The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, September/October 2024 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
U.S. House relies on Foundation for insight on ‘card check’ and forced-dues-for-politics
“The Law Has Failed Me”: This was MIT Ph.D. student Will Sussman’s response when asked by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) whether current federal labor law protects union dissenters. Sussman recommended nationwide Right to Work protections.
WASHINGTON, DC – Within the past few months, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys and recipients of free Foundation legal aid have appeared multiple times before the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce, revealing the anti-freedom tactics union bosses use to sweep workers under their power and prop up their radical political agenda.
In May, U.S. House members called Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger as an expert witness in a hearing named “Big Labor Lies: Exposing Union Tactics to undermine Free and Fair Elections.” The hearing was designed to probe how current federal labor policies are letting union bosses deprive American workers of even the basic protection of a secret ballot election when union organizers target their workplace for monopoly unionization.
In July, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Ph.D. student Will Sussman, who received free Foundation legal aid in filing federal anti-discrimination charges against union bosses on his campus, appeared before the U.S. House to recount his battle against MIT Graduate Student Union (GSUUE) officials. GSU union bosses demanded Sussman, who is Jewish, fund union activities despite his repeated and forceful objections to the union’s anti-Israel pursuits.
The July hearing, called “Confronting Union Antisemitism: Protecting Workers from Big Labor Abuses,” also featured testimony from veteran Foundation staff attorney Glenn Taubman, who is providing free legal representation to Sussman and other MIT graduate students challenging forced-dues demands from GSU.
“Whether it’s union officials seizing power in a workplace without giving employees a chance to vote, or using graduate students’ money to fuel radical protests and other unrest on college campuses, these outrageous activities all have one thing in common — union boss privileges heavily ingrained in federal labor law,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens. “No organization in the country has been more active than the Foundation in countering these coercive practices on behalf of rank-and-file workers.
“As the Biden Administration ramps up its attacks on worker freedom, we are honored and gratified that U.S. representatives look to Foundation attorneys and Foundation-backed workers for perspectives on how to defend worker freedom.”
Foundation Legal Director: ‘Card Check’ Permits Union Boss Tyranny
At its hearing in May, the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce listened to William Messenger testify regarding union bosses’ two favorite tactics for gaining power: “card check” drives and censorship of speech critical of the union.
Card check is a process that lets union bosses gain power in a workplace without giving employees a chance to vote in secret on whether they want a union. Union officials can gang up on workers and even harass them to obtain signatures on union authorization cards, which are later counted as “votes” for the union. This process opens workers to intimidation and threats, something not found with secret balloting.
Union Censorship Exposed by Foundation
As if that weren’t bad enough, Messenger testified how the Biden-Harris NLRB “operates the most repressive regime of government censorship in the nation” by censoring employees’ ability to hear basic truthful information from employers that union officials don’t want workers to hear.
“Just imagine if the ruling party of a third-world nation decided to use such a process instead of having secret-ballot elections for political office,” Messenger testified. “Instead of having elections, the ruling party would go around to people’s homes and workplaces and collect ‘votes’ for the party. Instead of free speech, only the ruling party would be allowed to campaign.
“I submit this process is nothing like a democratic process,” Messenger declared. “Yet the Biden NLRB is . . . mandating card check with its Cemex decision, under which it’s now an unfair labor practice . . . for an employer to refuse to recognize a union based on cards.”
At the July hearing, Will Sussman detailed the harrowing story of how GSU union bosses continued demanding dues payments from him and other Jewish MIT graduate students even after they had informed the union of their religious objections and requested religious accommodations due to their beliefs. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires union officials to accommodate those that have religious objections to subsidizing union activities; in practice this usually entails letting the employee pay an amount equivalent to dues to a charity.
MIT Grad Student Recounts Union Discrimination, Calls for Right to Work
But Sussman explained that the union blew off this legal duty, and legal action by the Foundation’s attorneys was needed: “The union denied my request, telling me in a letter that ‘no principles, teachings or tenets of Judaism prohibit membership in or the payment of dues or fees to a labor union’ . . . In other words, UE thinks it understands my faith better than I do.
“This Congress should pass the National Right to Work Act, so that unions have to earn their dues and think twice before discriminating against minorities,” Sussman added.
