This weekend the Chicago Tribune featured a story about secret deals that union officials are cutting with certain targeted employers to corral employees into the union’s ranks.

In exchange for the company’s assistance in unionizing employees (almost always by green-lighting a coercive card check drive and often by actively promoting the chosen union), union officials promise all sorts of things — ranging from promises not to badmouth the company anymore, to agreeing to drop demands for higher wages and health care benefits, to concessions in other bargaining units.

Not surprisingly, union bosses do their best to hide these agreements from the very employees they seek to represent, and even a few union officials are critical of the deals.

In a rare moment of candor, one union boss spilled the beans that these backroom deals are also kept secret to avoid lawsuits brought by employees with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation:

Hurd added that unions also like to keep a lid on such agreements to avoid embarrassment if they don’t succeed. Plus, they are concerned that other unions might want to join the bandwagon if they learn that the company has signed on to a neutrality agreement. And they want to avoid lawsuits from right-to-work groups challenging the agreements, he added.

For more on these secret deals and the legal challenges by individual employees enjoying assistance from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, see our special page on Top Down Organizing.