**Columbus, OH (June 22, 2007)** — In a victory for employee rights and the freedom of conscience, a St. Marys-area teacher has successfully challenged the constitutionality of a statewide law denying public employees their right to accommodations of religious objections that they have to paying union dues unless the objecting employees belong to certain state-approved religions.

The decision issued by U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost struck down the offending law as a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and permanently enjoined the Ohio State Employment Relations Board (SERB) from further enforcing the law against employees.

With free legal help from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, Carol Katter, a 21-year veteran teacher in the St. Marys school district, filed the original complaint in January in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio’s Eastern Division against top officials of the SERB for religious discrimination.

In her complaint, Katter informed the Court that, even though she is a lifelong Catholic with religious objections to the union’s agenda, she was denied her right to a religious accommodation. Katter believes that failing to divert her forced dues from the Ohio Education Association (OEA) union to a charity contradicts her beliefs due to the union hierarchy’s position on hot button political issues such as abortion.

Adding insult to injury, an OEA union official told Katter that she must “change religions” to receive a religious accommodation before SERB. Katter’s complaint challenged the state statute as an unconstitutional establishment of religion and an infringement of her religious free exercise rights. Because Judge Frost struck down the statute on Establishment Clause grounds, he did not need to decide the issue of whether the SERB had violated Katter’s free exercise rights.

The ruling in Katter’s case follows another federal court decree issued last fall that re-affirmed that all public sector employees who have sincere religious objections to union affiliation cannot be forced to associate with and pay dues to a union they find objectionable. That decree was in another Foundation-assisted case challenging similar systematic religious discrimination throughout Ohio. However, for technical reasons, Ohio’s SERB itself was not formally bound by that decree even though it was well aware of its existence.

“Carol Katter’s struggle is part of a pattern of OEA union officials’ willingness to trample on the religious beliefs of the very employees they claim to represent just to stuff their pockets with more forced dues,” stated National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “While the ruling expands the rights available to employees of faith, abuses of forced unionism will inevitably continue until Ohio passes a Right to Work law making union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary.”

Katter also filed a related charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the OEA union, a state affiliate of the National Education Association, challenging an attempt by union officials to divert her forced dues to the local union rather than a charity. Currently the EEOC is still investigating the charge.

Download the Federal Court’s Ruling

**Springfield, VA (June 21, 2007)** – While defending several employees’ legal rights, attorneys from the National Right to Work Foundation have uncovered evidence that Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) union officials in Texas have apparently been engaging in a fraudulent scheme to force potentially thousands of employees to pay union dues in violation of the state’s Right to Work law.

Today, Foundation President Mark Mix wrote a letter to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott asking for enforcement of the state law that prohibits forced unionism.

The National Right to Work Foundation’s investigation indicates that union officials and certain contractors at federal government facilities within the State of Texas are willfully signing monopoly bargaining agreements illegally requiring employees to pay union dues that also appear to contain fraudulent statements.

In November 2006, Foundation attorneys first asked the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to prosecute criminal violations of the Texas Right to Work law. No formal action has yet been taken by the Attorney General’s office to prosecute the documented abuses of employees in multiple local Texas jurisdictions, particularly Corpus Christi and El Paso.

*This article originally appeared in Education Week*

**High Court Upholds Wash. State Law on Union Fees**

By Mark Walsh

*Washington*

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a defeat to teachers’ unions last week by upholding a Washington state law that required them to get the consent of nonmembers to spend their representation fees on political activities.

But the court’s unanimous ruling on June 14 will likely do little harm in the long run to the Washington Education Association or other public-employee unions, legal experts said.

The court declined suggestions from so-called right-to-work groups to reconsider some of its basic precedents in the area of “agency fees,” which unions collect from nonmembers because they benefit from collective bargaining even though they haven’t joined.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a Springfield, Va.-based organization that represented a group of nonunion teachers in the Washington state case, said workers opposed to having their agency fees go for unions’ political agendas “are little better off after today’s ruling.”

The Supreme Court “avoided the more critical and far-sweeping question—whether union officials should be able to automatically collect forced dues for politics from nonunion members in the first place,” the foundation said in a statement.

**Unions Not ‘Hurt’**

Robert H. Chanin, the general counsel of the National Education Association, the parent of the WEA, said, “The court could have hurt us, and chose not to, and reaffirmed what we have been doing for 25 years.” He was referring to the complex rules for collecting and accounting for the proper use of agency fees that the high court has addressed in several cases.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court in Davenport v. Washington Education Association Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader (Case No. 05-1589), said it does not violate the First Amendment speech or association rights of public-sector unions if states require them to seek an “affirmative authorization” before spending nonmembers’ money on election-related activities.

“We do not think that the voters of Washington impermissibly distorted the marketplace of ideas when they placed a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral limitation on the state’s general authorization allowing public-sector unions to acquire and spend the money of government employees,” Justice Scalia wrote.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr. declined to sign on to some portions of Justice Scalia’s opinion, but the underlying judgment was unanimous.

Washington state amended the statute last month. The revised law clarifies that unions don’t need authorization for using nonmembers’ agency fees for political and other non-bargaining-related purposes as long as a union has enough money in its general treasury to pay for such activities.

Some legal experts had expected that the change, enacted by a Democratic governor and legislature some 15 years after state voters had approved the “opt-in” requirement in a ballot initiative, would lead the Supreme Court to send the case back to the Washington state courts without a full opinion.

But both sides had told the court the change in law did not make the case moot. Justice Scalia agreed, saying in a footnote that money damages were still at stake.

State officials noted that more than $500,000 in fines levied by the state against the WEA for violations of the earlier statute were also still dependent on the outcome of the case.

“The union is still subject to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fines,” Rob McKenna, the attorney general of Washington state, said in an interview. He said that unions were within their rights to seek a change to the law through the political process, as they did, but that his office was intent on defending the 1992 ballot initiative.

“The union clearly lost on the question of whether the law it violated was constitutional,” added Mr. McKenna, a Republican. “There’s no way to put a spin on losing a case 9-0 in the U.S. Supreme Court.”

But Mr. Chanin of the NEA said “the outcome is just fine from our point of view.” He added that he thought there was a good chance that the WEA’s fines would be reduced after further lower-court proceedings.

The case originated with a state probe of the WEA in 1994 after the union instituted a dues increase, partly to offset an anticipated drop-off in political contributions because of the 1992 initiative.

In 1998, the state reached a $430,000 settlement in a case against the union. In a subsequent legal action by the state, the union faced a judgment of $590,000 for failing to abide by the opt-in measure. The WEA was also sued by a group of four teachers who were not members of the union and objected to the use of their agency fees for political purposes.

In March 2006, the Washington Supreme Court struck down the 1992 law. The court said the law imposed a burden on the teachers’ union of confirming that a nonmember does not object to having his agency fees spent on electoral purposes. That burden may have infringed on the union’s First Amendment right of “expressive association,” the court said.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision threw out the state high court’s ruling and sent the case back for further proceedings in the state courts.

**Modest Returns**

In its arguments on behalf of the nonunion teachers, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation had urged the justices to rule that a phrase from a 1961 high court labor precedent applies only to voluntary union members, not to nonmembers.

In *Machinists v. Street*, which upheld the idea that nonunion members should not get a free ride when they benefit from a union’s bargaining activities, the Supreme Court at that time further said that “dissent is not to be presumed—it must affirmatively be made known to the union by the dissenting employee.”

The right-to-work group said that phrase was not meant to apply to nonunion members, whose refusal to join the union has already served to register dissent to the union’s acting on their behalf.

Justice Scalia said the Washington high court mistakenly relied on the “dissent is not to be presumed” principle to conclude that a nonmember bears the burden of objecting before a union may be barred from spending his or her fees for impermissible purposes.

The high court’s precedents set a “constitutional floor” for procedures to evaluate unions’ collecting and spending of agency fees, Justice Scalia said, not a “ceiling” for measures that states may enact.

Justin Hakes, the legal-information director of the National Right to Work foundation, suggested that his group has soured on the effectiveness of “paycheck protection” measures for nonunion workers.

“We don’t feel the underlying [1992] law was effective,” he said. The group contends that unions were able to evade the Washington state provision by changing their accounting methods and taking other steps to fall outside the scope of the regulation, which focused on election-related matters.

Timothy M. Sandefur, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on the side of the nonunion workers, said the Supreme Court’s ruling makes it clear that the states may enact stronger measures to attempt to guarantee that nonunion workers’ fees are not mis-used.

But even measures such as Washington state’s 1992 law returned relatively little money to such workers, adding to the ineffectiveness of the requirement.

“It doesn’t pay much for you to refuse to join the union—maybe five bucks back” after a year-end accounting of whether expenses were related to bargaining or not, Mr. Sandefur said.

**El Paso, TX (June 18, 2007)** – After attorneys from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation helped Juan Vielma file federal charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an administrative law judge ordered the local security guard’s reinstatement and back pay for his unlawful firing for exercising his right to cutoff payment of all union dues, a right protected by Texas’ Right to Work law.

But Foundation attorneys anticipate another attempt by union officials to stall the security guard from reclaiming his job by appealing the decision to the NLRB in Washington, DC. Vielma has yet to receive any back pay for wages he would have earned over the past year if he was still employed.

The Texas Attorney General has so far failed to prosecute these violations of the state’s Right to Work law, a criminal statute.

Vielma, an AKAL Security employee, prompted the NLRB to issue a complaint and prosecute the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) union and his employer after he was unlawfully suspended without pay in retaliation for asserting his legal right not to pay union dues. AKAL and SPFPA union officials falsely claimed Vielma worked on federal property that is not protected by Texas’ Right to Work law, and thus could be forced to pay union dues or be fired.

After a hearing before the NLRB, Administrative Law Judge Gregory Z. Meyerson ruled that the SPFPA union hierarchy must submit a written request to AKAL requiring Vielma’s reinstatement, as well as reimburse all his lost earnings and benefits since his termination. Additionally, union officials must cease and desist from enforcing contract clauses that make payment of union dues a requirement of employment –– and union officials must post notices at the El Paso facility and SPFPA union headquarters informing employees of their right to resign from union membership and cut off all dues payment.

“Because the Texas Attorney General’s office is so far AWOL, Vielma is stuck with the slow moving processes of the NLRB,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Union officials are trying to destroy Mr. Vielma for standing up for his rights.”

The ruling described union lawyers’ last-ditch attempt to keep Vielma out of work as “a final effort in what appeared to be the inevitable” when they argued that the National Labor Relations “Act be ignored in any matters involving national security.” The ALJ referenced another Board decision to show that “this same Union argued that the NLRB has jurisdiction over airport screeners…whose work is obviously regulated by Homeland Security.”

Parallel to Vielma’s case, Foundation attorneys are helping Carlos Banuelos, a Corpus Christi security guard who filed federal charges against the SPFPA union. SPFPA union officials there are similarly attempting to enforce a forced dues contract clause in violation of Texas’ Right to Work law, which prohibits forced dues.

**Washington, DC (June 14, 2007)** – The U.S. Supreme Court today unanimously reversed a novel Washington State Supreme Court ruling that discovered a “constitutional right” for union officials to spend dissenting employees’ mandatory dues on political causes they oppose. The ruling merely reinstates an ineffective state campaign finance law that had opened the door for courts to misinterpret the First Amendment.

Today’s ruling comes in *Davenport v. Washington Education Association (WEA)*, a case brought by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys for Gary Davenport and more than 4,000 Washington teachers who are not union members, but who are nonetheless forced to pay union dues.

In striking down the Washington High Court ruling, however, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided the more critical and far sweeping question — whether union officials should be able to automatically collect forced dues for politics from nonunion members in the first place. That clarification, sought by Foundation attorneys would have freed roughly one million nonunion employees nationwide from each having hundreds of dollars in compulsory dues automatically deducted each year. Surprisingly, the U.S. Solicitor General actually supported the union’s position on this key question and tried to steer the Justices away from ruling in the employees’ favor.

Although pointing out that the court below had “read far too much into our admonition that ‘dissent is not to be presumed,’” the High Court did not rule against unions’ objection policies used nationwide. Under such policies, employees must do more than simply resign from union membership. In order to reclaim fees spent for politics, union officials often require employees to object every single year.

“America’s workers laboring under compulsory unionism are little better off after today’s ruling,” stated Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Rather than promoting more ineffective campaign finance regulations that risk further undermining the First Amendment, sincere reformers should instead turn their attention to attacking the root problem of compulsory unionism. No one should be forced to join or pay dues to a union in the first place.”

The Washington State Supreme Court last year struck down the remaining union dues provisions in I-134 (also known as Section 760), Washington’s troubled “paycheck protection” campaign finance statute, and in the process created a precedent that union lawyers could have used to attack Right to Work laws across America.

The Davenport case brought into focus how ineffective “paycheck protection” campaign finance laws are in protecting employees laboring under forced unionism. Although upheld by U.S Supreme Court, I-134 will only result in individual refunds of $10 per year, on average. After the law originally took effect, union officials learned how to collect 60 percent more dues for politics simply by changing their accounting procedures and tweaking the nature of their expenditures.

“Courts reacting to this misguided ‘paycheck protection’ campaign finance law nearly turned the First Amendment upside down,” said Gleason. “Reformers in other states would be wise not to turn down this blind alley.”

Download the decision

For interviews, contact Justin Hakes, Legal Information Director, at (703) 770-3317

For background on the Davenport decision, see our special *Davenport* Supreme Court Case Page.

Below is a selection of the continuously growing body of work confirming both the ineffectiveness and imprudence of so-called “paycheck protection” campaign finance laws which hope to regulate the expenditure of union funds on politics. Included are news articles, commentary articles, academic studies, and legal briefs from the last ten years demonstrating the many failings of promoting these campaign finance regulations.

**April 1998**
*Investors Business Daily*: What Does Paycheck Protection Protect? by Bob Adams

Key quote: “No matter what the outcome of Prop. 226, Big Labor will score a victory in the long run. If it is passed, California workers – cruelly bombarded with false hopes for months – can only conclude that union political spending is a thing of the past. This false sense of security buys organized labor years to extract even more forced dues for politics. And if CRI loses, organized labor achieves a public relations coup, energizing its activists and convincing lawmakers that they’ll be steamrolled if they cross Big Labor.”

**April 1998**
*Seattle Times*: Piercing the popular myth of ‘paycheck protection’ by Michelle Malkin

Key quote: “If the experience in Washington State holds, unions across the country will have an easy time – on members’ dime – inventing new and improved ways to divert compulsory dues to fund campaign activities. And state law-enforcement officials will support them.”

**May 1998**
Public Service Research Council Special Report: “Paycheck Protections” and the Washington Experience: What impact did it really have on union politics? by David Denholm

Key quote: “Did the initiative’s requirement that political payroll deductions be authorized annually in writing reduce union political activity or influence” Apparently not.”

**June 1998**
*National Review*: Protection Racket: The Right’s favorite campaign reform idea sounds too good to be true. It is. by Michael Lynch (Washington editor of Reason Magazine)

Key quote: “these laws can regulate only a small portion of private sector union dues spent on political and ideological activity, and unions have a strong financial incentive to avoid even these regulations. Both deficiencies are on display in Washington State, which is hailed by backers of paycheck protection.”

**July 1998**
*Orange County Register*: Labor formed a plan to skirt Prop 226 rules by Jeff Jacoby

Key quote: “In short, the new [paycheck protection] law wouldn’t have changed a thing. Real paycheck protection is about ending compulsory unionism in the first place.”

**March 2001**
*The Weekly Standard*: One Cheer for Paycheck Protection: It won’t stop unions from political mischief by Jeff Jacoby & Michelle Malkin

Key quote: “Experiences in Washington state and California show that laws intended to stop unions from spending forced dues on politics have been vastly oversold. They have done little to reduce massive political expenditures of mandatory dues on left-wing lobbying, Democratic party-building, and soft-money “issues” ads designed to hurt Republicans. Worst of all, they do nothing to curb the power of unions to extract dues from dissenting members in the first place.”

**June 2005**
*Sacramento Bee*: ‘Paycheck protection’ measures have little impact in 4 of 5 states by Bee Reporter Andy Furillo

Key quote: “In Washington, the unions have blunted paycheck protection in the courts and are spending money on politics like never before. In Michigan, union outlays still reach into the millions, while in Wyoming labor spending only got higher after paycheck protection. Idaho’s voluntary contribution law has since been enjoined in the federal courts. Robert P. Hunter, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich., a free-market public policy think tank, said paycheck protection has done nothing to curb union spending in the state.”

**August 2006**
Heritage Foundation Data Analysis Report: What Do Union Members Want” What Paycheck Protection Laws Show About How Well Unions Reflect Their Members’ Priorities by James Sherk, Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy at the Heritage Foundation (page 10)

Key quote: “Circumstantial reports certainly suggest that union leaders simply ramp up their unconstrained soft money spending when their members have the option of opting out of hard money donations… effectively sidestepping the law.”

**November 2006**
Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s “Friend of the Court” Brief in *Washington v. WEA* and *Davenport v. WEA* U.S. Supreme Court cases, authored by Eric Martin (pages 11-12)

Key quote: “Even if every non-member declined to opt-in to the use of dues for political purposes, the impact to the WEA would amount to less than ¼ of 1% of the WEA’s total expenditures…. Such a miniscule drop in funds available for political purposes hardly has the crippling effect complained of by the WEA…”

**January 2007**
*Pittsburgh Tribune-Review*: Laboring against free speech by George C. Leef, Execuive Director of the Pope Center for Higher Education

Key quote: “Union officials are adept at evading such “paycheck protection” regulations because the definition of politics covered is extremely narrow. After slight changes to their accounting and spending practices, union bosses can continue business as usual, and Washington’s experience proved no exception.”

**June 2007**
*The National Review*: Freedom to Choose the Union Label by Jim Bopp, general counsel to the James Madison Center for Free Speech

Key quote: “While the Court’s decision in Davenport v. WEA is welcome, other states should not rush to enact similar laws. They should instead address the underlying problem of state compulsion… A paycheck-protection act (PPA) actually endorses and supports this underlying compulsion and merely attempts to remove some of the objectionable effects of such compulsory arrangements.”

**June 2007**
*The Detroit News*: Don’t copy Washington state’s union dues law by Bradley A. Smith, former member of the Federal Election Commission and chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics

Key quote: “The problem of ineffectiveness is not the only reason why paycheck protection is a blind alley. By embracing the campaign finance regulatory approach, its promoters are trying to use the tools of the political left — that is, government regulations — to solve a problem caused by government. This path is fraught with danger and could continue to backfire, as it nearly did in Washington state. The real problem is that forcing employees to pay any dues — for politics or anything else — is fundamentally unjust.”

**Harrisburg, PA (June 6, 2007)** — A federal judge has enjoined a Teamsters union local, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and two Turnpike Commission officers from continuing to seize union dues from the paychecks of 20 Pennsylvania Turnpike employees who brought suit to vindicate their constitutional rights. The preliminary injunction also blocks enforcement of a longtime union policy that bars thousands of employees in Pennsylvania from resigning from formal union membership for up to three years.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is providing free legal aid to two groups of Turnpike employees from Harrisburg and Pittsburgh in their challenge to the unlawful collection of forced union dues. This injunction pertains to the Harrisburg lawsuit involving Teamsters union Local 77.

The employees filed the parallel lawsuits in March citing multiple violations of employees’ rights by Turnpike and Teamsters union Local 77 and Local 250 officials in confiscating forced dues from employees who, in the case of the Pittsburgh employees, who had resigned their formal union membership. In Pennsylvania, a compulsory unionism state, nonunion members can only be forced to pay for a union’s proven collective bargaining costs.

The Harrisburg lawsuit includes a potentially precedent-setting claim challenging the constitutionality of a clause in the collective bargaining agreement that prohibits employees from resigning their formal union membership except during a narrow 15-day window prior to the expiration of a three-year contract.

In granting the employees’ motion for a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher C. Conner noted that, under the policy, “the only way plaintiffs can resign from the union is to leave their employment” and employees are subject to union discipline and must pay full dues despite their “disagreement with the union’s ideology or politics.” The judge found that the policy “may have a direct and deleterious impact on plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendment,” and that union officials’ actions demonstrated a “real or immediate danger to their First Amendment rights.”

These so-called “maintenance of membership” clauses are common in the public sector in Pennsylvania and exist in several other states. Union officials use them to block employees from exercising their constitutional rights to refrain from formal union membership and cut off compulsory dues unrelated to monopoly bargaining.

“Union officials want to keep Pennsylvania’s public employees from exercising what limited rights they still possess to cut off payment of compulsory union dues,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “Until employees in the Keystone State are protected by a Right to Work law making union dues payment strictly voluntary, such abuses will inevitably continue.”

The union hierarchy is violating the minimal procedural protections required by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1988 *Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson* decision. In the Foundation-won Hudson case, the High Court ruled that before collecting any forced dues, union officials must provide an audited disclosure of the union’s expenses and give employees an opportunity to object to paying forced union dues spent for certain activities.

Download the Injunction

**Akron, OH (June 5, 2007)** – After several employees at the local Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (NYSE:GT) facility filed a wave of federal charges, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has agreed to prosecute the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) union for hitting nonunion workers with illegal retaliatory strike fines and waging an ugly campaign of threats, recriminations, and hate mail.

With help from attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, Goodyear employee Frank C. Steen III originally filed federal charges against the USWA union after officials levied fines of $620 each against several employees for refusing to walk off the job during a union-ordered strike. Union officials imposed the fines on each of the workers after ordering them to attend an internal “kangaroo” court (which the employees refused to attend) for continuing to do their jobs. Union officials also “accused” the employees of allegedly informing others of their legal right to refrain from formal union membership.

Between October 2006 and January 2007, USWA officials ordered employees to walk off the job at the Goodyear plant. However, in order to support their families, Steen and his coworkers resigned from formal union membership in November and exercised their right to return to work.

After USWA officials issued the unlawful fines, Steen filed federal charges against USWA union officials because they disregarded the employees’ November resignations and unlawfully continued to deduct full union dues from their paychecks.

After his resignation, Steen received approximately 10 pieces of hate mail from union officials. Similarly, on two different occasions, USWA union operatives shouted through bullhorns outside Steen’s residence, calling him a “low life” for refusing to abandon his job. In a separate incident, another union-strike supporter threatened one of Steen’s coworkers over the phone that he would be fined for “everything he made and then some” and would be fired once the strike was over.

“Union officials want Frank Steen and his coworkers to shut up and pay up,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “This case shows the contempt that union officials often have for employees who exercise independent judgment and who work to support their families during an unpopular strike.”

According to the NLRB Regional Director, the case will be heard before an Administrative Law Judge on August 21, 2007. The order for an official hearing comes after Goodyear saw a USWA union-ordered walkout of over 15,000 of its employees across its 16 plants in North America for several months.

“Unfortunately, as long as Ohio workers labor without the protections of a Right to Work law – which makes union affiliation and dues payment strictly voluntary – abuses of this nature will surely continue throughout the Buckeye State,” said Gleason.

Dowload the complaint

San Francisco, CA (June 1, 2007) — National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have filed a motion to intervene to stop a desperate, last-ditch effort by union lawyers to block the federal labor board from conducting a secret-ballot election in which 900 airport security screeners at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) may choose to end the union’s ability to seize compulsory union dues.

With 900 screeners forced to pay roughly $400 each per year, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officials stand to lose upwards of $360,000 annually in compulsory dues if the employees succeed, and Foundation attorneys will ask the court to throw out the SEIU lawsuit.

That lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 20 Director, as well as appointed Members of the NLRB in Washington, DC. The suit claims that these officials do not have the discretion to allow employees to exercise their statutory right to an election. The NLRB has final jurisdiction over such “deauthorization” elections, and a federal court has no legal authority to enjoin the election.

Led by Stephen Burke, a four-and-a-half year employee of Covenant Aviation Security at SFO, the screeners are upset that SEIU officials became their monopoly bargaining agent in the first place — without a secret-ballot election, but rather through a coercive “card check” campaign — and almost immediately ordered the security screeners to pay union dues or be fired from their jobs.

Under coercive “card check” unionization, rather than a vote in a government-supervised secret ballot election, union operatives may browbeat dissenting workers into signing cards later counted as “votes” favoring unionization. Since gaining monopoly bargaining power over the screeners, many have reported that the union hierarchy is unresponsive, and unwilling to do anything other than collect forced dues. Many screeners have reported that this dissatisfaction fostered the deauthorization effort.

Hundreds of SFO security screeners apparently object to the mandatory union dues requirement. Over 45 percent of Burke’s coworkers signed the deauthorization petition, far beyond the 30 percent necessary to trigger the NLRB supervised-election. If a majority of all employees in the bargaining unit vote in favor of deauthorization, union officials will be stripped of their special privilege to compel payment of dues.

“Without the ability to withhold union dues, SFO screeners have virtually no leverage to keep union officials from continuing to act in their own self-interest,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation, a charitable organization that is assisting the screeners in vindicating their rights. “This desperate lawsuit against the Members of the NLRB demonstrates how aggressively union officials guard their special legal privilege to shake down employees for union dues.”

SEIU officials had previously tried to block the employees from obtaining the deauthorization election by challenging signatures collected in opposition to the forced dues clause before it took effect. However, the NLRB in Washington, DC, recently rejected that challenge and ordered the election to proceed.

**Chicago, IL (May 30, 2007)** – After multiple attempts by United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Locals 881 and 1546 lawyers to block a decertification election, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 13 ruled that over 300 employees of Treasure Island Foods, Inc. at six local stores have a right to vote on whether to oust the unwanted union.

Treasure Island employees originally filed for a union decertification election in 2004, after UFCW officials ordered an unpopular boycott and fell out of favor with the vast majority of employees. Even though the employees’ petition was timely filed, UFCW Local 881 and 1546 officials thwarted it by filing a series of “blocking charges” at the NLRB against Treasure Island Foods for allegedly encouraging employee dissatisfaction with the union.

In 2005, after obtaining signatures from an overwhelming majority of employees at the grocery chain, Dan Schalin and his coworkers filed another decertification election petition at the NLRB. Threatened by the independent-minded employees’ petition, UFCW union officials continued to file multiple unfair labor practice charges against Treasure Island to block the election. UFCW union officials alleged that Treasure Island illegally sent letters to its employees encouraging them to file the petition, but an administrative law judge rejected that claim.

Finally, with help from attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, Schalin and his coworkers requested that the petition for decertification be reinstated. Late last week, the NLRB Regional Director ruled in favor of their request, stating that Treasure Islands’ written letters never tainted the employees’ showing of interest in the petition.

“UFCW officials have thrown up every stumbling block possible over three years to block Treasure Island employees from exercising their free choice,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The hostility of the union hierarchy to workers’ interests shows why Illinois needs a Right to Work law that would make union affiliation and dues payment strictly voluntary.”

A decertification election, an NLRB-supervised secret ballot election to oust a union, is generally an uphill battle for workers to obtain, particularly because union lawyers are adept at gumming up the works by filing baseless charges that often block an election for years. Under the National Labor Relations Act, a decertification election gives employees the opportunity to cast a vote to remove the union as the “exclusive bargaining representative” in a workplace, but one can only be sought during narrowly proscribed periods every few years. If the Treasure Island employees vote to revoke the unwanted UFCW union’s “certification,” employees at all six stores in the Chicago area will become nonunion and free to negotiate over their own wages and working conditions.

Download the Employee’s Request for Review
Download the NLRB’s Order Reinstating the Decertification Petition