Richmond, Va. (February 25, 2002) — On Tuesday, February 26, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit hears arguments challenging a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that gives unions the right to force non-union employees across America to wear union badges on their uniforms as a condition of employment.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys brought the appeal for BellSouth Communications technicians Gary Lee and James Amburn of Charlotte, North Carolina, who were ordered to wear a Communications Workers of America (CWA) union logo patch in order to keep their jobs.

“No worker should be forced to be a walking billboard for a union he or she doesn’t support,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “This case shows the extreme bias of the NLRB in favor of union coercion and against employee free speech.”

In 1997, the NLRB’s General Counsel issued a complaint against the CWA and BellSouth for unfair labor practices. The complaint agreed with Foundation attorneys’ arguments that forcing non-members to wear the CWA union logo violates their right to refrain from union activity, and that the logo gave the false appearance that non-members belonged to or supported the union. (The employees exercised their right not to join the union under North Carolina’s highly popular Right to Work law.)

However, in a decision filled with tortured legal reasoning, late last year the NLRB in Washington, DC, ruled that BellSouth’s uniform policy requiring the patch was a “special circumstance,” which trumped the statutory right of workers to refrain from supporting the union.

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.