In what has become an annual (or rather semi-annual) tradition, the increasingly discredited American Bar Association (ABA) is once again pointedly excluding the viewpoints of individual employees who don’t want a union in their workplace.

The intellectually dishonest organization is holding its second annual Labor and Employment Law Continuing Legal Education Conference in Denver this September. The cover of the event brochure (pdf) trumpets a panel titled "Hot Topic: Neutrality Agreements, Card Checks, and Voluntary Recognition After Dana."

The core case at issue, Dana/Metaldyne, was brought and won by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, and most of the law in this area is the result of Foundation litigation. Yet, the roster of attorneys on the panel again consists entirely of union, company, and government lawyers.

Foundation VP Stefan Gleason wrote the following about the anti-individual worker bias of the ABA back in February, the last time Foundation attorneys were excluded from speaking about its many cases, and the criticism therein is only reinforced by this latest episode:

ABA political hacks have pointedly refused to allow the perspective of employees who may, God forbid, not want a union to dominate their workplace. Once again, a hot topic at the conference was the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s cases defending employees whose rights are abused during card check organizing drives.

And yet again, the ABA meeting planners refused to allow the perspective of workers or their Right to Work attorneys to be heard — instead selecting speakers representing Big Labor and a small faction of squishy, union-boss-friendly management lawyers. (Of course, the views of the speakers were rejected by the NLRB in its recent Dana/Metaldyne ruling, and the views of Foundation attorneys were embraced. Just a technicality, I guess.)

The ABA’s intellectual dishonesty continues to be an embarrassment to America’s legal profession.

Posted on Aug 15, 2008 in Blog