High Point, N.C. (June 1, 2004) – Employees at the Thomas Built Bus facility in High Point have filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for an election that could strip officials of the nation’s largest auto workers union of their newly granted “exclusive representation” power over roughly 1,100 of the company’s employees.

The official filing comes on the heels of top United Auto Workers (UAW) brass expressing confidence in the local press that the UAW union enjoys “majority” support among Thomas Built employees.

With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, Jeff Ward filed the decertification petition signed by 36 percent of his coworkers after Thomas Built began bargaining with the UAW union without allowing the employees to cast a secret ballot to determine their union status.

Bowing to pressure brought by UAW union operatives, Freightliner, Thomas Built’s parent company, signed a so-called “neutrality agreement” that prohibits a traditional and less abusive secret ballot election process in favor of a coercive “card check” campaign. Under the agreement, union organizers were given full access to employees’ personal information and company facilities to browbeat workers into signing union recognition cards that were counted as “votes” for unionization. Employees complained of “captive audience” speeches during which Freightliner and UAW officials coerced employees to sign cards.

If a decertification election is allowed and is successful, the UAW would lose its special privilege to act as the “exclusive bargaining representative” of the employees. All Thomas Built Bus employees then would be free to negotiate their own terms and conditions of employment and could be rewarded on their individual merit.

“Thomas Built employees should be allowed, once and for all, to have a voice in whether they are unionized,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “It’s an outrage that Freightliner struck a backroom deal with UAW officials to deny these workers their rights.”

The filing of the decertification petition follows Ward’s filing of an unfair labor practice charge at the NLRB against his employer and UAW officials for jointly coercing the plant’s workers to accept an unwanted union pursuant to the so-called “neutrality agreement.” In addition, Ward recently appeared at a Capitol Hill press conference to denounce abuses suffered by workers at the High Point facility at the hands of UAW operatives in their recent organizing push.

Under the National Labor Relations Act, if 30% or more of the employees in a bargaining unit sign a decertification petition, the NLRB should conduct a secret ballot election to determine if a majority of the employees wish to decertify the union and stop it from any further “exclusive representation.”

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.