Foundation Attorneys Win Another NLRB Case: Union Bosses Retaliated Against Nonmember By Yanking Seniority
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled in favor of a nonunion worker represented by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, finding that Interstate Bakeries Corp. and local Teamsters union officials violated the law when they stripped a nonmember worker of his seniority during a merger.
In November of 2005, company and union officials agreed to consolidate two corporate divisions. One division was staffed by a single nonunion sales representative who had put in more time with the company than any of his counterparts at the other division. Company officials tried to ensure that he retained his seniority during the merger, but Teamsters officials stood fast, insisting on discriminating against him because of his nonunion status.
In the sales business, seniority has serious implications for workers. The longer you’ve been with the company, the better your chances are of securing more desirable sales routes and vacation time. In this case, union officials wanted to unilaterally strip a nonunion sales representative of his earned seniority, placing him at the bottom of the totem pole. It was effectively retaliation for his nonunion status.
Fortunately, the NLRB agreed with Foundation attorneys and found that union officials broke the law when they discriminated against the nonunion sales representative by favoring unionized employees during the merger. Here’s the crux of the decision (emphasis mine):
The only difference between Rammage [the nonunion worker] and those Dolly Madison employees who were dovetailed [given favorable seniority status during the merger] was the fact that Rammage had not previously been represented by the Union. The Union admits that it treated Rammage differently and unfavorably because he was not previously represented. In addition, the comments of Respondent Employer’s managers Roberts and Simmons to Rammage, that he lost his seniority because "he was not in the Union," demonstrate that he was singled out becasue he had not previously been represented by a labor organization.
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Cross the Union Bosses, Get a Molotov Cocktail (or 2)
On Friday, a United States District Court judge sentenced a former union organizer to six months in prison and three years of probation for his participation in an arson against a nonunion concrete plant. The Albany Times Union has the details:
The May 2003 arson was part of an organized effort by two union officials to sabotage companies that were using non-unionized workers at construction sites.
The sentencing of Michael Kwarta, 32, who had served as a labor organizer and sergeant-at-arms for Local 190 of Glenmont, marked the culmination of a meandering federal investigation into the underworld of Albany’s politically connected laborers’ unions.
The arson triggered a federal grand jury investigation of the union’s ties to elected officials, public contracts and organized crime figures, and also whether top union leaders had authorized the firebombing.
Even though just about everybody in the union knew about Kwarta’s role in the arson — when an accomplice "hurled two Molotov cocktails at an operations trailer filled with computer equipment and it caught fire" — union hierarchy gladly kept him on the payroll for five years until just days before he entered his guilty plea. (Apparently he was just doing his job.)
For all their government-imposed special privileges, union thugs aren’t above the law. Oh, actually, in many ways, they are:
The most egregious example of organized labor’s special privileges and immunities is the 1973 United States v. Enmons decision. In it, the United States Supreme Court held that union violence is exempted from the Hobbs Act, which makes it a federal crime to obstruct interstate commerce by robbery or extortion. As a result, thousands of incidents of violent assaults (directed mostly against workers) by union militants have gone unpunished. Meanwhile, many states also restrict the authority of law enforcement to enforce laws during strikes.
Foundation Action: Foundation Seeks Federal Investigation into Union Political Fundraising
The cover story of the September/October issue of Foundation Action covers efforts by the Foundation to expose an SEIU union political fundraising scheme that coerces workers to support union politics, and to get the Department of Labor and Department of Justice investigate the scheme.
Read the whole story here (pdf) and sign up today for a free print subscription.
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Federal Court Halts Scheme by Teamsters Union Bosses to Illegally Collect Forced Dues
Pittsburgh, PA (September 26, 2008) – The United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of seven Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC) employees against the Teamsters union and PTC for seizing forced union dues in violation of the employees’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.
With free legal aid from staff attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, the seven Turnpike workers filed a federal lawsuit last year against Teamsters Local 250, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), and the PTC. Local 250 is the certified monopoly bargaining agent of Turnpike employees – every employee, like it or not, is forced to accept union representation and is required to pay dues or fees to the union to keep his or her job.
In the Foundation-won Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson (1986), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously established due process safeguards to ensure that employees are not compelled to subsidize union activities beyond what union officials can prove is spent on collective bargaining. Union expenditures such as organizing and political activism cannot be legally charged to workers who exercise their right to refrain from union membership. Before collecting an “agency fee” from a nonmember employee, a union must provide an adequate explanation for the basis of the fee, verified by an independent auditor, and an opportunity for the worker to challenge the amount of the fee before an impartial third party.
In its decision released on Thursday, the District Court found that Local 250 failed to provide an adequate basis for the forced union fee seized from the seven workers, from whom the PTC seized more than 92 percent of the dues formal union members paid. The court found that the local’s “procedures for chargeability audits are faulty and incomplete.” Specifically, Local 250 failed to break down the portion of the fees which went to the local’s national affiliates.
Particularly troubling are the court’s findings that the “independent auditor” relied solely on a personal conversation with a Local 250 union boss, “word of mouth” from IBT chiefs, and a quick look at the local’s year end balance sheets to verify the chargeability of the union’s expenses. Local union officials also failed to even obtain an audit of its expenses one year.
The court awarded nominal damages, restitution of the nonchargeable portions of the agency fees seized after the employees resigned in writing (plus interest), and attorneys’ fees. It will hold an evidentiary to determine the amount of the restitution. At the hearing, the court will also consider whether six of the employees may be entitled to restitution for an earlier period because union bosses failed to provide them adequate Hudson notices after they orally expressed their desire to resign from the union.
“Unfortunately, Pennsylvania does not have a Right to Work law,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “In the absence of such a protection, union bosses will continue to try to extract as much dues money as possible from dissenting workers.”
Card Check Forced Unionism: Biggest Intervention Since New Deal?
Big Labor apologist Mark Weisbrot had a piece defending the woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act in Tuesday’s Chicago Sun-Times. Money quote (emphasis mine):
This law would probably change Americans’ lives more than any legislation since the New Deal brought us Social Security. The political influence of millions of new union members would also bring us closer to such basic reforms as universal health care. It’s all long overdue.
Of course, millions of new forced dues paying union members would only increase union bosses’ influence, not the workers’ influence — nearly half of whom do not support Big Labor’s political agenda.
Meanwhile, American who agrees with Big Labor’s political agenda can already choose to financially (or otherwise) support union-backed candidates and causes. But union bosses, you see, know better than the average worker. The average worker isn’t giving enough support to the Far Left politicians prefered by union officials on his own. So union bosses want to use dues money, seized from workers’ paychecks, to finance their own political activism.
Worse, an increase in Card Check forced unionism will open the doors for rampant intimidation of workers by union goons — so much of the increased dues money going to these politics will be from workers who were pressured into union ranks through card check.
Employees should indeed have a free choice — to determine their own representation and to decide for themselves if they want to join a union or fund its political activism.
Many Ways to Get Wired in to America’s Right to Work Movement
Since you already read this blog (after all you’re here aren’t you) here are some other ways you can keep up with everything the National Right to Work Foundation does to defend employees from the abuses of compulsory unionism:
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These are just a few of the many ways to stay on top of the critical developments in the Right to Work movement. Whether you are at work, at home, or on vacation, all you need is a computer to get started.
Foundation Defends Ohio Religious Objectors
Here’s our latest press release on the Foundation’s efforts to defend the rights of religious objectors to refrain from supporting union activities that offend their deeply-held beliefs:
Cincinnati, Ohio (September 24, 2008) – National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys recently obtained settlements with the National Education Association (NEA) union for two teachers whose consciences would not allow them to pay mandatory dues to support a union involved in activities they consider immoral. Geralyn Buening and Tessy Huwer, both practicing Catholics, objected to the NEA’s positions on abortion and special rights for homosexuals.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination against religious employees and requires companies and unions to attempt to reasonably accommodate employees’ sincerely-held religious beliefs. The obligation to accommodate includes the payment of compulsory union fees, as no employee should be forced to fund a union that engages in activities that offend their religious convictions.
The Ohio teachers originally filed charges against the NEA teacher union with the Ohio Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), alleging that the union was in violation of their rights as religious objectors. In return for withdrawing the charges, the settlement allows the teachers to redirect their mandatory agency fees to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, rather than pay any funds whatsoever to a union hierarchy steeped in objectionable social activism.
Read the rest of the press release here. For more on the Foundation’s efforts to ensure unwilling Ohio teachers aren’t forced to fund morally objectionable causes, check out here and here.
Two Ohio Teachers of Faith Win Right to Refrain From Supporting Objectionable Union
Cincinnati, Ohio (September 24, 2008) – National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys recently obtained settlements with the National Education Association (NEA) union for two teachers whose consciences would not allow them to pay mandatory dues to support a union involved in activities they consider immoral. Geralyn Buening and Tessy Huwer, both practicing Catholics, objected to the NEA’s positions on abortion and special rights for homosexuals.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act forbids discrimination against religious employees and requires companies and unions to attempt to reasonably accommodate employees’ sincerely-held religious beliefs. The obligation to accommodate includes the payment of compulsory union fees, as no employee should be forced to fund a union that engages in activities that offend their religious convictions.
The Ohio teachers originally filed charges against the NEA teacher union with the Ohio Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), alleging that the union was in violation of their rights as religious objectors. In return for withdrawing the charges, the settlement allows the teachers to redirect their mandatory agency fees to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, rather than pay any funds whatsoever to a union hierarchy steeped in objectionable social activism.
The Ohio Education Association (OEA) has a long and abusive record of refusing to accommodate religious objectors in the workplace. National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have helped Ohio teachers in dozens of cases over the last decade involving the OEA and its affiliates. The EEOC has filed suit against OEA affiliates and released findings that OEA affiliates violated the rights of religious objectors. Congress has also investigated the problem of the OEA and its treatment of employees of faith. In fact, one OEA attorney went so far as to tell Carol Katter, a life-long Catholic, that she should “change religions” when she requested a religious accommodation to redirect her union fees to a charitable organization.
“While we applaud the EEOC for working with our legal aid team to reach an equitable settlement, abuses of this nature will continue as long as Ohio lacks a Right to Work law,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Making union affiliation completely voluntary is the most effective way to free employees from the abuses of forced unionism.”
Foundation Pushes NLRB to Make Its Shadowy “Card Check» Database Public
Responding to a request from the National Right to Work Foundation, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has finally made its so-called "voluntary recognition” database available to the public by posting it online.
So-called “voluntary recognitions” occur when union bosses and leveraged employers agree to bargain without the affected employees ever having chosen the union through an NLRB-supervised secret-ballot election. Such recognitions are the ultimate goal of most vicious, multi-pronged pressure campaigns waged by union forces against targeted employers.
As result of the Foundation’s Dana/Metalydyne victory, employees may now obtain a traditional decertification election immediately after finding themselves pressured into union ranks through "card check" or other means.
However, in order to obtain the ability to block employees from freeing themselves from union monopoly bargaining once 45 days have elapsed, union officials must now report the occurance of a voluntary recognition in the first place. This “VR Database” is now available on-line and allows the public to see the over 380 so-called “voluntary recognitions” recorded in the past year.
As of September 9, interested persons may access the database by going to the NLRB website and clicking on “ Frequently Requested Documents” under the “What’s New” column. The database can be found by scrolling down to “Dana Corp. and Metaldyne Briefs and Documents” and clicking on “Post Dana Corp. Case Processing” or by going here.
