**Pleasanton, CA (May 2, 2007)** – Two employees of Acura of Pleasanton filed a new round of federal unfair labor practice charges today to protect themselves from repeated threats against their jobs and hundreds of dollars in unlawful retaliatory union fines.

Rachel Warner of Livermore and Marco Llamas of Modesto, both parts technicians at the auto dealership, filed the charges with help from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys against the International Union of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Local 1546. Warner and Llamas filed the charges after union officials threatened them with the fines and termination simply for exercising their limited legal rights to refrain from formal union membership. The employees filed the charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which will now investigate and decide whether to prosecute the union.

Warner and Llamas detail in their charge how union officials sent letters threatening them with termination and the fines despite the fact that they are not bound by internal union rules as nonmembers. (Both letters are viewable at: www.nrtw.org/pdfs/warner-llamas.pdf)

Warner and Llamas also allege that the union has violated its so-called “duty of fair representation” through the arbitrary and discriminatory nature of the fines.

“Union officials are trampling the very rights of the employees they claim to represent,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Such union abuse of employee rights is rampant in California because there is no Right to Work law which would prohibit forced unionism.”

Warner and Llamas filed similar unfair labor practice charges in early January, after union officials unlawfully rejected their letters resigning formal union membership, in violation of the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court *Communication Workers of America v. Beck* decision.

In the *Beck* decision, the High Court ruled that employees laboring under compulsory unionism contracts are entitled to resign from formal union membership and withhold forced dues for everything except the documented cost of monopoly bargaining. Such workers have the right to cut off the use of their forced dues by union officials for activities such as union political activities and organizing.

Download the threatening letters

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.