Valparaiso, IN (April 3, 2008) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has agreed to prosecute the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) Local 150 for threatening to get a worker fired for refusing union membership. The agency issued the complaint in response to unfair labor practice charges filed by the employee with help from attorneys at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

Minteq International, Inc. employee Joel Tibbetts originally filed federal charges against the IUOE Local 150 on October 1, 2007. Aside from threatening Tibbetts’ job, union officials are also accused of failing to notify him of his rights to refrain from full union membership, to provide him with an audit of the union’s financial expenditures, and allow him to withhold forced dues unrelated to collective bargaining.

Tibbetts, a steel mill worker at Minteq, turned to the National Right to Work Foundation for help after union officials repeatedly threatened to have him fired for refusing to join the IUOE. When Tibbetts finally agreed to join the union under protest out of fear of losing his livelihood, union officials refused his application and told him that he would actually have to pay even more in compulsory dues than his co-workers who were union members.

IUOE officials unlawfully told Tibbetts that union members’ fees are calculated on an individual basis, whereas nonmember’s fees are based on so-called “representation” costs, which somehow made the forced dues demanded of him higher than dues paid by formal union members.

“IUOE union officials have repeatedly run roughshod over the rights of workers in Indiana,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Until the Hoosier State passes a Right to Work law making union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary, employees statewide will continue to face this thuggishness.”

However, under the Foundation-won Supreme Court decision Communications Workers v. Beck, union officials cannot require formal union membership or the payment of union dues unrelated to collective bargaining as a condition of employment. The decision also requires union officials to provide verified financial disclosure of union expenditures, a provision that allows employees to refuse to pay for activities unrelated to workplace representation. Retaliation or discrimination against employees for exercising these rights is also illegal.

The NLRB has scheduled a June 17, 2008 hearing to prosecute the union at the NLRB Regional Office 25 in Indianapolis.

Washington, DC (March 31, 2008) – Today the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and agreed to hear the case of Ysursa v. Pocatello Education Association, thus agreeing to review a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that limited the applicability of an Idaho state law banning payroll deductions for union Political Action Committees (PACs).

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Sutherland Institute, and Utah Taxpayers Association filed a joint amicus (“friend of the court”) brief urging the Supreme Court to take up the appeal filed by the Attorney General for the State of Idaho.

The lower U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruling argued that the payroll deduction ban should only apply to union payroll deductions at the state government level, and that local government bodies were independent political entities outside of the reach the state law.

But the joint amici brief pointed out that a ruling by the Ninth Circuit wrongly forces Idaho taxpayers to subsidize union political activities by offering valuable payroll deduction services to union officials.

Even more alarmingly, union lawyers could try to use the Ninth Circuit’s reasoning to launch fresh new attacks on state Right to Work laws as applied to local government bodies. The joint amici brief emphasized that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that unions have no constitutional right to collect union dues from non-union members, much less use payroll deduction privileges to do so.

In response to the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case, National Right to Work Vice President Stefan Gleason made the following remarks:

“We applaud the Supreme Court’s decision to revisit the activist ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Just like state governments, local governments should not act as bagmen for union political funds.

“Stripping union officials of their payroll deduction privileges is good public policy. In fact, the State of Idaho should have gone much further than it did – by banning outright the use of public facilities to collect any union funds whatsoever.”

Download the decision here.

Sacramento, California (March 31, 2008) – A federal judge has ordered California State Employees Association (CSEA) union officials to offer rebates to up to 28,000 state employees who are not union members. Imposing a “special assessment” in addition to mandatory dues, union officials seized an additional 25% of forced union dues to wage their campaign against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s modest reform measures on the 2005 ballot.

The ruling stems from a class-action civil rights complaint, filed by nine state government employees (union members and nonmembers) with free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The complaint sought a ruling that would require union officials to give employees due process, including proper financial disclosure, a formal notice that they may reclaim the special assessment spent for electioneering, and rebates, plus interest, to all who request them.

CSEA union officials had imposed on government employees a so-called “Emergency Temporary Assessment to Build a Political Fight-Back Fund” for a broad range of political activities. Union officials openly admitted that the “Fund will not be used for regular costs of the union,” but for political advertising, direct mail, and get-out-the-vote activities.

By levying this mid-year “special assessment,” CSEA officials illegally jacked up and spent employees’ mandatory payments by between 25-36% without even allowing those employees who were not union members to opt out of paying for such activities. Union officials raised over $12 million through the special assessment and spent many millions more using regular dues. Approximately $3 million of this was taken from nonmembers.

Morrison C. England Jr., a U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of California, noted that “a contrary decision from the one reached today would allow unions to run roughshod over dissenting nonmembers…”
CSEA union officials must now provide the nonunion state employees with a financial disclosure, notice that they may object to the use of these forced union dues for political activities, and refunds to all who object in response to the new disclosure.

“Although this is an encouraging victory for these employees, this ruling underscores the gross injustice of forced unionism that exists in California,” stated National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “Only a Right to Work law banning forced union dues altogether will give Golden State employees meaningful protection from similar abuses of their constitutional rights.”

In the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, the High Court ruled that public employees have due process rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to be notified of how their forced union dues are spent, and how to prevent the spending of their dues for union political activities. However, CSEA union officials did not give public employees any opportunity to object to the special assessment.

Washington, DC (March 28, 2008) – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed its opposition to a package of sweeping rule changes proposed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) bureaucracy that would further undermine the right of American workers to choose freely whether to form a union. The Foundation filed its comments on behalf of itself and three employees victimized by coercive “card check” unionization drives in California, Ohio, and South Carolina, respectively.

Under the proposed rules, colluding union officials and company officials could trigger a quick-snap union certification election even when no employees have expressed any interest in unionization. The proposed changes would toss aside traditional NLRB certification safeguards while effectively barring employees from challenging any misconduct or unfair labor practices.

Additionally, an NLRB rubberstamp could be obtained despite strategic gerrymandering of bargaining units and even where no advance notice of the election is provided to employees.

The proposed NLRB rules also appear to contradict the National Labor Relations Act by unilaterally shortening the statute of limitations for filing unfair labor practice charges from six months to seven days. The proposed rules would also unlawfully leave employee allegations of misconduct to the unappealable discretion of NLRB Regional Directors, cutting the Board and appellate courts out of the process.

“The NLRB’s devious proposal would ‘rent out’ federal oversight of representation elections to union officials and certain employers who have caved in to extortionate pressure campaigns intended to induce them to hand over their employees to forced unionism,” stated Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The NLRB should not further erode employees’ freedom to resist unwanted unionization, nor should it so crassly provide a veneer of legitimacy to coercive and often illegal union organizing tactics.”

The Foundation’s comments cite that the proposed changes would rapidly accelerate a trend of coercive “top down” union organizing drives. Such drives often include “corporate campaigns” where a non-union company is targeted with ugly PR onslaughts, trumped up lawsuits, and political pressure.

“In short, the proposed rules must be viewed in the context of union efforts to destroy both the full and open debate inherent in… the NLRA-established secret ballot election process, and replace them with “neutrality agreements,” forced employer silence, non-existent election campaigns, employees’ inability to object or organize a movement to oppose unionization, and union selection via either “card check” or rapid-fire consent elections,” wrote Foundation staff attorneys Glenn Taubman and Bill Messenger.