SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (June 28, 2001) — Utilizing free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, several state employees intervened today to defend Utah’s Voluntary Contributions Act, a recently enacted measure that requires union officials to obtain union members’ permission before spending their dues for political activities.

Claiming that the law’s requirements infringe the unions’ freedom of association rights, the Utah AFL-CIO and the state’s biggest government unions had filed suit in April to overturn the new law as unconstitutional. The employees filing the countersuit today in the Third District Court in Salt Lake County seek to defend the statute and their constitutional rights.

The employees argue that without rights granted under the Voluntary Contributions Act, employees must give up their workplace voice in order to exercise their political freedom. That’s because state law grants union officials the exclusive right to negotiate contracts on behalf of employees. Only union members are allowed a voice about workplace issues that control the terms of their employment.

Therefore, the employees argue, the court should uphold the Voluntary Contributions Act as constitutional. If it does not, then the court must declare that the state’s monopoly bargaining law is unconstitutional.

“Union officials want it both ways. They jealously guard their many government-granted privileges while opposing all measures to protect individual employees from the adverse consequences,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an organization that provides free legal aid to victims of compulsory unionism abuse.

The individual employees ask the court to declare that the Voluntary Contributions Act is constitutional because they have a constitutional right to withhold dues spent for political and ideological activities. Additionally, they ask the court to declare they have a right to full financial disclosure revealing how the union spends employees’ dues money.

The employees intervening in the case are teachers Christy Morris, John Clark, Wendy Solomon, and Nancy Granducci, firefighter Robert Miles, and school technical advisor Joe Granducci.

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.