Los Angeles, California (October 7, 2005) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has agreed to prosecute Teamsters Union Local 952 for violating the rights of, and illegally imposing fines as high as $13,000 on, over 70 grocery workers who refused to abandon their jobs during a Teamsters union “sympathy strike.” The contentious union strike ordered by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and Teamsters union officials shut down grocery stores across California in 2003.

In early 2004, three workers assisted by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys filed NLRB unfair labor practice charges against the union. Those charges were the basis for over 70 similar complaints from employees of Albertson’s and Ralphs Grocery locations in Irvine, Brea and La Habra, California. The NLRB combined all the complaints into one case and scheduled a January 2006 hearing on the charges.

The 132-page consolidated complaint describes how Teamsters union officials failed to properly inform the employees of their rights to refrain from formal union membership, making each employee’s union membership involuntarily and coerced. This failure to inform workers of their rights means that the over $120,000 in retaliatory fines union officials levied against the workers were unlawful.

Teamsters union officials initiated internal union “discipline” and fined over 70 workers anywhere from $200 to $13,000 dollars because the workers continued to do their jobs after Teamsters union officials ordered a sympathy strike on behalf of the UFCW union. The amounts of other fines were not disclosed.

The original charges filed by the employees also alleged that the “sympathy strike” Teamsters officials ordered was unlawful because it was in violation of the union’s own “no-strike” contract. Ultimately, the NLRB complaint only deals with the fact that by misinforming workers that formal union membership was a condition of employment, the punitive fines imposed by the union hierarchy were illegitimate because the workers were not voluntarily union members.

“Teamsters union officials engaged in an ugly and unlawful campaign of retaliation that trampled the rights of rank-and-file workers who refused to walk off the job and continued working to support their families,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the Foundation.

Under the Foundation-won Supreme Court decision in Communications Workers v. Beck and subsequent NLRB rulings, union officials cannot require formal union membership or the payment of union dues unrelated to collective bargaining as a condition of employment. Employees are also entitled to notice of their right to refrain from union membership, an independent audit of union expenditures and notice of their right to object to paying for non-bargaining activity.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.