AT&T Employee Files Federal Charges Against Communications Union for Illegal Threats

CWA union bosses told worker they would “take him to court” for refusing to go on strike

St. Louis, Missouri (April 13, 2009) – A St. Louis-based AT&T worker has filed federal unfair labor practice charges against a national union for illegal threats in the run-up to an impending national strike.

With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, David McBride of Granite City, Illinois filed charges alleging that Communication Workers of America (CWA) union officials threatened him with legal action if he refused to go on strike and failed to provide him with a federally-mandated audit of union expenditures.

CWA union officials appear to be on the verge of ordering 20,000 employees to abandon their jobs as part of a nationwide strike against AT&T Mobility. However, numerous employees across the United States have contacted the National Right to Work Foundation for legal advice after being falsely informed by CWA officials that they are obligated to participate in the union’s upcoming work stoppage or face severe penalties.

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Click here to read the whole thing. The St. Louis Business Journal's coverage of the charges is available online here. 

Last year, Freedom@Work reported on the allegations of corruption against Tyrone Freeman, former boss of the largest Service Employees International Union (SEIU) affiliate in California. Freeman spent nearly three-quarters of a million dollars of rank-and-file workers' forced union dues on his wife's and mother's companies and on a luxurious fat-cat lifestyle. The Los Angeles Times later reported Freeman's SEIU affiliate "charity" failed to spend a single cent on its charitable mission in two of the four years it has been in existence.

Today, the Los Angeles Times reports another SEIU union official corruption scandal, this time executive vice president of the SEIU's Illinois-Indiana health care affiliate and national SEIU union board member Byron Hobbs.

Hobbs is accused of billing the union for $9,000 for personal expenses. The LA Times continues its report by putting the latest scandal in context:

...[former Freeman Chief-of-Staff] Rickman Jackson, was removed as head of the SEIU's largest Michigan local, because he allegedly received improper lease payments for his Bell Gardens house.

Annelle Grajeda, president of both a second L.A. local and the SEIU's state council, has been on leave since August, when the union began investigating whether she had improperly used her influence to keep her ex-boyfriend on the county payroll...

Last month, the union imposed a trusteeship on an Oakland-based local and fired its officers, accusing them of misusing dues money to wage a political battle against SEIU President Andy Stern.

And of course, who can forget that it was a SEIU union boss who was engaged in pay-to-play talks with former [and corrupt] Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich -- to allegedly buy Obama's then-vacant U.S. Senate seat.

Unfortunately, the people most hurt by union boss corruption are the rank-and-file workers, especially in forced unionism states. Right to work laws, allow workers to hold union officials more accountable by exercising because workers can cut off union dues if they don’t like union officials' so-called “representation,” politics, corruption, or fat-cat lifestyles.