San Jose, California (October 5, 2005) – Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation, made the following statement in response to this afternoon’s U.S. District Court ruling not to grant a temporary restraining order to immediately freeze forced union dues seizures spent for politics while the class action lawsuit is pending. In declining to issue a temporary restraining order, however, U.S. District Court Judge James Ware invited briefing as to whether the Court should issue a preliminary injunction.

The lawsuit filed by teachers and faculty seeks to block union officials’ use of a mandatory dues increase to pay for the unions’ $50 million campaign to influence the November special election.

“Since the educators filed their suit, California Teacher Association (CTA) union officials have already backpedaled and indicated they will now, in fact, allow non-union members to get their $60 dues ‘assessment’ back this fall. But, at the same time, they stand firm in refusing even to inform the 300,000+ members of their right to resign and object.

“While the Court has failed to take swift action to stop the ongoing violation of CTA members’ constitutional rights while this class-action suit is pending, we believe that the educators will ultimately win their legal case because Supreme Court precedents are on their side.

“The Supreme Court has ruled that all potential objectors are entitled to financial disclosure and notice that they can resign from union membership and prevent the use of their forced dues for politics.
The CTA has never notified California teachers of these rights. This case shows the injustice of forced unionism in California. Even though we are confident the teachers will ultimately prevail in their case, the results of the November special election influenced by use of their forced dues payments cannot be undone.

“California’s teachers should not be forced to serve as ATM machines for union officials, yet last week, the forced dues increase began coming out of their paychecks automatically to pay for partisan union electioneering. CTA officials have also announced their intention to raise $40 million more to influence the November election, and California teachers may foot an even higher bill.

“Since the court has chosen not to require that union officials immediately fess up to educators about their legal rights, the National Right to Work Foundation will be committing significant resources in the coming weeks to inform educators of their right to object to funding partisan politics with their forced union dues.”

San Jose, California (September 28, 2005) – A group of California teachers and university professors today asked the U.S. District Court to issue a temporary restraining order and to schedule a hearing for a preliminary injunction to prevent two large statewide teacher unions from spending a mandatory dues increase without due process in order to influence the upcoming special election.

At a dramatic press conference in Sacramento last Thursday, the teachers and professors announced their First Amendment class action lawsuit challenging forced dues increases levied against more than 350,000 teachers and professors statewide. More than 100 screaming union militants filed out of union political headquarters buildings and encircled the press conference to drown out and intimidate the classroom teachers who were speaking to the media about their allegations against the union hierarchy.

The suit, filed with the free legal assistance of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, challenges the use of a $60-per-teacher mandatory dues increase imposed by California Teacher Association (CTA) officials and a 10 percent mandatory dues increase imposed by California Faculty Association (CFA) officials that are earmarked for efforts to defeat Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s propositions on the ballot on November 8th.

Foundation attorneys argue that an injunction is necessary because only swift action can prevent the irreparable infringement of the teachers’ constitutional rights. The results of an election cannot be undone.

Since September 1, CTA officials have written checks to several campaign committees totaling $23 million from a loan that is secured by guarantees of higher compulsory dues paid by educators as a job condition. Earlier in the summer, CTA officials announced another $22 million in expenditures. The CTA’s first deduction of the forced dues increase is scheduled to occur on September 30 at which time most teachers will first learn of the dues increase.

Like many public servants, the six named plaintiffs object to paying for union political activities with which they disagree. They seek an order certifying their suit as a class action for all CTA members and nonmembers and all CFA nonmembers. The educators seek to block the further use of the special dues increase until every teacher and professor is given full disclosure of the union’s expenditures and notice of their right to object and obtain a refund. The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge James Ware.

“Union officials seem to think rank-and-file educators are there to serve as the union’s ATM machine to finance its political agenda,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the Foundation.

The suit relies on the rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court, including the Foundation-won Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson (1986). In Hudson, the high court ruled that all “potential objectors” to forced union dues assessments have due process rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to be notified of how their forced union dues are spent and to be given an opportunity to prevent the spending of their dues for non-collective bargaining purposes.

San Jose, California – Wednesday morning, September 28, a group of California educators will brief the media as their attorneys move for a temporary restraining order and a hearing on a preliminary injunction in U.S. District Court. The educators are seeking to prevent California Teacher Association (CTA) and California Faculty Association (CFA) union officials from spending a per-capita increase of forced union dues without due process in order to influence the upcoming special election.

For more information, contact Justin Hakes at 916-844-4264 or Stefan Gleason at 916-844-4265.

Sacramento, California (September 22, 2005) – A group of California teachers and professors today filed a statewide class-action lawsuit in federal court against the state’s largest teacher and faculty unions seeking to bar union officials from forcing more than 350,000 California educators to pay significant dues increases earmarked for political electioneering during this year’s special election.

Filed by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose, the civil rights suit seeks to enjoin the use or further collection of a $60-per-teacher mandatory dues increase imposed by California Teacher Association (CTA) union officials and a 10 percent mandatory dues increase imposed by California Faculty Association (CFA) officials that are earmarked for efforts to defeat Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ballot propositions.

Since September 1, CTA union officials have written checks to several campaign committees totaling $23 million from a loan that is secured by guarantees of higher compulsory dues paid by educators as a job condition. Earlier in the summer, CTA officials announced another $22 million in expenditures.

Like many public servants, the six named plaintiffs object to paying for union political activities with which they disagree, so they asked the Foundation for free legal assistance. They seek an order certifying their suit as a class action for all CTA members and nonmembers, and all CFA nonmembers. The educators also ask for an injunction to block the use or further collection of the special dues increase and an order that every teacher and professor be given notice and allowed to obtain a refund, plus interest.

“Union officials are shamelessly fleecing rank-and-file educators to finance a political agenda that many educators oppose,” stated National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “No one in America should be forced to join or pay dues to a union they do not support. This case demonstrates how egregiously union officials abuse the special privileges they have obtained under California law.”

In the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson (1986), the high court ruled that public employees have due process rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to be notified, as potential objectors, of how their forced union dues are spent, and how to prevent the spending of their dues for non-collective bargaining purposes. However, the CTA and CFA unions have failed to give educators any opportunity to object and have rebuffed those who have objected.

To prevent the further violation of their constitutional rights, the teachers ask that the forced dues be placed into escrow, because, as Foundation attorneys note in their complaint, “Once the employees’ money is spent, contrary to their wishes, to affect the outcome of ballot propositions… the employees’ First Amendment rights are irretrievably lost.”

For more information, contact Justin Hakes at (916) 844-4264 or Stefan Gleason at (916) 844-4265.

Atlanta, Ga. (September 21, 2005) – National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have filed charges on behalf of a telephone worker against his employer, BellSouth Telecommunications, and its union for forcing him to wear a union logo as a job condition. In doing so, company and union officials are directly defying a 2005 U.S. Court of Appeals decision which ruled that their policy is unlawful.

In January, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously overturned a controversial Clinton-era National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that approved the practice of forcing both union and non-union BellSouth employees to wear union insignia on their work uniforms or be fired from their jobs. After issuing its decision, the Court of Appeals took the rare step of ordering the NLRB to pay attorneys fees because their erroneous decision had not been substantially justified.

In defiance of the appellate court’s ruling, Communications Workers of America (CWA) union officials continue to insist, despite the objections of BellSouth employee Gary Mullis, that he wear their logo as a condition of employment. Mullis, who is not a member of the CWA union, was informed in May by BellSouth that he would not be allowed to refrain from wearing the union insignia. Mullis objects to wearing the logo because the union pursues political objectives that do not represent his views. His charges seek the prosecution of the company and union for unfair labor practices.

“Workers should not be forced to be walking billboards for union officials who seek to trample their own freedoms,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The repeated abusive actions of the CWA hierarchy and BellSouth management raise serious questions about their integrity and respect for the law.”

The appellate court’s 3-0 decision overturning the unlawful policy concurred with Foundation attorneys’ arguments that provisions of the National Labor Relations Act embodied a “right to refrain from wearing union insignia.” The court rejected union and company lawyers’ claims that the display of the union patch alongside the company logo on the uniform was so integral to the “public image” of BellSouth that the mandate superceded the individual rights of workers.

The court noted that there was no evidence that the union patch projected a positive image to customers, and that it could, in fact, signal a negative image to customers who could conclude that strikes and service interruptions were more likely to occur. However, regardless of what image was projected to customers, the court explained that proper analysis should have been what the requirement signaled to employees – that the company and union expect employees to be union members. The court ruled that this restrained and coerced employees in the exercise of their right to refrain from union membership.

Sacramento, California – Thursday morning, September 22, a group of California educators will hold a press conference to announce the filing of a statewide class-action lawsuit in federal court seeking to bar union officials from forcing more than 350,000 California educators to pay significant dues increases earmarked for political electioneering during this year’s special election.

For more information, contact Justin Hakes at 916-844-4264 or Stefan Gleason at 916-844-4265.

Phoenix, Arizona (September 19, 2005) – With the assistance of National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, five Arizona employees of Dex Media, the official publisher of the yellow page and white page phone books, have filed a racketeering lawsuit against the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) union Local 1269, Qwest Communications subsidiary Dex Media, and two Dex employees who are union officials.

The lawsuit, filed today in U.S. District Court alleges an elaborate scheme in which the employer, the IBEW union Local 1269, and IBEW Local union agents working for Dex, engaged in systematic violations of company policy and collective bargaining agreements in order to give preferential treatment to union officials at the expense of Dex’s advertising sales force. Because of a complex performance-based pay system used for workers selling advertising in its publications, union agents have not only used their power to create labor strife for their own personal profit, but they have also cheated other workers out of earnings. In effect, the ill-gotten commissions the union agents improperly received raised the bar against which the other workers’ compensation packages were determined.

By knowingly aiding the union agents as they repeatedly broke company rules to increase their performance-based pay, Dex allegedly bribed the union agents to act against the workers’ interests. Some of the methods used to increase the union agents’ compensation include reassigning to the union officials accounts that should have gone to other workers, giving the union agents “double commissions” for sales made by other workers, and allowing the union officials to regularly sell “group ads” allowing their customers to have better ad placement than would normally be warranted, all practices explicitly forbidden by Dex written policy.

Because of the pattern of illegal activity by Dex, the Local 1269 IBEW union, and the union’s agents, the suit lists five counts for violating the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and two counts for violating the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act. The RICO statutes are best known for having been used to prosecute criminals for Mob and gang activities.

“Union officials appear to be stealing from the very workers they claim to represent,” said National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “As long as workers are forced against their will to be represented by unions in monopoly bargaining with employers, the power wielded by union brass will continue to allow greedy union officials to sell out workers.”

The workers ask the court for injunctions to stop Dex from continuing to bribe union officials with undue compensation, and ask for financial compensation for the workers whose money was effectively stolen from them by the IBEW Local 1269 union agents’ corrupt actions.

Columbus, Ohio (September 1, 2005) — The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed an unprecedented lawsuit in federal court against the State of Ohio and a State agency for systemic discrimination against employees who object to union affiliation and the payment of dues on religious grounds. DOJ filed the suit after National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys brought repeated civil rights violations by State agencies to the attention of federal prosecutors.

An earlier charge, filed by Foundation attorneys on behalf of Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (OEPA) employee Glen Greenwood had already led to a finding by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that the OEPA and Ohio Civil Service Association (OCSA) union were guilty of religious discrimination against Greenwood who has sought to redirect his union dues to a charity and away from a union he believes to be involved in immoral activities. Despite the EEOC finding, the State’s agencies and OCSA union have maintained their practice of denying religious objections to the payment of forced dues from employees who are not members of certain State-approved churches.

The DOJ suit filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio names the State of Ohio, the OEPA, the Ohio State Employment Relations Board, the OCSA union, and the Ohio Department of Administrative Services as defendants.

Citing Greenwood’s case, the DOJ determined that the policies of Ohio represent a “pattern or practice” of religious discrimination against State employees in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Under Title VII, employees may not be forced to financially support a union if doing so violates the employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs. To avoid the conflict between an employee’s faith and a requirement to pay fees to a union he or she believes to be immoral, the law requires union officials to accommodate the employee – most often by designating a mutually acceptable charity to accept the funds.

“The unprecedented involvement by the United States Justice Department in a case of this nature demonstrates the seriousness of the abuse that Ohio employees face when they make conscientious objections to union membership,” stated Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason.

As a devout Presbyterian, Greenwood believes that supporting this union violates his sincerely held religious beliefs because of the union’s support for abortion on demand and special rights for homosexuals.

However, in March 2004 Greenwood received a letter from the General Counsel of the Department of Administrative Services denying his request on the basis that he did not belong to a “qualified” church that had a specific doctrine against union affiliation by church members.

Springfield, VA (August 31, 2005) – Spokesmen from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation will be available for comment and interviews on and around Labor Day about the recent AFL-CIO dispute, politics, workers’ rights, union organizing, and other issues relating to organized labor. The Foundation is a non-profit, charitable organization that provides free legal aid to victims of compulsory unionism abuse

Foundation spokesmen have been interviewed frequently on national television and radio programs, including The O’Reilly Factor, Special Report with Brit Hume, CNBC’s Closing Bell, and CNN. Their writings frequently appear in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and numerous other publications. They are prepared to comment on or debate any issues related to the following:

• How the recent dispute among Big Labor officials during and after the recent AFL-CIO convention may signal an ominous new threat to employees’ freedom of association;
• Big Labor’s war on the secret ballot election process for choosing whether to unionize, increasing use of coercive “card check” organizing campaigns against workers, and “corporate campaigns” against nonunion companies;
• How Big Labor’s political agenda is out of step with many rank-and-file workers’ views;
• How union officials seeking to unionize private airport security screeners may undermine national security while reversing Bush administration policy;
• The growing support for job-producing Right to Work laws that make union membership strictly voluntary;
• Examples of abuse resulting from forced union membership, union violence, violations of religious freedom, and other violations of employee individual rights;
• How teacher union officials have contributed to a decline in public education quality while blocking efforts at reform.

To schedule an interview or for information, call Justin Hakes at 703-770-3317.

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (August 18, 2005) – A Michigan Court of Appeals agreed with arguments made by lawyers for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation that imposing monopoly collective bargaining on Brother Rice High School, a private Catholic school, would entangle labor laws with the religious freedoms of the teachers and the school itself.

Three judges issued a joint “per curiam” opinion this week overturning a precedent-setting Michigan Employment Relations Commission’s (MERC) ruling that Catholic schools somehow fall under Michigan’s compulsory collective bargaining laws. If the MERC had not been overturned, union officials were expected to forcibly unionize numerous other religious institutions.

The dismissal of the claim by the Michigan Educators Association (MEA) is a victory for both religious independence and teacher freedom. The MEA was targeting teachers at the Brother Rice High School for forced unionization. The Foundation filed an amicus curiae brief for the Acton Institute, a religious liberty public policy group, in support of Brother Rice.

“It would be unconscionable to force religious schools to bargain with union officials who have an agenda that runs afoul of the teachings of the Catholic Church,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “At the same time, teachers should not be forced to accept the representation of union officials whose agenda they may believe to be morally reprehensible.”

The Foundation brief demonstrated that Catholic Church doctrine and the ideology of the MEA union are incompatible, and that Michigan state law was not written in a way to include Brother Rice in the jurisdiction of union representation and state regulation.

Ultimately the appeals court agreed that Michigan state law should be interpreted so that parochial schools are not placed under the jurisdiction of state labor laws.

Foundation attorneys argued that giving MERC oversight of collective bargaining agreements could lead to the MEA using collective bargaining to highjack the religious teaching process and allow the MEA’s radical political agenda to influence the religious instruction given by Brother Rice teachers. Additionally, because hiring practices at the school necessarily involve religious beliefs, an MEA victory would have meant that the state would be forced to pass judgment upon church doctrine to determine whether the school’s refusal to bargain over certain terms of employment is legitimately based on religious belief.