Asheboro, North Carolina (January 5, 2005) – United Steel Workers of America (USWA) union officials have dropped their bid to unionize the local Goodyear Tires (Goodyear) facility in order to settle a federal prosecution for unfair labor practices committed during a coercive organizing drive last year.

Goodyear’s controversial recognition of the union as the “exclusive bargaining agent” of the facility’s workers has been in dispute since last year. Numerous employees contend that union and company officials failed to honor employee revocations of previously signed union “authorization” cards and jointly imposed union representation on a dissenting majority of workers.

Receiving free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, three workers at the Goodyear facility filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in July 2004 after USWA officials claimed that a majority of workers had signed union “authorization” cards and thus “voted” in favor of unionization. Goodyear subsequently installed the USWA union as the monopoly representative of the approximately 340 workers at the plant based on this dubious claim.

Many workers gave Goodyear, and the arbitrator who counted the cards, letters revoking their previously signed cards. USWA officials, Goodyear, and the arbitrator unlawfully ignored the revocations. The workers’ unfair labor practice charges simply asked the NLRB to recount the cards and recognize the revocations.

The NLRB Regional Director in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, ultimately sided with the three employees, and in December filed a formal complaint – ordered by the NLRB’s General Counsel – against Goodyear and the union. At the center of the NLRB’s settlement agreement is a mandate that union officials walk away.

“This victory is a step towards holding union officials across the country to account for trampling workers’ rights under abusive ‘card check’ schemes,” said Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “While encouraging, it’s an outrage that Goodyear struck a backroom deal with USWA officials in the first place to deny these workers the freedom to decide their own representation through the less abusive secret ballot election process.”

Bowing to pressure from USWA union operatives, Goodyear had 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 “authorization” cards.

Under the terms of the settlement, USWA union officials may not use the “card check” unionization scheme in any future organization attempts at the Asheboro Goodyear facility.

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.