**Corpus Christi, TX (September 5, 2007)** – For the second time in six months, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys have helped a security guard employed by Asset Protection and Security Services file unfair labor practice charges after union officials threatened workers with termination if they failed to pay union dues.

Under Texas’ Right to Work law, on the books since 1947, no employee can be required to pay dues or fees to a union as a condition of employment.

Ramona Trevino joined fellow employee Carlos Banuelos in filing charges with help from Foundation attorneys challenging the enforcement of the illegal forced dues clause in the employment contract between Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) union officials and their employer. Trevino also filed charges against Asset for enforcing the unlawful forced dues clause.

Banuelos’ earlier charges have already triggered a prosecution by the National Labor Relations Board. SPFPA union officials claim, with no basis whatsoever, that Banuelos, Trevino, and their coworkers work on an “exclusive federal enclave” that is not protected by the Right to Work law – and therefore can be forced to pay union fees as a condition of employment.

Under similar circumstances, Foundation attorneys successfully secured the reinstatement of Juan Vielma, a security guard for AKAL Security in El Paso, whom union officials had illegally suspended without pay for over a year for refusal to pay dues. Agreeing with Foundation attorneys, a federal Administrative Law Judge ruled that SPFPA union officials had no legal authority to compel Vielma to pay dues.

Trevino’s charge further emphasizes what is likely a widespread violation of Texas’ Right to Work law. In oral argument in Vielma’s case, an attorney for another security company with a contract with the SPFPA union even boasted that they require employees to pay dues “across the country in Right to Work states.” Evidence shows that union officials have established these forced dues requirements at multiple worksites under apparently fraudulent agreements.

Responding to demands of Texas citizens, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott took long-awaited legal action in July to enforce the Right to Work law in the Vielma and Banuelos cases. However, Texans await further action by the Attorney General to address the statewide pattern of Right to Work law violations.

“Union officials are trampling Texas’ long standing freedom to earn a living without paying money to union bosses for the privilege,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Union officials need to learn that the Lone Star state takes its Right to Work law very seriously.”

**Landover, MD (September 5, 2007)** – A group of five ex-employees of Giant Foods, Inc. have prompted the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to prosecute a Carpenter union affiliate for illegal coercion and fining them $2,500 each because they found new jobs at nonunion employers. Union officials also levied the fines because the workers refused to serve as union “salts” (plants that surreptitiously work to unionize a nonunion work place).

All five employees are former carpenters at Giant’s Landover warehouse where they performed various jobs for the Mid-Atlantic area grocery chain until that facility shut down. Attorneys from the National Right to Work Foundation helped the workers file federal charges at the NLRB in May against the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters (MARCC) union.

Union officials had demanded that the workers join the Carpenter union affiliate over the past 20 years and have lied to them about their right to refrain from formal union membership and to withhold all forced dues except those spent on union monopoly bargaining. Ultimately, the employees learned independently of these rights and sought to exercise them.

After the Giant warehouse shuttered in August 2005, all of the employees were unemployed for weeks before securing new jobs. Upon learning the workers had chosen a nonunion employer, union officials insisted they work to organize a union in the workplace. When they refused, the union brass imposed vicious internal union disciplinary fines against the workers. However, since the employees were no longer union members, they cannot be legally subjected to union discipline.

“Union officials tried to drive these workers towards the poor house simply for exercising their freedom to find new jobs and for honorably refusing to thrust a union upon their new employer,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Because Maryland does not have a Right to Work law making unions voluntary, union officials have little accountability to the workers.”

In the Foundation-won *Communications Workers of America v. Beck* decision in 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employees laboring under the National Labor Relations Act are entitled to resign from formal union membership but can still be forced to pay for activities related to union monopoly bargaining. However, they cannot be compelled to pay for other activities such as union political activities.
The NLRB has scheduled a hearing on November 7, 2007 at its Region 5 headquarters in Baltimore to prosecute the union.

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