Washington, D.C. (August 11, 2004) – Attorneys with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation today filed as amicus curiae in a U.S. Court of Appeals in opposition to the AFL-CIO’s appeal to overturn new union financial disclosure requirements intended to provide employees with meaningful information as to how their compulsory union dues are spent.

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

Secretary of Labor Elaine 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 their brief, Foundation attorneys argue that Secretary Chao responded to a clear need for union accountability and transparency, and she acted within her authority by issuing the new requirements to disclose more financial information to rank-and-file union members.

“The AFL-CIO hierarchy is going all out to keep rank-and-file workers in the dark about union finances,” said Foundation President Mark Mix. “Not only did Secretary Chao have the authority to do what she did, but she should have gone much further, such as requiring independent audits and more functional reporting of union expenditures.”

The National Right to Work Foundation has also criticized the curious 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 union hierarchy claims the new regulations are “prohibitively expensive,” arguing that unions will be required to keep records in a new way. However, contrary to these claims, to comply with several landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings, unions are already required to track expenditures in a fashion that the new forms will require.

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.

To read the Foundation’s brief, click here.

Asheboro, N.C. (August 4, 2004) – Employees at the Goodyear Tires (Goodyear) facility in Asheboro have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for an election that could strip officials of the steelworkers union hierarchy of their newly granted monopoly representation power over roughly 340 of the company’s employees.

The petition comes on the heels of a controversial “card check” unionization campaign which resulted in NLRB unfair labor practice charges filed by Goodyear employees complaining that revocations of coercively obtained signatures on cards were not honored, and that support for the union had not reached a majority. The employees filed those charges against both Goodyear and the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) union for their joint role in imposing an unwanted union upon them.

With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, Scott Shaw filed the decertification petition signed by over 30 percent of his coworkers after Goodyear began bargaining with the USWA union despite its lack of majority support.

Under the National Labor Relations Act, if 30% or more of the employees in a bargaining unit sign a decertification petition, the NLRB should conduct a secret ballot election to determine if a majority of the employees wish to decertify the union and stop it from any further “exclusive representation.”

“Goodyear employees should be allowed, once and for all, to have a voice in whether they are unionized,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “It’s an outrage that Goodyear struck a backroom deal with USWA officials to deny these workers their rights.”

Bowing to pressure brought by USWA union operatives, Goodyear signed a so-called “neutrality agreement” that prohibits a traditional and less-abusive secret ballot election process in favor of a coercive “card check” campaign. Under the agreement, union organizers were given full access to employees’ personal information and company facilities to browbeat workers into signing union recognition cards that were counted as “votes” for unionization.

If a decertification election is allowed and is successful, the USWA union would lose its special privilege to act as the “exclusive bargaining representative” of the employees. All Goodyear employees then would be free to negotiate their own terms and conditions of employment and could be rewarded on their individual merit.

Meanwhile, the workers’ unfair labor practice charges are under investigation by the NLRB office in Winston-Salem. Numerous workers had submitted letters to Goodyear, and the arbitrator who counted the cards, revoking their previously signed cards. However, USWA officials, Goodyear, and the arbitrator ignored the revocations. The remedy to the unfair labor practices the employees seek is a recount of the cards, taking into consideration the many letters from workers revoking previously signed cards.

Trenton, NJ (August 4, 2004) — Defending the rights of non-union local government employees statewide, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation today filed arguments at the New Jersey Supreme Court on behalf of Hunterdon County workers attacking the constitutionality of a new state law – backed by Governor Jim McGreevey – forcing workers to pay dues to an unwanted union.

A national legal aid organization, the Foundation filed its amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief in Hunterdon County v. CWA, Local 1034 for Henry Wieczorek and other non-union Hunterdon County employees. The brief challenges a decision by the Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC), taken pursuant to the new state law, ordering the county to seize compulsory union dues from all employees in the Communication Workers of America (CWA) Local 1034 bargaining unit. In June, the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, ruled in favor of the PERC’s order to seize compulsory dues. That decision was subsequently appealed by the County.

Foundation attorneys argue that there is no compelling state interest to justify PERC’s forcing Hunterdon County to collect compulsory dues from non-union members when county officials have already rejected the requirement during the collective bargaining process. In addition, Foundation attorneys charge that, if counties are forced to collect the fees, it will strip away safeguards that protect workers from having compulsory agency fees used to support union politics or other activities not directly related to collective bargaining.

“Big Labor wants to require the county government to be their collection agency and strong-arm workers into subsidizing a union that they do not support,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Apparently experiencing difficulty persuading employees to join the union voluntarily, union officials are grabbing for the power to compel payment of dues as a job condition.”

Until recently, New Jersey’s county and municipal employees who refrained from union membership could not be compelled to pay so-called “agency fees” unless local government officials agreed to such a requirement through the collective bargaining process. However, a statute signed by Governor McGreevey in 2002 gave union officials the power to utilize a new PERC procedure to force county governments to impose the requirement as a job condition.

In December 2002, in response to demands from CWA Local 1034, PERC ordered Hunterdon County to begin deducting “agency fees” from all non-union county government employees. Seeking to defend its employees’ freedom of association, Hunterdon County officials filed suit against the CWA union challenging the commission’s order. A ruling in favor of the County would strike down the McGreevey law.

Albuquerque, N.M. (July 28, 2004) – The United States District Court for the District of New Mexico found late yesterday that local union officials violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of nonunion City of Albuquerque employees by failing to properly disclose the union’s spending of their forced union dues. The Court then opened the door for the workers to seek precedent setting punitive damages against the union from a jury for intentionally or recklessly and callously violating the workers’ 1st and 14th Amendment rights. The Court also ordered a complete refund of all forced dues taken from nonunion City workers’ paychecks from August 1999 through July 2000.

The rulings came down in related cases brought for roughly 300 blue-collar Albuquerque City workers by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys. The workers sued the City of Albuquerque and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 624, New Mexico AFSCME Council 18, and AFSCME International after the illegal seizures began.

Under the rulings, the City and Local 624 must also strike an indemnification clause from their collective bargaining agreement. In that clause, the union promised the City that it would pay all of the City’s damages, attorneys’ fees, and expenses in defending any suit filed by employees about the forced union dues. The Court enjoined the City from accepting such indemnification from the AFSCME union in the future and ordered the City to repay all past indemnification.

“AFSCME officials will no longer be able to bribe the City of Albuquerque to seize union dues from its workers’ paychecks by promising to reimburse all legal costs that arise from violating the workers’ First Amendment rights,» said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “This ruling is a significant step toward curtailing the power of union officials to shake down workers for political contributions where there is no Right to Work law prohibiting all forced dues.”

Foundation attorneys filed suit after the City unlawfully deducted forced union dues from the paychecks of nonmembers without proper procedural protections required to prevent the monies’ use for activities unrelated to collective bargaining, such as support of union politics. The amount of unlawfully seized dues amounts to roughly $52,000. The AFSCME union now faces the possibility of a substantial additional judgment awarding punitive damages for misrepresenting how union officials were spending the nonmembers’ forced dues.

The actions of AFSCME union officials violated First Amendment protections articulated in the Foundation-won Supreme Court decision in Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson. Under Hudson, union officials must disclose an independent audit of their expenses, justifying the lawfulness of the disbursements charged to nonmembers, before seizing any forced union dues from employees who choose to refrain from formal union membership.

Senior District Judge C. Leroy Hansen cited in his opinions that the notice to workers detailing the union’s expenditures was inadequate, stating, “The simple fact of the matter is that the union’s original notice did not include the information it was required by law to include.” Dismissing the union’s inability to prove that the forced dues amount was correct, Judge Hansen said, “accounting inconvenience is an insufficient excuse to allow the union to continue to violate the First Amendment rights of the Plaintiffs.” Judge Hansen also likened the AFSCME union’s funneling of forced dues through the International, State, and Local affiliates with no record of how they were being spent to “money laundering.”

Asheboro, N.C. (July 27, 2004) – Three Goodyear Tires (Goodyear) employees filed federal charges today against their employer and the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) union for jointly coercing a majority of the plant’s workers to accept an unwanted union. Receiving free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, the workers filed the unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional office in Winston-Salem.

Bowing to pressure brought by USWA union operatives, Goodyear signed a so-called “neutrality agreement” that prohibited the traditional and less abusive secret ballot election process in favor of a coercive “card check” campaign. As a result, Goodyear gave union organizers full access to employees’ personal information and company facilities to browbeat workers into signing union recognition cards that were counted as “votes” for unionization.

After USWA officials claimed that a majority of workers had signed such cards in mid-March, the union was installed by Goodyear as the monopoly representative of roughly 340 workers at the plant.

However, numerous workers submitted letters to Goodyear and the arbitrator who counted the cards revoking their previously signed cards. USWA officials, Goodyear, and the arbitrator ignored the revocations.

The workers’ unfair labor practice charges simply ask the NLRB to recount the cards and recognize the letters from workers revoking previously signed cards. The NLRB will now investigate the charges and decide whether to issue a formal complaint.

“Goodyear and USWA officials pulled the rug out from underneath workers by corralling them into unwanted union representation without so much as a secret ballot vote,” stated Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Since employees are increasingly rejecting union membership when given a true choice, union officials are cutting back-room deals with companies to help bully workers into compulsory unionism.”

The filing comes on the heels of a decision by the NLRB Regional Director in Winston-Salem to prosecute the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and Freightliner for illegally coercing another group of Foundation-assisted workers to sign union recognition cards at the Thomas Built Bus facility in neighboring High Point, N.C. That complaint will be the first of its kind issued by any NLRB regional officer in response to a rapidly expanding wave of allegations of employee rights violations related to so-called “neutrality agreements” and “top-down” unionization campaigns.

Oxnard, Calif. (July 27, 2004) — The United Farm Workers (UFW) union agreed late yesterday to pay out over $105,000 in back pay to a large group of strawberry pickers unlawfully fired from their jobs for refusal to join the union and sign dues check-off authorizations permitting the union to collect full dues directly from their wages.

The settlement comes after attorneys with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation persuaded the General Counsel of California’s Agriculture Labor Relations Board (ALRB) to issue a complaint against the UFW union in December 2003 for unlawfully ordering and causing the mass firings of more than 100 Oxnard Coastal Berry employees in 2001. Under the settlement agreement, those workers will receive checks to compensate them for lost pay within the next several weeks.

With the assistance of Foundation attorneys, Francisco Alcazar, Bertha Ambriz, Bertha Andrade, Ella Carranza, Alma Rose Arredondo, and Manuel Mena filed the class-action unfair labor practice charges against the UFW union in June 2001. Coastal Berry, which employs approximately 750 workers, is the world’s largest strawberry producer.

“These employees so disdained the notion of joining and supporting the UFW union, that they decided they would rather lose their jobs,” said Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “It’s an outrage that the union would attempt to drive dissenting workers into financial ruin.”

The unionization of Oxnard Coastal Berry occurred under controversial circumstances in the first place. In May 2000, by order of an ALRB packed with three one-day appointments by Governor Gray Davis, UFW union officials were granted monopoly bargaining power over Coastal Berry employees – even though a large number of the employees did not support the union. In March 2001, Coastal Berry entered into a collective bargaining agreement with the UFW union. Within days, UFW officials demanded that all Coastal Berry workers join the union and sign payroll deduction cards that would have allowed union officials to seize dues from their paychecks.

The ALRB complaint stated that UFW union officials unlawfully demanded that the berry pickers pay full union dues as a condition of employment, violating several Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court decisions, including Chicago Teachers v. Hudson. UFW union officials also unlawfully failed to inform employees of their rights to object to paying for non-collective bargaining activities (such as politics), and the right to challenge the union’s fee calculations before an impartial decision maker.

California State Senator Tom McClintock (R-19th District), whose legislative district borders Oxnard, weighed in for the workers: «The National Right to Work Foundation should be commended for representing the hard-working Californians that have been denied their jobs due to politics. Ironically, the UFW claims to be for workers, yet it turned more than 100 workers away from the fields where they have labored for years.”

The plight of Coastal Berry’s union-abused workers was featured in a national public television documentary.

Washington, DC (July 20, 2004) – In an issue emerging as a top election-year priority for organized labor officials, Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and John Edwards (D-NC) have joined with Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) to file formal arguments at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) urging the agency governing America’s private sector workplaces to deny employees access to the less-abusive secret-ballot election process when choosing whether to unionize.

“For two politicians who claim they’ll stick up for America’s workers, taking away basic freedoms is a strange way to show it,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation.

Kerry, Edwards, Kennedy, 14 other Senators, and 31 congressmen joined together to file the amicus curiae brief, perhaps the most noteworthy of dozens of briefs filed last week by representatives of management, unions, employees, public policy groups, and Members of Congress – arguing either in opposition to, or in favor of, the plight of disenfranchised employees aided by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys.

The Board invited the briefs after voting 3-2 to determine the enforceability of increasingly common arrangements intended to limit further employees’ freedom to determine whether union officials are authorized to represent them. These arrangements, sometimes called “card check” or “neutrality agreements,” involve high-pressure card solicitation drives that frequently result in complaints of union coercion from rank-and-file workers.

Replacing the less-abusive secret ballot election process with “card check” has become the number one requirement of candidates to obtain Big Labor’s support in the 2004 elections. According to the AFL-CIO’s recent statement to BNA’s Daily Labor Report, “we don’t have any issue that’s a litmus test, but this is as close as it gets.” According to the AFL-CIO, more than 80 percent of newly organized employees each year are already unionized through the controversial “card check” process while the traditional election process, favored by federal labor policy and the courts, is used far less frequently.

“Having trouble selling even a bare majority of workers on the merits of unionization, union officials are resorting to the in-your-face ‘card check’ process to intimidate workers into supporting a union,” said Gleason.

Congressman Charlie Norwood (R-GA), a signatory to a separate congressional brief and lead sponsor of legislation to reduce “card check” organizing abuses, said “Hard-working folks deserve the right to a fair and secret election – not the threats, arm-twisting, and shakedown tactics that come with ‘card check’ campaigns.”

The lead consolidated cases at the NLRB, brought by Foundation attorneys, arise out of the automotive industry where suppliers have cut deals with union officials to waive the secret ballot election process and to assist in pressuring employees to sign union authorization cards. The coercively obtained cards were then counted as “votes” in favor of authorizing the union to act as the employees’ monopoly bargaining agent.

These pacts also typically require employers to hand over their employees’ private information (including home addresses) to union organizers, subject employees to unsolicited “home visits,” and permit wide access to company facilities – resulting in employee complaints of browbeating and other harassment.

Cincinnati, Ohio (July 19, 2004) – Five Cincinnati firefighters today filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against an International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) union affiliate and top city officials for violations of the First Amendment by seizing compulsory union dues from the paychecks of scores of nonunion firefighters.

Receiving free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the firefighters charge that IAFF Local 48 union officials acted in concert with the City of Cincinnati and seized compulsory union dues from them without first providing an adequate independent audit of the union’s expenditures. The complaint also names Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken, among other top city officials, for signing and enforcing an agreement with the union that resulted in the unconstitutional acts.

The firefighters filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio’s Western Division. They allege that IAFF Local 48 union officials intentionally seized the forced union dues without first providing the financial disclosure and procedures required by a long-standing U.S. Supreme Court ruling interpreting that the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution protect public employees from demands to pay for union political activity and other activities they may oppose.

Like many similar agreements around the country, the Cincinnati monopoly bargaining agreement included an “indemnification clause” whereby the union promises to pay all legal costs a city may incur in defending a suit that results from illegal seizures of compulsory dues. These agreements remove the incentive for the employer to ensure the union is not mistreating workers. Some courts, including the U.S. Court of Appeals with jurisdiction over Ohio, have stuck these agreements down as void as against public policy.

“IAFF union officials simply want nonunion firefighters 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 firefighters’ First Amendment rights.»

The firefighters are asking the court to enjoin IAFF officials from seizing forced dues from any nonunion employee represented by Local 48 until they provide the legally required notice and procedures.

The workers also seek class-action status for their case, and restitution for all firefighters represented by IAFF Local 48 in the form of a refund of all past forced dues collected since July 2002. If the court grants class-action status, a remedy in the case could force significant financial reimbursements to all past and present nonunion firefighters who were forced to pay such union fees-an amount estimated as high as $100,000.

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.

Washington, DC (July 16, 2004) – Representatives of management, unions, employees, and Members of Congress filed a flurry of formal arguments on yesterday’s deadline in the National Right to Work Foundation’s lead case before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that will determine to what extent employees may enjoy the protections of a secret ballot election when deciding whether to form a union.

Filing one of many briefs on the employees’ side, an unprecedented coalition of three former members of the NLRB (John Raudabaugh, J. Robert Brame, and Dennis Devaney) argued for 21 Members of Congress that employees should have a right to a secret ballot election conducted by the NLRB to “test” a union’s claims of majority support after an abusive “card check” organizing drive.

In a statement released today, Congressman Charlie Norwood (R-GA), a signatory to the congressional brief and lead sponsor of legislation to reduce “card check” organizing abuses, said “Hard-working folks deserve the right to a fair and secret balanced election — not the threats, arm-twisting, and shakedown tactics that come with card check campaigns.”

In contrast, the Big Three (and Delphi) argued that they should be entitled to cut deals and bargain without employee interference after a union is recognized pursuant to a so-called “neutrality” or “card check” agreement – even when a clear majority of employees opposing unionization immediately petition thereafter for a secret ballot decertification election.

Many other amicus curiae briefs, filed both for and against the disenfranchised employees, poured in from across America as the Board debates the enforceability of increasingly common arrangements intended to limit employees’ freedom to determine their union status. According to the AFL-CIO, more than 80 percent of newly organized employees each year are now unionized through this “card check” process.

“Increasingly unable to sell workers on union membership, union officials have resorted to coercive tactics such as ‘neutrality’ agreements and the in-your-face ‘card check’ solicitation process to intimidate workers into supporting a union,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The Big Three should be ashamed of themselves for selling their hard-working employees into forced unionism in return for concessions from United Auto Workers (UAW) officials.”

The NLRB solicited briefs from the legal community after granting review last month by a 3-2 vote in consolidated cases filed by Foundation attorneys for employees at Dana Corporation and Metaldyne that challenge the so-called “voluntary recognition bar rule” which prevents free employee elections. Under pressure from the Big Three – as well as a union “corporate campaign” – the automotive suppliers cut deals with the UAW to waive the secret ballot election process and to assist union organizers in pressuring employees to sign union authorization cards. The coercively obtained cards were then counted as “votes” in favor of unionization.

These pacts typically require that the employer hand over employees’ private information (including home addresses) to union organizers, subject employees to unsolicited “home visits,” and permit wide access to company facilities resulting in employee complaints of harassment. After Dana and Metaldyne granted recognition to the UAW union, large groups of employees immediately filed petitions – signed by 35 percent and more than 50 percent, respectively – opposing unionization and calling for a formal decertification election.

In a related development, the U.S. Senate today held hearings on the subject of “card check” organizing.

Washington, D.C. (July 15, 2004) – By a 3-2 vote, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) this week struck down an activist Clinton-era ruling which had allowed union officials to corral university graduate teaching assistants (TAs) into unwanted union affiliation, and ultimately to force them to pay union dues to maintain their status.

In the case involving the United Auto Workers (UAW) union’s attempt to forcibly unionize TAs at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, the NLRB voted to return to its long-standing position of more than 25 years that TAs have an academic, rather than economic, relationship with universities, and that TAs are not “employees” under federal labor law who can be subjected to union monopoly bargaining.

Agreeing with the position taken by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys in an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief filed in early 2002, the NLRB found that, because TAs are admitted into, rather than hired by universities, they are students in, rather than employees of, the institution.

“While some students may have Marxist dreams that they are ‘workers,’ rather than students, who will be in the vanguard of an economic revolution when the workers of the world unite, the fact remains that they are students and not employees, and have little commonality of interest with most employees,” the Foundation pointed out in its brief.

In their brief, Foundation attorneys cited that grades are the central form of “compensation” for TAs and questioned whether grades would ultimately become a mandatory subject of monopoly bargaining if TAs were treated as “employees” for purposes of unionization. Foundation attorneys also argued that allowing union officials monopoly bargaining power over all TAs would violate the First Amendment freedom of association rights of dissenting TAs, thereby undermining academic freedom.

UAW union officials sought monopoly bargaining privileges over roughly 450 TAs at Brown University. While UAW officials relied on a NLRB decision in 2000 involving New York University which, for the first time, classified TAs as employees, Brown University contended that “[c]ommon sense dictates that students who teach and perform research as a part of their academic curriculum cannot properly be considered employees without entangling the…[National Labor Relations]Act into the intricacies of graduate education.”

“This was a shameless attempted power grab by UAW officials to corral graduate students into unwanted union affiliation and force them to pay dues for unwanted union ‘representation,’” stated Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.