Washington, D.C. (June 5, 2001) — Ironically complaining that President George W. Bush’s executive order imposes “substantial administrative burdens” on businesses, three unions and a federally funded union-established corporation filed suit against the Bush Administration. The suit seeks to prevent unionized employees of federal contractors from learning about their rights to be nonmembers and reclaim their forced union dues spent for politics.
The suit is likely to raise many eyebrows, as the same unions that have long claimed to be defenders of workplace rights are now suing to prevent employees from learning about workplace rights.
Executive Order 13201 simply requires federal contractors to post a standard workplace notice informing employees of their rights under the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Communications Workers v. Beck, a case won by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys in 1988 establishing that employees cannot be compelled to formally join a union or pay dues spent for politics or any other activities unrelated to collective bargaining. Because of unions’ routine and systematic non-compliance with the law, a vast majority of unionized employees still do not know they have these rights, polls show.
The United Auto Workers (UAW) union, along with the UAW-Labor Employment and Training Corporation and two affiliates of the Office and Professional Employees International Union, quietly filed the suit last month in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and several other high-ranking Administration officials.
National Right to Work Foundation attorneys are preparing to intervene in defense of the executive order on behalf of workers who have been lied to about their rights or outright threatened by union officials (including UAW officials) when they tried to reclaim their forced dues spent on electioneering and the like.
“Afraid that they would face a grassroots revolt, union bosses don’t want working Americans to find out that they can stop funding Big Labor’s massive political machine,” said National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “This multi-union lawsuit demonstrates the total hypocrisy of union officials’ claims that they are genuinely concerned about employee rights.”
Signed on February 17, 2001, the executive order affects a small segment of the 12 million American employees compelled to pay union dues as a condition of employment, as it only requires companies with federal contracts to inform workers of their Beck rights by posting workplace notices. Bush’s father issued a similar executive order in April of 1992 that was immediately revoked at the request of union officials as President Clinton took office in 1993. Additionally, the Clinton National Labor Relations Board stonewalled the enforcement of these precious employee protections, often leaving many cases languishing within the bureaucracy for six or more years.
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.
