IOUE officials threatened workers’ jobs to extract dues for period before a monopoly bargaining contract had even been signed with their employer

Irwindale, CA (January 22, 2021) – Wes Ginier, a foreman with United Rock Products won a settlement in his case at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against International Union of Operating Engineers (IOUE) officials for illegally demanding he and his coworkers join the union and pay union dues before a monopoly bargaining contract was even in effect. He filed the Unfair Labor Practice charges with free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

As detailed in the charges filed in May 2020, the IOUE signed a monopoly bargaining contract with Ginier’s employer in March of that year. Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), a union monopoly bargaining contract cannot require payment of union dues or fees until after 30 days have passed. Despite this, IOUE officials demanded that Ginier pay dues and become a member of the union on March 26, 2020, prior to the expiration of the 30-day period.

Not only did this demand violate the NLRA, it also violated the 1963 NLRB v. General Motors Supreme Court decision, which protects workers from being forced to become full union members. According to his charge, union officials threatened Ginier, telling him he would lose his job if he did not comply with their demands.

According to the charges, IOUE officials also “demanded and collected dues for a period of time when there was no [monopoly] bargaining agreement.” Workers were also told if they refused to pay these dues from before the monopoly bargaining contract was signed, they would lose their jobs.

Ginier’s charges further stated that IOUE officials failed to explain employees’ rights under CWA v. Beck. In the Supreme Court’s decision in Beck, the High Court declared that employees have the right not to be union members and to pay a reduced fee if they object to funding Big Labor politics and lobbying efforts. IOUE officials failed to inform Ginier and his coworkers of their right to pay this reduced fee, and instead insisted they must pay full dues and become full members, or else lose their jobs.

As part of the settlement, IOUE officials are required to post a notice explaining workers’ rights under Beck, including that they cannot be compelled to pay the portion of regular dues that goes towards union politics and other activities unrelated to the union’s bargaining activities. The settlement also requires union officials to inform new employees of these rights, and to “include sufficient information to enable the employees to intelligently decide whether to object” to membership and full union dues.

“IOUE union bosses were so eager to extract forced dues payments from Wes Ginier and his coworkers that they couldn’t even wait the legally required 30 days before threatening workers to pay dues or else be fired,” said National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation president Mark Mix. “This case demonstrates again the willingness of union bosses to use deception and coercion to line their pockets, even at the expense of the very workers they claim to represent.”

“Contract bar” manipulated by union bosses to maintain power in workplace despite valid employee-backed petition for vote to remove union

Washington, DC (January 14, 2021) – Two Transdev employees working at the Fairfax Connector are asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC, to review their case, which seeks to remove Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) Local 2 as their monopoly representative. The pair filed a Request for Review with the NLRB with free legal aid from staff attorneys at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is based in Springfield, VA.

The petitioner, Amir Daoud, and proposed substitute petitioner, Sheila Currie, are asking that the full NLRB overturn the “contract bar.” That is a non-statutory NLRB policy which forbids employees from exercising their right to vote out an unpopular union for up to three years after their employer and union finalize a monopoly bargaining contract. Based on this restrictive policy, the NLRB Regional Director in Baltimore dismissed Daoud’s petition for an NLRB-supervised vote to eliminate the union, despite the fact that the petition was signed by the requisite number of his coworkers to trigger such a “decertification” vote.

Daoud and Currie’s Foundation-provided attorneys point out that the “contract bar” is utterly absent from the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law the NLRB enforces. They argue that it should be eliminated because it infringes on rank-and-file employees’ right under the NLRA to remove unions that lack majority support.

The Request for Review notes that in June 2020, after almost a year of talks, Transdev workers voted down a tentative agreement that had been presented to them by an OPEIU agent. Despite this, the Request for Review states, in October 2020 “a Union representative informed certain [employees] via teleconference that he had negotiated a new agreement” and “‘intended’ to sign it without a ratification vote.” He did not tell employees when he planned to sign the contract.

Following news of union officials’ plan to charge ahead with the contract without employee consent, Daoud filed the decertification petition on November 10, 2020. The Request for Review notes that he and his coworkers were only informed after the petition’s filing that the new contract had been signed by union agents on October 30 and Transdev representatives on October 31.

NLRB Region 5 in Baltimore dismissed the decertification petition on December 22, ruling that the “contract bar” applied because the employees’ decertification petition was submitted just after the new contract was signed, even though the employees had no way of knowing whether or when that signing would occur. This prompted Daoud and Currie to ask the NLRB in Washington to review their case. Because Daoud recently accepted a job with Transdev outside the OPEIU’s monopoly bargaining control, the Request for Review asks the NLRB to recognize Currie as the new petitioner to represent the interests of the workers who signed the decertification petition.

The Request for Review contends that the “contract bar” should be nixed because it is “contrary to the [NLRA’s] paramount objectives of employee self-representation and free choice” and “has the effect of forcing unwanted representation on employees for as long as three years.” The Request exposes the arbitrariness of the “contract bar,” pointing out that the NLRB Regional Director applied it “merely because the Union ‘won the race’ and signed the contract ten days” before Daoud submitted the petition, even though the petition clearly demonstrated the employees’ interest in voting the union out.

Foundation attorneys are currently litigating two other cases for workers whose right to vote out an unpopular union has been stymied by the “contract bar.” Most notably, Delaware Mountaire Farms employee Oscar Cruz Sosa and his coworkers are currently waiting for the NLRB to rule on their Foundation-backed case challenging United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union bosses’ similar attempts to block their right to vote the union out.

In that case, UFCW officials claim that the “contract bar” should apply to bar any elections at Mountaire, despite an NLRB Regional Director allowing the vote based on his finding that the union contract contained an invalid forced dues clause. When the UFCW bosses asked the full NLRB to review the Region’s order allowing the election, Cruz Sosa filed a brief urging that, if the Board granted the review, it should use the opportunity to review the entire non-statutory “contract bar” policy. The Board is now doing just that. The UFCW union bosses are even arguing that the impounded ballots already cast by Mountaire workers should be destroyed, claiming the election should never have been held.

In Daoud and Currie’s Request for Review, Foundation attorneys ask that if the NLRB decides not to review their case, it should at least hold it in abeyance pending the ruling in Cruz Sosa’s similar case. Additionally, just a week ago, Foundation attorneys submitted a similar Request for Review to the NLRB for armored transport guards in San Juan, Puerto Rico, who are seeking to remove Private Security and Valuables Transit Professionals Union officials from their workplace.

“The facts of this case demonstrate exactly why the contract bar should be eliminated. After workers voted to reject an earlier proposed union contract, union bosses surreptitiously entered into a contract behind workers’ backs in an attempt to ‘game the system’ and use the ‘contract bar’ to block workers from voting them out,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “The ‘contract bar’ is an affront to the federal labor law’s supposed protection of employee free choice. It merely serves to entrench self-serving union bosses even when there is clear evidence that the very workers that they claim to represent want them gone.”

Union officials using “contract bar” to trap worker and his coworkers in union ranks despite valid employee-backed petition seeking secret-ballot election

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San Juan, PR (January 8, 2021) – A San Juan-based guard employed by Ranger American Armored Services has just submitted a Request for Review to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC. His Request asks that the full board take up his case seeking an NLRB-supervised secret-ballot election to remove the Private Security and Valuables Transit Professionals Union from his workplace. The Request for Review was filed with free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

The guard, Edwin Roman, asks the NLRB to review the Regional Director’s decision to block the election on the basis of the “contract bar,” a non-statutory NLRB policy which forbids employees from exercising their right to vote out an unpopular union for up to three years after an employer and union bosses have finalized a contract. The “contract bar” is not in the text of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law the NLRB is charged with enforcing. As Roman’s Request for Review argues, it should be ended because it only serves to entrench union bosses even though the NLRA explicitly guarantees workers the right to hold secret-ballot elections to “decertify” unions opposed by the majority.

As detailed in the Request for Review, on November 18, 2020, Roman submitted a petition signed by the requisite number of his coworkers needed to trigger an NLRB-supervised secret-ballot decertification election at his workplace. The Request for Review lists opposition to the “Union’s representation, its contract, and its requirement that” employees pay dues to union bosses or be fired as reasons that Roman filed the petition with his colleagues’ support. At this point, Roman and his coworkers had already been working under the current monopoly bargaining contract for about a year.

On December 21, 2020, the Director of NLRB Region 12 in Tampa, Florida, dismissed Roman’s petition at union officials’ behest, claiming that the “contract bar” prevents this decertification attempt. This prompted Roman to appeal his case to the full NLRB.

Roman’s Request for Review points out that the contract bar “has no basis in the text of” the NLRA, and that the NLRB’s original interpretations of the statute favored “full freedom of association and foreclos[ed] any contract bar.” According to the Request for Review, the contract bar only came about as the result of later union boss-friendly decisions by the Board.

The request also contends that the “contract bar contradicts the [NLRA’s] well-established ‘bedrock principles of employee free choice and majority rule’” by allowing a union to force its representation on employees “even in the face of objective evidence proving the union has lost majority support.” It also points out that the only restriction on workers’ right to hold a decertification election actually provided in the NLRA is the one-year “bar” after an election, making the non-statutory three-year “contract bar” a particularly egregious restriction on workers’ rights under the Act.

Roman and his colleagues are not the only employees fighting for the overturn of the “contract bar” with Foundation legal assistance. Delaware Mountaire Farms employee Oscar Cruz Sosa and his coworkers are currently waiting for the NLRB to rule on their case challenging United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union bosses’ similar attempts to block their right to vote the union out.

In that case UFCW officials, despite receiving a decision from an NLRB Regional Director permitting the employees’ requested vote because the union contract contained an invalid forced dues clause, still claim that the “contract bar” should apply and that the Mountaire workers’ already-cast ballots should be destroyed. When the union asked the full NLRB to review the Region’s order, Cruz Sosa filed a brief arguing that if the Board granted the review it should use the opportunity to review the entire non-statutory “contract bar” policy, which the Board is doing.

“The ‘contract bar’ undermines one of the fundamental objectives of federal labor law: employee free choice. It makes rank-and-file employees prisoners of an unpopular union, merely because union honchos and an employer struck a contract between themselves,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “This inevitably creates an environment in which, as Mr. Roman and his coworkers can certainly attest, it’s impossible to hold self-serving union bosses accountable because workers are denied the right to vote them out for three years.”

Union officials threaten to take away healthcare benefits unless employees “authorize” years of prior illegal union dues deductions

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San Juan, PR (January 4, 2021) – Employees of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) filed a motion for a preliminary injunction against the University of Puerto Rico Workers Union. The motion comes as part of the employees’ class action lawsuit against the University’s President in his official capacity and the union for illegally seizing dues from workers’ paychecks without their authorization.

Jose Ramos and Orlando Mendez originally filed their class action suit in May 2020 with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys. The lawsuit contends that union and university officials are infringing on its employees’ rights as recognized in the 2018 Foundation-won Janus v. AFSCME U.S. Supreme Court decision. In Janus, the High Court ruled that requiring public employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment violates the First Amendment, and further held that union fees can only be taken from public employees with an affirmative waiver of the right not to pay.

Mendez and Ramos have been employed by the University as maintenance workers since 1997 and 1996, respectively. From then, the complaint says, university and union officials “have regarded Ramos and Mendez as members of the Union” and seized dues from their paychecks, despite neither ever having signed a union membership or dues deduction authorization form.

On December 29, 2020, the lawsuit was amended to include two additional plaintiffs, and to specifically challenge a recent attempt by union officials to coerce university workers into signing a document retroactively approving all previously deducted dues and consenting to an unspecified number of future deductions. According to the complaint, employees who do not comply with union officials’ demands that they sign this document will lose access to the employer provided healthcare plan the union administers.

On December 30, the plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction to block union officials’ efforts to force employees to choose between losing their healthcare and retroactively agreeing to union dues deductions taken in violation of their rights. The motion also asks the court to block and reverse union efforts to bar health insurance from employees who refuse to sign away their First Amendment rights.

The employees’ lawsuit contends that union and university officials violated the First Amendment by seizing dues from employee paychecks without written authorization, and by requiring employees to become full union members in violation of longstanding precedent. The lawsuit additionally seeks an order forbidding further enforcement of the unconstitutional schemes and requiring the union to refund to employees dues that were seized illegally “within the … 15-year statute of limitations period for breach of contract.”

“For years, University of Puerto Rico Workers Union bosses have gotten away with taking dues out of the pockets of those they claim to represent without ever getting their permission,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Now, instead of seeking to win workers’ voluntary support, they’re threatening to take away the healthcare of anyone who doesn’t meet their demands as they attempt to retain years of unconstitutional union dues deductions.”

“We hope the court will move quickly and grant the injunction to block union officials’ blatantly unconstitutional actions,” added Mix.

SDEA union officials used Facebook, Instagram posts to disparage teachers who backed a petition to hold a vote to remove the union from the school

San Diego, CA (December 28, 2020) – Gompers Preparatory Academy teachers filed unfair labor practice charges with the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) against the San Diego Education Association (SDEA) for illegal retaliation and for interfering with their right to refrain from union membership. The charges come after union officials posted comments disparaging the teachers, Dr. Kristie Chiscano and Jessica Chapman, who supported an effort to hold a vote to remove the union from the school.

The charges were filed with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Gompers teachers had been free of union officials’ monopoly forced “representation” since 2005 when the school converted to a charter school, but in 2019 the teachers were unionized without a secret ballot election through a coercive card check certification.

Many Gompers teachers were unhappy with the sudden presence of union officials in their school. As Dr. Chiscano put it “I chose to work at a school that didn’t have a union and now they’ve come in and they’re running everything about my contract and my work.” Chiscano led the effort to collect signatures for a decertification petition for a vote to remove the union from Gompers. That petition was filed in January with legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys. However, union lawyers have so far blocked the vote from occurring despite significant support from teachers to remove the union.

Dr. Chiscano and Ms. Chapman were both leaders in the effort to decertify the union. According to their charges, in retaliation for their expressed opposition to the union, SDEA officials posted a slide presentation on its Instagram and Facebook accounts attacking the two for working with the Foundation to seek a decertification vote. California law makes it illegal for a union to intimidate or retaliate against employees who exercise their right to refrain from union membership.

The charges ask PERB to order the SDEA and its affiliates to post notices acknowledging that the posts about Dr. Chiscano and Ms. Chapman violated the teachers’ rights, and to remove the teachers’ names and photos from the slide presentation. Foundation staff attorneys also continue to represent Chiscano in her effort to obtain a PERB-supervised decertification election.

“Teachers should be free to express their opinions about union membership without union bosses’ harassment and intimidation tactics,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “Gompers teachers deserve a vote free from union coercion, and educators who devote their lives to serving their students should be able to express their minds without fear of social media harassment.”

“If SDEA union bosses actually had the support of a majority of Gompers educators they wouldn’t be fighting so hard to block teachers from voting and attacking those speaking in favor of decertification,” added Mix.

Union officials refuse to refund money they took from employees’ pay for healthcare benefits the employees never received

Phoenix, AZ (December 21, 2020) – Phoenix-area Cemex Transport employee Joseph Conway has filed charges against Teamsters Local 104 union. He asserts that union officials refuse to return money that was deducted from his and his coworkers’ paychecks for healthcare benefits they never received. His charges were filed at National Labor Relations Board Region 28 in Phoenix with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

According to Conway’s charge, Teamsters union officials, who maintained monopoly bargaining power over his workplace until October of this year, took money from the pay of every bargaining unit employee in Conway’s workplace to go towards what the union bosses claimed was a union-sponsored healthcare plan.

The charge alleges that Conway and at least four of his other coworkers never received the promised benefits. Facing significant opposition from workers opposed to their so-called “representation,” in October union officials disclaimed interest in being the monopoly representatives at Conway’s workplace, but never gave back the money that was deducted from Conway and his coworkers’ paychecks.

After the union disclaimed interest, the charge notes, Conway called a Teamsters Local 104 union official to ask about getting a refund of the money taken from his pay. The union agent then probed Conway on whether he had signed a petition that had been circulated for a vote to remove the union. When Conway responded in the affirmative, the agent said he would not get a refund. The charge reports that when other employees phoned with similar inquiries, the union official hung up on them.

Conway’s Foundation-backed charge argues that the Teamsters bosses’ refusal to return the money deducted from his and other employees’ paychecks violates their rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The Act forbids union officials from discriminatorily denying promised benefits to employees who exercise their right to attempt to decertify a union they oppose.

“Teamsters bosses are violating the rights of Conway and his coworkers, who in addition to never receiving promised healthcare benefits are now being robbed blind because they exercised their right to seek a vote to remove the union,” observed National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Foundation staff attorneys will fight for Conway and his coworkers until their rights are vindicated and their hard-earned money is returned.”

Union officials ignored two resignation requests, continue to unlawfully charge employee for union politics

Hawaii (December 15, 2020) – Nina Chiu, an employee of Kaiser Permanente in Hawaii, filed a federal charge against the UNITE HERE Local 5 union at her workplace. National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys are providing her with free legal aid in pursuing her charge.

Chiu’s charge was filed at National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 20 in San Francisco. The charge explains that she “sent two letters to the union within the last six months asserting” her rights under the Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision. Beck forbids union bosses from forcing employees who object to union membership to pay dues for any union activities not directly germane to the union’s bargaining functions, such as the union’s political expenditures. The NLRB has ruled that, under Beck, nonmembers must be provided an independent audit of the union’s breakdown of expenses.

Because Hawaii lacks Right to Work protections for its employees, Chiu can still be required to pay some money to the union as a condition of keeping her job. However, union officials must follow the requirements of the Beck decision if they compel employees to make union payments under threat of termination.

Chiu’s charge states that, even after submitting two letters exercising her Beck rights, she still “has not received a financial breakdown and is still being charged the equivalent of full dues.” Consequently, her charge argues, the UNITE HERE Local 5 union has breached Chiu’s rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which guarantees all workers the right to “refrain from any or all” union activities.

This is not the first time that Foundation staff attorneys have assisted workers whose Beck rights have been violated by UNITE HERE union officials. Most recently, in late October, Foundation attorneys won a settlement for foodservice workers at Portland, Oregon’s Lewis & Clark College, where UNITE HERE agents had impaired their ability to decide intelligently whether to choose union membership by failing to give them a good faith estimate of the amount by which their dues payments would be reduced if they abstained from membership. The Foundation-won settlement gives the employees there an opportunity to resign their memberships retroactively, and receive refunds for dues they paid in excess of the nonmember rate while misled by the union’s keeping them in the dark.

“Once again, UNITE HERE union bullies have been caught forcing dissenting employees into subsidizing the union’s agenda in clear violation of the rights of rank-and-file workers,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “The willingness of union bosses to violate longstanding law just to line their own pockets demonstrates, once again, why Aloha State workers need the protection of a Right to Work law, which would make union membership and financial support strictly voluntary.”