UFCW Operatives Misled Worker into
Signing Union Card, Ordered Him Fired for Exercising Rights

Vons grocer repeatedly told UFCW union officials he objected to formal union membership

Escondido, CA (March 22, 2010) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a former Vons Grocery employee has filed unfair labor practice charges against United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 135 union officials for misleading him into signing a union card, illegally seizing full union dues from his paycheck, and eventually ordering him fired for attempting to exercise his rights.

In September 2007, Nestor Mendez was told by union officials that he could opt out of union membership and full dues payments by filling out a union membership card and writing “Beck Decision” on top of it. Mendez followed these instructions and wrote a letter in January 2008 informing UFCW officials of his decision not to become a union member.

Under the Foundation-won Supreme Court decision Communications Workers v. Beck, employees can only be forced to pay union dues related to workplace bargaining as a condition of employment. Moreover, union officials are obligated to provide employees with a breakdown of union expenditures to determine how much objecting employees must pay.

Read the full press release for more information.

Regular Freedom@Work readers may remember the case of Jeffrey Reed, a Michigan employee fighting to end religious discrimination in his workplace. With free legal assistance from Right to Work attorneys, Reed is asking the United States Supreme Court to review a United Auto Workers (UAW) union policy that forces religious objectors to pay more union dues than workers who object to union activities on secular grounds.

Foundation litigators recently responded to the UAW’s final arguments opposing the Supreme Court granting certiorari and hearing Reed’s case. The Foundation’s brief notes that UAW officials forced Reed to pay an additional $100 premium and 22 percent more dues than workers who object to union activities on secular grounds. UAW members and secular objectors are allowed to pay an amount less than full dues if they wish to withdraw their financial support from the UAW’s political activities. As a religious objector, however, Reed is forced to redirect the dollar equivalent of full union membership dues to a third party charity as a condition of his continued employment.

Foundation attorneys also argue that Reed should not have to be disciplined or fired for failing to pay additional dues for the UAW’s policy to constitute religious discrimination. Because this has serious implications for religious objectors in workplaces across America, several organizations have filed amicus curiae briefs in support of the Foundation’s petition, including a joint brief from the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventists and the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. The Foundation’s original petition for a writ of certiorari can be found here, the UAW’s response here, and the Foundation’s final reply brief here. 

Although the Supreme Court grants cert to only a few cases each year, Right to Work attorneys are hopeful that the Justices will take up this case to clarify a previously muddled body of law. We anticipate receiving final word on the Court’s decision as soon as early April.

Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with American Family Radio to discuss the Obama Administration’s attempt to blacklist nonunion contractors and employees. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:

You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed. 

Despite union lawyers’ obstruction, workers vote to “decertify” United Electrical union bosses

Pittsburgh, PA (March 12, 2009) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, Pittsburgh Precision Turned Products employees recently overcame frivolous union boss blocking charges to eject the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 623 union.

In November 2009, Kathleen Lobodinsky, an employee at Precision Turned Products, solicited signatures from coworkers to hold an election to eject Local 623 from their workplace. Instead of defending their presence to employees, union officials responded by filing spurious blocking charges with the National Labor Relations Board(NLRB), alleging that company officials unlawfully assisted Lobodinsky’s efforts to collect employee signatures.

Click here to read the rest . . .

Right to Work Vice President Doug Stafford sat down with nationally-syndicated radio host Lars Larson to discuss Big Labor’s Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:

You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed.

The pro-worker freedom think tank National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) just published a study noting that forced unionism hurts young workers the most and because of that, they are leaving forced unionism states for Right to Work states in droves:

Though they are located variously in the New England, Middle Atlantic, South Atlantic, and East North Central regions of the U.S., all 13 states enduring the worst losses [of young workers] all have one important public policy in common: Not one has a Right to Work law that prohibits making forced union dues or fees a condition of employment. In contrast, all six of the states outside the West with young-adult population gains of more than 10.0% are Right to Work states.

The study also notes that states with Right to Work protections for its workers are weathering these tough economic conditions significantly better than their forced unionism counterparts and previous studies have shown that workers who flee forced unionism benefit financially more than their counterparts who moved from a pro-worker freedom state into a forced unionism state.  NILRR’s most recent study suggests that the further expansion of Big Labor’s government-granted forced dues privileges such as those in the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill would not only hurt all of America’s workers but also hit young workers the hardest.

Of course, economic benefits alone do not account for the trend of young workers’ moving patterns. It is easy to surmise that young folks — a notoriously independently-minded group — are seeking to pursue their version of the American Dream without being dictated by power hungry union bosses’ demands and allow them to keep their own hard-earned money if they find union dues payment to be objectionable or even just undesirable.

If the goal of Obama’s Deficit Panel is to increase government budget deficits then naming SEIU top boss Andy Stern makes perfect sense. But since the supposed goal is to reduce the record budget shortfalls, Stern’s nomination is a real head-scratcher.

As many union members know, the self-interest of union bosses to corral more workers into dues-paying ranks often has severe costs.  And now that more than half of our nation’s government workers are now under union boss monopoly bargaining control, it’s becoming abundantly clear that one of these costs is the growth of government to fiscally unsustainable levels.

It’s no wonder mayors from across the country are standing up to oppose the Police & Firefighters Monopoly Bargaining Bill, currently pending in Congress, which would force first responders into forced-dues-paying ranks by federal fiat.  As Charleston, WV, mayor Danny Jones told the Charleston Daily Mail, 

If you look around the states, the most unionized states are the ones that are the most broke.

So while SEIU boss Andy Stern continues his using his frequent White House visits to push for a new federal policy that could add $100 billion a year to the federal budget (while forcing employees of federal contractors into union coffers) and the costs of Big Labor’s public sector growth become more clear, concerned citizens can only wonder what kind of recommendations Andy Stern will make on President Obama’s deficit panel.

Right to Work President Mark Mix sat down with the Lucy Ann Lance Business Insider to discuss Big Labor’s attempt to force Michigan homecare workers into union collectives. Click here to listen or use the embedded player below:

You can also listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to the feed. For more information on the forced unionization of Michigan homecare workers, check out Mix’s interview with Detroit-based radio host Frank Beckman. 

Worker Advocate Demands Federal Disclosure on Controversial Transportation Union Rule Change

Former airline union officials should not use federal power to help their
unions corral tens of thousands of workers into union membership

Washington, DC (March 5, 2010) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the National Mediation Board (NMB) seeking records of any communication between two of its three members – both former union officials – and any union official or lobbyist concerning a dramatic rule change proposal on how a union is imposed on non-union railway and airline industry workers.

The NMB, the federal agency tasked with mediating labor disputes within the railroad and airline industries, is poised to roll back 75 years of precedent and change labor union organizing regulations, greasing the skids for union organizers to lock industry workers into union ranks. The new procedure would stack the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over workers if the union “wins” an election, no matter how few eligible workers actually participate in the vote. In fact, this means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss “representation” on the whole group as opposed to a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.

Read the full news release.

Over at BigGovernment.com, Don Loos of National Right to Work examines the abysmal record of the Obama Department of Labor when it comes to enforcing the Administration’s ethics policy against union officials:

On January 8^th, BigGovernment.com posted a blog that began, “Outrageously, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Secretary Hilda Solis and other DOL Obama appointees appear to have blatantly disregarded the President’s Executive Order #13490 – the Ethics Pledge.”

Somebody at the U.S. Department of Labor must be reading BigGovernment.com because just 11 days after the posting, the DOL ethics officer wrote a letter to The National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix and provided copies of signed “EO 13490 ethics pledges.”  (See related Foundation ongoing lawsuit against DOL for DOL’s failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.) Each of these newly provided pledges matched the ethics order language (more on this in another post) unlike the self-administered waivers included in the publicly distributed pledges provided to ProPublica.org and referenced in the earlier blog.

In addition, the DOL ethics officer asserted that 51 people at the DOL have signed the ethics pledge and there has been only one (1) ethics waiver issued by DOL and that was for Naomi Walker.  Her Job: Big Labor Liaison (an Associate Deputy Secretary position). Her past experience includes a stint as an AFL-CIO lobbyist among others. Walker’s ethics waiver is the subject of this blog.

Walker’s ethics waiver and its accompanying explanatory memo was approved “after consultation with the Counsel to the President” expose The President’s Ethics Executive Order for the joke that it is.

The ethics officer provides a four-page memo (probably written in a large part by the Counsel to the President) to justify the reasons that Walker must be provided an ethics waiver of Obama’s ethics executive order.   My summary of the memo follows:

The Counsel to President Obama and the Department of Labor reached the conclusion that it would be impossible for Walker not to violate the Ethics Order because of her previous positions with the AFL-CIO; therefore, she must be granted an ethics waiver so that she can do the job for which she was appointed.

Wasn’t the reason for the ethics pledge to prevent appointing someone to a position where their previous employer could greatly benefit with them as a government insider?

[…]

Continue reading the post here.