WASHINGTON, D.C. (March 25, 2002) – In a stunning 11-0 reversal of its previous unanimous ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the new nationwide rule of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that union officials may force 7.8 million employees to pay for union organizing drives as a condition of employment.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation immediately announced it will appeal today’s ruling – authored by Judge Stephen Reinhardt (a former union attorney and former executive committee member of the Democratic National Committee) – to the U.S. Supreme Court. In recent years, the Ninth Circuit has been overturned by the High Court more frequently than any other federal appellate court.

“No worker should be forced to fund the recruitment of supporters to a private ideological cause,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “This ruling is an outrageous affront to employee freedom and previous rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court.”

In its original 3-0 ruling issued early last year, the Ninth Circuit overturned the NLRB for abusing its discretion when it parted with Supreme Court precedent establishing that employees cannot be compelled to pay for union recruitment activity. Unless overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, today’s en banc ruling will compel 7.8 million American employees who work in compulsory union shops under the National Labor Relations Act to pay union organizing expenses or lose their jobs. Organizing expenses often exceed 20-30% of a union’s budget.

Many labor law experts agree that the Ninth Circuit’s decision directly violates previous rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the Court’s 1988 ruling in Communications Workers v. Beck, a case brought by Foundation attorneys, employees may not be forced to pay for union political activities and other activities unrelated to collective bargaining, contract negotiation, or grievance adjustment. In the Foundation-won precedent Ellis v. Railway Clerks, the High Court determined that union organizing expenses were clearly unrelated to collective bargaining, and thus employees who are not members of a union could not be legally forced to financially support this activity.

In establishing the nationwide precedent, the Court of Appeals decided against grocery store employee Phillip Mulder and five other employees, who originally filed the case (with the help of Foundation attorneys) against the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) 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 more than 250 cases nationwide per year.