**Washington, D.C. (October 2, 2007)** – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) voted 3-2 to overturn its policy of denying employees any access to a secret ballot vote over unionization after a union is recognized pursuant to the controversial “card check” organizing process.

The long-awaited ruling came in two high-profile cases brought by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys for employees at two automotive suppliers (Dana and Metaldyne) who found themselves organized by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. In the future, the federal agency will give employees notice that they have 45 days after the recognition to file a decertification petition to obtain an election to vote out the unwanted union.

However, in a bizarre move that punishes the very employees who brought these cases, the NLRB majority decreed that its ruling would only apply prospectively. As a result, the forcibly unionized Dana and Metaldyne employees – as well as employees of other employers who had similarly filed decertification petitions after card-check campaigns – will not be allowed to toss out the unions imposed upon them.

The NLRB’s decision prospectively impacts the effect of so-called “neutrality” agreements, contracts between a union and an employer under which the employer agrees not to oppose unionization of its workers. Under these coercive agreements, employers typically also grant union operatives sweeping access to their workplaces, home addresses, and employees’ other personal information. These pacts also strip workers of the opportunity to a secret ballot election and often allow union officials to hold mandatory “captive audience” meetings to browbeat the employees to sign union cards that are counted as “votes” for unionization.

The NLRB majority pointed out, “card checks are less reliable because they lack secrecy and procedural safeguards… union card-solicitation campaigns have been accompanied by misinformation… workers sometimes sign union authorization cards…to get the person off their back.”

The NLRB ruling comes in the consolidated cases of employees at Dana Corporation in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, and Metaldyne in St. Marys, Pennsylvania, who filed decertification petitions (with 35 percent and more than 50 percent of employees signing, respectively) seeking elections to decide whether officials of the nation’s largest auto workers union truly enjoyed the support of a majority of employees and could lawfully act as their “exclusive representatives.” The employees filed these petitions after their employers had announced that they would recognize the union on the basis of signed cards. The NLRB Regional Directors dismissed the election petitions, and the employees appealed to the NLRB in Washington, D.C., in 2004.

“This is an encouraging step forward for employee freedom, but the Bush NLRB has been sitting on many other important employee rights cases for several years,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Meanwhile, there is no moral or legal justification for penalizing the very employees who brought these cases by barring them from throwing out these illegally imposed unions.”

Download the NLRB Decision

**Philadelphia, Pa. (September 19, 2007)** – The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation today filed a motion in federal court seeking to inform more than an estimated 12,000 individuals that union organizers have surreptitiously violated their privacy rights under federal law.

The Foundation filed the motion to intervene in *Pichler v. UNITE* in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania after the court ordered the union to pay damages because union organizers unlawfully used the license plate numbers of over 1,500 Cintas Corporation employees to access their personal information in official Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) records. Union operatives conducted an additional 12,100 searches on individuals who may be employees of other non-union companies targeted by the union. Those individuals are unaware of this illegal invasion of their privacy.

The *Pichler* lawsuit, currently on appeal by union lawyers at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, revealed that UNITE union organizers violated employee rights under the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) of 1994. That federal law bars anyone from using motor vehicle records to obtain individuals’ personal information with limited exceptions. The union must potentially pay $2,500 per violation if the District Court’s decision is affirmed.

Union organizers illegally obtained the home addresses of Cintas employees for the purpose of conducting “home visits” to pressure and browbeat those workers into signing union authorization cards. The union intended to use these cards to bypass the secret-ballot election process for determining whether the employees wanted to unionize.

The U.S. District Court determined that union operatives conducted surveillance of numerous parking lots used by workers, collected license plate numbers, and conducted more than 13,700 searches of driving records. Cintas employees were alarmed to learn of this invasion of their privacy and filed their successful class-action lawsuit against the notoriously abusive union.

The Foundation’s motion seeks to modify a protective order in the case, which paradoxically prevents any of these other 12,100 Americans from being notified about the violation of their rights. The Foundation is seeking the right to do a one-time mailing under court supervision to each citizen the union operatives targeted. Ultimately, those 12,100 victims could be entitled to over $30 million in liquidated damages from the UNITE union.

“Thousands of employees deserve to know that UNITE union organizers may have violated their privacy by rifling through their DMV records,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “Citizens should not be prevented from learning that union operatives are secretly using their private personal information.”

Download the motion

**Janesville, Wisc. (September 11, 2007)** – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC, ruled that union officials cannot force nonunion members to object twice simply to receive basic information about how union affiliates spend the workers’ forced union dues.

By a vote of 3-2, the NLRB majority agreed with National Right to Work Foundation attorneys and chose to follow an earlier U.S. Court of Appeals decision (also won by Foundation attorneys) which the Clinton NLRB had refused to apply. This week’s NLRB ruling decreed that refusal to provide a breakdown of union affiliate expenditures violates the union’s “duty of fair representation” (DFR) owed to nonunion workers. The relatively vague DFR standard is intended to protect employees from arbitrary or deliberately discriminatory actions by union officials.

With free legal help from the Foundation, Brandon Jones, a former employee of Chambers & Owen warehouses, in Janesville, Wisconsin, originally filed unfair labor practice charges at the NLRB in October 2001. Jones challenged Teamster Union Local 579’s policy of refusing to provide employees information about how union affiliates spend their mandatory dues until the employee not only “objects” to paying for non-collective bargaining activity, but also further “challenges” the union’s diversion of funds to union affiliates. Affiliates include such entities as the national or regional union or the AFL-CIO.

Under the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court *Communications Workers v. Beck* and *Ellis v. BRAC* decisions, the high court recognized that workers have the right to refrain from formal union membership and have the right to object to paying for non-bargaining activities (such as politics, organizing, and lobbying). Under *Chicago Teachers v. Hudson*, non-members are also entitled to receive an independently audited breakdown of union expenditures and to challenge the breakdown before an impartial decision maker.

But the Clinton NLRB dramatically undercut the Beck decision and piled additional burdens on dissenting employees. Specifically, the Clinton NLRB applied the weak DFR standard instead of a stricter statutory standard to processing of Beck objections. In part, this meant that employees must resign or refrain from union membership and affirmatively object before receiving any disclosure of union expenditures. In this week’s ruling, dissenting NLRB members Wilma Liebman and Dennis Walsh (an activist union partisan who is reportedly jockeying for Senate confirmation with his recess appointment expiring in December) argued, like the Clinton NLRB, that employees should be forced to object a second time before receiving any meaningful disclosure from union affiliates. While this ruling does not correct many of the deficiencies of the NLRB’s *Beck* enforcement procedures, it does reverse one of its many anti-employee elements.

“This ruling is a small step forward for employee freedom,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “However, the Bush NLRB has a lot more work to do to put the agency on the side of the worker rather than the union bosses. And time is running out.”

**Landover, MD (September 5, 2007)** – A group of five ex-employees of Giant Foods, Inc. have prompted the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to prosecute a Carpenter union affiliate for illegal coercion and fining them $2,500 each because they found new jobs at nonunion employers. Union officials also levied the fines because the workers refused to serve as union “salts” (plants that surreptitiously work to unionize a nonunion work place).

All five employees are former carpenters at Giant’s Landover warehouse where they performed various jobs for the Mid-Atlantic area grocery chain until that facility shut down. Attorneys from the National Right to Work Foundation helped the workers file federal charges at the NLRB in May against the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters (MARCC) union.

Union officials had demanded that the workers join the Carpenter union affiliate over the past 20 years and have lied to them about their right to refrain from formal union membership and to withhold all forced dues except those spent on union monopoly bargaining. Ultimately, the employees learned independently of these rights and sought to exercise them.

After the Giant warehouse shuttered in August 2005, all of the employees were unemployed for weeks before securing new jobs. Upon learning the workers had chosen a nonunion employer, union officials insisted they work to organize a union in the workplace. When they refused, the union brass imposed vicious internal union disciplinary fines against the workers. However, since the employees were no longer union members, they cannot be legally subjected to union discipline.

“Union officials tried to drive these workers towards the poor house simply for exercising their freedom to find new jobs and for honorably refusing to thrust a union upon their new employer,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Because Maryland does not have a Right to Work law making unions voluntary, union officials have little accountability to the workers.”

In the Foundation-won *Communications Workers of America v. Beck* decision in 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employees laboring under the National Labor Relations Act are entitled to resign from formal union membership but can still be forced to pay for activities related to union monopoly bargaining. However, they cannot be compelled to pay for other activities such as union political activities.
The NLRB has scheduled a hearing on November 7, 2007 at its Region 5 headquarters in Baltimore to prosecute the union.

Download the Complaint

**Corpus Christi, TX (September 5, 2007)** – For the second time in six months, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys have helped a security guard employed by Asset Protection and Security Services file unfair labor practice charges after union officials threatened workers with termination if they failed to pay union dues.

Under Texas’ Right to Work law, on the books since 1947, no employee can be required to pay dues or fees to a union as a condition of employment.

Ramona Trevino joined fellow employee Carlos Banuelos in filing charges with help from Foundation attorneys challenging the enforcement of the illegal forced dues clause in the employment contract between Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) union officials and their employer. Trevino also filed charges against Asset for enforcing the unlawful forced dues clause.

Banuelos’ earlier charges have already triggered a prosecution by the National Labor Relations Board. SPFPA union officials claim, with no basis whatsoever, that Banuelos, Trevino, and their coworkers work on an “exclusive federal enclave” that is not protected by the Right to Work law – and therefore can be forced to pay union fees as a condition of employment.

Under similar circumstances, Foundation attorneys successfully secured the reinstatement of Juan Vielma, a security guard for AKAL Security in El Paso, whom union officials had illegally suspended without pay for over a year for refusal to pay dues. Agreeing with Foundation attorneys, a federal Administrative Law Judge ruled that SPFPA union officials had no legal authority to compel Vielma to pay dues.

Trevino’s charge further emphasizes what is likely a widespread violation of Texas’ Right to Work law. In oral argument in Vielma’s case, an attorney for another security company with a contract with the SPFPA union even boasted that they require employees to pay dues “across the country in Right to Work states.” Evidence shows that union officials have established these forced dues requirements at multiple worksites under apparently fraudulent agreements.

Responding to demands of Texas citizens, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott took long-awaited legal action in July to enforce the Right to Work law in the Vielma and Banuelos cases. However, Texans await further action by the Attorney General to address the statewide pattern of Right to Work law violations.

“Union officials are trampling Texas’ long standing freedom to earn a living without paying money to union bosses for the privilege,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Union officials need to learn that the Lone Star state takes its Right to Work law very seriously.”

**Springfield, VA (August 31, 2007)** – Experts from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and National Right to Work Committee will be available for comment and interviews on and around Labor Day September 3 about workers’ rights, union political activities, union organizing trends and tactics, union corruption, and other issues relating to organized labor in America.

The Foundation is a non-profit, charitable organization that provides free legal aid to victims of compulsory unionism abuse. The National Right to Work Committee is 2.2 million member grassroots citizens’ organization that is dedicated to the principle that no one should ever be forced to affiliate with a union in order to get or keep a job.

National Right to Work spokesmen are frequently interviewed on national television and radio programs, including The O’Reilly Factor, Special Report with Brit Hume, CNBC’s Closing Bell, and on CNN. Their writings frequently appear in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and scores of others. They are prepared to comment on or debate any issues related to the following:

• Union officials’ political efforts to pass legislation expanding union special privileges at the expense of rank-and-file employees;

• The growing support around the country for job-producing Right to Work laws that make union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary;

• How the Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board has failed to rule on many of the most cutting-edge cases in American labor law – allowing union officials to step up their aggressive organizing tactics;

• The efforts of Big Labor’s allies in Congress to overturn state labor laws and give union officials monopoly bargaining power over firefighters and police officers;

• Organized labor’s war on the secret ballot election process for workers choosing whether to unionize; increasing use of coercive “card check” organizing campaigns against workers; and “corporate campaigns” to bully nonunion companies to unionize or go out of business;

• How the Foundation is helping workers battle back in the courts against forced union dues, union violations of religious freedom, union violence, and other infringements of employees’ individual rights;

• How teacher union officials have contributed to a decline in public education while blocking efforts at reform.

To schedule an interview – or for more information – call Justin Hakes at 703-770-3317 or email him at jah@nrtw.org

An audio clip from this statement can be downloaded at www.nrtw.org/audio/laborday.mp3

**Springfield, VA (August 31, 2007)** – Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and National Right to Work Committee, made the following statement regarding this year’s Labor Day holiday.

The Foundation is a non-profit, charitable organization that provides free legal aid to victims of compulsory unionism abuse. The National Right to Work Committee is 2.2 million member grassroots citizens’ organization that is dedicated to the principle that no one should ever be forced to affiliate with a union in order to get or keep a job.

“While Americans hit the beaches and fire up the barbeques to celebrate Labor Day, the holiday marks a bittersweet occasion for millions of hardworking Americans forced to join or pay dues to a labor union just to get or keep a job.

“In the 28 states without a Right to Work law that makes union affiliation strictly voluntary, millions of our fellow citizens would be fired if they refused to pay union dues.

“Despite their feel-good rhetoric about standing up for workers’ rights, union officials commonly target dissenting workers. Sadly, such retaliation often takes the form of harassment, firings, and even brutal violence.

“The National Right to Work Committee has spent most of 2007 fighting two dangerous union power grabs in Congress. Right now, Big Labor is seeking the forced unionization of our nation’s police and firefighters by federal fiat. Meanwhile, union officials are working to pass a so-called ‘card check’ bill to impose aggressive new recruitment methods on America’s workers – a process which would allow union officials to bully individual workers into signing forms that are counted as ‘votes’ for unionization.

“Meanwhile, National Right to Work attorneys fought at the U.S. Supreme Court to establish that nonunion employees should not have to say ‘no’ multiple times to cut off the use of their forced dues for union political causes they abhor. In Ohio, the Foundation helped a teacher strike down a law barring union religious objectors from diverting their forced dues to a charity unless they were members of certain state-approved religions. In California, Foundation attorneys are defending a 16-year-old grocery clerk saving for college after union officials tried to get her fired for refusal to pay union dues.

“And so, as Big Labor officials dish out their tired old Labor Day propaganda, let us not forget about those rank-and-file workers who have paid a high price for standing up to union officials and exercising their individual rights.

“These workers have nothing for which to thank organized labor. This Labor Day, in fact, they are owed an apology.”

In 2004, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed one of the complaints that led to this FEC conciliation agreement. As a group that defends employees against forced political confromity by unions, we were alarmed by the diversion of $26 million by officials of the Service Employees International Union, taken mostly from workers’ forced union dues, into partisan and overt electioneering activity.

See attached letter I received yesterday from the FEC.

This FEC action is a mere slap on the wrist. The big problem with the FEC’s “enforcement” action is, at the end of the day, not one cent of the millions of dollars illegally funnelled into federal election activity will be returned to the unionized workers forced to foot the bill as a condition of employment.

The SEIU union was the biggest ACT donor at $26 million, according to SEIU’s president Andy Stern, a founder of ACT. And many other millions of dollars in workers’ forced union dues were transferred into ACT by officials of other major unions.

Stefan Gleason
Vice President
National Right to Work
Legal Defense Foundation

**Akron, OH (August 20, 2007)** – In order to avoid impending federal prosecution by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a local union backed down from its unlawful attempts to fine several Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (NYSE:**GT**) employees $620 each for refusing to abandon their jobs during a union-ordered strike.

The settlement won by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys requires United Steel Workers of America (USWA) Local 2L union officials to stop threatening employees who are not formal union members with internal union fines, to discontinue holding internal union trials used to discipline such employees, and to cease coercing and intimidating employees who choose not to walk off the job during a union-ordered strike. The settlement also requires notices to be posted in visible areas throughout the Goodyear plant advising employees of their rights.

USWA union officials also must stop “using bullhorns to intimidate” and threaten retaliation against employees at their residences, according to the settlement. USWA union officials must now withdraw the illegal strike fines levied against Goodyear employees as well as expunge all internal union disciplinary records on file.

Foundation attorneys originally helped Frank C. Steen III file federal charges after union officials targeted him with illegal retaliatory strike fines, threats, hate mail, and other recriminations. Having issued a formal complaint in June 2007, the NLRB had scheduled a trial for tomorrow, August 21.

“The outright contempt that these thuggish union officials have for employees who refuse to toe the union line is despicable,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Such bully tactics underscore the Buckeye state’s need for a Right to Work law that would make union affiliation and dues payment strictly voluntary.”

Between October 2006 and January 2007, USWA officials ordered over 15,000 Goodyear employees across 16 plants in North America to walk off the job. However, in order to support their families, Steen and his coworkers resigned from formal union membership in November and exercised their right to return to work.

After resigning, Steen and his coworkers were ordered to appear at an internal “kangaroo” court (which the employees refused to attend), where union officials imposed the fines on the employees for continuing to do their jobs. USWA union officials also sought to retaliate against the workers for informing others of their legal right to refrain from formal union membership.

While at work during the strike, Steen received approximately 10 pieces of hate mail from union officials. On two different occasions, USWA union operatives shouted through bullhorns outside Steen’s residence, calling him a “low life” for refusing to abandon his job. And in a separate incident, another union-strike supporter threatened one of Steen’s coworkers over the phone that he would be fined for “everything he made and then some” and would be fired once the strike was over.

Download the settlement

**Gulfport, MS (August 14, 2007)** – Three employees of the Island View Casino have filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop union organizers from obtaining confidential information about Island View employees and from demanding other organizing assistance from Island View management in violation of federal labor law.

In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi with the help of National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, the three employees, detail how Teamsters, International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) and UNITE-HERE union officials are attempting to violate the Labor Management Relations Act by demanding that Island View hand over “things of value” to union organizers. Among these, Teamsters, IUOE, and UNITE union organizers have demanded confidential records containing personal information about employees, sweeping physical access to Gulfside’s properties for organizing, and control over all communications Gulfside has with its employees concerning the unions.

The federal law provisions at issue are meant to prevent sweetheart deals between employers and unions which induce union officials to sell out the interests of the employees they are supposed to represent.

The unions’ demands are part of a “Memorandum of Agreement” that union officials signed with the management of the Grand Casino Gulfport. The remaining assets of the now-defunct Grand Casino were purchased by the Gulfside Casino Partnership in December 2005 after the Grand Casino was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

So-called “neutrality and card check” agreements give union organizers sweeping power to browbeat rank-and-file workers into union ranks. Armed with confidential personnel information, union organizers often make “house calls” where they can intimidate or harass employees into signing cards that are then counted as “votes” for unionization. “Card checks” also deny employees the privacy and limited protections afforded workers during a National Labor Relations Board-run secret ballot election over whether to unionize.

In past National Right to Work Foundation-assisted cases, employees have reported being misled about the cards’ true purpose, and some employees have even had to threaten police action to get union organizers off their property. The Island View employees and their co-workers are particularly concerned about the prospect of home visits from union organizers, after hearing stories of intimidation during organizing drives at other area casinos.

“Union bosses are determined to force unionization on Island View employees from the top down, like it or not,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “These employees believe that the union bosses are more concerned with bolstering union ranks than with representing rank-and-file employees.”

Mississippi is one of 22 Right to Work states in which union membership and dues payment is strictly voluntary. However, if union officials are granted monopoly bargaining power over Island View employees, the workers will no longer be free to negotiate individually over their own wages and working conditions.

Download the Federal Lawsuit