Sonoma County grape pickers aren’t the only workers facing prolonged union occupation – an employee decertification election aimed at ejecting International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150 from a Northwest Indiana plant has also been repeatedly stalled by frivolous union blocking charges:

Dozens of workers at the Edw. C. Levy Co., a slag processing subcontractor at Mittal Steel’s Burns Harbor plant, are involved in a lengthy and nasty dispute with the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150.

The workers claim Local 150 is purposely delaying their right to an election that could, presumably, rule out the union as their representative. The workers, who voted out Local 150 in 2007, claim that its repeated filing of unfair labor practice complaints is strictly to delay a new election, again presumably to vote in another union.

"All we want is a vote," said Jim Bezler, a Levy Co. mechanic for three years and one of the few workers who would allow me to print his name.

Like the Sonoma grape pickers, workers in Indiana are being punished for an alleged company malfeasance despite the employees’ repeated grassroots campaigns to kick out the unwanted union: 

The Levy Co. workers I spoke with disagree, claiming Local 150 is taking full advantage of the NLRB’s policy by filing charge after charge against the Levy Co.

"They keep pushing back any hope for us to have an election," said Alvin Johnson III, a mechanic from Hebron. "And now they just filed six more charges which could drag this out even longer, possibly to September."

The union bosses, of course, are only interested in retaining their forced dues and monopoly bargaining privileges. Moreover, evidence suggests union operatives have engaged in vandalsm, including actions which could seriously harm independent-minded workers:

Some of the workers also claimed that Local 150 supporters have sabotaged company equipment, such as dumping materials in hydraulic tanks and removing bolts from transmissions.

"I’ve seen the damage first-hand," Bezler said.

Other workers told me their personal property has been vandalized, including slashed tires, allegedly by Local 150 supporters.

While we applaud these workers for stepping forward, many employees don’t have the time or legal expertise to deal to take on union lawyers and union thugs. If you or your coworkers need legal assistance, please contact the National Right to Work Foundation. We provide free aid to workers across the country who have been victimized by compulsory unionism. 

Last month, a California Agricultural Relations Board Administrative Law Judge threw out the result of a 2007 E&J Gallo’s Sonoma County vineyards employees election to oust the United Farm Workers (UFW) union as their monopoly bargaining agent.

The 2007 decertification election was the second time in less than five years the E&J Gallo’s workforce voted to remove the unwanted UFW union from their workplace.  The judge ruled that the company failed to provide an accurate list to the UFW union bosses in the lead up to the election.  Unfortunately, the clear will of the employees and a 30-vote margin was ignored due to the scorned union bosses’ exploitation of an apparent clerical error on the part of the company.

However, the case isn’t over yet.  National Right to Work Foundation attorneys are helping lead petitioner Roberto Parra appeal the judge’s erroneous decision.  Of course, the Foundation will keep you informed on any developments in this case and others on our website and on our Freedom@Work blog.

In this new special National Right to Work Committee video report, Dana Corporation employees in Albion, Indiana, share their stories of harassment and intimidation by UAW union operatives during a militant card check organizing drive. The workers discuss how union organizers specifically targeted and ramped up their coercive tactics against female employees.

As one worker explains in the video, “People in the UAW will call you their sister or their brother. I never treated any of my brothers and sisters that way.”

UAW union organizers were able to collect a majority of signatures after weeks of pressure on the employees. Thanks to a precedent won by attorneys with the National Right to Work Foundation, the employees eventually forced an election and defeated the UAW union hierarchy.

Workers will not have this secret ballot option if the union-label Congress repays its billion-dollar campaign debt to Big Labor by passing the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill.

For more on the Albion workers’ story, check out Fox News’ coverage here and here, and click here to read a detailed analysis on how the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill will eliminate the secret ballot.

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The National Right to Work Foundation provides free legal aid to employees so they can fight back against union coercion and abuse.

The Foundation must rely on the voluntary support of individual Americans who believe in our cause and wish to advance our strategic litigation program. To make a fully tax-deductible donation in whatever amount, please click here.

AT&T Employee Files Federal Charges Against Communications Union for Illegal Threats

CWA union bosses told worker they would “take him to court” for refusing to go on strike

St. Louis, Missouri (April 13, 2009) – A St. Louis-based AT&T worker has filed federal unfair labor practice charges against a national union for illegal threats in the run-up to an impending national strike.

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, David McBride of Granite City, Illinois filed charges alleging that Communication Workers of America (CWA) union officials threatened him with legal action if he refused to go on strike and failed to provide him with a federally-mandated audit of union expenditures.

CWA union officials appear to be on the verge of ordering 20,000 employees to abandon their jobs as part of a nationwide strike against AT&T Mobility. However, numerous employees across the United States have contacted the National Right to Work Foundation for legal advice after being falsely informed by CWA officials that they are obligated to participate in the union’s upcoming work stoppage or face severe penalties.

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Click here to read the whole thing. The St. Louis Business Journal’s coverage of the charges is available online here. 

To regular readers of Freedom@Work, it’s certainly no secret that Big Labor’s union bosses, in the face of greater difficulty in winning workers over voluntarily, are always working to come up with new schemes to force workers into full-dues-paying union membership.

Of course, one major way union bosses get around this inconvenient truth is to use workers’ forced dues for politics, essentially buying political power to steer our already intrusive Federal government toward coercive policy to force more workers into union ranks.

On Tuesday, Big Labor’s upper echelon announced the formation of a committee dedicated to an alliance of our nation’s 12 largest unions.   The unification committee is to be led by Big Labor front group "American Rights at Work" President David Bonior.  Their goal?  You guessed it:  wielding the power of the Federal government to coerce more workers into forced unionism.

Union bosses are prone to freely and constantly shift their associations with each other.  But every day they hypocritically infringe on workers’ own freedom of association.

In our latest Right to Work video report, Foundation President Mark Mix discusses how the Foundation is pressing the Obama Administration to disclose its entanglements with Big Labor’s top political operatives using the Freedom of Information Act. Click on the video below to watch the whole thing:

Download the National Right to Work Foundation’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request here.

And visit the Right to Work YouTube channel to watch all our videos.

Recently, former West Wing actors Martin Sheen and Bradley Whitford lobbied in favor of the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (better known as the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill) at a press conference with so-called American Rights at Work, the same militant lobbying group which Labor Secretary Hilda Solis played a formal role while a member of Congress.

CNS News asked the actors why they support a bill which would effectively eliminate the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives.  Whitford responded (emphasis mine),

The notion that the labor movement is out to abolish their own members’ rights to a secret ballot just doesn’t pass the laugh test. And people who are propagating the rumor that it does, their sudden compassion for worker’s rights is just not believable.

There are so many problems with that one, incredibly misinformed sentence.  As I explained last week, the card check bill makes the secret ballot a virtual dead letter.  But Whitford’s comment shows he is willing to believe whatever union bosses tell him.  Union bosses routinely work to undermine employee freedom — it’s nothing new, except to hardcore union partisans.

But Whitford also made another error.  In a sense, he’s right that the labor movement is not "out to abolish their own members’ rights to a secret ballot" — but only because the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill doesn’t have anything to do with unions’ "own members."  The bill would eliminate the secret ballot for prospective members as well as independent-minded workers who do not want the union’s "representation."  Union bosses want to destroy the secret ballot in unionization campaigns so that they can intimidate and trick employees into signing cards.

Fortunately, Sheen and Whitford just play politicians on TV.

In the debate over the grossly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (more accurately called the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill), union bosses have gone out of their way to convince the media that the bill does not eliminate the secret ballot in workplace unionization drives.

But legal experts here at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation have examined the bill and the state of the current law and come to the following conclusion:

Under the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill, the provisions of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) that refer to the secret ballot election would be rendered a dead letter, even though they are not technically stricken from federal law.

Big Labor spin artists can claim all they want that the workers can still "choose" to have a secret ballot election, but there simply is no way by which workers can force union bosses to file for a secret ballot election — and it is union bosses, not workers, who are in possession of the cards.  Reporters who repeat this union boss talking point owe their readers a correction.

The simple fact is that professional union organizers hold tremendous power in a unionization drive. If this forced unionism power grab becomes law, workers will only be privy to the information union bosses disseminate.

The text of the bill clearly states that once union bosses collect a simple majority of signed cards, "the [National Labor Relations] Board shall not direct an election but shall certify the individual or labor organization as the representative" or monopoly bargaining agent of all employees in the unit.

As former NLRB member John Raudabaugh told U.S. Senators last year,

Were the union to come up short of 50+ percent signed cards, would it really proceed to file a petition for an election? No, the secret ballot would not remain an option under the EFCA proposal.

If union bosses can’t get a majority through card check — a process during which many workers sign cards not due to actual support for the union but due to lies and intimidation by union organizers — they obviously won’t be able to win through the more fair and private secret ballot process.  As James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation and Paul Kersey of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy note,

An election would occur only when union organizers submit cards signed by a minority of workers; but union organizers do not call for an election without signed cards from a majority of workers. They know that unions usually lose these elections. The AFL-CIO’s internal studies show that unions win only 8 percent of elections that are called after less than 40 percent of workers have signed cards.

Less obvious, however, is that union bosses don’t think they can win secret ballot elections even if they collect a simple majority of cards.  Sherk and Kersey explain (emphasis mine):

Consequently union guidelines call for organizers to collect cards from 60 to 70 percent of workers in a company before going to the polls. Unions openly state that they do not go to an election without a supermajority of cards:

1. International Brotherhood of Teamsters: "The general policy of the Airline Division is to file for a representation election only after receiving a 65 percent card return from the eligible voters in a group."

2. New England Nurses Association: "Have 70-75 percent of members sign cards; if unable to reach this goal, review plan."

3. Service Employees International Union (SEIU): "[T]he rule of thumb in the SEIU is that it’s unwise to file for an election when fewer than 70 percent of the workforce has signed interest cards."

The secret ballot is much better than the alternative in workplace unionization drives because of what monopoly unionization actually means in practice under the law. Once a union is in place, it is virtually impossible to remove it. More importantly, independent-minded workers who would prefer to represent themselves, or even workers who would prefer a different union’s representation, are forced to accept the certified union as their monopoly bargaining agent. And unless those workers live in one of 22 states with Right to Work protections, they will be forced to pay dues to an unwanted union.

In other words, an individual worker’s desire to belong to a particular union — or indeed the collective desire of a simple majority of workers in a unit — is different from an individual’s desire to belong to any other private organization. The decision forces one’s coworkers — current and future — to also accept the "representation" of this particular union. A secret ballot can’t overcome this fundamental violation of individual rights, but at the very least, the secret ballot provides workers with a degree of protection against intimidation. And that protection will be lost under EFCA.