Oscar Cruz Sosa moves to intervene in union case charging employer with refusing to help them surveil and harass him

Washington, DC (April 8, 2021) – Delaware Mountaire Farms poultry worker Oscar Cruz Sosa, who is spearheading a worker effort to vote United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 27 union bosses out of the Mountaire Farms plant in Selbyville, DE, is now seeking to intervene in UFCW union officials’ case against Mountaire Farms management for refusing to hand over to them his private employee information.

Cruz Sosa filed a Motion to Intervene at Region 5 of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Baltimore today with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys. Foundation staff attorneys are also assisting Cruz Sosa and his coworkers in defending their right to oust UFCW officials from their workplace.

The new motion comes after Cruz Sosa himself filed federal charges last month against UFCW brass for illegally retaliating against him and attempting unlawful surveillance of his activities, by demanding from Mountaire Farms records of his activities in and around the plant.

Cruz Sosa’s charge incorporated information from a complaint NLRB Region 5 issued in the UFCW bosses’ case against the employer, which revealed that Mountaire Farms officials had rebuffed intrusive union requests for “[c]opies of the daily hours of work and the time and attendance records for employee Oscar Cruz Sosa between August 1, 2019 and March 15, 2020,” and “the daily admission log…for all access points to the Selbyville plant identifying by name” anyone who has accessed the plant since March 2020.

As Mr. Cruz Sosa’s filing points out, many “Board and federal court cases support [his] intervention to protect his rights to campaign for decertification without being spied upon.”

Meanwhile, Cruz Sosa and his coworkers are still waiting for the NLRB in Washington to rule in their decertification election case. In that case, the workers are defending their already-cast ballots from UFCW lawyers’ attempts to have those ballots destroyed. UFCW lawyers claim that a non-statutory NLRB policy called the “contract bar” should have blocked Cruz Sosa’s petition, even though it was signed by hundreds of his colleagues requesting the election. The non-statutory “contract bar” policy entrenches unions for up to three years after management and union officials broker a contract.

NLRB Region 5 ruled that the decertification vote should proceed because of an invalid forced dues clause in the contract, and UFCW lawyers quickly demanded review of that ruling by the full NLRB. The NLRB agreed to review the case, but also agreed with Foundation staff attorneys’ arguments that the entire “contract bar” policy should be re-evaluated, as it arbitrarily blocks workers’ right to remove unpopular union bosses for as long as three years.

Cruz Sosa and his coworkers are also fighting in another unfair labor practice case to get back dues collected under the illegal forced dues clause that blocked the contract bar and threw a wrench in UFCW bosses’ initial attempt to stop the vote. Just weeks ago, Cruz Sosa objected to a settlement proffered in that case by NLRB Region 5. According to his objections, that proposal “[sought] to ferret out for relief what is likely to be a minuscule handful of employees” even though all of his coworkers were harmed by the clause, which unlawfully compelled employees to pay dues immediately upon hiring or be fired. Federal law mandates a 30-day grace period on such demands. Cruz Sosa’s charge demands unit-wide dues refunds for all employees.

“UFCW union bosses’ campaign to thwart Mountaire Farms employees’ right to vote them out of their workplace is pernicious and far-reaching, and even includes the current attempt to twist the employer’s arm for personal information so they can unlawfully surveil an employee in retaliation for assisting his coworkers in exercising their rights,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Mr. Cruz Sosa’s attempt to intervene in this case should serve as a reminder of his strong motivation to fight back, and highlights the lengths to which union officials will go to maintain their one-size-fits-all ‘representation’ against the will of the very workers they claim to represent.”

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.