Indianapolis, IN (February 1, 2010) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, an Indianapolis bus driver has filed federal unfair labor practice charges challenging American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3826 union officials’ discriminatory workplace practices.

Barry Hickman is a bus driver employed by First Student in Indianapolis, Indiana. As an employee in a unionized workplace, he is forced to accept union monopoly bargaining and pay certain union dues to Local 3826. Hickman was also involved in a prolonged legal battle to opt out of paying dues for union political activism, which was finally resolved in 2009 when AFSCME officials acknowledged his right not to fund their political activities.

However, Hickman and similarly situated employees have been targeted for workplace discrimination by union officials. AFSCME bosses are retaliating against Hickman and his coworkers because they previously filed unfair labor practice charges against the union with the assistance of National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.

At issue in these new charges is a scheme to manipulate First Student’s extra trip list to artificially limit the earnings of Hickman and other employees who object to the union’s activities. The trip list assigns First Student drivers additional compensation for driving trips beyond scheduled routes. Union officials manipulated the list to limit nonunion drivers’ access to extra trips. When Hickman asked to review the extra trip list, union officials told him to get a lawyer.

Hickman’s charges allege that these practices violate the National Labor Relations Act and the union’s duty of representation, which grants union officials the power to ‘represent’ all workers in a bargaining unit, regardless of their union membership status. The charges will now be investigated by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“AFSCME union bosses are always eager to keep independent-minded workers in line and paying forced dues, and this discriminatory policy is just one more ugly example of how employees who bravely stand up to union intimidation are treated,” said Patrick Semmens, legal information director of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Mr. Hickman shouldn’t have to ‘get a lawyer’ to ensure he’s treated fairly on the job, but union bosses forced his hand.”

“Ultimately, passing a Right to Work law in Indiana would go a long way towards curbing this type of ugly retaliation by union bosses against the employees they claim to represent,” Semmens continued.

Washington, DC (February 26, 2010) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation announced today that it has hired Erin Elizabeth Smith of Georgetown, Texas, as an addition to its legal staff.

Smith is a recently sworn in member of the North Carolina State Bar and 2009 graduate of the Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, NC.

“Erin Smith brings to the Foundation a real commitment to defending and advancing individual liberty against the looming threat of compulsory unionism,” said Ray LaJeunesse, vice president and legal director of the National Right to Work Foundation.

“She will assist the Foundation’s burgeoning, cutting-edge legal strategies to blunt Big Labor’s well-funded, politically-connected attack on individual worker rights – including its coercive ‘card check’ forced union organizing and misuse of compulsory dues for politics.”

As the newest of the Foundation’s eleven staff attorneys, Smith will help build on the Foundation’s litigation record for union-abused workers that includes 14 cases at the United States Supreme Court, seven of which were won in whole or in part. Currently, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys represent thousands of employees in over 200 active cases nationwide.

Before joining the Foundation, Smith served as an intern for both the National Labor Relations Board regional office and for a federal public defender in Winston-Salem. She also was a law clerk for Davis & Hamrick, LLP of Winston-Salem and for the Institute for Justice in Washington, DC.

Smith holds bachelors degrees in History and Political Science from Wake Forest University, where she graduated with honors. She was also a member of the legal honor society Phi Alpha Delta and an executive staff member of the Wake Forest Journal of Intellectual Property Law.

Miami, FL (April 1, 2010) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a Miami-Dade public school teacher has filed unfair labor practice charges challenging a discriminatory policy that prevents nonunion teachers from using representatives of their own choosing during school investigatory interviews.

Shawn Beightol, a veteran chemistry teacher at Michel Krop Sr. High School, was told to report to the Miami-Dade County Office of Professional Standards (OPS) to discuss a possible violation of the school’s email policy last October.

The United Teachers of Dade (UTD) union is the exclusive bargaining agent for the Miami-Dade School District. However, Beightol is a member of the Professional Educations Network of Florida (PENFL), a nonunion teachers association. Although Beightol brought a representative from the PENFL to the October hearing, school officials refused to allow his advisor to participate.

Beightol’s charges allege that the Miami-Dade School District and UTD union officials unfairly discriminate against nonunion teachers by denying them the opportunity to bring private counsel to professional hearings. Although UTD members are entitled to union counsel at investigatory conferences, the teachers’ contract – negotiated by union officials with the school district – forbids private attorneys. This practice effectively discourages teachers from leaving UTD or joining a voluntary teacher association instead of the union.

Florida law explicitly prohibits public employers from encouraging union membership through discriminatory workplace practices. Florida’s popular Right to Work Law also guarantees that no employee – public or private – can be coerced into joining a union or paying union dues.

“This policy is nothing more than an underhanded way to force reluctant teachers into union ranks,” said Patrick Semmens, legal information director for the National Right to Work Foundation. “Union bosses and complicit public school administrators use these discriminatory policies to bludgeon nonmember teachers and voluntary teacher associations for offering workplace alternatives to union monopoly bargaining.”

Beightol’s charges will now be investigated by the Florida Public Employees Relations Commission in Tallahassee.

Union bosses continued to seize dues without a monopoly bargaining contract, rebuffing multiple valid attempts from employee to end dues deductions from paycheck

Hopkinsville, KY (January 22, 2020) – With free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, Hopkinsville, KY-based UPS employee William Anderson is appealing his case against Teamsters Local 215 union bosses to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel in Washington, DC. Anderson has charged Teamsters officials with illegally rejecting requests he made to stop dues deductions from his paycheck while there was no contract in place between the Teamsters union and UPS, and continuing to seize dues from his paycheck after receiving those requests. Under Kentucky’s Right to Work law, Anderson cannot be required to pay dues to keep his job.

Anderson’s appeal recounts that he sent a letter to Teamsters bosses on March 25, 2019, resigning his union membership and cutting off dues deductions. Teamsters officials responded the next week by acknowledging his resignation, but claiming that his dues checkoff revocation was not timely submitted. Anderson tried to cease dues deductions again with a letter on April 8, 2019, but union agents rebuffed this one too, claiming that his revocation had to be submitted during a 15-day “window period” in February to be valid.

As Anderson was trying to stop the dues flow from his paycheck, his appeal notes, Teamsters officials and UPS had not yet ratified a new monopoly bargaining contract. Although Teamsters bosses had failed to inform him of his right to revoke his dues checkoff at will while no contract was in effect, Anderson discovered his rights independently and sent union agents letters on April 17 and May 8, 2019, asking for a copy of the new monopoly bargaining contract. Anderson “believed this new contract was not ratified at the time he sent his revocation letters” and thus thought his two attempts to stop dues should have been honored.

In response, Anderson’s appeal notes, Teamsters bosses sent him on May 21, 2019, a copy of an “extension agreement dated June 21, 2018 that indefinitely extended the prior contract” past its expiration date, ostensibly in an attempt to show Anderson that there was never a contract hiatus in which he could have stopped dues deductions. Anderson’s appeal argues that, because federal law forbids dues checkoffs which are “irrevocable…beyond the termination date of the applicable” monopoly bargaining contract, Teamsters officials violated his rights by rejecting his attempts to cut off dues.

With free legal aid from the Foundation, Anderson filed federal charges at NLRB Region 10 against Teamsters bosses in September 2019, asserting that they had violated his rights by not informing him of the times he could revoke his dues checkoff, limiting to an illegal “window period” the time in which he could stop dues deductions, and “rejecting his revocation during a contract hiatus.” Region 10 rejected Anderson’s contention that Teamsters bosses had denied his revocation while there was no contract in effect, prompting his appeal to the NLRB General Counsel in Washington, DC.

“Teamsters bosses, in this case and many others, have given the very workers they claim to represent misinformation about their right to cut off union dues deductions and imposed arbitrary restrictions on the exercise of that right simply to keep dues money flowing into their coffers,” observed National Right to Work President Mark Mix. “We urge the General Counsel to quickly prosecute Teamsters officials for illegally blocking Mr. Anderson’s attempt to exercise his right to stop funding union activites.”

SEIU 1199NW union officials facing second round of federal charges from Swedish Medical Center employees as union bosses threaten strike

Seattle, WA (January 10, 2020) – Swedish Medical Center employee Daniel Dalison is charging Service Employees’ International Union (SEIU) 1199NW bosses and his employer with illegally seizing union dues from his paycheck when there is no contract in effect between the union and employer, and additionally with unlawfully ignoring two attempts he made to exercise his rights to resign union membership and pay reduced dues. His charges were filed at Region 19 of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.

Dalison’s charges come as news reports indicate that SEIU 1199NW bosses could potentially order Swedish Medical Center employees to strike if a new contract is not approved by January 10. The Foundation’s website provides information on the legal rights of workers in the absence of a contract, including the process by which one can resign his or her union membership and rebuff both union fee demands and any strike orders.

According to his charges, Dalison sent two letters to SEIU bosses in December 2019 ending his union membership and asserting his right under the Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision to pay only the amount of union dues directly germane to bargaining. Because Washington State lacks Right to Work protections for workers, private sector workers like Dalison who refrain from formal union membership can be legally required to pay a portion of dues in order to keep their jobs.

Dalison’s charges also note that his membership revocation letter should have been effective in stopping all dues deductions from his paycheck because the monopoly bargaining contract between Swedish Medical Center and the SEIU union had expired, leaving him with no active legal obligation to pay any fees to the SEIU hierarchy. Nevertheless, his charges state, neither Swedish Medical Center nor SEIU officials have responded to his requests, and Swedish Medical Center continues to deduct full membership dues from Dalison’s paycheck at the behest of SEIU officials.

Dalison’s charges also allege that SEIU has never given him or his coworkers “adequate notice of their rights” under Beck. Those rights include the rights to be a nonmember and as such object and not pay full union dues, and the right to be provided “disclosure of the reduced fee amount employees will have to pay if they choose Beck objector status” and an independent audit of the union’s expenditures. The charge explains that SEIU bosses’ actions and omissions violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and are attempts by the SEIU union to “trick or force nonmembers into funding its political and ideological agenda.”

Dalison’s charges come just months after another Swedish Medical Center employee, NancyEllen Elster, filed federal charges with Foundation aid similarly alleging that SEIU bosses never furnished employees a proper Beck rights notice, and had denied her request to pay the Beck reduced fee rather than full dues. Region 19 found merit in Elster’s charges and imposed an October 2019 settlement intended to rectify the union’s violations. Because SEIU officials have apparently flouted the requirements of that settlement, Dalison’s charges urge Region 19 resume prosecution of the SEIU for the violations in Elster’s case.

Those charges were not the only time Washington State SEIU bosses were recently caught violating workers’ legal rights. In October 2019, SEIU 775NW officials were forced to settle a federal case and refund well over $3 million to home-based healthcare providers in the state who asserted in the lawsuit that the SEIU had diverted a percentage of Medicaid payments from them to the union in violation of their statutory and constitutional rights.

“Given Washington State SEIU bosses’ repeated flouting of even the most basic employee rights protections, it is understandable that Swedish Medical Center employees may begin questioning whether the threatened strike is really what is best for themselves, their families, and their patients,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Swedish Medical Center employees should know they unequivocally have the right to resign their union memberships and avoid all union fee demands and strike orders in the absence of a contract.”

“If SEIU bosses further refuse to comply with Swedish Medical Center employees’ legal rights, other rank-and-file workers there should immediately contact the Foundation for free legal aid,” added Mix.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) initiating rulemaking to modify rules used to block workers’ right to escape union ranks

Washington, DC (January 9, 2020) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has just submitted comments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), urging it to issue a final rule to nix three arbitrary policies that union officials frequently manipulate to trap workers in union ranks despite a majority’s desire to oust the union from the workplace. The three policies are not statutory, but were created by past Board precedents. The comments, submitted by Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse, support all three changes the NLRB is currently considering in rulemaking. However, the comments advocate an important modification to the Board’s proposed change in how it deals with so-called “blocking charges.”

The NLRB’s “blocking charge” policy currently lets union bosses file unfair labor practice (ULP) charges against an employer to halt employee votes to decertify unions, even if the allegations against the employer have no connection to the decertification effort. The agency plans to eliminate that policy and replace it with one that lets decertification elections proceed while such charges are pending, but requires the results of the vote to be withheld until those charges are resolved.

The Foundation’s comments explain that the Board’s proposed “vote and impound” procedure does not fully address the blocking charge problem, because even after workers vote union officials could continue to trap them in unwanted representation by dragging out the ULP process to maintain monopoly bargaining powers for months or years before the vote can be announced. The comments point out that this will unfairly “frustrate and confuse employees who may have to wait years to see the election’s results.” Instead, the Foundation urges the Board to release vote tallies first to “decrease litigation and give parties greater information on whether to settle” unfair labor practice charge allegations unlikely to impact the election’s outcome.

Foundation staff attorneys have provided legal assistance to scores of workers faced with “blocking charges,” most recently a group of Alaskan bus drivers who were freed in December 2019 from an unpopular Teamsters union after three years of attempts to remove it. One employee in that situation commented to the NLRB that Teamsters officials’ continued blocking of an election was “the most unfair and anti-democratic event” with which he had ever been involved.

The Foundation’s comments support the NLRB’s move to reinstate a process that allows employees and rival unions to file for secret-ballot elections after a union has been installed in a workplace through abuse-prone “card check” drives that bypass the NLRB-supervised election process. That critical modification to the so-called “voluntary recognition bar” policy would reinstate a system secured by Foundation staff attorneys for workers in the 2007 Dana Corp NLRB decision. Despite thousands of workers using the process to secure secret ballot votes after being unionized through card checks, the Obama NLRB overturned Dana in 2010.

The Foundation’s comments also support the agency’s proposed rule to crack down on schemes in the construction industry where employers and union bosses are allowed to unilaterally install a union in a workplace without first providing proof of majority union support among the workers. Foundation staff attorneys represented a victim of such a scheme in a case (Colorado Fire Sprinkler, Inc.) that ended when a DC Circuit Court of Appeals panel unanimously ruled for the worker, who had been unionized despite no evidence of majority employee support for the union.

The Foundation has long called for the NLRB to abandon all barriers to employee decertification of unions which the National Labor Relations Act, the federal law that the agency is charged with enforcing, does not mandate or even mention. In addition to the “blocking charge” policy and “voluntary recognition bar” that are subjects of the current rulemaking, the Foundation also opposes other arbitrary and non-statutory barriers to workers exercising their right to a decertification election.

“For too long the statutory right of employees under the National Labor Relations Act to vote out a union they oppose has been trampled by arbitrary NLRB policies that allow union bosses to maintain power despite the overwhelming opposition of rank-and-file workers,” observed National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Delays in the rulemaking process this Board has used to address these coercive policies means workers across the country continue to be trapped in unions they oppose every day, which is why the NLRB should now swiftly finalize these rules as the Foundation’s comments advocate.”

Petition contains signatures of more than enough employees at charter school to trigger secret-ballot election to oust teacher union imposed through unreliable “card check” drive

San Diego, CA (January 8, 2020) – A group of employees at Gompers Preparatory Academy (GPA), a charter school in the Chollas View neighborhood, have signed a petition for a vote to remove the San Diego Education Association (SDEA) union from monopoly bargaining power at the school. GPA teacher Dr. Kristie Chiscano, who obtained free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, just submitted the decertification petition at the California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB).

Contention has surrounded the SDEA’s presence at GPA, as the union installed itself in January 2019 after conducting a controversial “card check” drive, bypassing the more reliable method of a secret-ballot election whether to certify a union as the monopoly representative of all educators in the school. GPA transitioned from being a regular public school to a charter preparatory academy in 2005 as the result of a campaign by parents, teachers, and administrators who believed that school district and union bureaucracies were not serving the students’ interests, especially by failing to combat the issues of gang violence and teacher attrition at the school.

Since the school’s unionization without a secret ballot vote in January 2019, no monopoly bargaining contract has been approved. GPA parents and educators have accused SDEA agents of sowing division at the school, including by supporting anti-charter school legislation, making unnecessary and disparaging comments to school leadership during bargaining sessions, and plotting to prevent the California NAACP from giving the school’s director, Vincent Riveroll, an award for helping minority students succeed.

Dr. Chiscano, who teaches chemistry to 10th and 11th grade students, began circulating the decertification petition in October 2019. She soon obtained the signatures of well over the number of her fellow educators necessary to trigger a PERB-supervised secret-ballot vote to remove the union. Their petition was filed with the PERB immediately following the one-year anniversary of the union’s installation.

In December, union officials preemptively filed a charge at PERB seeking “that the certification year be extended.” That would block the educators’ right to remove the union from their workplace for another year despite no evidence or even an allegation that any educator violated the law. Such “blocking charges” are a tactic union lawyers frequently use to block rank-and-file employees from holding secret-ballot elections that could result in the removal of union officials from power as employees’ designated monopoly representative.

Dr. Chiscano turned to the National Right to Work Foundation for free legal aid to challenge this attempt by union officials to stymie her and her coworkers’ right to hold a decertification vote to oust a union they believe lacks the support of a majority of the school’s educators.

“Rather than face a secret-ballot vote of the rank-and-file educators they claim to represent, SDEA union bosses are attempting to resort to legal trickery to trap teachers in a union they oppose by blocking their right to hold a decertification election,” observed National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “By using these coercive tactics to attempt to trap teachers in union ranks SDEA union officials do wrong by GPA’s namesake, AFL-CIO union founder Samuel Gompers, who himself urged devotion to ‘the principles of voluntarism’ and reminded all American workers that ‘no lasting gain has ever come from compulsion.’”

Today the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced rulemaking to change its policies that permit union officials to block workers from holding decertification votes to remove unions. The alterations incorporate standards established in past NLRB cases argued by Foundation staff attorneys, and urged in comments submitted by staff attorneys to the Board.

National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix issued the following comments regarding the NLRB’s move:

“For years union officials have used a wide range of tactics to suppress the right to vote out a union that is opposed by a majority of workers. Today’s announced rules are a good first step in what needs to be a larger series of reforms that put the rights of workers ahead of the coercive legal powers that have been granted to union bosses. That Big Labor will oppose these proposals that simply make it easier for workers to vote for or against unionization in secret ballot elections demonstrates how much their power derives from legal trickery and not from the voluntary support of rank-and-file workers.”

The announced changes include the elimination of a “bar” blocking workers from voting out a union for a period of time after a union has been installed through a controversial “card check” process and reforms to the NLRB’s “blocking charge” policy that permits union officials to file Unfair Labor Practice charges that then block workers’ right to hold a decertification election, sometimes for years. Both of the proposed changes are reforms that Foundation staff attorneys have long pushed for, including in comments to the NLRB on the election rules submitted in April 2018.

Over the years, Foundation staff attorneys have litigated dozens of cases at the NLRB for workers whose petitions for decertification votes were not processed because of the two policies.

National Right to Work Foundation letter asks Board to address all non-statutory “bars” to decertification votes that trap workers in unions that lack majority support

Washington, DC (December 3, 2018) – Today the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation submitted a letter to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asking the Board to expand the scope of upcoming rulemaking to address several Board-invented doctrines that block employees from exercising their right to vote whether to remove union representation under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

According to statements Board Members recently made at an American Bar Association Labor and Employment Law Conference in San Francisco, the NLRB intends to use rulemaking this winter to address two policies that restrict workers’ right to vote out union officials’ unwanted representation: the “blocking charge” policy and the “voluntary recognition bar” doctrine.

The letter from Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse recognizes that the Board’s decision to address those two policies that have restricted workers’ rights for years is a good first step. However, it adds that Foundation staff attorneys believe that the Board should address all “bars” and “blocks” on employees’ right to hold elections to remove unwanted union representation which are not established by the NLRA itself, because they improperly obstruct employees from exercising their free choice rights guaranteed by that statute.

“Blocking charge” policies allow union officials to file unfair labor practice charges to block employees’ petitions to decertify unions, even when a majority of unit employees sign a petition. The “voluntary recognition bar” rule prevents workers’ attempts to hold secret ballot votes to decertify a union for at least a year, and potentially up to four years, after union officials force workers into union representation via a coercive card check drive.

The letter urges the Board to also address all of the other doctrines created by past Board Members that restrict workers’ right to hold decertification elections, highlighting three other “bars” that should be eliminated. The “successor bar” blocks workers from decertifying a union for an indefinite amount of time after the previous employer has been replaced by a successor. The “settlement bar” rule prevents workers from removing an unwanted union after a settlement agreement between a union and their employer. The “contract bar” restricts when workers can file decertification petitions to a narrow window of time that may occur only once in three years.

As the letter and the Foundation’s formal comments concerning the Obama Board’s “ambush election” rules filed with the NLRB earlier in the year point out, none of these bars are authorized by the statute. Moreover, all undermine workers’ rights under the NLRA by allowing union officials to maintain monopoly representation powers even when a majority of the workers they claim to represent oppose union representation.

“These restrictive doctrines have granted power to union bosses at the expense of the rights of the employees whose choice the National Labor Relations Act purports to protect,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Each of these Board-invented doctrines actively undermines the NLRA’s central premise by trapping workers in unions that lack the support of a majority of workers, which is why the announced rulemaking should eliminate all of these non-statutory barriers to holding decertification votes.”