14 Jun 2007

U.S. Supreme Court Rules in National Right to Work Foundation’s Case: Union Officials Have No Constitutional Right to Spend Employees’ Forced Dues for Politics

Posted in News Releases

**Washington, DC (June 14, 2007)** – The U.S. Supreme Court today unanimously reversed a novel Washington State Supreme Court ruling that discovered a “constitutional right” for union officials to spend dissenting employees’ mandatory dues on political causes they oppose. The ruling merely reinstates an ineffective state campaign finance law that had opened the door for courts to misinterpret the First Amendment.

Today’s ruling comes in *Davenport v. Washington Education Association (WEA)*, a case brought by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys for Gary Davenport and more than 4,000 Washington teachers who are not union members, but who are nonetheless forced to pay union dues.

In striking down the Washington High Court ruling, however, the U.S. Supreme Court avoided the more critical and far sweeping question — whether union officials should be able to automatically collect forced dues for politics from nonunion members in the first place. That clarification, sought by Foundation attorneys would have freed roughly one million nonunion employees nationwide from each having hundreds of dollars in compulsory dues automatically deducted each year. Surprisingly, the U.S. Solicitor General actually supported the union’s position on this key question and tried to steer the Justices away from ruling in the employees’ favor.

Although pointing out that the court below had “read far too much into our admonition that ‘dissent is not to be presumed,’” the High Court did not rule against unions’ objection policies used nationwide. Under such policies, employees must do more than simply resign from union membership. In order to reclaim fees spent for politics, union officials often require employees to object every single year.

“America’s workers laboring under compulsory unionism are little better off after today’s ruling,” stated Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Rather than promoting more ineffective campaign finance regulations that risk further undermining the First Amendment, sincere reformers should instead turn their attention to attacking the root problem of compulsory unionism. No one should be forced to join or pay dues to a union in the first place.”

The Washington State Supreme Court last year struck down the remaining union dues provisions in I-134 (also known as Section 760), Washington’s troubled “paycheck protection” campaign finance statute, and in the process created a precedent that union lawyers could have used to attack Right to Work laws across America.

The Davenport case brought into focus how ineffective “paycheck protection” campaign finance laws are in protecting employees laboring under forced unionism. Although upheld by U.S Supreme Court, I-134 will only result in individual refunds of $10 per year, on average. After the law originally took effect, union officials learned how to collect 60 percent more dues for politics simply by changing their accounting procedures and tweaking the nature of their expenditures.

“Courts reacting to this misguided ‘paycheck protection’ campaign finance law nearly turned the First Amendment upside down,” said Gleason. “Reformers in other states would be wise not to turn down this blind alley.”

Download the decision

For interviews, contact Justin Hakes, Legal Information Director, at (703) 770-3317

For background on the Davenport decision, see our special *Davenport* Supreme Court Case Page.

13 Jun 2007

Study: A Decade of Experience Independently Confirming “Paycheck Protection” Campaign Finance Regulation is Both Bad Policy and

Posted in News Releases

Below is a selection of the continuously growing body of work confirming both the ineffectiveness and imprudence of so-called “paycheck protection” campaign finance laws which hope to regulate the expenditure of union funds on politics. Included are news articles, commentary articles, academic studies, and legal briefs from the last ten years demonstrating the many failings of promoting these campaign finance regulations.

**April 1998**
*Investors Business Daily*: What Does Paycheck Protection Protect? by Bob Adams

Key quote: “No matter what the outcome of Prop. 226, Big Labor will score a victory in the long run. If it is passed, California workers – cruelly bombarded with false hopes for months – can only conclude that union political spending is a thing of the past. This false sense of security buys organized labor years to extract even more forced dues for politics. And if CRI loses, organized labor achieves a public relations coup, energizing its activists and convincing lawmakers that they’ll be steamrolled if they cross Big Labor.”

**April 1998**
*Seattle Times*: Piercing the popular myth of ‘paycheck protection’ by Michelle Malkin

Key quote: “If the experience in Washington State holds, unions across the country will have an easy time – on members’ dime – inventing new and improved ways to divert compulsory dues to fund campaign activities. And state law-enforcement officials will support them.”

**May 1998**
Public Service Research Council Special Report: “Paycheck Protections” and the Washington Experience: What impact did it really have on union politics? by David Denholm

Key quote: “Did the initiative’s requirement that political payroll deductions be authorized annually in writing reduce union political activity or influence” Apparently not.”

**June 1998**
*National Review*: Protection Racket: The Right’s favorite campaign reform idea sounds too good to be true. It is. by Michael Lynch (Washington editor of Reason Magazine)

Key quote: “these laws can regulate only a small portion of private sector union dues spent on political and ideological activity, and unions have a strong financial incentive to avoid even these regulations. Both deficiencies are on display in Washington State, which is hailed by backers of paycheck protection.”

**July 1998**
*Orange County Register*: Labor formed a plan to skirt Prop 226 rules by Jeff Jacoby

Key quote: “In short, the new [paycheck protection] law wouldn’t have changed a thing. Real paycheck protection is about ending compulsory unionism in the first place.”

**March 2001**
*The Weekly Standard*: One Cheer for Paycheck Protection: It won’t stop unions from political mischief by Jeff Jacoby & Michelle Malkin

Key quote: “Experiences in Washington state and California show that laws intended to stop unions from spending forced dues on politics have been vastly oversold. They have done little to reduce massive political expenditures of mandatory dues on left-wing lobbying, Democratic party-building, and soft-money “issues” ads designed to hurt Republicans. Worst of all, they do nothing to curb the power of unions to extract dues from dissenting members in the first place.”

**June 2005**
*Sacramento Bee*: ‘Paycheck protection’ measures have little impact in 4 of 5 states by Bee Reporter Andy Furillo

Key quote: “In Washington, the unions have blunted paycheck protection in the courts and are spending money on politics like never before. In Michigan, union outlays still reach into the millions, while in Wyoming labor spending only got higher after paycheck protection. Idaho’s voluntary contribution law has since been enjoined in the federal courts. Robert P. Hunter, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich., a free-market public policy think tank, said paycheck protection has done nothing to curb union spending in the state.”

**August 2006**
Heritage Foundation Data Analysis Report: What Do Union Members Want” What Paycheck Protection Laws Show About How Well Unions Reflect Their Members’ Priorities by James Sherk, Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy at the Heritage Foundation (page 10)

Key quote: “Circumstantial reports certainly suggest that union leaders simply ramp up their unconstrained soft money spending when their members have the option of opting out of hard money donations… effectively sidestepping the law.”

**November 2006**
Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s “Friend of the Court” Brief in *Washington v. WEA* and *Davenport v. WEA* U.S. Supreme Court cases, authored by Eric Martin (pages 11-12)

Key quote: “Even if every non-member declined to opt-in to the use of dues for political purposes, the impact to the WEA would amount to less than ¼ of 1% of the WEA’s total expenditures…. Such a miniscule drop in funds available for political purposes hardly has the crippling effect complained of by the WEA…”

**January 2007**
*Pittsburgh Tribune-Review*: Laboring against free speech by George C. Leef, Execuive Director of the Pope Center for Higher Education

Key quote: “Union officials are adept at evading such “paycheck protection” regulations because the definition of politics covered is extremely narrow. After slight changes to their accounting and spending practices, union bosses can continue business as usual, and Washington’s experience proved no exception.”

**June 2007**
*The National Review*: Freedom to Choose the Union Label by Jim Bopp, general counsel to the James Madison Center for Free Speech

Key quote: “While the Court’s decision in Davenport v. WEA is welcome, other states should not rush to enact similar laws. They should instead address the underlying problem of state compulsion… A paycheck-protection act (PPA) actually endorses and supports this underlying compulsion and merely attempts to remove some of the objectionable effects of such compulsory arrangements.”

**June 2007**
*The Detroit News*: Don’t copy Washington state’s union dues law by Bradley A. Smith, former member of the Federal Election Commission and chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics

Key quote: “The problem of ineffectiveness is not the only reason why paycheck protection is a blind alley. By embracing the campaign finance regulatory approach, its promoters are trying to use the tools of the political left — that is, government regulations — to solve a problem caused by government. This path is fraught with danger and could continue to backfire, as it nearly did in Washington state. The real problem is that forcing employees to pay any dues — for politics or anything else — is fundamentally unjust.”

6 Jun 2007

Federal Court Enjoins Illegal Union Dues Seizures from Pennsylvania Turnpike Employees

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**Harrisburg, PA (June 6, 2007)** — A federal judge has enjoined a Teamsters union local, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and two Turnpike Commission officers from continuing to seize union dues from the paychecks of 20 Pennsylvania Turnpike employees who brought suit to vindicate their constitutional rights. The preliminary injunction also blocks enforcement of a longtime union policy that bars thousands of employees in Pennsylvania from resigning from formal union membership for up to three years.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is providing free legal aid to two groups of Turnpike employees from Harrisburg and Pittsburgh in their challenge to the unlawful collection of forced union dues. This injunction pertains to the Harrisburg lawsuit involving Teamsters union Local 77.

The employees filed the parallel lawsuits in March citing multiple violations of employees’ rights by Turnpike and Teamsters union Local 77 and Local 250 officials in confiscating forced dues from employees who, in the case of the Pittsburgh employees, who had resigned their formal union membership. In Pennsylvania, a compulsory unionism state, nonunion members can only be forced to pay for a union’s proven collective bargaining costs.

The Harrisburg lawsuit includes a potentially precedent-setting claim challenging the constitutionality of a clause in the collective bargaining agreement that prohibits employees from resigning their formal union membership except during a narrow 15-day window prior to the expiration of a three-year contract.

In granting the employees’ motion for a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher C. Conner noted that, under the policy, “the only way plaintiffs can resign from the union is to leave their employment” and employees are subject to union discipline and must pay full dues despite their “disagreement with the union’s ideology or politics.” The judge found that the policy “may have a direct and deleterious impact on plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendment,” and that union officials’ actions demonstrated a “real or immediate danger to their First Amendment rights.”

These so-called “maintenance of membership” clauses are common in the public sector in Pennsylvania and exist in several other states. Union officials use them to block employees from exercising their constitutional rights to refrain from formal union membership and cut off compulsory dues unrelated to monopoly bargaining.

“Union officials want to keep Pennsylvania’s public employees from exercising what limited rights they still possess to cut off payment of compulsory union dues,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “Until employees in the Keystone State are protected by a Right to Work law making union dues payment strictly voluntary, such abuses will inevitably continue.”

The union hierarchy is violating the minimal procedural protections required by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1988 *Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson* decision. In the Foundation-won Hudson case, the High Court ruled that before collecting any forced dues, union officials must provide an audited disclosure of the union’s expenses and give employees an opportunity to object to paying forced union dues spent for certain activities.

Download the Injunction

5 Jun 2007

Steelworkers Union Faces Prosecution for Illegal Retaliatory Strike Fines And Intimidation of Goodyear Employees

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**Akron, OH (June 5, 2007)** – After several employees at the local Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (NYSE:GT) facility filed a wave of federal charges, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has agreed to prosecute the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) union for hitting nonunion workers with illegal retaliatory strike fines and waging an ugly campaign of threats, recriminations, and hate mail.

With help from attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, Goodyear employee Frank C. Steen III originally filed federal charges against the USWA union after officials levied fines of $620 each against several employees for refusing to walk off the job during a union-ordered strike. Union officials imposed the fines on each of the workers after ordering them to attend an internal “kangaroo” court (which the employees refused to attend) for continuing to do their jobs. Union officials also “accused” the employees of allegedly informing others of their legal right to refrain from formal union membership.

Between October 2006 and January 2007, USWA officials ordered employees to walk off the job at the Goodyear plant. 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 USWA officials issued the unlawful fines, Steen filed federal charges against USWA union officials because they disregarded the employees’ November resignations and unlawfully continued to deduct full union dues from their paychecks.

After his resignation, Steen received approximately 10 pieces of hate mail from union officials. Similarly, 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. 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.

“Union officials want Frank Steen and his coworkers to shut up and pay up,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “This case shows the contempt that union officials often have for employees who exercise independent judgment and who work to support their families during an unpopular strike.”

According to the NLRB Regional Director, the case will be heard before an Administrative Law Judge on August 21, 2007. The order for an official hearing comes after Goodyear saw a USWA union-ordered walkout of over 15,000 of its employees across its 16 plants in North America for several months.

“Unfortunately, as long as Ohio workers labor without the protections of a Right to Work law – which makes union affiliation and dues payment strictly voluntary – abuses of this nature will surely continue throughout the Buckeye State,” said Gleason.

Dowload the complaint

1 Jun 2007

SEIU Union Lawyers File Desperate Federal Lawsuit to Block SFO Screeners’ Election to Rid Workplace of Forced Union Dues

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San Francisco, CA (June 1, 2007) — National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have filed a motion to intervene to stop a desperate, last-ditch effort by union lawyers to block the federal labor board from conducting a secret-ballot election in which 900 airport security screeners at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) may choose to end the union’s ability to seize compulsory union dues.

With 900 screeners forced to pay roughly $400 each per year, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officials stand to lose upwards of $360,000 annually in compulsory dues if the employees succeed, and Foundation attorneys will ask the court to throw out the SEIU lawsuit.

That lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 20 Director, as well as appointed Members of the NLRB in Washington, DC. The suit claims that these officials do not have the discretion to allow employees to exercise their statutory right to an election. The NLRB has final jurisdiction over such “deauthorization” elections, and a federal court has no legal authority to enjoin the election.

Led by Stephen Burke, a four-and-a-half year employee of Covenant Aviation Security at SFO, the screeners are upset that SEIU officials became their monopoly bargaining agent in the first place — without a secret-ballot election, but rather through a coercive “card check” campaign — and almost immediately ordered the security screeners to pay union dues or be fired from their jobs.

Under coercive “card check” unionization, rather than a vote in a government-supervised secret ballot election, union operatives may browbeat dissenting workers into signing cards later counted as “votes” favoring unionization. Since gaining monopoly bargaining power over the screeners, many have reported that the union hierarchy is unresponsive, and unwilling to do anything other than collect forced dues. Many screeners have reported that this dissatisfaction fostered the deauthorization effort.

Hundreds of SFO security screeners apparently object to the mandatory union dues requirement. Over 45 percent of Burke’s coworkers signed the deauthorization petition, far beyond the 30 percent necessary to trigger the NLRB supervised-election. If a majority of all employees in the bargaining unit vote in favor of deauthorization, union officials will be stripped of their special privilege to compel payment of dues.

“Without the ability to withhold union dues, SFO screeners have virtually no leverage to keep union officials from continuing to act in their own self-interest,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation, a charitable organization that is assisting the screeners in vindicating their rights. “This desperate lawsuit against the Members of the NLRB demonstrates how aggressively union officials guard their special legal privilege to shake down employees for union dues.”

SEIU officials had previously tried to block the employees from obtaining the deauthorization election by challenging signatures collected in opposition to the forced dues clause before it took effect. However, the NLRB in Washington, DC, recently rejected that challenge and ordered the election to proceed.

30 May 2007

Over 300 Treasure Island Foods Employees Finally Allowed a Vote on Ousting Unpopular Union

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**Chicago, IL (May 30, 2007)** – After multiple attempts by United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Locals 881 and 1546 lawyers to block a decertification election, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 13 ruled that over 300 employees of Treasure Island Foods, Inc. at six local stores have a right to vote on whether to oust the unwanted union.

Treasure Island employees originally filed for a union decertification election in 2004, after UFCW officials ordered an unpopular boycott and fell out of favor with the vast majority of employees. Even though the employees’ petition was timely filed, UFCW Local 881 and 1546 officials thwarted it by filing a series of “blocking charges” at the NLRB against Treasure Island Foods for allegedly encouraging employee dissatisfaction with the union.

In 2005, after obtaining signatures from an overwhelming majority of employees at the grocery chain, Dan Schalin and his coworkers filed another decertification election petition at the NLRB. Threatened by the independent-minded employees’ petition, UFCW union officials continued to file multiple unfair labor practice charges against Treasure Island to block the election. UFCW union officials alleged that Treasure Island illegally sent letters to its employees encouraging them to file the petition, but an administrative law judge rejected that claim.

Finally, with help from attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, Schalin and his coworkers requested that the petition for decertification be reinstated. Late last week, the NLRB Regional Director ruled in favor of their request, stating that Treasure Islands’ written letters never tainted the employees’ showing of interest in the petition.

“UFCW officials have thrown up every stumbling block possible over three years to block Treasure Island employees from exercising their free choice,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The hostility of the union hierarchy to workers’ interests shows why Illinois needs a Right to Work law that would make union affiliation and dues payment strictly voluntary.”

A decertification election, an NLRB-supervised secret ballot election to oust a union, is generally an uphill battle for workers to obtain, particularly because union lawyers are adept at gumming up the works by filing baseless charges that often block an election for years. Under the National Labor Relations Act, a decertification election gives employees the opportunity to cast a vote to remove the union as the “exclusive bargaining representative” in a workplace, but one can only be sought during narrowly proscribed periods every few years. If the Treasure Island employees vote to revoke the unwanted UFCW union’s “certification,” employees at all six stores in the Chicago area will become nonunion and free to negotiate over their own wages and working conditions.

Download the Employee’s Request for Review
Download the NLRB’s Order Reinstating the Decertification Petition

29 May 2007

Foundation Letter to the Wall Street Journal: State’s ‘Paycheck Protection’ Law Is Flawed

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*This letter to the editor originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal*

***State’s ‘Paycheck Protection’ Law Is Flawed***
**May 25, 2007; Page A13**

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire and Washington Education Association (WEA) union officials certainly deserve criticism for their last-ditch effort to tamper with the pending *Davenport v. WEA* Supreme Court case. But your May 17 editorial “Paycheck Protection End Run” grossly inflated the impact of the underlying Washington law at issue in the case.

While well-meaning, Washington’s so-called “paycheck protection” law has not reduced the mandatory dues union officials collect from employees for political activism because it contains fundamental flaws. The law is merely a campaign finance regulation that governs a tiny percentage of union political activity at the state level, so union officials simply adjusted their accounting methods, tweaked their spending practices, and continued business as usual. In fact, analyses of the teachers union’s finances shortly after the “paycheck protection” law took effect showed that union officials spent 60% more dues money on politics. The spending has continued to increase ever since.

Fortunately, the pending Davenport case goes beyond simply defending this hollow law.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys brought Davenport on behalf of 4,000 nonunion teachers and are asking the high court to clarify that employees who resign from union membership are inherently “dissenters” against paying for union activities. This simple clarification would free one million nonunion workers in America of the union requirement to object affirmatively every single year — simply to reclaim hundreds of dollars deducted from their paychecks.

With their “emergency” amendment (which itself happens to be unconstitutional), Gov. Gregoire and her union benefactors hope to give the Supreme Court an excuse not to rule. But their concern is not that the “paycheck protection” law had ever drained the unions’ political coffers. Their real fear is a ruling that strengthens the First Amendment protections available to America’s employees forced to pay union dues.

Stefan Gleason
Vice President
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation
Springfield, Va.

14 May 2007

Over 900 SFO Airport Security Screeners to Vote Whether to Eliminate Compulsory Union Dues from Workplace

Posted in News Releases

**San Francisco, CA (May 14, 2007)** — With help from the National Right to Work Foundation, over 900 airport security screeners at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) have successfully petitioned the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for a deauthorization election to stop Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officials from forcing employees to pay union dues as a job condition.

Led by Stephen Burke, a four and a half year employee of Covenant Airport Security at SFO, the workers are upset that SEIU officials became their monopoly bargaining agent — without a secret-ballot election but rather through a coercive “card check” campaign — and almost immediately ordered the security screeners to pay union dues within 30 days or be fired from their jobs.

Hundreds of SFO security screeners apparently object to the mandatory union dues requirement. Over 45 percent of Burke’s coworkers signed the deauthorization petition, far beyond the 30 percent necessary to trigger the NLRB supervised-election.

“Without the ability to withhold union dues, SFO screeners have virtually no leverage to keep union officials from continuing to act in their own self interest,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation, a charitable organization that is assisting the screeners in vindicating their rights.

If a majority of all employees in the bargaining unit vote in favor of deauthorization, union officials will be stripped of their special privilege to compel payment of compulsory dues. The requirement for an absolute majority, set by the National Labor Relations Act, is more difficult for employees to achieve than the standard for certifying a union, which requires only a majority of those voting.

SEIU officials had previously tried to block the employees from obtaining the deauthorization election by challenging signatures collected in opposition to the forced dues clause before it took effect. However, the NLRB in Washington, DC, recently rejected that challenge and ordered the election to proceed.

The election will take place by mail, with the NLRB sending out ballots on June 4, and the results being tallied on June 19. However, even if the deauthorization election succeeds, union officials will still be able to bar the screeners – even those that are not union members – from negotiating over their individual wages and working conditions.

Download the NLRB Order

10 May 2007

13 Former Giant Foods Employees Hit Union with Federal Charges for Unlawful Retaliatory Fines

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**Landover, MD (May 10, 2007)** – A group of 13 ex-employees of Giant Foods, Inc. filed federal charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against two Carpenter union affiliates for failing to inform the employees of their rights and fining them $2,500 each after working for a nonunion employer. The employees worked under union monopoly contracts for over 20 years without union officials informing them of their rights.

Led by Clark Bowling, all 13 are former metal workers at Giant’s Landover warehouse where they performed various jobs for the Mid-Atlantic area grocery chain. Attorneys from the National Right to Work Foundation helped Bowling and his coworkers file the charges after officials from the Millwrights and Machinery Erectors Local 1548 and Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters (MARCC) unions told the employees they were required to be full union members. Union officials then levied retaliatory fines after the employees went to work for nonunion employers.

Union officials demanded that the workers join the Carpenter union affiliates despite failing to inform the employees of their right to refrain from formal union membership and to withhold all forced dues except those spent on union monopoly bargaining.

After the Giant warehouse closed in August 2005, Bowling and his coworkers were unemployed for weeks before securing new employment. Upon learning the workers had chosen a nonunion employer, union officials imposed internal union disciplinary fines against the employees despite the fact that they were not voluntary members of the union.

“It’s despicable for union officials to drive workers towards the poor house, especially after they failed to protect their jobs from being eliminated,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “In states like Maryland, with no Right to Work law that makes payment of union dues strictly voluntary, union officials seem to have a tremendous sense of entitlement to workers’ wages.”

In the Foundation-won *Communication 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 and withhold forced dues for activities other than union monopoly bargaining such as union political activities and organizing. And only truly voluntary union members can be subjected to internal union discipline, such as fines.

9 May 2007

ESPN/ABC Cameraman Challenges Pervasive Entertainment Industry Practice of Illegally Forcing Daily-Hires into Union Ranks

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**Charlotte, NC (May 9, 2007)** – An ESPN television cameraman, occasionally employed as a “daily hire” for the Walt Disney Company (ABC), has filed federal charges against a union challenging the pervasive practice in the entertainment industry of forcing union membership on part-time and freelance independent contractors. The cameraman also alleges union officials unlawfully threatened to have him fired for refusing to pay thousands of dollars in compulsory union dues.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys helped Michael Duke filed the charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after demands from National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians (NABET) Local 31 officials that he join the union, pay a $2,905 “initiation fee,” pay back dues, and authorize union officials to automatically deduct union dues from future paychecks. If Duke refused, union officials stated in a February 20 letter that they would have him barred from working again for ABC.

The NLRB charges detail how NABET officials are illegally trying to force Duke into their dues-paying ranks. As a daily hire, Duke is not subject to compulsory union membership because he is never employed for thirty consecutive days, as required by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

Yet the contract that NABET union officials reached with ABC is illegal on its face because it requires employees to pay forced dues after only 20 non-continuous days of employment in any year or 30 days within two consecutive calendar years – a standard that has no basis in federal labor law.

Despite being facially invalid, requirements of this nature are commonplace in the entertainment industry. Often union officials use threats of blacklisting such workers from future work to press them into paying union dues in violation of federal law.

“By maintaining this blatantly illegal forced unionism policy, NABET officials have been thumbing their noses at employee rights for years while extorting thousands of dollars in illegal union dues and bogus initiation fees,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Foundation attorneys intend to root out this pervasive practice in the entertainment industry.”