Applicant refused when company demanded forced union fees on for IBEW union bosses in blatant violation of Tennessee’s Right to Work protections

Spring City, TN (August 17, 2015) – With free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, Bill Bauer has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against a company that supplies maintenance and repair workers to a Tennessee nuclear power plant run by the Tennessee Valley Authority. The company attempted to force Bauer to pay union fees as a condition of employment. Forced union fees are illegal in Tennessee under Tennessee’s Right to Work law.

The nuclear power plant is located in Spring City, Tennessee and temporary, highly skilled maintenance and repair workers are supplied by Williams Plant Services. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1323 (Local 1323) has a monopoly bargaining contract with Williams Plant Services.

Bauer, a journeyman, was offered a job at the plant, and drove from his home in Pennsylvania to begin work. On July 20, 2015, Bauer’s first day of work, he met with representatives from Williams’ human resources department at the company’s headquarters in Tucker, Georgia, before he made his way to the power plant in Tennessee. Bauer was informed that he could join the workplace union, Local 1323.

Bauer declined to join Local 1323. He was then told he had to sign a dues check off form to authorize his employer to withhold 3.5 percent of his paycheck and remit those funds to Local 1323. Knowing that he would be working in a Right to Work state, Bauer refused to sign the checkoff form, understanding that he had the right to refrain from paying any fees to Local 1323. The company representatives told him that signing the checkoff form was a condition of employment at the power plant.

Under Tennessee’s Right to Work law, no worker can be forced to pay fees to a union as a condition of employment.

“Even in longstanding Right to Work states like Tennessee union bosses all too often engage in schemes and ploys to undermine or outright violate employees’ Right to Work protections,” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “No worker should be forced to pay tribute to a union just to get or keep a job, and it is especially outrageous for company and union officials to conspire to violate laws that explicitly make union dues and fees voluntary.”

[An original version of this release incorrectly identified the power plant as located in Spring Hill, TN.]  

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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.