Top union bosses demanded Robb’s ouster, which was immediately followed by agency tossing Foundation cases challenging union officials’ violations of workers’ rights

Washington, DC (February 9, 2021) – Following the Biden Administration’s unprecedented and legally dubious removal of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Peter Robb and his second-in-command, Alice Stock, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has just submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the agency to dig deep into this unfolding scandal.

The FOIA request asks for all correspondence related to Robb’s and Stock’s firings, and two Foundation-supported cases for workers which were hastily suppressed by NLRB Acting General Counsel Peter Ohr shortly after he was installed in Robb’s place by President Biden. Both cases challenged union officials’ collusion with management to foist union representation on hotel workers without even an employee vote.

On January 20 at 12:23 PM, a mere 23 minutes after the President formally took office, President Biden’s Office of Presidential Personnel demanded that Robb resign or be fired. After Robb refused to resign, citing the unprecedented nature of the demand and his Senate confirmation to a four-year term, he was fired that same day. Robb’s deputy, Alice Stock, received a similar threat the next day only to be fired as well when she refused to resign.

Since the office of NLRB General Counsel was established in 1947, no sitting General Counsel of the NLRB has ever been terminated by a president before the end of their Senate-confirmed four-year term, even when the White House changed hands. For example, Obama’s pick for General Counsel, former union lawyer Richard Griffin, remained the General Counsel for most of the first year after Trump’s election (until his term expired on 10/31/17).

In addition to general information regarding the circumstances of Robb’s removal and Ohr’s installation, the FOIA request specifically asks for documents regarding two cases brought by hotel employees challenging so-called “neutrality agreements.” Robb had sustained employee appeals in both cases and ordered NLRB regional officials to issue complaints against UNITE HERE union officials and hotel management. Both cases were just a few weeks away from scheduled trials before NLRB Administrative Law Judges.

However, about a week after Robb’s unprecedented firing, Ohr directly ordered Seattle NLRB officials to withdraw the complaint and dismiss one of the cases, which had been filed by Foundation staff attorneys for Embassy Suites housekeeper Gladys Bryant. The Seattle Region did so on January 29. The next business day, Boston NLRB officials dropped the other case, which Foundation staff attorneys were litigating for four Boston Yotel housekeepers who had had UNITE HERE thrust upon them.

The FOIA request also demands all documents germane to Ohr’s rescission of a September 2020 memo issued by Robb, which advised NLRB regional officials to adopt a consistent standard in “neutrality agreement” cases. Foundation staff attorneys maintain in both the Boston and Seattle cases that because NLRB case law forbids employers from providing “more than ministerial aid” to employees who attempt to vote out, or decertify, an unwanted union, the same standard must apply in cases where union officials obtain employer assistance in installing a union as workers’ monopoly “representative.” Robb’s memo had endorsed that neutral application of the law.

The request demands “all documents and communications” concerning these issues between Ohr and “any Member of the U.S. House of Representatives or any U.S. Senator,” “any officer, employee or representative of a labor organization,” “any representative of…the Biden-Harris transition organization,” or “any official or employee of the U.S. Government, including officials and employees of the National Labor Relations Board,” among other parties.

“The Biden Administration’s radical, unprecedented firing of NLRB General Counsel Peter Robb immediately resulted in so-called Acting General Counsel Peter Ohr quashing two Foundation-backed cases which threatened a key privilege union bosses use to seize power over workers across the country,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “This FOIA request seeks documents related to this scandalous power grab, which is clearly designed to shut down multiple NLRB prosecutions of Biden’s union boss political allies for their violation of workers’ legal rights.”

Denial of union boss request for rehearing en banc leaves in place unanimous Appeals Court panel decision in favor of Rhode Island nurse

Boston, MA (February 4, 2021) – In another victory for longtime Rhode Island nurse Jeanette Geary, the First Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a request by United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) union lawyers to rehear UNAP v. NLRB, a case in which they sought to overturn a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling in favor of Geary and her fellow nurses who objected to being forced to pay for union lobbying expenses. Geary was not a member of the UNAP union in her workplace and filed federal charges with free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys in 2009 after union officials infringed on her and other nonmember nurses’ rights under the Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision.

Geary, who worked as a nurse at Kent Hospital in Warwick, Rhode Island, filed unfair labor practice charges after UNAP officials failed to provide her evidence of a legally required independent audit of its breakdown of expenditures. She also challenged the union’s forcing her and other employees to pay for union lobbying activities in state legislatures.

The Foundation-won Beck decision mandates that private sector workers in states without Right to Work protections can only be forced to pay union dues for union activities “directly germane” to the union’s bargaining functions, which excludes political activity like lobbying. In another Foundation-won case, Hudson, the Court held that union officials must provide an audited financial breakdown of how forced union dues are being spent.

The NLRB ruled against Geary in a decision issued in 2012, but that decision was invalidated by the Supreme Court’s holding in NLRB v. Noel Canning that the Board lacked a valid quorum because of unconstitutional “recess appointments” then-President Obama had made. Seven years later, Geary’s case was one of the only remaining decisions invalidated by Noel Canning still pending without a decision by the NLRB.

In January 2019, Foundation staff attorneys filed a mandamus petition at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, seeking a court order that the NLRB promptly decide Geary’s case. The Appeals Court then ordered the NLRB to respond to that petition by March 4, 2019, which caused the NLRB to issue its decision on March 1, 2019, just ahead of the deadline.

The NLRB ruled 3-1 that union officials violate workers’ rights by forcing nonmembers to fund any union lobbying activities. It also ruled that union officials must provide independent verification that the union expenses they charge to nonmembers have been audited. Unwilling to stop forcing workers to fund lobbying activities, UNAP union bosses then asked the First Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn this ruling.

Oral arguments were held before the First Circuit in March 2020, with veteran Foundation staff attorney Glenn Taubman arguing for Geary. One of the judges on the First Circuit panel was retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter. In September, the First Circuit decided unanimously in favor of Geary, ruling that “we see no convincing argument that legislative lobbying is not a ‘political’ activity,” while also finding that the NLRB was correct that Supreme Court precedent dictated that nonmembers could never be required to fund union lobbying.

Rather than accept this limitation on their power to force workers to fund union activities as a condition of employment, union lawyers requested that the case be reheard by every judge on the Court of Appeals. Finally today (February 4, 2021) the First Circuit denied the union lawyers’ request for a rehearing with no judge dissenting.

The decision to deny rehearing en banc and leave in place the panel’s unanimous decision that unions violate workers’ rights when they attempt to force them to pay for any lobbying comes just three days after ersatz NLRB acting General Counsel Peter Ohr rescinded a Guidance Memo to NLRB Regional Directors seeking the enforcement of workers’ rights under the Geary/Kent Hospital precedent. Ohr was installed as Acting General Counsel following President Biden’s unprecedented and likely unlawful firing of General Counsel Peter Robb, who authored the memo on enforcing employees’ rights under Kent Hospital.

“The First Circuit’s unanimous ruling for Ms. Geary, followed by denial of rehearing, demonstrates the clarity of the Supreme Court’s standard in Beck, and shows how flagrantly UNAP officials disregarded her and her coworkers’ Beck rights well over a decade ago,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “While it is just plain wrong to force workers to shell out cash for union political expenses as a condition of keeping their jobs, federal labor law as a whole needs reform so no worker is forced to accept or pay for the ‘representation’ of union hierarchies they don’t want and never requested.”

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation President issues statement in recognition of National School Choice Week

Washington, DC (January 29, 2021) – Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, issued the following statement in recognition of National School Choice Week 2021:

In this year’s School Choice Week, more and more Americans are seeing firsthand the benefits of letting parents choose which type of education will best serve their children’s needs. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, teacher union officials have held parents, children, and independent-minded teachers hostage to unreasonable and evidence-free demands designed to perpetuate and expand union officials’ one-size-fits-all monopoly over government education.

Prime targets of teacher union officials in recent years have been ever more popular and successful charter schools. Union bosses have even used Coronavirus as a pretense for demanding a moratorium on the opening of new charter schools, a cynical attempt to block teachers and parents from escaping union-dominated government school systems.

When they can’t block the existence of charter schools, teacher union bosses have employed coercive tactics to foist their so-called ‘representation’ onto charter school educators. This puts charter school students and teachers at risk: Many parents and teachers prefer charter schools precisely because they reject the one-size-fits-all approach national and state teacher union bosses promote.

Take, for example, Gompers Preparatory Academy in San Diego, California. The school made an impressive transition in 2005 from a traditional public school to a charter school after a campaign by parents, teachers, and administrators who believed that public school district and union bureaucracies were not serving the students’ interests.

In 2019, after being unionized through a contentious ‘card check’ drive that bypassed a secret-ballot election, Gompers teachers began circulating a petition for a vote to remove the union. Union officials have now for more than a year blocked the teachers from exercising their right to vote the union out. On top of that, union officials face legal charges filed by Gompers educators for attacking teachers and their coworkers on social media just for wanting to exercise their right to a vote to remove the union.

Charter school employees are entitled to certain constitutional and statutory rights, but unfortunately union officials frequently attempt to keep employees in the dark about those rights. That is why National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys have provided direct, free legal aid to over 10,000 teachers since its founding, including the teachers at Gompers, and why the Foundation has its Charter School Initiative. Foundation-won legal precedents have also expanded the workplace rights of millions of teachers across the country.

Led by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, the National Right to Work Foundation’s Charter School Initiative aims to enlighten charter school employees about their rights so that they can make decisions about union representation in an atmosphere free of union boss threats, harassment, coercion, or misrepresentation. To that end, Foundation attorneys have developed free educational materials for charter school teachers and other charter school employees. Furthermore, Foundation staff attorneys are prepared to defend charter school employees from the injustices of forced unionism, as they are now doing for Gompers teachers.

Charter school teachers and other employees: You have rights. For more information about your rights and the Foundation’s Charter School Initiative, check out our website at https://www.nrtw.org/charterschools.

Union boss demanded personal emails of Sacramento-Yolo District workers seeking information about holding a vote to remove the union from their workplace

Sacramento, CA (January 27, 2021) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, three Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito & Vector Control District employees just received a favorable decision from a California Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) Administrative Law Judge (ALJ). The employees’ case charged that International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 3 officials interfered with their rights under California law to remove the union from their workplace by targeting their protected communications through a California Records Act request.

The ALJ decision confirms the workers’ charges that IUOE union officials had “unlawfully surveilled [their] protected conduct” and also finds that the workers were “harmed by the unlawful surveillance when they learned of it.” As a result, the decision orders union officials to immediately stop monitoring the workers’ email activity about the union. The decision also requires IUOE Local 3 to post copies of the decision in all Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito & Vector Control District workplaces where the union maintains monopoly bargaining power and to send the decision to all bargaining unit employees through electronic means, including email.

The employees, Brett Day, Ryan Wagner, and Mark Pipkin, were targeted by union officials after they discussed with other District employees how to exercise their rights as public workers under California’s Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (MMBA). That statute guarantees public workers “the right to refuse to join or participate in the activities of employee organizations” and “the right to represent themselves individually in their employment relations with the public agency.” Union agents requested from their employer all emails the three and other named employees had sent containing the words or phrases “decertification,” “PERB,” “union,” “decertify,” “how to get rid of union,” “Public Employee Relations Board,” and “Meyers Milias Brown Act.”

That request was made as IOUE officials sought to block a push for a decertification election, in which workers would vote in secret to determine whether a majority want to end the union’s monopoly representation. Under the 2018 Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, the dissenting workers finally have the legal right to stop financial support of the union, yet California law still forces the union on them as their monopoly bargaining agent.

Day, Wagner, and Pipkin defended themselves by obtaining free legal aid from Foundation staff attorneys and filing charges with PERB. The workers’ charges argued that the union’s demand for employee emails interfered with their right to communicate with their coworkers about voting out the union, as protected by the MMBA. In May 2019, PERB found merit in Day, Wagner, and Pipkin’s charges and issued a complaint on which to prosecute the union.

The decision notes that employees’ knowledge of being spied on by union officials “has a deleterious effect on [their] future exercise of rights” and thus ruled that Day, Wagner, and Pipkin “suffered harm to their protected right to communicate with coworkers about unionization, decertification, and the Union in general.” The ALJ’s decision will become the PERB’s official decision in 20 days, unless one of the parties files exceptions to it.

“IUOE union bosses’ conduct in this case clearly demonstrates that they were far more interested in maintaining their one-size-fits-all bargaining power over Day, Wagner, and Pipkin’s workplace than in respecting the rights and privacy of the very workers they claim to represent,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “This favorable decision underscores why government sector union bosses should not have the privilege of forcing their so-called ‘representation’ on all employees in a public workplace, especially not over the objections of employees who oppose the union.”

“Even though the Foundation-won Janus decision eliminated the scourge of forced union dues for public employees, there is ultimately no place for compulsory unionism of any kind in state or federal labor law,” Mix added.

“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

Para leer este articulo en español, haga clic aquí.

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 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.”

Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision clearly forbids forced union fees for public employees, but IUOE bosses try to pass them off as “agreement administration fees”

Cincinnati, OH (December 14, 2020) – With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, City of Hamilton employee Timothy Crane is suing International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 20 union officials and the City of Hamilton for seizing a compulsory fee from his paycheck in violation of his First Amendment rights. His complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, contends that union bosses are infringing on his rights under the Janus v. AFSCME decision by forcing him to pay a so-called “agreement administration fee” equal to more than 90 percent of full union dues as a condition of his employment.

In the 2018 Foundation-won Janus decision, the High Court ruled that no public worker can be forced to pay union dues or fees as a condition of getting or keeping a job. The Court also held that union dues or fees can only be deducted from a public employee’s paycheck if that employee clearly and affirmatively waives his or her right not to pay. Justice Alito wrote for the Court majority that “such a waiver cannot be presumed” by union or state officials.

Crane works for the City of Hamilton. He sent letters to IUOE union officials in both August and September of this year attempting to exercise his First Amendment Janus right to end dues deductions from his paycheck. After sending these two letters, he discovered that an “agreement administration fee” was now being taken from his pay by the City at the behest of IUOE union bosses.

Crane’s lawsuit points out that the most recent contract between the City of Hamilton and IUOE Local 20 requires employees who have revoked their dues deduction authorizations to pay compulsory agreement administration fees. The complaint contends that this fee is just a so-called “agency fee” – compulsory union payments charged to employees who refrain from formal union membership that were definitively outlawed by the Janus v. AFSCME decision – masquerading under a different name.

The suit urges the District Court to declare it unconstitutional for IUOE Local 20 and the City of Hamilton to force him to pay this compulsory union fee. Crane’s lawsuit also seeks a refund of all money that the union illegally took from his paycheck under the unconstitutional arrangement.

Since Janus was handed down by the Supreme Court, Foundation staff attorneys have already won favorable settlements in four cases for Buckeye State public workers who have challenged illegal union-created restrictions on the exercise of Janus First Amendment rights. In a July settlement in a class-action lawsuit filed by four state workers, nearly 30,000 Ohio public employees were freed from an “escape period” scheme imposed by Ohio Civil Service Employees Association (OCSEA) union chiefs, which limited to just a handful of days every few years the time in which a public employee could exercise his or her Janus rights.

“IUOE bosses, who may have thought they were going to trick employees into funding their agenda against their will with this blatantly unconstitutional scheme, have now been caught red-handed,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Rank-and-file workers like Mr. Crane now see that IUOE officials are far more interested in keeping hard-earned employee cash flowing into their coffers than in respecting the First Amendment rights of the workers they claim to represent.”

Mix continued: “The string of Foundation victories for independent-minded Buckeye State employees who just want to exercise their First Amendment rights is not going to end here.”

Workers already receiving $1,000+ refunds, Labor Board says that union officials used illegal barriers to prevent workers from ending dues payments

Detroit, MI (December 10, 2020) – In response to federal charges filed by three employees of Rieth-Riley Construction Company, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 7 in Detroit has just hit the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 324 union with a second consolidated complaint for using unlawful resignation and revocation requirements to trap employees in unwanted membership and dues payments. The three employees are receiving free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

Absent settlement, the case will now go before an NLRB Administrative Law Judge. NLRB Region 7’s complaint comes as IUOE union bosses appear to be hurriedly refunding illegally-seized dues to workers, possibly to avoid further litigation on the issue. While the NLRB case to prosecute the union continues, some workers who had ended their memberships as early as 2019 are already reporting receiving checks from the union of up to four-figure sums, apparently to refund illegally-seized money, most likely in response to the Foundation-backed litigation.

The NLRB complaint consolidates the cases of Rieth-Riley employees Jesse London, Rob Nevins, and John Shipkosky, who each charged the union this year with ignoring their letters exercising their right to resign from the union and to stop any dues deductions. The complaint specifically says that union officials illegally required dues authorization revocations to be submitted by registered or certified mail, and additionally failed to inform employees that “revocation is effective at any time upon the expiration of” the union’s monopoly bargaining contract.

According to the complaint, the union’s enforcement of these restrictions violated their and their coworkers’ right to refrain from union activities guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The complaint now seeks a ruling from an NLRB Administrative Law Judge that will order union officials to “[m]ake whole any affected employees, for any financial loss” that resulted from the union’s illegal dues deduction scheme.

NLRB Region 7’s consolidated complaint also comes just weeks after Rieth-Riley employees submitted an emergency appeal in support of their effort to vote IUOE Local 324 bosses out of their workplace. They are challenging Region 7’s November 9 decision to suppress the ballots just hours before they were scheduled to be tallied, due to unverified charges IUOE bosses made against Rieth-Riley management. Foundation attorneys argue in the workers’ appeal that Region 7’s decision ignores new NLRB rules that require that employee votes be counted before such charges are dealt with.

“Operating Engineers union bosses were caught red-handed illegally seizing dues from Rieth-Riley workers in violation of their rights. Returning those ill-gotten funds is just the first step to fully vindicate the rights of IUOE’s victims,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Foundation staff attorneys are proud to stand with the hardworking men and women of Rieth-Riley, including in their effort to have their votes counted to free themselves from unwanted union so-called ‘representation.’”

Union bosses ignored his attempts to exercise his rights, now must refund all illegally taken money

Portland, OR (December 7, 2020) – Portland-area ABC cameraman Jeremy Brown has just won a decision in his case charging National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET-CWA) Local 51 union officials with demanding and seizing illegal dues from him and for ignoring his multiple attempts to exercise his right to refrain from union membership and not pay for union political activities. He is represented at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

A December 3 ruling by an NLRB Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) found that NABET union bosses have, since April 2019, breached federal labor law by violating Brown’s rights under the Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision. Beck stipulates that union bosses can only compel employees, like Brown, who have objected to formal union membership to pay for specific, limited costs directly related to the union’s bargaining functions. An employee cannot be required to pay for the union’s political, lobbying and other non-bargaining expenditures. Beck also requires union officials to provide such employees an independent audit of the union’s financial breakdown and the process by which they calculate the reduced fee amount, among other disclosures.

According to the ALJ’s decision, Brown resumed work with ABC in 2016 after periods of intermittent hire since 1999, at no point joining the union. A new president, Carrie Biggs-Adams, took over the NABET union in the workplace in late 2018 and sent Brown a series of letters in early 2019 which claimed that, as a condition of employment, he had to pay nearly $10,000 dollars in initiation fees and “back agency dues.”

Because Brown works primarily in states without Right to Work protections, which make union membership and financial support voluntary, he can be required to pay a fee to the union as a condition of employment.

Brown, who according to the ALJ’s decision was unaware until 2019 that he was under the NABET union’s bargaining power, emailed Biggs-Adams in April 2019 asking for “clarification” regarding the fee demands and also exercised his Beck rights by objecting “to the collection and expenditure by the union of a fee for any purpose other than” certain bargaining activities. The decision also recounts that Brown informed Biggs-Adams that he filled out an application for formal NABET membership (which included an authorization for full dues deductions from his paycheck), but did so under duress, believing that he would be fired if he did not agree to pay dues.

Several follow-ups by Brown were not acknowledged by Biggs-Adams. According to the ALJ’s ruling, she “believed Local 51 had no obligation to do so because Beck objections” are handled only by the union’s national headquarters under NABET rules. Biggs-Adams never told Brown that his Beck objection was misdirected nor provided any of the disclosures Beck requires under prior Board decisions, and the union never reduced his fee amount in accordance with Beck.

The ALJ’s decision holds that the NABET Local 51 union violated Brown’s rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) through its officials’ omissions and the failure to reduce his dues. The ALJ orders that NABET Local 51 provide Brown with “a good faith determination of the reduced dues and fees objectors must pay,” “reimburse Brown for all dues and fees collected” beyond what is required by Beck with interest, and post notices informing the employees in Brown’s workplace of the decision.

“NABET union bosses flat out ignored multiple attempts by Mr. Brown to exercise his Beck rights, all the while stuffing their coffers with well over the limit of cash that they could legally demand from him,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “While this decision vindicated Mr. Brown’s legal rights, it also demonstrates why every American worker deserves the protection of a Right to Work law to shield them from union boss threats to pay up or be fired.”