation attorneys have asked the courts for the right to do a one-time mailing to these thousands of other victims. That case is currently before the Third Circuit as well (for more information, read our appellate and reply briefs).

If your personal information was obtained illegally, wouldn't you want to know about it?

Feds to Prosecute UAW Union Bosses for Blocking Job Promotions for Non-union Members

Union officials’ retaliation against nonmembers highlights abuses of union monopoly bargaining privileges

Winston-Salem, NC (September 12, 2008) – National Right to Work Foundation attorneys persuaded federal labor board officials to prosecute union officials and High Point-based Thomas Built Buses for cooperating to deny non-union workers an important employment certification and the corresponding pay increase.

United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 5287 is the monopoly bargaining agent of employees at Thomas Built. With free legal aid from attorneys at the Foundation, Terry Bean filed unfair labor practice charges against Thomas Built and UAW officials with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Winston-Salem. Jamie Whitley filed similar charges against UAW Local 3520 and Cleveland-based Freightliner. Both companies are Daimler Trucks subsidiaries. The NLRB Regional Director’s investigation determined that the employees’ rights were violated.

Because North Carolina is a Right to Work state, UAW officials and the companies may not condition employment on the payment of any dues or fees to the union. Nonmembers like Bean and Whitley, however, must accept the union’s “representation”—whether or not they want it. It is illegal for the employees to represent themselves, but UAW officials have a legal duty to represent fairly all employees in the bargaining units, including nonmembers.

According to the NLRB’s complaint, the UAW Locals have acted in bad faith toward Bean, Whitley, and other similarly situated employees by making agreements with Thomas Built and Freightliner to deny nonmembers discriminatorily their “journeyman” certification and the corresponding pay increase but grant the certification and additional pay to union members with similar skill levels and classifications.

At Freightliner, a human resources manager told nonmember employees that they could only obtain journeyman certification and the corresponding pay increases by completing additional training requirements which do not apply to UAW members. Meanwhile, Local 5287 union officials told nonmember employees at Thomas Built that they could only achieve their rightfully earned employment certification and pay raises by joining the union.

As part of the remedy, the federal government is seeking back pay and other monetary awards with interest. A hearing is scheduled in Winston-Salem on October 27.

“These corrupt union locals have a long history of retaliation against non-union members, and it’s outrageous that management would itself participate in the illegality,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation.

Laboring Away at the Institute points out this flagrant piece of hypocrisy from the AFL-CIO blog:

We have learned painfully that in this third century of our republic, we cannot take our right to vote for granted. We have to defend it. There are people in our political system who think that voting is a privilege reserved for those like themselves, that it is fair and right to confuse and intimidate people into not voting.

So Big Labor thinks voting is a privilege and should be free from confusion and intimidation? Hmmm... Except when union organizers unrelentingly pressure or mislead workers into signing "union authorization cards" so that workers are denied access to the less-abusive secret ballot election process. Except when union bosses decide to spend forced dues on radical politics. The list goes on and on...

With just the click of your mouse and a few key strokes, National Right to Work Foundation supporters can help the Foundation achieve its mission of providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses.

Right to Work supporters generously make tax-deductible contributions to the Foundation each year, and there are many more ways of giving. (After all, unlike the union bosses, we don't, can't, and wouldn't dare force anyone to support us, but depend on the voluntary contributions of our generous supporters.)

Now with GoodSearch.com, you can supplement your support for the Foundation's strategic legal program while you search online.

GoodSearch is a search engine powered by Yahoo. But unlike other search engines, GoodSearch contributes a portion of advertising revenue for each search to a charity of your choice. Make GoodSearch your default browser today, and make sure to select the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation as your designated charity. It's easy, and since you are online anyway, just searching the Internet can help the Foundation defend the rights of victims of forced unionism.

You can even add a toolbar to your Internet browser to make things even easier.

It gets better. GoodSearch has also launched GoodShop.com, which is partnered with over 500 of the most popular online retailers such as Amazon.com, iTunes, and 1-800-flowers. The next time you're planning on doing some online shopping, go to GoodShop.com, make sure the Foundation is the designated charity, and find the online store of your choice. Up to 30% of your purchase may go to supporting the cause of employee freedom. Using this service doesn't cost you any extra -- you pay the same prices you would if you went straight to the site.

It's easy. It's free to use. And you get to help vindicate employees' rights doing two things you're doing online anyway -- searching and shopping.

We appreciate your continued support.

Federal Court Halts Scheme by Teamsters Union Bosses to Illegally Collect Forced Dues

Union officials failed to provide Pennsylvania Turnpike employees an adequate breakdown of expenditures

Pittsburgh, PA (September 26, 2008) – The United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of seven Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) employees against the Teamsters union and PTC for seizing forced union dues in violation of the employees’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

With free legal aid from staff attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, the seven Turnpike workers filed a federal lawsuit last year against Teamsters Local 250, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), and the PTC. Local 250 is the certified monopoly bargaining agent of Turnpike employees – every employee, like it or not, is forced to accept union representation and is required to pay dues or fees to the union to keep his or her job.

In the Foundation-won Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson (1986), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously established due process safeguards to ensure that employees are not compelled to subsidize union activities beyond what union officials can prove is spent on collective bargaining. Union expenditures such as organizing and political activism cannot be legally charged to workers who exercise their right to refrain from union membership. Before collecting an “agency fee” from a nonmember employee, a union must provide an adequate explanation for the basis of the fee, verified by an independent auditor, and an opportunity for the worker to challenge the amount of the fee before an impartial third party.

In its decision released on Thursday, the District Court found that Local 250 failed to provide an adequate basis for the forced union fee seized from the seven workers, from whom the PTC seized more than 92 percent of the dues formal union members paid. The court found that the local’s “procedures for chargeability audits are faulty and incomplete.” Specifically, Local 250 failed to break down the portion of the fees which went to the local’s national affiliates.

Particularly troubling are the court’s findings that the “independent auditor” relied solely on a personal conversation with a Local 250 union boss, “word of mouth” from IBT chiefs, and a quick look at the local’s year end balance sheets to verify the chargeability of the union’s expenses. Local union officials also failed to even obtain an audit of its expenses one year.

The court awarded nominal damages, restitution of the nonchargeable portions of the agency fees seized after the employees resigned in writing (plus interest), and attorneys’ fees. It will hold an evidentiary to determine the amount of the restitution. At the hearing, the court will also consider whether six of the employees may be entitled to restitution for an earlier period because union bosses failed to provide them adequate Hudson notices after they orally expressed their desire to resign from the union.

“Unfortunately, Pennsylvania does not have a Right to Work law,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “In the absence of such a protection, union bosses will continue to try to extract as much dues money as possible from dissenting workers.”

On Friday, a United States District Court judge sentenced a former union organizer to six months in prison and three years of probation for his participation in an arson against a nonunion concrete plant. The Albany Times Union has the details:

The May 2003 arson was part of an organized effort by two union officials to sabotage companies that were using non-unionized workers at construction sites.

The sentencing of Michael Kwarta, 32, who had served as a labor organizer and sergeant-at-arms for Local 190 of Glenmont, marked the culmination of a meandering federal investigation into the underworld of Albany's politically connected laborers' unions.

The arson triggered a federal grand jury investigation of the union's ties to elected officials, public contracts and organized crime figures, and also whether top union leaders had authorized the firebombing.

Even though just about everybody in the union knew about Kwarta's role in the arson -- when an accomplice "hurled two Molotov cocktails at an operations trailer filled with computer equipment and it caught fire" -- union hierarchy gladly kept him on the payroll for five years until just days before he entered his guilty plea.  (Apparently he was just doing his job.)

For all their government-imposed special privileges, union thugs aren't above the law. Oh, actually, in many ways, they are:

The most egregious example of organized labor's special privileges and immunities is the 1973 United States v. Enmons decision. In it, the United States Supreme Court held that union violence is exempted from the Hobbs Act, which makes it a federal crime to obstruct interstate commerce by robbery or extortion. As a result, thousands of incidents of violent assaults (directed mostly against workers) by union militants have gone unpunished. Meanwhile, many states also restrict the authority of law enforcement to enforce laws during strikes.

Make no mistake, union violence is anything but dead.