Washington, DC (March 21, 2011) – The National Right to Work Foundation, a charitable organization that provides free legal assistance to employees nationwide, submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), asking for information about a series of Google Ads placed by the NLRB from 2008 to 2011.

According to an earlier NLRB statement, the Board received a free Google Ads trial in 2008 and has since discontinued the program. However, other reports indicate that NLRB Google Ads appeared as recently as February of this year.

Moreover, these ads only contained information about workers’ ability to organize or join unions. No record of ads about workers’ rights to refrain from union activities or remove a union from their workplace has been found.

In the wake of former SEIU lawyer Craig Becker’s recess appointment to the Board, numerous media outlets have questioned the NLRB’s ability to impartially administer labor law.

Unfortunately, the NLRB’s Google Ads campaign does nothing to dispel these fears. Foundation attorneys are concerned that the NLRB’s ad buys publicized information about workers’ rights to organize or join a union without providing equally important information about the rights of employees to refrain from union membership or eject unwanted unions from their workplaces.

The Foundation’s FOIA request seeks all documented business transactions between the Board and Google related to online ad buys. Foundation attorneys believe that this information is necessary to determine the extent of the NLRB’s pro-Big Labor bias and to inform the public of how the Board’s budget is being spent.

“We’ve raised persistent questions about the impartiality of the NLRB that have yet to be addressed, and what looks like a selective information campaign through Google Ads is another example of this trend,” said Patrick Semmens, Legal Information Director for the National Right to Work Foundation. “We call upon the NLRB to immediately release any and all information related to this ad campaign to address public concerns about its perceived pro-Big Labor bias.”

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.