Hampstead, MD (June 29, 2005) – With assistance from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, two local factory workers filed federal unfair labor practice charges today against the so called “UNITEHERE” union for failing to inform roughly 140 employees of their rights to withhold payment of union dues for politics, and refrain from formal union membership.

Janice Walsh and Ted Fotiou, on behalf of all similarly situated employees at Joseph A. Bank’s Hampstead distribution facility, charge that “UNITEHERE” officials unlawfully told workers that they must become or remain formal union members in order to keep their jobs. Furthermore, Walsh and Fotiou charge that union officials have been unlawfully deducting forced union dues for politics from their paychecks and refusing to provide legally mandated financial disclosures of union expenditures.

“Union officials want these workers to simply shut up and pay up,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Rather than respect the rights of workers they claim to represent, union officials are bullying workers into bankrolling union politics.”

The actions of “UNITEHERE” union officials violate the rights of employees recognized under the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court decision, Communications Workers v. Beck. Under Beck and subsequent NLRB rulings, union officials must inform employees of their right to refrain from formal union membership and their right not to be forced to pay for costs unrelated to collective bargaining, such as politics.

Union officials have not simply refused to provide adequate financial audits to objecting non-members while claiming that nonmembers must pay 93% of full dues. The documents that union officials have turned over to Walsh and Fotiou actually prove that “UNITEHERE” officials have been using nonmember dues for legally non-chargeable activities, such as nationwide organizing and “public and international relations.”

The workers also accuse “UNITEHERE” officials of unlawfully requiring employees to annually renew their objections and falsely informing them that they must exhaust internal union appeals before instituting any court or administrative actions to protect their rights.

“These attempts by union officials to run roughshod over workers’ rights show the inevitable greed and corruption that flow from forced unionism,” said Gleason.

Fresno, Calif. (June 27, 2005) – National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys filed unfair labor practice charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against a local Fresno casino for stifling the free speech of workers opposing unionization.

James Terrazas’ charges, filed in recent days for similarly situated employees, come in the midst of an employee-initiated decertification campaign to strip the Unite-Here union of its monopoly bargaining privileges at Chukchansi Gold Resort and Casino (Chukchansi Gold). The charges point out that the employer established several work rules in violation of federal labor law. Additionally, casino management enforced some of these rules discriminatorily—targeting only those employees favoring decertification of the union.

“Chukchansi Gold is doing the bidding of the Unite-Here union hierarchy by stifling employee dissent,” said Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “Employees should be allowed to exercise their freedom of speech—whether or not the union brass like what they hear.”

Chukchansi Gold originally recognized the Unite-Here union as the monopoly bargaining agent of 700-800 employees in November of 2004, as the result of a controversial “card-check” system in which union organizers bypass the less-abusive secret ballot election process and instead browbeat and mislead workers into signing cards that are counted as “votes” for unionization.

This coercive “card-check” campaign arose from legally suspect gaming compacts Governor Schwarzenegger signed into law last August. The compacts included a requirement forcing the affected casinos to enter into so-called “neutrality agreements” with local union officials. Under these coercive “neutrality agreements” union organizers are given full access to company facilities and employees’ personal information (including home addresses) as they seek signatures on union authorization cards.

In a related action, Foundation attorneys have asked the Department of Interior not to approve the California gaming compacts because they unlawfully deny employers their right to ensure that employees get a secret ballot election when choosing whether to unionize.

The Regional Director of the NLRB will now investigate Terrazas’ charges, and determine whether to issue a formal complaint.

Washington, D.C. (June 21, 2005) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation today applauded the Department of Labor’s (DOL) announcement yesterday that it will step up enforcement of President Bush’s executive order regarding forced union dues, but warned that far more must be done before employee rights are truly protected.

Signed by President Bush on February 17, 2001, Executive Order 13201 affects a small segment of the 12 million American employees compelled to pay union dues as a condition of employment. The order requires companies with federal contracts to inform workers of their rights under the Foundation-won Supreme Court decision in Communications Workers v. Beck.

Foundation attorneys won the Beck ruling at the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988, establishing that objecting employees covered by the National Labor Relations Act may resign their formal union membership, and reclaim all forced union dues spent on activities other than collective bargaining, such as political expenditures.

In its announcement, DOL notified federal contractors that it will be spot-checking federal workplaces to assure that they are in compliance with the order.

«Though largely symbolic, President Bush’s executive order is a step toward curbing compulsory unionism abuse. Unless the National Labor Relations Board gets more serious about enforcing the law, union officials will continue to shake employees down for political contributions with virtual impunity,» said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation.

Implementation of the executive order’s modest protections was stalled by a spurious lawsuit filed by the United Auto Workers union crafted to deny workers access to information about their rights. Ultimately, with the help of Foundation attorneys, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the executive order.

Experts estimate that during the 2004 elections, union officials spent more than $800 million in workers’ dues on electioneering activities, nearly all of it paid for out of union dues collected from employees as a condition of employment. Gleason pointed out that even with full enforcement, the Beck precedent is far from a cure-all. Nevertheless, the Foundation’s free legal aid program has ensured that hundreds of thousands of workers are not paying for union political activities against their will.

“No one should be forced to join or pay dues to a union against their will,” stated Gleason. “While the DOL’s announcement is encouraging, the ultimate solution to truly guarantee workers’ rights is to abolish compulsory unionism, not to fashion new regulatory schemes and government bureaucracies to regulate its ill effects.”

Portland, Maine (June 16, 2005) — A group of twenty Maine state employees have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against the Maine State Employees Association (MSEA) union and several senior State of Maine officials to block the seizure of compulsory union dues from the paychecks of thousands of nonunion state employees.

Receiving free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the state workers charge that MSEA union officials are acting in concert with State of Maine officials to seize compulsory union dues from nonunion state employees’ paychecks without first providing them with a legally-mandated audit. The workers’ complaint charges State Controller Edward A. Karrass, among other top state officials, for signing an agreement with the union that threatens the First Amendment rights of thousands of public employees and forces them to subsidize union organizing expenses.

The employees filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maine Portland Division. The workers allege that MSEA union officials will intentionally seize the forced union dues without first providing the financial disclosure and procedures required by a long-standing U.S. Supreme Court ruling that protects public employees from demands to pay for union political activity and other activities they may oppose.

Like many similar agreements around the country, the Maine monopoly bargaining agreement includes an “indemnification clause” in which the union promises to pay all legal costs state officials may incur in defending any suit that results from illegal seizures of compulsory dues. These agreements remove any incentive for the employer to ensure the union is not mistreating workers. Most courts have struck such agreements down as void as against public policy.

“MSEA union officials simply want nonunion state employees to shut up and pay up,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Union operatives should not be allowed essentially to bribe city officials to do their dirty work by promising to reimburse all legal costs that arise out of violating state employees’ First Amendment rights.»

The state employees are asking the court to enjoin MSEA officials from seizing forced dues from any nonunion employee represented by the MSEA union until it provides a satisfactory independent audit of union expenditures.

The workers also seek class-action status for their case, and restitution to all state employees represented by MSEA union of all past forced dues.

Under the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court decision Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, before collecting any forced dues, union officials must first provide an audited disclosure of the union’s expenses. Such audits are intended to ensure that forced union dues seized from nonunion public employees do not fund union activities unrelated to collective bargaining, such as politics.

Washington, D.C. (June 1, 2005) — A three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit yesterday unanimously upheld the authority of the Department of Labor to heighten federal union financial disclosure requirements. Agreeing with arguments made in an amicus curiae brief filed by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, the panel determined that strengthening the reporting laws was well within the authority of Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.

Secretary Chao issued the final regulations on October 9, 2003, in response to a national epidemic of union corruption. This revision in the long-standing union disclosure requirements was the first such reform in over four decades.

In June 2004, AFL-CIO lawyers filed an appeal after District Court Judge Gladys Kessler upheld the new union financial disclosure requirements. Judge Kessler, who has ruled for Big Labor officials in other cases, called AFL-CIO lawyers’ arguments “unconvincing.”

In August 2004, Foundation attorneys filed their “friend of the court” brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals in opposition to the AFL-CIO’s appeal.

“This ruling affirms that not only did Secretary Chao have the authority to do what she did, but she should have gone much further,” said Foundation President Mark Mix. «Much more, such as an independent audit requirement or an itemization requirement for expenses beyond simply incidental expenses, needs to be done before rampant union corruption is deterred.”

The National Right to Work Foundation earlier criticized the curious last-minute raising of the threshold for itemization of expenditures in the final disclosure rules. In the last days before the rules were finalized, the itemization threshold was raised to $5,000 from an originally proposed level of $250, allowing the concealment of many union disbursements on the new forms.

The AFL-CIO hierarchy claimed the new regulations are “prohibitively expensive,” arguing that unions will be required to keep records in a new way. Contrary to these claims, to comply with several landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings, unions already must track expenditures in a fashion that the new forms will require.

For example, under the Foundation-won rulings in Communications Workers v. Beck and Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, union officials already must maintain accounting systems, record keeping, and infrastructure to provide forced-dues-paying nonmembers with information about how resources are spent on various union functions. With these reporting mechanisms already in place, Foundation attorneys have asserted that most unions should be able to satisfy the new reporting requirements with little additional financial burden.

Cincinnati, OH (May 19, 2005) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued a formal complaint to prosecute a local union for unlawfully coercing local caregivers into paying union dues even though they had voted to ban forced union dues from their workplace.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys last month filed unfair labor practice charges on behalf of ResCare, Inc. (Camelot Lake) employee Larry Richardson and all similarly situated coworkers employed at the company, which provides healthcare to the mentally disabled. The charges pointed out that union officials unlawfully refused to allow caregivers to revoke their “dues check-off cards.” So-called “dues check-off cards” allow the automatic deduction of forced union dues from workers’ paychecks.

Camelot Lake is a Fairfield, Ohio-based intermediate healthcare facility providing services to the mentally disabled.

“UFCW union officials want employees to simply shut up and pay up,” said Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “Union bosses just want the money.”

The health care workers at Camelot Lake voted to deauthorize the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), Local 1099 in an election held by the NLRB in March 2005. A successful deauthorization election simply removes the forced union dues clause from a contract and ensures that no one can be legally forced to pay any dues or fees to the union in order to get or keep their job.

A few weeks after the election, UFCW officials misinformed the employees at Camelot Lake that they could not revoke their “dues-check off cards” until the window period stated on the signed card. This window period is unique to each employee and is based on the date they signed their individual card.

In the charges filed for Richardson, Foundation attorneys argue that the actions of UFCW officials clearly violate past rulings of the NLRB, that workers can revoke their dues check-off cards at any time after deauthorization, even if the revocation occurs outside a stated window period.

Unless union officials cease and desist in their unlawful actions they will face a trial before an administrative law judge in Cincinnati next month.

Fairfield, Calif. (May 17, 2005) — A local employee of Anheuser Busch has filed a fifth round of federal charges against a recalcitrant Teamsters union local for once again failing to properly calculate and disclose how workers’ forced union dues are spent.

Catherine Anderson, a part-time employee at Anheuser Busch’s Fairfield facility, filed the unfair labor practice charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys.

For nearly two years, Teamsters Union Local 896 officials refused to provide Ms. Anderson with adequate audited financial disclosures about its spending, and the spending of its affiliates, as required by law and as promised in an earlier settlement with the federal government.

As a result of federal charges filed by Anderson and a co-worker in July 2003, September 2004, October 2004, and February 2005, Teamsters union officials settled the cases by agreeing to properly inform workers of their right to refrain from financially supporting the union’s political and ideological causes as required by law.

“This Teamsters union hierarchy wants workers simply to shut up and pay up,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “These union officials are scofflaws and repeat offenders. This arrogance, greed, and corruption is encouraged by the existence of the many union special privileges established by federal law.”

This April, Ms. Anderson received the most recent attempt by the union hierarchy to skirt around its legal obligations—audit reports that claim 96.06% of union dues money was spent on “collective bargaining” costs. Not only is some of this information hopelessly out of date, but Teamsters officials also continue to claim that 100% of union staff salary and overhead costs are chargeable to nonmembers, even though the disclosure shows that resources were spent on non-chargeable activities. Anderson’s complaint challenges these claims.

The actions of Teamsters union officials violated worker protections recognized in the U.S. Supreme Court ruling Communications Workers v. Beck, a case argued and won by Foundation attorneys. Under the Beck ruling, workers may not be compelled to pay dues beyond the union’s proven collective bargaining costs, and they are entitled to an independent audit of union expenditures before any forced dues or fees are seized. Union officials also violated Penrod v. NLRB, which requires local union officials to provide financial disclosure for affiliated unions.

Milwaukee, Wis. (May 5, 2005) — The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s formal arguments in opposition to a Milwaukee County ordinance that requires certain private employers that contract with the county to assist union officials in pressuring employees into union ranks have been accepted by an Appellate Court.

The amicus curiae brief filed by Foundation attorneys in support of MMAC’s appeal of a lower court ruling, was accepted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) v. Milwaukee County.

In their brief, Foundation attorneys argue that the ordinance, County “Chapter 31,” is pre-empted by federal labor law intended to protect third-party employers from pressure to unionize by other entities in concert with union officials. Foundation attorneys point out that such requirements in contracts by private businesses are clearly outlawed by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and that government entities should be held to the same standard.

Under the ordinance, non-union private employers wishing to receive contracts from the County must sign a so-called “neutrality agreement” requiring them to assist union organizers by granting them sweeping access to their facilities, providing them with employees’ private personal information, and not telling workers the full story with regard to unionization.

“Local officials are forbidden from using the heavy hand of government to trample upon employers’ and workers’ freedoms which are supposedly protected by federal law,” said Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “Since union officials seem to be having increasing difficulties persuading employees to join unions voluntarily, they have resorted to these tactics in order to maintain the flow of forced union dues into their coffers.”

On September 28, 2000, the County of Milwaukee’s Board of Supervisors passed “Chapter 31” over the objections of its own Corporate Counsel, who views the law as an impermissible regulation of private labor relations. One of the law’s sponsors branded the law a “…fight to change the NLRA.”

Milwaukee, Wis. (April 26, 2005) — In a legal controversy of national intrigue, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed arguments in opposition to a Milwaukee County ordinance that requires certain private employers that contract with the county to assist union officials in pressuring employees into union ranks.

Foundation attorneys filed the amicus curiae brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) v. Milwaukee County, in support of MMAC’s appeal of a lower court ruling.

In their brief, Foundation attorneys argue that the ordinance, County “Chapter 31,” is pre-empted by federal labor law intended to protect third-party employers from pressure to unionize by other entities in concert with union officials. Foundation attorneys point out that such requirements in contracts by private businesses are clearly outlawed by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and that government entities should be held to the same standard.

Under the ordinance, non-union private employers wishing to receive contracts from the County must sign a so-called “neutrality agreement” requiring them to assist union organizers by granting them sweeping access to their facilities, providing them with employees’ private personal information, and not telling workers the full story with regard to unionization.

“Local officials are forbidden from using the heavy hand of government to trample upon employers’ and workers’ freedoms which are supposedly protected by federal law,” said Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “Since union officials seem to be having increasing difficulties persuading employees to join unions voluntarily, they have resorted to these tactics in order to maintain the flow of forced union dues into their coffers.”

On September 28, 2000, the County of Milwaukee’s Board of Supervisors passed “Chapter 31” over the objections of its own Corporate Counsel, who views the law as an impermissible regulation of private labor relations. One of the law’s sponsors branded the law a “…fight to change the NLRA.”

Mount Clemens, MI (April 22, 2005) – In order to avoid federal prosecution by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a local union was forced to back down from its unlawful threats to fine a group of nonunion nurses up to $4,000 each for refusing to abandon their patients during a recent strike.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys persuaded NLRB prosecutors to issue a formal complaint in January 2005, after helping four Mount Clemens General Hospital nurses who had been targeted for union retaliation file unfair labor practice charges last November.

In August of 2004, Deborah Mounger, Cherie Jones, Kimberly Grifka, and Jennifer Pacyga followed proper procedure by sending letters to Local 40 of the Office and Professional Employees International Union (OPEIU) formally revoking their union memberships. By resigning from formal union membership, employees cannot be subjected to union rules and internal union discipline.

After having officially resigned from formal membership in OPEIU Local 40, the four women continued going to their jobs during a union-ordered strike. In October, each woman received a letter stating union officials were filing internal charges against them. They were each threatened with fines of $500 per charge, for totals of up to $4,000 per person simply for loyally serving their patients.

In an attempt to cut their losses and settle the complaint filed by the NLRB, OPEIU Local 40 officials have given up their attempt to collect these fines. The four women have been notified that all possibility of a monetary fine for continuing to work during the strike has been rescinded, and union officials must post a notice at the hospital informing other employees of the settlement.

“The vicious lack of compassion displayed by union officials for the sick and feeble is stunning,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “It’s outrageous to retaliate against health care professionals simply because they refused to abandon their patients.”

The action of the union hierarchy violated NLRB v. Textile Workers, a Supreme Court decision that it is an unfair labor practice for a union to fine employees who had been union members in good standing but who resigned during a lawful strike and then returned to work. According to another Supreme Court decision, Patternmakers v. NLRB, workers may resign from union membership at any time, including during a strike.

“This union hierarchy’s disdain for the nurses’ freedom and economic security – to say nothing of their lack of concern for public health – shows they do not have employees’ best interests at heart.”