Union sought to interrogate teenage cashier over his religious beliefs after he asserted his rights and presented religious objections to supporting the union

Pittsburgh, PA (January 17, 2023) – North Huntingdon Giant Eagle employee Josiah Leonatti – a high school student – has filed federal discrimination charges against the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1776KS union. He maintains that union officials refused to consider his religious beliefs after he expressed religious objections to joining and paying dues to the union. Union officials, according to his charges, subjected him to an illegal “religion test” to determine whether his religious beliefs count.

Leonatti is receiving free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, who filed charges for him against the union at both the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). They also filed charges against Giant Eagle for firing him after he asked for a religious accommodation. Giant Eagle falsely told him that he must join the union to keep his job.

Leonatti charges that the UFCW union and Giant Eagle are breaching Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Title VII requires unions and employers to accommodate employees who have religious objections to joining or supporting a union. The NLRA also prohibits forced union membership regardless of a worker’s reason for not wanting to affiliate with a union. Leonatti’s Title VII claims will be investigated by the EEOC; the NLRB will handle his NLRA claims.

Pennsylvania’s lack of Right to Work protections means that union officials may force private sector workers in unionized workplaces, like Leonatti, to pay them fees or be fired. Under federal law, employees with religious objections cannot be compelled to pay such fees. Right to Work states broaden that protection; in Right to Work states, no worker can be fired for refusal to join or financially support a union no matter the reason for objecting to subsidizing union activities.

High School-Age Employee Dismissed After Presenting Religious Objection

Leonatti’s charges report that he attended employee training last year as a cashier trainee. There an official told new hires that they “must sign papers to join the United Food And Commercial Workers.” According to the NLRB charges, “No other options were even hinted at.”

After reviewing the papers with his family, Leonatti’s charges explain, he mailed a letter to UFCW officials detailing his sincere religious objections to joining and supporting the union. He also presented the same letter in person at training. Rather than accommodate his sincere religious beliefs, a company official “dismissed [Leonatti] from training and sent [him] home.” The same official later called Leonatti and told him that union membership is compulsory at Giant Eagle, and the grocery store had terminated him over his refusal to join.

UFCW officials also responded to Leonatti’s letter by mail on November 10, rejecting the written explanation of Leonatti’s religious objection and demanding he “complete its religious examination” before they even considered granting him an accommodation. Even if he passed this “test,” the charges say, union officials threatened that he would still have to pay an amount equal to full UFCW union dues to a charity.

A religious test is forbidden by federal law. The Supreme Court ruled in its 1981 Thomas v. Review Board of the Indiana Employment Security Division decision that “religious beliefs need not be…comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection.”

Leonatti’s father called Giant Eagle’s HR department, according to the charges, to gain more clarity. A Giant Eagle employee reiterated that employment depended on union membership. After missing several weeks of work because the store had terminated him, Leonatti got an email from Giant Eagle inviting him to return to work.

To date, however, no Giant Eagle agent ever offered or discussed a religious accommodation with Leonatti, and the union has not retracted its threats or agreed to accommodate.

Employee Seeks Re-Training for Accommodation-Denying Union Officials

Leonatti’s EEOC charges seek to compel the UFCW union and Giant Eagle to provide him a legally-required religious accommodation. In addition, the NLRB charges state that relief must include unit-wide information and corporate retraining, among other remedies.

“Union bosses’ attempt to coerce a high schooler to violate his religious beliefs is unconscionable, and illegal,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “We’re proud to support Mr. Leonatti as he defends his rights, but this should serve as a stark reminder that all Americans deserve Right to Work protections. Regardless of their particular reasons for not wanting to affiliate with a union, no employee’s job should hinge on whether he or she pays dues to a private organization.”

Union boss-beholden NLRB to make it easier for union bosses to block workers from exercising right to vote out unpopular unions

Washington, DC (November 3, 2022) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) today announced it was initiating rulemaking to rescind the Board’s Election Protection Rule, a 2020 provision that, among other things, helped protect rank-and-file workers’ statutory right to hold votes to remove unwanted union officials.

National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix issued the following statement on the Biden NLRB’s announcement:

“The Biden-appointed NLRB majority – two of whom were union lawyers when nominated for their seats on the Board – is once again protecting union boss power to the detriment of the statutory rights of rank-and-file workers. Make no mistake, reversing the Election Protection Rule will mean more workers trapped in forced union ranks they oppose, and more denials of worker requests for basic secret-ballot votes regarding union status.

“The NLRB’s own statistics indicate that workers are currently seeking to throw out unwanted unions at the highest rate in years. Yet, rather than reflect on why so many workers want nothing to do with union so-called ‘representation,’ the anti-worker response of the Biden Administration and their Big Labor allies is to build a wall to keep workers in unions, or to stop them from even holding votes to oust incumbent union bosses.”

NLRB Seeks to Undermine Right to Vote as Worker Decertification Efforts Increase

The NLRB adopted the Election Protection Rule in 2020 after multiple rounds of comments from Foundation staff attorneys supporting the changes. The rule included reforms to the NLRB process for dealing with union “blocking charges,” which union bosses often file to prevent rank-and-file employees from exercising their right to vote out a union. Union officials manipulate “blocking charges” to stop workers’ requested votes from taking place for months or even years by making one or multiple allegations against the employer.

The 2020 rule stopped union charges from stalling worker-requested votes, and in most cases permitted the immediate release of the vote tally as opposed to ordering ballots to be impounded during litigation over “blocking charges.”

The Election Protection Rule also substantially eliminated the so-called “voluntary recognition bar,” a policy that union officials exploited to block workers from requesting a secret-ballot election after a union is installed through the abuse-prone “card check” process. The NLRB instead adopted a Foundation-backed process in which workers could submit a petition to hold a secret-ballot vote after a union’s installation by “card check,” with the secret-ballot election determining whether the union actually had the majority support union officials claimed in their submission of “union cards.”

Additionally, the Election Protection Rule cracked down on schemes in the construction industry where employers and union bosses installed 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. As the federal court said, “the rule is that employees pick the union; the union does not pick the employees.”

With the elimination of the Election Protection Rule, workers will not only have a much harder path toward getting a vote on whether a union should be ousted, but even if the vote is held, they will likely be kept in the dark about the results of that vote for months or even years if litigation follows union “blocking charges.” Also, workers forced into union ranks via “card check” would be barred for potentially years from ever holding a secret-ballot vote to determine the level of union support, as the bar following “card check” is often combined with other non-statutory bars like the three-year “contract bar.”

Workers nationwide relied on the Election Protection Rule as they exercised their right to vote out unpopular unions, and the NLRB’s own statistics show a sharp increase in worker decertification efforts. In 2021, the year following the Election Protection Rule’s adoption, Foundation attorneys aided over 7,000 workers at 54 workplaces in exercising their right to hold votes to boot unwanted union officials.

District Court ordered Southwest to announce that airline may not discriminate on basis of religion; airline instead effectively denied wrongdoing despite jury verdict

Dallas, TX (January 9, 2023) – With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, Southwest Airlines flight attendant Charlene Carter is seeking sanctions against Southwest for flouting the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas’ decision in her case. Carter sued both Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 556 and Southwest in 2017 for firing her over opposing the union’s political stances – a violation of both the Railway Labor Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The District Court in December 2022 ordered Southwest and the union to give Carter the maximum amount of compensatory and punitive damages permitted under federal law, plus back-pay, and other forms of relief that a jury originally awarded following Carter’s victory in a July trial. The Court also mandated that Southwest reinstate Carter, ruling that only requiring Southwest and the TWU union to pay out future monetary damages to Carter “would complete Southwest’s unlawful scheme” of firing dissenting employees.

Carter’s latest motion calls on the District Court to impose sanctions against Southwest for releasing a misleading “Recent Court Decision” notice to its roughly 17,000 flight attendants, arguing that the notice papers over the airline’s significant rights violations found by the Court. The notice states that Southwest “does not discriminate” against its employees based on religious belief, despite the Court’s finding that Southwest did discriminate against Carter on religious grounds. The motion also says Southwest’s notice fails to make a court-ordered announcement that the airline is forbidden from discriminating in the future.

Foundation attorneys also contend that an “Inflight Information On The Go” memo the airline issued chills flight attendants’ religious expression, beliefs, and practices. The memo implies that Southwest will be the final arbiter of what kind of religious speech is acceptable in the workplace, while characterizing Carter’s speech challenging the TWU union’s political positions as “inappropriate, harassing, and offensive,” and thus worthy of punishment.

The motion asks the District Court to find the airline in contempt so it can issue monetary sanctions against Southwest, and further order the airline to immediately issue corrective notices.

Flight Attendant Called Out Union Officials for Their Political Activities

As a Southwest employee, Carter joined TWU Local 556 in September 1996. A pro-life Christian, she resigned her membership in September 2013 after learning that her union dues were being used to promote causes that violate her conscience and have nothing to do with her work.

Carter resigned from union membership, but was still forced to pay fees to TWU Local 556 as a condition of her employment. State Right to Work laws do not protect her and her fellow flight attendants from forced union fees because airline and railway employees are covered by the federal Railway Labor Act (RLA). The RLA allows union officials to have a worker fired for refusing to pay union dues or fees. But it does protect the rights of nonmembers of the union who are forced to associate with a union, including the rights to criticize the union and its leadership, and advocate for changing the union’s current leadership.

In January 2017, Carter learned that Audrey Stone, the union president, and other TWU Local 556 officials used union money to attend the “Women’s March on Washington D.C.,” which was sponsored by political groups she opposed, including Planned Parenthood.

Carter, a vocal critic of Stone and the union, took to social media to challenge Stone’s leadership and to express support for a recall effort that would remove Stone from power. Carter also sent Stone a message affirming her commitment to both the recall effort and a National Right to Work law after the union had sent an email to employees telling them to oppose Right to Work.

After Carter sent Stone that email, Southwest managers notified Carter that they needed to have a mandatory meeting as soon as possible about “Facebook posts they had seen.” During this meeting, Southwest presented Carter screenshots of her pro-life posts and messages and questioned why she made them.

Carter explained her religious beliefs and opposition to the union’s political activities. Carter said that, by participating in the Women’s March, President Stone and TWU Local 556 members purported to represent all Southwest flight attendants. Southwest authorities told Carter that President Stone claimed to be harassed by Carter’s messages. A week after this meeting, Southwest fired Carter.

Flight Attendant Wins Jury Verdict and District Court Decision

In 2017, Carter filed her federal lawsuit with help from Foundation staff attorneys to challenge the firing as an abuse of her rights, alleging she lost her job because of her religious beliefs, standing up to TWU Local 556 officials, and criticizing the union’s political activities and how it spent employees’ dues and fees. In July 2022, she won a federal jury verdict awarding millions of dollars in damages for Southwest’s and TWU’s violations of her rights, and in December 2022 the District Court issued its judgment in her favor.

“First, Southwest Airlines violated Charlene Carter’s rights by firing her at the union’s behest. Now, the airline is doubling down by misleading other workers about its wrongdoing in defiance of a federal court order,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Foundation attorneys will continue to defend Ms. Carter’s rights, and will ensure that Southwest’s attempts to dodge the requirements of the decision in her favor will not go unopposed.”