**Washington, DC (June 2, 2006**) – With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, two Schreiber Foods employees from Green Bay, Wisconsin, have asked a federal appellate court to order the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to decide a long-delayed case the workers initiated in 1989. Having refrained from formal union membership, the workers are challenging union officials’ use of their forced union dues for activities unrelated to collective bargaining, such as union organizing.

The case – originally filed by David and Sherry Pirlott more than 17 years ago against Teamsters Local 75 in Wisconsin – is the oldest of scores of cases in which Foundation-assisted employees are trying to reclaim their forced union dues used for non-bargaining activity.

The NLRB, which has long been plagued by what critics have called political in-fighting and institutional pro-union bias, faced similar appellate court scrutiny in the *Pirlott* case in 1998. But rather than decide the case that had long been pending for many years on the docket in Washington, DC, the Board sent the case back to an administrative law judge for further fact finding. The case returned to Washington, DC, in 2001 where it has since collected dust awaiting a decision.

The Pirlott’s writ of *mandamus* petition, filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, points out the Board’s egregious and unjustifiable delay in issuing a decision that could be subject to judicial review. The employees are simply asking the NLRB to follow U.S. Supreme Court rulings that uphold workers’ rights to not pay for recruiting more dues paying workers into organized labor’s ideological movement.

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” said [Stefan Gleason](mailto:shg@nrtw.org), vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “By failing to do its job, the NLRB is, in effect, helping union officials fill their coffers with forced-dues seized from the paychecks of countless Americans.”

Under the Supreme Court’s rulings in *Communications Workers v. Beck* and *Ellis v. Railway Clerks*, cases brought by employees represented by Foundation attorneys, workers may not be lawfully forced to pay for any union activities unrelated to collective bargaining, contract negotiation, or grievance adjustment such as union organizing, politics, extra-unit litigation, and member-only programs.

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 about 200 cases nationwide per year.