U.S. Supreme Court to Re-Examine Scope of Union Dues Compelled from Non-Union Workers
Washington, D.C. (February 19, 2008) — The U.S. Supreme Court has today granted a petition for a writ of certiorari filed by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys for a group of twenty Maine state employees objecting to the misuse of their compulsory union dues.
The case, Daniel Locke et al. v. Edward Karass et al., will directly address whether non-union employees can be forced to pay for litigation activities far removed from their workplaces. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling may provide much-needed clarity to the criteria it had established previously that determine what union activities employees can be lawfully forced to fund.
Unions spend billions of dollars each year on activities such as politics, organizing, litigation, lobbying, and a wide range of other ideological and non-bargaining activities. Yet, union officials often claim that non-union members must foot the bill for these activities or be fired from their jobs.
“No one should be compelled to pay union dues just to get or keep a job,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “But where union officials have obtained this special privilege from the legislature, they still have no legal authority to make non-union public servants in Maine pay for union activity across America.”
Locke is the 14th case brought by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Top SEIU Official Resigns Executive Post Objecting to «growth at any cost»
Sal Rosselli, a top official in the Service Employee International Union (SEIU) recently resigned an executive committee position with the union to protest power consolidation by the union’s chief Andy Stern, according to the Chicago Tribune. As head of a 150,000-member SEIU local in California, Rosselli boasts real sway within SEIU.
Rosselli told the Tribune:
"Over the past two years, a stark difference has evolved between SEIU’s projected image and its real world practices," he wrote to Stern. "An overly zealous focus on growth, growth at any cost, apparently has eclipsed SEIU’s commitment to its members."
Most representative of this sentiment is the way the SEIU hierarchy has stepped up in-your-face "card check" unionzation drives. The National Right to Work Foundation is helping workers across America fight back.
Ironically, Rosselli’s using the same freedom to disassociate himself from the SEIU executive committes that union officials deny workers in the form of a Right to Work law which makes union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary.
Union Officials Stonewall Religious Objector’s Right to Divert Forced Dues to Charity
In Washington State, Susan Wiggs, a teacher with a religious objection to paying union dues, fought tooth-and-nail against the Vancouver Education Association (VEA) over her right to divert those dues to charity. VEA union officials refused time and again to accommodate the teacher’s wishes.
Citizenlink.com has the story:
“[Union officials] absolutely don’t want a precedent of religious objectors being able to choose their own charity," Wiggs said.
After the seemingly never-ending battle, a labor board ruled last week in favor of the teacher, but the VEA won’t give up and still refuses to approve Wiggs’ choice.
For more information on your rights as a religious objector, read the Foundation’s pamphlet entitled, “An Employee’s Guide–To Union Dues and Religious Do Nots.” The guide describes how to obtain as accommodation of an employee’s religious beliefs against joining or financially supporting a labor union.
Video: Union Officials Threaten Nurses with Arrest, Jail, and Fines
Here’s a new video detailing how the National Right to Work Foundation is helping a group of nurses in Pomona, California, fight back against a hostile union hierarchy:
New Jersey Union Official Gets Caught Playing Tony Soprano
News of a 170-page federal indictment handed down over the weekend could’ve come straight out of The Sopranos. According to The Jersey Journal:
The business manager of a Jersey City labor local is among
more than 80 people charged by federal and New York
officials this week in a massive sweep they say also netted
key leaders of the Gambino crime family.
The indictment details how the union official helped "Fat Joe" Agate get fraudulent union credentials and access to a union job site. The indictment was part of a mob crackdown that reached as far away as Italy.
What a slap in the face to workers in New Jersey forced to pay union dues that they have to pay the salaries of union officials charged with such crimes.
Washington Teachers Union Bosses Convicted of “Seven Year Orgy of Greed”
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia circuit affirmed a district’s court ruling to sentence local union bosses Gwendolyn Hemphill and James Baxter to jail.
The court called their case a “seven-year orgy of greed.”
Between 1995 and 2002, the conspirators stole millions of dollars from Washington Teachers Union (an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers union). As a result, a federal judge convicted two union bosses of multiple counts, including embezzlement, money laundering, false pretenses, and conspiring to commit such crimes.
Here are some of the expensive goodies these union bosses bought using money from the union dues treasury:
- A $50,000 Tiffany silver set
- A wedding reception for Hemphill’s son
- $29,000 in dental work for Hemphill and her spouse
- $19,000 in Washington Wizards tickets
- Car insurance
- Art décor for their homes
- Personal checks to themselves ($18,805 for Hemphill and $31,000 for Baxter)
According to court documents, in 2001, these union bosses stole so much money (using union dues) that the WTU union paid $925,000 to cover the credit card bills. By 2002, the union went broke and could not pay its membership fees to the AFT union.
In the end, Hemphill was sentenced to 11 years in prison and Baxter 10 years. Barbara Bullock, WTU union’s president during this period, and her chauffeur, Leroy Holmes, both pled guilty before trial.
This astonishing example of union boss greed is exactly why forced association with unions breeds corruption. Unfortunately, heinous crimes like these are sure to continue until compulsory unionism ends.
Kennedy Vows “Card Check” to Become Law of Land
At a United Auto Workers (UAW) conference yesterday, Senator Teddy Kennedy (D-MA) – chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee – told attendees that he wouldn’t give up trying to push the so-called “Employee Free Choice Act” down the throats of America’s workers.
The Daily Labor Report highlighted:
"We’re going to bring it back again and again, until we prevail,” Kennedy said. “And I guarantee this: we get a Democrat in the White House and the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) will be the law of the land.”
Meanwhile, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) released a report today entitled “Card-Check Forced Unionism Would Hurt Employees and Employers” that details the economic devastation that would result from increased union monopoly power.
The detailed 13-page research report highlights how Big Labor’s number one legislative priority (you guessed it, EFCA) will exacerbate forced unionism and expand unions’ monopoly bargaining privileges over employees.
NILRR’s report points out some of the following about card check organizing and forced unionism:
- “Card-check” organizing empowers union officials to force a business’s employees to accept a union as their monopoly-bargaining agent solely through the acquisition of signed union authorization cards.
- Key provisions in the legislation would effectively ban employee secret-ballot elections over unionization in the private sector and replace such elections with so-called “card checks.”
- Private sector job growth is nearly three times as fast in low union-monopoly states.
To read all the facts, download the full NILRR report on the card check forced unionism bill here.
Las Vegas Non-Union Worker Wins Right to Obtain Over $100,000 from IATSE Union for Discrimination
Las Vegas, NV (February 5, 2008) — Under threat of a federal court appeal, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) this week reversed itself and authorized a local worker to claim over $100,000 in damages after International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 720 union officials illegally discriminated against him.
Union brass had unlawfully expelled the employee from an exclusive union hiring hall, denied him the ability to obtain work, and offered him no means of reinstatement.
The ruling comes in a case brought by Las Vegas-area worker Steven Lucas, with free legal help from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys. Lucas is an audio-visual equipment technician employed in the Las Vegas trade show and convention industry.
In June 2007, the NLRB in Washington, DC, upheld a preliminary ruling by NLRB Region 28 in Las Vegas allowing Lucas to reclaim only about $16,000 in lost wages from one job due to the unlawful union discrimination. In reality, union officials’ illegal blackballing of Lucas from getting work from more than a dozen employers during 1995 and 1996 had cost him many times that amount.
The Lucas case has been a major source of embarrassment for the NLRB since the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals several years ago reprimanded the agency and forced it to pay attorneys’ fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA) because its position in an earlier phase of the case was “not substantially justified.”
“The prospect of even more embarrassment for the NLRB in enabling this outrageous union discrimination forced the agency’s hand,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Even in a Right to Work state where payment of union dues is voluntary, union officials use their monopoly bargaining power to punish workers that don’t toe the union line.”
Lucas was a union member from 1981-1992 and used the hiring hall until 1994, when union officials illegally and arbitrarily expelled him from the hiring hall. By not allowing Lucas to be reinstated in the hiring hall, IATSE union officials denied him work opportunities for a period of roughly 18 months.
Even though Nevada has a highly popular and effective Right to Work law that frees nonunion employees from paying membership dues to an unwanted union, IATSE union officials use their monopoly bargaining privileges to set up “exclusive hiring halls.” In such halls, union officials decide which employees to refer for work at conventions and trade shows, and workers are forced to pay money to the union to be eligible for work.
LIUNA Union Official Spent Nearly $20,000 in Union Dues at Strip Clubs
A top official – Steven T. Thomas – at the Laborer’s International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 500 in Ohio was fired for spending thousands of dollars on personal entertainment using the union’s credit card.
Of course, the credit card debts are paid by forced dues-paying workers the union local supposedly “represents.” And according to this union boss, there’s apparently no better way to represent the working interests of those employees than to spend the money in multiple gentlemen’s clubs.
The Toledo Blade reports:
[Steven T. Thomas] charged the union $17,414 for 96 separate visits in 2004 to Scarlett’s in Toledo and Kahoots Gentlemen’s Club in Columbus, according to report obtained by The Blade.
Thomas, the business manager of the union local, was removed in May 2007 for the misuse of funds.
But in an ironic twist, Judge Nadine S. Pettiford of the Ohio Unemployment Compensation Review Commission recently ruled that Thomas was not fired with just cause from his job and ordered that Thomas’ unemployment benefits be reinstated.
The outcome of this story is entirely amazing, as it highlights yet another reason why compulsory unionism and corruption go hand-in-hand and why labor bosses often barely receive a slap on the wrist when they misuse union dues.
Woodman’s Grocery Workers Seek to Bag Unwanted UFCW Union
In Wisconsin today, a local newspaper reported that employees at Woodman’s Food Stores in Janesville and Beloit will likely be granted a decertification vote to oust the unwanted United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1473 union.
The GazetteXtra reported:
“We’re going to do what the employees tell us to do,” [company president Phil] Woodman said. “We’re going to do what’s in the best interests of the employees.”
The secret ballot election (scheduled for next week) comes after the National Labor Relations Board held hearings on the validity of the employees’ decertification petition.
UFCW Local 1473 officials delayed the workers’ vote after they asked the grocery store chain for records and files on over 2,100 employees at the 11 Woodman’s stores.
Such “blocking” tactics are not unusual for UFCW union officials to use, as recently witnessed by grocery employees in Illinois.
There, National Right to Work Foundation attorneys helped over 300 Treasure Island grocery workers win a vote to oust the unwanted UFCW union from their workplace, after UFCW union lawyers blocked a decertification election for nearly three years.
