Goshen, Ind. (March 26, 2004) – A majority of employees at Cequent Towing Product’s Goshen facility have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asking that local union officials be stripped of their newly granted “exclusive representation” power over roughly 450 of the company’s employees. The petition was filed with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys.

More than 230 workers signed the petition, which was given to Cequent before it recognized the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) union as their “exclusive bargaining representative” earlier this week. As a result of that recognition, employees were denied the opportunity to vote on union status through a secret ballot. If a decertification election is allowed and is successful, all Ceuqent employees then would be free to negotiate their own terms and conditions of employment, and would not be forced to pay union dues.

The workers who signed the petition each declared that they do not want USWA officials bargaining on their behalf, revoked any previously signed union recognition cards, and asked for a secret ballot election on their union status. Under federal labor law, petitioning employees need only obtain signatures from 30 percent in the bargaining unit to trigger a decertification election.

“Workers should have the right to cast off the unwanted monopoly representation of union officials at any time,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “It’s an outrage that Cequent struck a backroom deal with USWA officials to deny them so much as a secret ballot vote.”

Earlier this week, the union was chosen by the employer pursuant to a so-called “neutrality” agreement and a “card check” authorization process – a process that bypasses a secret ballot election and allows union officials to bully workers one-on-one into signing union recognition cards. In recent years union organizers have had less success in persuading employees to vote in favor of unionization and have instead focused on eliciting employer support to corral workers into union collectives through methods that curtail employee free choice in the union recognition process.

Meanwhile, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys are currently in U.S. District Court challenging the secret deal between Heartland Industrial Partners (Cequent’s parent company) and the USWA union that forces companies acquired under Heartland’s umbrella actively to help the union organize employees and ultimately force them to pay union dues as a job condition. In return, USWA officials pour unsuspecting workers’ trust funds into Heartland, promise to stifle certain employee rights under federal law, and limit employees’ ability to influence their own wages, benefits, and working conditions.

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.