Wisconsin AFSCME Union Bosses Face Federal Charges for Illegally Seizing Forced Dues for Politics
Milwaukee, WI (March 16, 2011) – A U.S. Bank customer service and support employee has filed federal charges against a local union after local union officials illegally attempted to force him and his colleagues into full-dues-paying union membership.
Peter Quinones of Milwaukee filed the charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Tuesday with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.
After American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 777 union officials were granted monopoly bargaining privileges over approximately 300 U.S. Bank employees, Quinones sent a letter to union officials stating that he was exercising his right under National Right to Work Foundation-won Supreme Court precedent in Communication Workers v. Beck to refrain from full dues paying union membership.
Because Wisconsin is a forced unionism state, workers who refrain from formal union membership can still be forced to pay a certain amount of union dues, but cannot be compelled to pay the portion of union dues used for the union’s political, lobbying, and member-only activities.
Despite his letter, AFSCME Local 777 union officials continued to extract full union dues from his paycheck. After Quinones filed an unfair labor practice charge, union officials still refused to honor his request to exercise his legal rights.
Quinones’ latest charge seeks to prevent the AFSCME union hierarchy from requiring him to pay forced union fees by automatic deduction from his paycheck in violation of federal law.
“As we have seen in recent weeks, AFSCME union officials will stop at nothing to collect forced union dues from workers – whether they are in the public or private sector – to pay for their political activism,” said Patrick Semmens, National Right to Work Foundation legal information director. “Wisconsin’s workers desperately need Right to Work protections to protect them from the very union bosses that claim to care about workers’ rights while violating workers’ rights.”
If enacted, a Wisconsin Right to Work law would end compulsory union dues by making union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary. Polls consistently show that 8 in 10 Americans support the Right to Work principle, that no worker should be compelled to join a union or pay union dues to get or keep a job. Twenty-two states have already passed Right to Work protections for their workers.
Army Wives Driver Wins over $55k in Lost Wages After Teamster Union Boss Blacklisting
Washington, DC (March 17, 2011) – An ABC Studios movie/television driver has won over $55,000 in lost income after Teamster union officials refused to allow him to do his job for nearly a year.
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys helped the driver win the case before a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) administrative law judge in Charleston, South Carolina.
Teamster Local 509 union officials currently enjoy exclusive bargaining privileges with ABC Studios in Charleston – and thus have a monopoly bargaining agreement with ABC that forces workers to go through Teamster Local 509’s hiring hall in order to obtain a job.
However, because Local 509 union members were working on other television and movie productions, Thomas Coghill – who was from Wilmington, North Carolina and a member of Teamster Local 391 – worked on the set of the Charleston-based Army Wives television series. Coghill worked during the show’s first two seasons beginning in 2008 as a makeup truck driver.
However, as more Local 509 union members became available to work on the production of Army Wives, a dispute over who should be eligible to work on the set of Army Wives erupted between various Teamster union officials and Coghill was removed from Local 509’s “Movie Referral List” because he was not a member of Local 509. Meanwhile, Local 509 union members continue to receive preferential treatment in job placement on the set of Army Wives.
Federal law prohibits union bosses who operate an exclusive union hiring hall from barring employees who are not a member of that union from gaining employment at a workplace.
With free legal assistance from the National Right Work Foundation, Coghill pursued federal unfair labor practice charges against the Teamster Local 509 union bosses’ discrimination. A regional NLRB administrative law judge ruled in Coghill’s favor late last week, and ordered the Teamster Local 509 union hierarchy to pay Coghill $55,467.62 in lost wages (plus interest) and post a notice of employees’ rights in the workplace.
“In this tough economy, it is unconscionable that Teamster Local 509 union bosses would inflict such petty and disgusting discrimination on someone working to put food on the table” said Patrick Semmens, National Right to Work Foundation legal information director. “To prevent these types of ugly forced unionism abuses from occurring in the future, entertainment industry union bosses should be stripped of their government-granted special privileges to force workers under union boss control in order to get or keep a job.”
Right to Work in The Daily Caller: “In Wisconsin, Big Labor politicians help make Right to Work case”
Writing in The Daily Caller, Right to Work President Mark Mix explains how Big Labor activism in Wisconsin has dramatized the issue of forced union dues:
. . . millions of Americans are now learning about the bitterness with which union-label politicians are defending their forced dues-funded campaign machines. And now citizens are beginning to understand more clearly than ever before why no union official, whether government or private-sector, should ever have been granted forced-dues privileges in the first place, and why it is absolutely necessary to revoke those privileges in order to clean up our political system.
Thanks to the 14 union-backed Senate Democrats’ attempt to flee the state to deny S.B. 11 proponents a quorum — and the resulting legal battle over the bill — the effort to restore the right to work for most Badger State public employees remains in limbo for now. But the outrageous antics of union-boss politicians like Mr. Hintz and Mr. Danou could prove to be very costly to Big Labor over the long run, and not just in Wisconsin.
Click here to read the whole thing. For more on the Wisconsin labor fight, check out Mix’s recent appearance on Fox News.
Gas Utility Worker Seeks to Turn Off Forced Union Dues Pipeline for Union Boss Politics
Gas Utility Worker Seeks to Turn Off Forced Union Dues Pipeline for Union Boss Politics
West Virginia needs Right to Work law to protect workers from forced unionism abuses
Clarksburg, West Virginia (March 31, 2011) – A Dominion Hope utility worker has filed federal charges against a local union after union officials illegally attempted to force him into full-dues-paying union membership.
With free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, Dominion Hope employee Jeremy Dimick of West Union filed the charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Wednesday.
Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) Local 69 union officials enjoy monopoly bargaining privileges over Dominion Hope’s employees. In November 2010, Dimick sent a letter to union officials stating that he was exercising his right under National Right to Work Foundation-won Supreme Court precedent in Communication Workers v. Beck to refrain from full-dues-paying union membership.
Right to Work on the Radio: Mark Mix talks about the Costs of Government Union Monopolies
National Right to Work President Mark Mix was interviewed on Baltimore’s C4 Show about his recent Congressional testimony on the dangers of public sector monopoly bargaining. Use the embedded player below to listen to the whole thing:
As always, you can always listen to the Foundation’s podcast via iTunes or manually subscribe to our podcast feed. You can also watch Mix’s introductory remarks at the Congressional hearing online:
Fasten Your Seatbelts and Put Your Trays in the Locked Position: Delta Flight Attendants Take Fight to Next Level
As we reported before, a group of Delta Air Lines employees — with free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation — are appealing (pdf) a U.S. District Court judge’s decision to uphold a major rule change on how a union is imposed on railway and airline industry workers.
Last June, a U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia judge refused to impose an injunction halting the new unionization election procedures for workers in the shipping and transportation industries which were hastily instituted by the National Mediation Board (NMB).
The NMB — a government agency charged under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) with mediating labor disputes within the railroad and airline industries — voted 2-1 to dictate a new system which stacks the deck in favor of unionization by granting a union monopoly bargaining power over railway or airline industry workers if the union acquires support from just a bare majority of eligible workers in an election, no matter how few actually vote. This means that a small bloc of workers could force union boss "representation" on the whole group rather than having a true majority of all workers deciding for themselves.
The two NMB members who approved the new rule, Harry Hoglander and Linda Puchala are former union officials with the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) unions — two unions that have been pushing for the change — respectively.
Earlier this week, with help from Foundation staff attorneys, the flight attendants carried on their courageous fight and filed a joint appellant brief at the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. To read their appeal, click here.
News Release: Homecare Providers Win Settlement with State to Permanently Stop Childcare Unionization Scheme
Homecare Providers Win Settlement with State to Permanently Stop Childcare Unionization Scheme
Right to Work Foundation attorneys continue federal class action lawsuit against union officials to recover millions in illegally confiscated dues
Lansing, MI (May 11, 2011) – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, five homecare workers have reached a settlement with Governor Rick Snyder ensuring that Michigan will no longer be able to force home-based childcare providers into union ranks.
Carrie Schlaud, Diana Orr, Peggy Mashke, and Edward and Nora Gross originally filed a class-action suit against then-Governor Jennifer Granholm and a United Auto Workers (UAW) and American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) coalition, the Child Care Providers Together Michigan (CCPTM) union, for designating homecare workers who accepted state assistance as state employees and forcing them to pay union dues and accept CCPTM “representation.”
Under Granholm’s direction, the Michigan Department of Human Services created an agency known as the Michigan Home Based Child Care Council to provide union officials with an entity to negotiate with as the homecare providers’ “management.” Working with the council, CCPTM operatives staged a union certification election to acquire monopoly bargaining privileges over Michigan homecare workers.
Click here to read more . . .
Wall Street Journal: Boeing NLRB Case Threatens Right to Work States, Protects Forced Unionism
Regular readers are already up to speed on the Obama National Labor Relations Board’s attempt to punish Boeing for opening a new production line in Right to Work South Carolina – and the National Right to Work Foundation’s efforts to help Boeing employees. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore explain why the NLRB’s actions are so pernicious:
The Obama administration’s National Labor Relations Board filed a complaint last month against Boeing to block production of the company’s 787 Dreamliner at a new assembly plant in South Carolina—a "right to-work" state with a law against compulsory union membership. If the NLRB has its way, Dreamliner assembly will return to Washington, a union-shop state, along with more than 1,000 jobs.
The NLRB’s action, which Boeing will challenge at a hearing next month, is a big deal. It’s the first time a federal agency has intervened to tell an American company where it can and cannot operate a plant within the U.S. It lays the foundation of a regulatory wall with one express purpose: to prevent the direct competition of right-to-work states with union-shop states. Why, as South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley recently asked on these pages, should Washington have any more right to these jobs than South Carolina?
The National Right to Work Foundation is offering free legal assistance to South Carolina workers affected by this complaint. If you work at Boeing’s Charleston Dreamliner plant, we strongly encourage you to contact us today.
Right to Work Foundation Submits FOIA Request to Uncover Extent of National Labor Relations Board’s Google Ads Campaign
Washington, DC (March 21, 2011) – The National Right to Work Foundation, a charitable organization that provides free legal assistance to employees nationwide, submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), asking for information about a series of Google Ads placed by the NLRB from 2008 to 2011.
According to an earlier NLRB statement, the Board received a free Google Ads trial in 2008 and has since discontinued the program. However, other reports indicate that NLRB Google Ads appeared as recently as February of this year.
Moreover, these ads only contained information about workers’ ability to organize or join unions. No record of ads about workers’ rights to refrain from union activities or remove a union from their workplace has been found.
In the wake of former SEIU lawyer Craig Becker’s recess appointment to the Board, numerous media outlets have questioned the NLRB’s ability to impartially administer labor law.
Unfortunately, the NLRB’s Google Ads campaign does nothing to dispel these fears. Foundation attorneys are concerned that the NLRB’s ad buys publicized information about workers’ rights to organize or join a union without providing equally important information about the rights of employees to refrain from union membership or eject unwanted unions from their workplaces.
The Foundation’s FOIA request seeks all documented business transactions between the Board and Google related to online ad buys. Foundation attorneys believe that this information is necessary to determine the extent of the NLRB’s pro-Big Labor bias and to inform the public of how the Board’s budget is being spent.
“We’ve raised persistent questions about the impartiality of the NLRB that have yet to be addressed, and what looks like a selective information campaign through Google Ads is another example of this trend,” said Patrick Semmens, Legal Information Director for the National Right to Work Foundation. “We call upon the NLRB to immediately release any and all information related to this ad campaign to address public concerns about its perceived pro-Big Labor bias.”
Gas Utility Worker Seeks to Turn Off Forced Union Dues Pipeline for Union Boss Politics
Clarksburg, West Virginia (March 31, 2011) – A Dominion Hope utility worker has filed federal charges against a local union after union officials illegally attempted to force him into full-dues-paying union membership.
With free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, Dominion Hope employee Jeremy Dimick of West Union filed the charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Wednesday.
Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) Local 69 union officials enjoy monopoly bargaining privileges over Dominion Hope’s employees. In November 2010, Dimick sent a letter to union officials stating that he was exercising his right under National Right to Work Foundation-won Supreme Court precedent in Communication Workers v. Beck to refrain from full-dues-paying union membership.
However, because West Virginia does not have a Right to Work law, workers who refrain from formal union membership can still be forced to pay a part of union dues as a condition of employment, but cannot be compelled to pay the portion used for the union’s political, lobbying, and member-only activities.
Despite Dimick’s letter, UWUA Local 69 union officials continued to extract full union dues from his paycheck. Then in December, union officials ordered him to file another objection letter and refused to provide him with a legally-required breakdown of union expenditures that had evidence that it was actually verified by an independent audit. Dimick contests the part of union fees used for forcing workers in different industries in the region into union ranks.
Meanwhile, Dimick requested that the UWUA Local 69 union hierarchy respect his First Amendment rights of free speech and let him remove the union logo patch from his uniform. Union officials refuse to honor his request.
“UWUA union officials are not only forcing workers to financially associate with their union, they are also forcing workers to act as walking billboards for an organization they do not support and want nothing to do with,” said Patrick Semmens, National Right to Work Foundation legal information director. “West Virginia desperately need a Right to Work law to protect workers from the very union bosses that claim to care about workers’ rights but clearly don’t.”
If enacted, a state Right to Work law would end compulsory union dues by making union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary. Polls consistently show that 8 in 10 Americans support the Right to Work principle, that no worker should be compelled to join a union or pay union dues to get or keep a job. Twenty-two states have already passed Right to Work protections for their workers.
