Seattle, WA (February 24, 2010) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, a Redmond-based AT&T Mobility employee filed federal charges after union organizers illegally colluded with company officials to sweep AT&T workers across the state into union ranks in exchange for contract concessions.

Per a so-called “neutrality agreement” between the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union hierarchy and AT&T, workers in a 140-employee bargaining unit (which consists of various locations across the state of Washington) had CWA union monopoly bargaining foisted upon them after a card-check forced unionism campaign. In exchange, union officials agreed with AT&T to subject the employees to a previously negotiated contract which results in lost benefits and perks for the workers.

As part of the agreement, the workers would be swept into the CWA union’s regional monopoly bargaining unit which consists of thousands of employees – making it virtually impossible for them to later organize to remove the union officials’ monopoly bargaining privileges.

Greg Hartmann of Auburn is challenging the pre-recognition negotiations because he and his colleagues were not even aware of the terms either of the neutrality agreement or the employees’ new contract until after the card-check campaign.

Moreover, using precedent won by Right to Work Foundation attorneys in the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) landmark 2007 decision in Dana Corporation, the employees filed a decertification petition demanding a secret ballot election to remove the unwanted union from their workplace. CWA union lawyers failed to convince the NLRB regional director in Seattle to block the employees’ request for a secret ballot election.

Instead, union lawyers are now adding workers who were not included in the card-check campaign to the list of eligible voters for the decertification election – bringing into question AT&T’s recognition of the union as the workers’ monopoly bargaining agent. Hartmann is challenging the company’s granting of bargaining privileges to CWA union officials because changing the eligible voters list suggests the union bosses were prematurely recognized.

“First, CWA union bosses cut a backroom deal to force these workers into their forced dues-paying ranks and now they appear to be rigging the decertification election to prevent workers from throwing out the unwanted union,” said Patrick Semmens, Legal Information Director of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Union officials’ blatant disregard for the rights of employees in this case shows why no worker should ever be forced to pay dues to a union, or to accept union ‘representation’ as a condition of employment.”

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.