Comfort Systems USA Pipefitters and Welders Win Two-Year Battle to Escape Steamfitters Local 52 Union
Union officials made dubious charges concerning pipefitter who collected worker signatures opposing union, but charges were dropped just before hearing
Montgomery, AL (July 15, 2025) – Brandon Davis and his fellow pipefitters and welders at Montgomery-based HVAC company Comfort Systems USA Mid-South have successfully removed Steamfitters Local 52 union bosses from their workplace. Davis, who spearheaded the nearly two-year struggle to oust the union, received free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.
Davis’ effort kicked off in March 2023, when he filed a petition backed by his coworkers asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold a workplace vote to remove (or “decertify”) the union. The NLRB is the federal agency in charge of enforcing federal labor law, a task that includes adjudicating labor disputes and administering elections to install or remove unions.
While Davis’ petition contained more than enough employee signatures under federal law to trigger a union decertification election, he had a backup plan: To avoid any attempts by union officials to use litigation to hold up or cancel the election, he also submitted a copy of his petition to his employer. Under the 2001 Levitz Furniture Co. NLRB precedent, employers can legally withdraw recognition from union bosses as the “exclusive representative” of their employees upon receiving a petition that shows the union does not enjoy majority support among workers – which Davis’ petition did.
Because Davis and his coworkers work in the Right to Work state of Alabama, state law barred Steamfitters union officials from enforcing contracts that required union membership or dues payments as a condition of employment. However, in Right to Work states and non-Right to Work states alike, union officials still have the ability to impose their “exclusive representation” on every worker in a unionized facility, even those who vote against or otherwise oppose the union.
Steamfitters Union Bosses Sought Order Compelling Workers Under Union Control
Comfort Systems stopped recognizing the Steamfitters union in March 2023 based on Davis’ petition. Unfortunately, Steamfitters union officials still tried to trap Davis and his coworkers under their control. Steamfitters union bosses filed a number of unfair labor practice charges against Comfort Systems management in an attempt to elicit an order from the NLRB that would force the company to submit to bargaining with the union – despite the petition showing that the union no longer enjoyed majority support from the workers. One union boss charge even accused Davis of being a manager or being put up to seeking an election, alleging his collection of worker signatures was part of an illegal company plot.
In February 2025, NLRB Region 15 issued a complaint finding merit to the union’s unfair labor practice charges, including the claim that Davis was a member or agent of management. Davis’ Foundation attorneys quickly sought to intervene in the case between the Steamfitters union and Comfort Systems to rebut the union’s allegations. “Should Mr. Davis be denied Intervenor status, an unfavorable determination in this case could destroy the impact of the decertification petition he prepared, i.e., the lawful withdrawal of recognition by his Employer,” read the motion to intervene.
Under pressure from Davis and his Foundation-provided legal team, the NLRB abandoned the allegations that threatened to reimpose the union and agreed to settle all others just three days before a hearing was scheduled to take place. With no remaining challenges to the company’s withdrawal of recognition, Davis and his colleagues are finally free of the Steamfitters union’s control.
“We’re proud to help Mr. Davis and his fellow Comfort Systems employees escape the clutches of Steamfitters union bosses who weren’t standing up for the employees’ interests, but their legal battle should have never lasted this long,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “As the Trump Administration selects new NLRB members, it should seek members who will eliminate policies that let union officials seize forced ‘representation’ powers over workers on the basis of unproven allegations. The Board should instead plan to defend equally workers’ right to associate or disassociate with a union as they please.”
Cornell University Graduate Student Files Federal Charges Seeking End to Union Boss Control Over Graduate Students
Student case attacks Obama-era federal labor board ruling that exposed graduate students to union boss power
Ithaca, NY (July 14, 2025) – Russell Burgett, a Ph.D. candidate in chemical physics at Cornell University, has just launched a groundbreaking federal labor case challenging the Cornell Graduate Student Union’s (an affiliate of United Electrical) authority to maintain exclusive representation powers over him and his fellow graduate students.
Burgett, who opposes the union and is not a member, filed his charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing private sector labor law. Burgett’s case is a direct challenge to the Obama NLRB’s 2016 Columbia University ruling, which overturned longstanding precedent and permitted union bosses to gain monopoly bargaining powers over graduate students at private universities like MIT, Columbia, and Cornell.
While union monopoly bargaining schemes in academia were already controversial at the time of the Columbia University ruling, student opposition to the policy has spiked in recent years as union officials have pursued increasingly radical and divisive ideological activities on campuses.
Charges: NLRB Must Reexamine Union Powers Over Students, Including Forced-Dues Mandates
Burgett’s charges assert that Cornell graduate students are not “employees” under the National Labor Relations Act. For that reason, the charges say, CGSU-UE union officials’ attempts to force them to abide by a union contract – including provisions that effectively mandate the students pay union dues or fees to complete essential parts of their graduate programs – violate federal labor law.
Furthermore, Burgett’s charges contend the union contract is illegal because it forbids the university from doing business with students who abstain from union membership or union financial support. Union agreements that require an entity to cease doing business with persons who refuse to associate with the union are a clear violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
“Mr. Burgett’s case is the latest chapter in a continuing saga showing why union bosses’ one-size-fits-all bargaining schemes have no place in academia,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “At America’s elite universities, union bosses empowered by the Obama and Biden NLRBs are coercing dissenting students into funding their political radicalism and constant agitation – including Jewish students who have sincere religious objections to the anti-Israel vitriol that campus unions push.
“Forcing students to choose between completing their graduate degrees or affiliating with an ideological group they find unconscionable is antithetical to principles of academic freedom, and Mr. Burgett’s case directly attacks the Obama NLRB’s and Biden NLRB’s flawed rulings allowing such coercion to happen in the first place,” Mix added.
DOJ Attorney Battles Biden Admin Union Power Grab Over Justice Department
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation attorneys challenge last minute DOJ unionization in violation of FLRA case law
NTEU union bosses backed Kamala Harris for President, but when voters rejected her, NTEU union officials and the Biden-Harris Administration hastily moved to install the union at the DOJ in an apparent attempt to obstruct Trump’s priorities.
WASHINGTON, DC – In states across the country, union officials go to great lengths to gain more political influence, and will often violate established law to do so.
As veteran Department of Justice attorney Jeffrey Morrison is discovering, federal agencies are no exception. Morrison is challenging a last-minute attempt by National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) bosses to gain monopoly bargaining control over attorneys at both the DOJ Civil Rights Division (CRT, where Morrison is employed) and the DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD).
The unionization campaign was fast-tracked just days after Trump’s November election victory, in an apparent attempt to formally hand NTEU union officials power over the divisions prior to inauguration day. Morrison’s legal action asks the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) to formally review the actions by the Biden DOJ and NTEU officials. The FLRA is the federal agency responsible for adjudicating disputes between federal employees, union officials, and agencies within the federal government.
Brief: DOJ Holdovers and NTEU Bosses Colluded to Flout Existing Law
Morrison, who is receiving free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, contends in filings before the FLRA that the NTEU’s scheme violates an existing FLRA decision in which the agency ruled that CRT attorneys did not comprise a work unit appropriate for unionization.
DOJ management raised this exact concern about the CRT unit with the FLRA after NTEU union bosses began their campaign, but the DOJ dropped its opposition just days after the November federal elections.
Morrison is asking the FLRA to review the decision of the Regional Director to allow the election to go forward in the CRT and ENRD divisions without properly considering if these divisions are an appropriate unit under the law.
Morrison’s filings (called “Applications for Review”) came after DOJ management and NTEU union officials agreed that the CRT and ENRD were work units appropriate for unionization. His Applications for Review point out that a prior FLRA decision, Antitrust Division, held that CRT lawyers “did not have a separate and distinct community of interest from other DOJ trial attorneys” and for that reason couldn’t stand as a distinct bargaining unit.
“[T]he Authority determined this very unit to not be an appropriate unit…The Regional Director’s failure to comply with current, binding Authority precedent is in error and must be reversed,” the Application for Review says regarding the CRT attorneys. This same argument is applied to the ENRD division because it is similarly situated to CRT in the DOJ hierarchy.
FLRA Failed to Conduct Investigation Into NTEU’s Union Scheme
Morrison’s applications also contend that the FLRA “fail[ed] to conduct an independent investigation into the appropriateness of the unit,” despite the law requiring that the FLRA make such a finding.
“An agency agreeing with a union that a unit is appropriate does not mean that unit is actually appropriate. Agencies, like DOJ here, cannot usurp the Authority’s role in deciding unit appropriateness…” say the Applications for Review.
“Right before power changed hands in Washington, DC, NTEU union bosses and DOJ bureaucrats appear to have colluded to flout longstanding precedent that says Justice Department attorneys cannot legally be unionized division by division,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix.
“The FLRA has ignored established precedent to let this hasty unionization attempt go through, and our attorneys are proud to assist Mr. Morrison in opposing this maneuver.”
National Right to Work Foundation Files Legal Brief Defending Wisconsin Act 10 as Union Bosses Seek to Regain Coercive Powers
Amicus brief exposes lower court’s flawed argument that union bosses have “right” to monopoly bargaining powers over workers and government
Washington, DC (July 9, 2025) – The National Right to Work Foundation has submitted an amicus brief to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in Abbotsford Education Association v. Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission. The case, which is on appeal from the Dane County Circuit Court, is a challenge by a cadre of labor unions against Act 10, a 2011 state law that set important restrictions on public sector union officials’ ability to control Wisconsin public services and public workers.
Act 10, among other provisions, prevents unelected union bosses from enforcing monopoly bargaining contracts that would let them dictate key aspects of work and compensation for large portions of state government – even over the objections of public workers themselves and their managers. It also requires union officials to periodically submit to employee votes (or “re-certification”) to ensure that they still enjoy majority employee support in public workplaces where they are in power. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the statute as constitutional in 2014, but union officials believe that the changed ideological makeup of the Court gives them a new opportunity to get the law overturned and regain power.
“[T]he Foundation has frequently offered its views as amicus curiae in cases impacting upon important aspects of employee freedom,” the Foundation’s amicus brief reads. “Most importantly here, the Foundation has provided free legal aid to employees in other challenges mounted by unions against various provisions of 2011 Wisconsin Act 10.”
Lower Wisconsin Court Ignores Clear Supreme Court Precedent in Flawed Act 10 Ruling
The Foundation’s amicus brief first contends that a state like Wisconsin “can define and limit the parameters of exclusive representation as it sees fit,” and union officials’ public sector monopoly bargaining powers are not a “right” that the U.S. or Wisconsin constitutions require the government to acknowledge.
“The United States Supreme Court recognized this principle long ago” in Smith v. Arkansas State Highway Employees, the amicus brief says. The Dane County Circuit Court erroneously called monopoly bargaining a “right” the Wisconsin legislature could not ban in certain public departments but allow in others.
In 2007, Foundation attorneys won a victory at the United States Supreme Court in Davenport v. Washington Education Association that established a similar point to Smith: Union officials have no constitutional “right” to seize money from nonconsenting workers. Wisconsin’s Right to Work law and the Foundation’s Supreme Court victory in Janus v. AFSCME continue to protect Wisconsin workers from being forced to pay union dues or fees to keep their jobs.
The Foundation’s amicus brief also states that the Dane County Circuit Court failed to consider whether, instead of striking down Act 10 as a whole, it could have expanded the statute’s pro-employee liberty provisions to cover all public departments to correct the alleged imbalances the court perceives in the law. “[T]he Circuit Court could have expanded the protection of Act 10’s re-certification requirements to all public employees in the State,” the brief says.
In addition to Act 10’s benefits for independent-minded public workers, public spending analyses indicate that the law has relieved Wisconsin taxpayers from the enormous financial weight of wasteful union contracts. Some estimates show that Act 10 has saved the state roughly $35 billion since it was enacted.
“Act 10 is a simple recognition that voters and taxpayers – not unelected union bosses – should be in control of how the public services Wisconsinites fund are managed,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “But the union boss attempt to nix it is an even more egregious attack on Wisconsin public workers, who under union officials’ proposed regime would be forced to sacrifice to unions the right to freely choose who will speak for them on workplace matters. Even convicted felons have the right to choose their own representation, but union officials seek to deny this right to dissenting public employees.
“The latest attempt to get Act 10 overturned is a power play by Wisconsin union officials that will severely harm the public interest, and no Wisconsin court should be complicit in that scheme,” Mix added.
Hundreds of OH Workers Exit Teamsters as Union Bosses’ Amazon ‘Strike’ Stunt Flounders
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Teamsters O’Brien tried to take away Christmas cheer, but couldn’t take away Ohio workers’ freedom
Daniel Caughhorn led a scrappy group of his coworkers in voting Teamsters bosses out of their workplace, a scrap metal processing facility in Toledo, OH. They also beat back union bosses’ attempts to overturn their vote.
WASHINGTON, DC – This past December, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien announced the “largest-ever strike against Amazon,” claiming that thousands of workers would heed his strike order, abandon their delivery vehicles and hit the picket lines. O’Brien threatened that Christmas gifts would be delayed unless his demands were met.
Those who took O’Brien’s rhetoric at face value would have thought he was a veritable Grinch stealing Christmas (even though he tried to explain it was Amazon’s fault that the strike had to occur). But even reporting from pro-Big Labor outlets soon revealed that the order was more story than substance: According to Labor Notes, only about 600 employees obeyed the strike order despite Teamsters honchos claiming to “represent” some 7,000 to 10,000 Amazon employees.
Even the small number who did cease work on O’Brien’s command are arguably not employees of Amazon, and likely aren’t under Teamsters control at all: They work primarily for independent contractors that carry out some delivery functions for Amazon. Even if O’Brien’s dubious theory claiming he had control over those delivery drivers was correct, it would have only affected 10 out of the roughly 110 Amazon centers nationwide. Still, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys put a special legal notice out to delivery drivers nationwide informing them of their rights if they were illegally coerced to strike.
Workers Defeat Cynical Attempt by Teamsters to Overturn Vote
The December 2024 Teamsters “strike” against Amazon may go down in history as a strained publicity stunt. But the more significant Teamsters news that month was that hundreds of Foundation-backed workers across Northern Ohio took real action by voting to free themselves from unwanted Teamsters officials’ so-called “representation.”
Dusty Hinkle, an employee for Frito-Lay’s plant in Wooster, OH, and Daniel Caughhorn, a worker at scrap metal firm Omnisource’s facility in Toledo, OH, paved the way to freedom for their coworkers by submitting petitions asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold votes among their coworkers to remove or “decertify” Teamsters unions at their facilities. They submitted these in October and August 2024, respectively, with free Foundation legal assistance.
Because Ohio lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, Teamsters officials enforced contracts that required Hinkle, Caughhorn, and their colleagues to pay union dues or fees as a condition of keeping their jobs. In contrast, in Right to Work states, union membership and all union financial support are strictly voluntary.
The NLRB, the federal agency that enforces federal labor law, administered decertification votes at Hinkle’s and Caughhorn’s workplaces after finding that both petitions contained enough employee signatures to trigger a vote under agency rules. Even though clear majorities of workers voted against Teamsters union control in both votes, Teamsters union officials filed objections alleging misconduct by Frito-Lay and Omnisource management in an attempt to overturn the election results.
However, in both cases regional NLRB officials tossed the union objections and certified the workers’ votes. The Omnisource and Frito-Lay employees — over 430 in total — thereby cut all ties with the Teamsters unions. Now both sets of employees are free both of union bosses’ forced-dues demands and their ability to impose one-size-fits-all contracts on the workplace.
In the final months of 2024, Foundation attorneys assisted a number of other workers from across industries with efforts to remove unwanted Teamsters officials. From just October to December 2024, truck drivers from Georgia, California, Virginia, and New Jersey successfully booted out Teamsters union officials or initiated removal efforts with Foundation aid. These cases came despite increasingly hostile rulemaking from the outgoing Biden Administration’s NLRB bureaucrats in 2024, which undid key Foundation-backed reforms that made it easier for workers to request decertification elections.
Teamsters Schemes to Steal Christmas and Workers’ Rights Both Failed
“Sean O’Brien’s Christmas publicity stunt might have made him seem like an attempted stealer of gifts and holiday cheer, but these two Foundation cases from Ohio demonstrate what Teamsters bosses really are: stealers of workers’ rights and freedom,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens.
“That Teamsters officials in both these cases attempted to disenfranchise workers who opposed them shows why workers are turning against their power-hungry tactics, and why American workers deserve the Right to Work choice to withhold financial support from union officials who aren’t serving their interests.”
Evansville Electrician Files Federal Charges Against IBEW Local 16 for Union Bosses’ $1.29 Million Retaliatory ‘Fine’
Electrician validly resigned union membership and left union to purchase a non-union electrical firm, but union used sham proceeding to levy massive fine
Evansville, IN (June 30, 2025) – Brian Head, an Evansville-based electrician, has just filed federal charges against the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 16 union for threatening him with a $1.29 million fine after he exercised his right to resign from the union. Head filed his charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
IBEW Union Bosses Threaten Fake Limits on Membership Resignation, Bogus Discipline
Head’s charges to the NLRB, which is the agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law, report that he resigned his IBEW union membership on March 27, 2025, in a notarized letter that IBEW officials acknowledged in an April 3 reply letter. However, the reply letter claimed that “[i]t is a six-month process before the resignation is finally effective.”
Putting such restrictions on workers’ right to resign their union memberships has no basis in law. Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and U.S. Supreme Court decisions like Pattern Makers v. NLRB spell out that workers have a right to end union membership and union officials cannot require such membership as a condition of getting or keeping a job (though states that lack Right to Work laws like Indiana’s let union officials force workers to pay dues or be fired). Union officials also may not impose union discipline, like fines, on workers who aren’t members.
In the interim between the two letters, IBEW Local 16 pursued union discipline against Head for “purchas[ing] a non-union electrical contractor and…decid[ing] not to sign a Letter of Assent” that would have likely handed the business over to union control without any kind of worker vote. Notably, the union’s discipline took place after Head’s March 27 union resignation – meaning Head was legally beyond the union’s powers to impose any sort of internal punishment.
Union Letter Imposes Million-Dollar-Plus ‘Punishment’ on Electrician
Nevertheless, IBEW Local 16 officials sent Head correspondence on May 1 demanding he appear before a union tribunal. Head later received a letter from IBEW Local 16 bosses on June 9 finding him “guilty” of violating the union’s constitution and imposing a “$1.29 Million dollar fine” as a penalty.
“IBEW Local 16 union bosses’ imposition of this cruel million-dollar-plus ‘punishment’ on a rank-and-file worker shows that their real priority is maintaining cartel-like control over Indiana electricians – not standing up for workers’ rights or freedom,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “IBEW bosses have no legal grounds for this obscene exploitation. But as ridiculous as this situation is, it’s important to remember that union monopoly bargaining is still the law of the land in all 50 states – a power that allows overtly self-interested union bosses like IBEW officials to extend their so-called ‘representation’ over every worker in a unionized facility, no matter how strenuously any worker opposes the union.”
Holistic Industries Cannabis Packing and Delivery Workers Overwhelmingly Request Vote to Remove UFCW Union
Effort comes as UFCW union officials try to rush contract to establish control over Western Mass facility
Springfield, MA (June 20, 2025) – A majority of production employees at cannabis company Holistic Industries’ Monson facility have requested a vote to remove United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1459 union officials from their workplace. Packaging associate Scott Browne submitted the union decertification petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on behalf of his colleagues with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
The NLRB is the agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law, a task that includes administering votes to install (or “certify”) or remove (or “decertify”) unions. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) stipulates that a decertification petition must contain signatures from at least 30% of employees in a work unit to prompt a decertification election. Browne far exceeded this threshold, submitting a showing of interest that contained signatures from over 70% of his work unit.
Because Massachusetts lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, union officials can enforce contracts that require employees to pay union dues or fees as a condition of getting or keeping a job. In contrast, in Right to Work states, union membership and all union financial support are strictly voluntary and the choice of each individual worker. However, in both Right to Work and non-Right to Work states, union monopoly bargaining contracts control the working conditions of all workers in a unionized workplace, even those who voted against or otherwise oppose the union.
“UFCW union officials are trying to strike a deal with our employer that will require us to pay fees out of our wages just to stay employed here. But with this petition, I and all of my coworkers have made our position clear: We don’t want or need a union,” commented Browne. “UFCW bosses haven’t convinced us that they’re going to deliver on the promises they made when they first came to our workplace, and the prospect of being forced to pay for that kind of ‘representation’ isn’t exactly appealing.”
UFCW Bosses Rush Contract Despite Worker Opposition
UFCW Local 1459 recently called a vote on a contract drafted by union officials. Union officials will often rush to finalize a contract in order to trigger the “contract bar,” a non-statutory NLRB policy that bars workers from requesting a union decertification vote while a union contract is active, up to three years.
Because there is no legal requirement to abide by the results of a worker contract vote, situations sometimes arise in which union officials ratify a contract that workers rejected to keep them trapped in the union under the NLRB’s non-statutory “contract bar” policy. However, because Browne submitted his decertification petition before any contract ratification occurred, Holistic Industries employees have likely avoided this situation.
Union-Label Legislators Seek to Strip Cannabis Workers Nationwide of Freedom to Resist Unionization
Foundation staff attorneys recently assisted employees of Green Thumb Industries – a New Jersey-based cannabis company – in filing a petition to remove UFCW union officials from power at their facility. Foundation attorneys have also opposed state legislative schemes that would require cannabis companies to grant union bosses special access to their workers just as a condition of operating. Such arrangements – misleadingly called “labor peace agreements” – infringe workers’ right to freely decide for or against union control, yet have become law in California, New York, and other states. Massachusetts legislators filed a bill last legislative session to establish such a framework.
“Holistic Industries workers have joined the groundswell of workers nationwide who are exercising their right to declare independence from union bosses who don’t represent their interests,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “While we’re confident that they will succeed in their effort to oust UFCW officials, union-label legislators are trying to stifle cannabis industry employees’ rights across the country as a sop to their union boss political allies.
“State lawmakers have no shortage of factors to wrestle with when deciding whether to greenlight the cannabis industry, but one thing should be non-negotiable: Letting the industry take root shouldn’t mean that workers’ individual rights go up in smoke,” Mix added.
Cornell Univ. Graduate Students Hit UE and GSU Unions with Discrimination Charges for Harassing Religious Objectors to Compulsory Unionism
EEOC Charges: Instead of respecting valid requests for religious accommodation, union officials sent harassing “questionnaires” to illegally interrogate students’ beliefs
Ithaca, NY (June 19, 2025) – Two Cornell University graduate students have just slammed the Cornell Graduate Student Union (GSU) and its parent the United Electrical (UE) union with federal antidiscrimination charges. The students, David Rubinstein and Louie Gold, maintain that union officials are illegally harassing graduate students who submit valid religious objections to paying union dues.
Rubinstein and Gold are both Jewish and believe affiliating with or financially supporting the UE unions conflicts with their sincerely held religious beliefs. The graduate students filed their charges at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) with free legal representation by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
In their charges, Rubinstein and Gold explain that they are targets of an illegal practice in which UE union officials harass and interrogate religious objectors rather than comply with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination, including on the basis of religion.
As their charges explain, rather than comply with their valid requests for religious accommodations, UE union bosses instead sent “questionnaires” containing invasive and legally irrelevant questions to religious objectors. The questionnaires include intrusive demands like, “[P]lease include the name and address of the organization sponsoring the [religious] services you attend and the name of the faith leader(s),” and “How long have you had your religious belief?” The end of the questionnaire indicates that union officials may not even respect a student’s religious objection after completion of the form, stating ominously that “The UE national union will review your religious objection upon receipt and may have follow-up questions” (emphasis added).
Union Officials Ignored Students’ Valid Exercise of Religious Freedom
Rubinstein and Gold argue in their charges that they and other students who received this dubious questionnaire already discharged their legal duties when they informed the union of their objections to paying dues. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides that objectors must only describe a sincere religious objection to union affiliation, which Rubinstein and Gold both did in letters to the national UE union. Federal law requires union officials to provide a religious accommodation to such objectors. An accommodation often permits the objector to divert an amount of money equal to dues to a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charity instead.
“Both nationwide and on the Cornell campus, the UE, CGSU, and their other campus affiliates have been at the forefront of demonizing Israel, seeking its destruction, and supporting Hamas’s violent and barbaric terrorism against Israel and its inhabitants,” the charges read. “The unions had no objective or bona-fide reasons to doubt the basis for my accommodation request or to question my sincerely held religious beliefs, observances, and practices.”
Because New York lacks Right to Work protections, UE and Cornell GSU union officials are enforcing a contract that requires graduate students to pay union dues or fees just to keep their work. While Title VII creates an exception for those like Gold and Rubinstein who have sincere religious objections to union affiliation, Right to Work states provide even more protection by making union membership and financial support a voluntary choice.
Jewish Graduate Students at MIT Forced GSU and UE to Back Off Illegal Dues Practices
Since 2023, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys have assisted dozens of Christian and Jewish graduate students across the country in defending their religious freedom from union forced-dues demands – particularly demands from UE union officials. In 2024, five Foundation-backed Jewish graduate students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scored religious accommodations that allowed them to pay money to pro-Israel charities instead of to the UE union hierarchy. In a related case for another MIT graduate student, Foundation attorneys secured a settlement that required union officials to inform the entire MIT graduate student body (over 3,000) of their rights under the Communications Workers of America v. Beck Supreme Court decision. Beck permits nonmembers to cut off dues payments for union political or ideological activities.
“This situation at Cornell again shows students and the public at large exactly what GSU and UE union officials’ priorities are: radical political mobilization and agitation, not respecting the individual rights of the students they claim to ‘represent,’” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Union bosses may not like it, but federal law is clear that they must comply with valid requests for a religious accommodation based on sincerely held objections to union affiliation, and cannot harass and interrogate those who object to the union’s activities on religious grounds.
“While the battle to preserve the right of religious students and workers to opt out of objectionable union support is certainly important, true reform is needed to ensure that no one is forced to associate with union bosses or their agendas, whether their objection to the union is political, religious, financial, or otherwise,” added Mix.
Following Foundation Legal Arguments, Trump Fires Biden-Appointed NLRB Bureaucrats
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Foundation constitutional lawsuit first to argue presidents can remove Board members
President Trump appears intent on ending union bosses’ reign at the NLRB. One of his first actions was to axe Jennifer Abruzzo and Gwynne Wilcox, both ex-union bosses who constantly sought to beef up their cronies’ powers over employees.
WASHINGTON, DC – Joe Biden, a career lackey of Big Labor union bosses, spared no moment of his administration ensuring that his cronies at the top of America’s largest unions gained power at the expense of independent-minded workers.
Only minutes after being inaugurated in 2021, he began setting the stage for a Big Labor takeover of the federal government: He immediately fired Peter Robb, the general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) during Donald Trump’s first term. With Robb gone, Biden’s acting general counsel quickly quashed multiple National Right to Work Foundation-backed cases that would have otherwise received full NLRB consideration. When Biden filled the general counsel position, he picked Jennifer Abruzzo — a radical ex-Communications Workers of America (CWA) lawyer who was confirmed only because then-Vice President Kamala Harris broke a party-line deadlock in the Senate.
And Biden wasn’t finished. He filled two vacancies on the Board itself with Gwynne Wilcox and David Prouty — who had both worked for the radical Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Biden’s crusade against worker freedom arguably culminated in the disastrous Cemex Construction Materials Pacific NLRB decision, which gave union officials the power to seize monopoly bargaining power in a workplace without winning a secret-ballot election among employees. The Biden Board also repealed key Foundation-backed reforms that (among other things) stopped union bosses from using so-called “blocking charges” alleging employer malfeasance to stop workers from voting in union removal elections they had requested.
Sudden End of Radical Biden Majority Creates Opportunities for Foundation Litigation
But, just a week after re-ascending to the White House, President Trump took immediate action to undo the damage to worker freedom caused by the historically-radical Biden NLRB. In late January, Trump took the crucial step of giving both Abruzzo and Wilcox the boot. That, combined with the fact that the Senate did not confirm Biden NLRB Chairman Lauren McFerran for another term, means Trump has the opportunity to appoint a pro-freedom majority to the Board before it considers any other cases.
“We hope that this signals the opening of a new chapter at the NLRB, where the agency will fulfill its statutory mandate to protect workers’ right to associate with unions if they choose, but will equally defend their right to refrain from all union activity,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix.
Trump Admin, Others Follow Foundation Lead in Arguing for Structural Board Change
By removing Wilcox, the Trump Administration is relying on arguments made in the Foundation’s groundbreaking cases challenging the structure of the NLRB. Foundation-backed Starbucks employees Ariana Cortes and Logan Karam filed the first-ever federal suit arguing that, as per the Constitution’s separation of powers principles, the president should be able to remove them at-will.
Cortes and Karam’s suit is currently pending at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Big Labor backers argue that board members like Wilcox have statutory protections that make them removable only in certain circumstances. But Board member protections are constitutionally questionable.
“President Trump made an excellent and decisive move to protect the freedom of American workers. Abruzzo’s and Wilcox’s track records were devastating for independent-minded employees,” observed Mix.
“We’re also encouraged by the Trump Administration’s apparent reliance on National Right to Work Foundation-backed workers’ cases to affirm the idea that NLRB members — like Wilcox — should be removable by the president at will. “The Foundation still has considerable legal work to do to reverse the damage done by the Biden NLRB, and removing a union partisan like Wilcox from the Board is just the first step towards restoring the rights and freedoms of workers opposed to union affiliation,” added Mix.
