**Atlanta, GA (April 5, 2007)** — Facing an embarrassing prosecution for their ugly retaliation against independent-minded workers, union officials quickly backtracked and settled federal unfair labor practice charges filed by four employees with free legal help from the National Right to Work Foundation.

The four local commercial insulation workers filed federal charges against International Association of Heat & Frost Insulators Local 48 (IAHFI) with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) for refusing to honor their resignations from the union and threatening to fine them $5,000 each in retaliation for choosing to work for a nonunion employer. In fact, union officials filed state court lawsuits against the three non-English speaking employees (Gonzalo Gomez, Ubaldo Romero, and Juan Perez) to collect the unlawful fines.

Under federal law, workers who resign from union membership cannot be lawfully fined by a union – even if the union maintains a formal rule governing the situation, which it did not in this case. In Foundation-supported *Patternmakers v. NLRB* (1984) U.S. Supreme Court decision, the High Court ruled workers may resign their formal union membership immediately, at any time, and without restrictions.

When the four employees inquired about how to exercise their right to resign their union memberships at a recent union meeting, union officials told the workers that they could not resign unless they did so “correctly,” but failed to explain exactly what this meant. When asked later what this meant, union officials replied simply that the employees had failed to resign “correctly.”

Facing a probable prosecution because the fines had no basis even in internal union rules, union officials chose to settle the charges by rescinding the illegal fines and recognizing the workers’ union resignations. Additionally, union officials will be required to post notices at all Atlanta-area construction sites where the union is the monopoly bargaining agent to inform other employees of their rights. The union will also refund $250 plus interest to the fourth worker, Larry Blaisdell, who had been told to pay the money in order to appeal the illegal fine in the internal union kangaroo court.

“Union officials tried to bully workers who simply wanted to support their families by working for one of the many, good non-union employers in Georgia,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “It is a shame that legal action was necessary just to get union bosses to stop violating the rights of the very workers they claim to ‘represent.’”

Union officials’ actions also violated the spirit of Georgia’s highly popular Right to Work law – on the books since 1947 – which prohibits forcing workers to join or pay dues to a union as a job condition.

**Corpus Christi, TX (April 3, 2007)** – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a local Asset Protection and Security Services guard filed federal charges against the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) union and his employer today after union officials unlawfully threatened to have him fired for asserting his legal right to refrain from formal union membership and payment of union dues.

Carlos Banuelos’ charge, filed at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), details how the SPFPA union hierarchy holds an illegal monopoly bargaining agreement with his employer that makes financial support for the union a mandatory condition of employment.

Asset Protection and Security Services (ASSET), an international security provider of armed and unarmed security personnel, enforced its illegal requirement and ordered Banuelos to pay a fee to the union or face termination. However, Texas is one of 22 states that has passed a Right to Work law, ensuring that union membership and dues payment are strictly voluntary.

“Union officials are trampling Texas’ long standing freedom provided under the state’s Right to Work law that makes union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary, ” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The public needs the State’s Attorney General to step in here, because union officials are repeatedly thumbing their noses at Texas’ popular Right to Work law.”

This is the second charge filed within months in Texas where the Foundation has helped an employee fight back against unlawful dues demands from the SPFPA union hierarchy. Juan Vielma, a security guard for AKAL Security in El Paso, prompted the NLRB to issue a formal complaint against the same union for unlawfully suspending him without pay in retaliation for asserting his legal right to refrain from union membership. The NLRB held a related hearing last month, and Vielma and Foundation attorneys are currently awaiting a ruling.

SPFPA union officials are falsely claiming that Vielma, Banuelos, and their colleagues work on federal property that is not protected by the Right to Work law – and thus can be forced to pay union fees as a condition of employment. In the El Paso case, NLRB investigators determined that the union had no proof of these claims, just as they are expected to do in Corpus Christi. Accordingly, the NLRB Regional Director found that the union hierarchy violated federal law by restraining and coercing employees exercising their limited rights under the National Labor Relations Act to refrain from union participation.

**Corpus Christi, TX (July 9, 2007)** – Spearheading an effort to prevent erosion of Texas’ highly popular Right to Work law, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys have persuaded National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) officials to prosecute a union for unlawfully threatening local security guards’ jobs. But the state’s own prosecutors have yet to take formal legal action to enforce multiple violations of Texas law.

Carlos Banuelos, a local Asset Protection and Security Services guard, filed federal charges in April against the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) union and his employer after union officials unlawfully threatened to have him (and other employees) fired for asserting their legal right to refrain from formal union membership and payment of union dues.

Banuelos’ charge details how the SPFPA union hierarchy maintains an illegal monopoly bargaining agreement with his employer that makes financial support for the union a mandatory condition of employment. Union officials enforced that illegal requirement and ordered Banuelos and his coworkers to pay a fee to the union or face termination. Texas is one of 22 states that have a Right to Work law, ensuring that union membership and dues payment are strictly voluntary.

This is the second complaint issued within months in Texas where Foundation attorneys have helped employees fight back against unlawful dues demands from the SPFPA union hierarchy. SPFPA union officials falsely claim that Banuelos and his coworkers work on an “exclusive federal enclave” that is not protected by the Right to Work law – and thus can be forced to pay union fees as a condition of employment.

Foundation president Mark Mix reiterated his earlier requests to Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to investigate and aggressively prosecute widespread violations of the Right to Work law. In oral argument in a parallel case, an attorney for another company with a contract with the SPFPA union even boasted that they require employees to pay dues “across the country in Right to Work states.” Evidence shows union officials have established these forced dues requirements at multiple worksites under apparently fraudulent agreements.

“Union officials are trampling the employee freedoms provided under Texas law,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The time has come for Attorney General Greg Abbott to take aggressive action to stop union officials from thumbing their noses at his state’s Right to Work law.”

In the parallel case in El Paso, Foundation attorneys successfully secured a reinstatement offer for Juan Vielma, a security guard for AKAL Security whom union officials had illegally suspended without pay for over a year for refusal to pay dues. Agreeing with Foundation attorneys, a federal Administrative Law Judge ruled that SPFPA union officials had no legal authority to compel Vielma to pay dues.

**Los Angeles, CA (July 9, 2007)** – A group of four Kaiser Permanente employees have forced the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers (SEIU-UHW) union to abandon multiple Kaiser Permanente units across the Southern California area after use of coercive union organizing methods. The action comes in the wake of unfair labor practice charges the employees filed just weeks earlier on June 21, and it will impact up to 400 Kaiser Permanente employees throughout the area.

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys helped Lisa Eklund and three of her co-workers file the federal charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) against the SEIU-UHW union and Kaiser. The charges alleged that union officials deceived Kaiser employees into signing union “authorization” cards that would later be counted as “votes” favoring unionization. Union officials also falsely told employees that signing the card was merely a request for more information about unionizing and promised higher pay raises and benefits. Lastly, SEIU-UHW officials engaged in unlawful bargaining over the employees’ wages and working conditions before the employees had even selected union officials as their representatives.

On December 28, 2006, Kaiser management recognized SEIU-UHW on the basis of the “card check” count. However, Eklund’s charge highlights that SEIU-UHW union officials manipulated the size of the bargaining unit and secured signatures from employees who were ineligible to participate in the “card check” organizing drive. Upon the heath care employees’ request to disclose the names of employees who were eligible to participate, union officials were unable to indicate which employees were inside or outside of the alleged bargaining unit.

Within two weeks of filing the federal charges, the NLRB indicated its intention to formally investigate the apparently unlawful “card check” organizing scheme. Upon the NLRB Region 21’s initial investigation, SEIU-UHW union officials and Kaiser rapidly abandoned the “card check” count.

“SEIU officials have been repeatedly caught red handed running roughshod over employee rights during these coercive organizing drives,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “These campaigns give employees two basic choices- union ‘yes,’ or union ‘yes.’”

“Card check” union organizing strips workers of the limited protections of a government-supervised secret ballot election in deciding whether or not to unionize. Instead, union agents frequently mislead or badger workers one-on-one into signing cards that are then counted as “votes” favoring unionization.

Only months earlier National Right to Work Foundation attorneys forced SEIU Local 49 to abandon the coercive “card check” union organizing process in Oregon and Washington for six months because of repeated and widespread abuses.

Chicago, IL (July 3, 2007) – Late yesterday, Treasure Island Foods employees successfully voted by over a 2-to-1 margin to kick the unwanted United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union out of all six area stores. The employees received free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation in overcoming three years of legal challenges by UFCW union lawyers to obtain the “decertification” vote, which was conducted by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The final tally in the election was 189 employees against the union, 91 in favor, with five votes being contested. As a result of the election, over 300 employees at all six Treasure Island Foods stores in the Chicago area will become nonunion and free to negotiate over their own wages and working conditions.

Treasure Island employees originally filed for the decertification election in 2004, after UFCW officials ordered an unpopular boycott and fell out of favor with the vast majority of employees. Even though the employees’ petition was timely filed, UFCW Local 881 and 1546 officials stonewalled the vote by filing a series of “blocking charges” at the NLRB.

In 2005, after obtaining signatures from an overwhelming majority of employees at the grocery chain, Dan Schalin and his coworkers filed another decertification election petition at the NLRB. Threatened by the independent-minded employees’ petition, UFCW union officials continued to abuse the legal process by filing further unfounded blocking charges.

Finally, with help from attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, Schalin and his coworkers requested that the petition for decertification be reinstated. In late May, the NLRB Regional Director ruled in favor of their request and scheduled the election.

“UFCW officials have thrown up every stumbling block possible over three years to block Treasure Island employees from exercising their free choice,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The hostility of the union hierarchy to workers’ interests shows why Illinois needs a Right to Work law that would make union affiliation and dues payment strictly voluntary.”

A decertification election, an NLRB-supervised secret ballot election to oust a union, is an uphill battle for workers to obtain or win. In particular, union lawyers are adept at gumming up the works by filing baseless charges that often block an election for years. Employees can only obtain such elections during narrowly proscribed periods every few years, and incumbent union hierarchies often retaliate against dissenting employees.

El Paso, TX (June 28, 2007) – After a year-long ordeal, El Paso security guard Juan Vielma received an offer of full reinstatement to his job yesterday after he was illegally suspended in 2006 without pay – in violation of Texas’ Right to Work law. But a national employee rights organization pressed the state’s top prosecutor to aggressively pursue numerous other violations of the Texas Right to Work law still occurring.

Immediately after Vielma contacted National Right to Work Foundation attorneys for help, they filed unfair labor practice charges at the National Labor Relations Board in early November 2006 against the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) union. Union officials and AKAL Security suspended Vielma indefinitely without pay over a year ago in retaliation for asserting his protected right not to pay union dues.

AKAL Security and union officials had claimed, with no basis whatsoever, that Vielma and his coworkers work on an “exclusive federal enclave” not protected by Texas’ Right to Work law prohibiting forced union dues.

The reinstatement offer comes after a federal Administrative Law Judge agreed with arguments presented by Foundation attorneys and ruled unequivocally earlier this month that the Texas Right to Work law applies to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility where Vielma worked. The judge also ordered the payment of full back pay and benefits. Testimony at trial in March revealed that AKAL and union bosses had no basis for claims that the Right to Work law did not apply to the El Paso ICE facility. The trial also revealed the existence of an illegal union scheme to violate the law across Texas and in other Right to Work states.

Foundation president Mark Mix today reiterated his earlier request of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott to investigate and aggressively prosecute widespread violations of the Right to Work law. Foundation attorneys first brought these violations to the attention of the Attorney General’s office on November 21, 2006.

“Although we are pleased that Mr. Vielma will finally be allowed to return to work, there is much more work to be done. Not only should the Attorney General prosecute existing violations and obtain monetary penalties available under the law, but he should also take aggressive action that puts all Texas union bosses on notice that violations of the Texas Right to Work law will no longer be tolerated,” said Mix.

Foundation attorneys have uncovered evidence that SPFPA union officials have been engaging in a willfully fraudulent scheme to force potentially thousands of employees to pay union dues in violation of the state’s Right to Work law.

The Texas Attorney General has been asked to prosecute these criminal violations of the Right to Work law as well as enforce the state’s fraud and other applicable criminal statutes.

In addition to Vielma’s case, Foundation attorneys are helping Carlos Banuelos, a Corpus Christi security guard who filed federal charges against the same union. SPFPA union officials unlawfully threatened to have Banuelos and other employees fired for refusing to pay union dues.

**Columbus, OH (June 22, 2007)** — In a victory for employee rights and the freedom of conscience, a St. Marys-area teacher has successfully challenged the constitutionality of a statewide law denying public employees their right to accommodations of religious objections that they have to paying union dues unless the objecting employees belong to certain state-approved religions.

The decision issued by U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost struck down the offending law as a violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause and permanently enjoined the Ohio State Employment Relations Board (SERB) from further enforcing the law against employees.

With free legal help from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, Carol Katter, a 21-year veteran teacher in the St. Marys school district, filed the original complaint in January in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio’s Eastern Division against top officials of the SERB for religious discrimination.

In her complaint, Katter informed the Court that, even though she is a lifelong Catholic with religious objections to the union’s agenda, she was denied her right to a religious accommodation. Katter believes that failing to divert her forced dues from the Ohio Education Association (OEA) union to a charity contradicts her beliefs due to the union hierarchy’s position on hot button political issues such as abortion.

Adding insult to injury, an OEA union official told Katter that she must “change religions” to receive a religious accommodation before SERB. Katter’s complaint challenged the state statute as an unconstitutional establishment of religion and an infringement of her religious free exercise rights. Because Judge Frost struck down the statute on Establishment Clause grounds, he did not need to decide the issue of whether the SERB had violated Katter’s free exercise rights.

The ruling in Katter’s case follows another federal court decree issued last fall that re-affirmed that all public sector employees who have sincere religious objections to union affiliation cannot be forced to associate with and pay dues to a union they find objectionable. That decree was in another Foundation-assisted case challenging similar systematic religious discrimination throughout Ohio. However, for technical reasons, Ohio’s SERB itself was not formally bound by that decree even though it was well aware of its existence.

“Carol Katter’s struggle is part of a pattern of OEA union officials’ willingness to trample on the religious beliefs of the very employees they claim to represent just to stuff their pockets with more forced dues,” stated National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Stefan Gleason. “While the ruling expands the rights available to employees of faith, abuses of forced unionism will inevitably continue until Ohio passes a Right to Work law making union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary.”

Katter also filed a related charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the OEA union, a state affiliate of the National Education Association, challenging an attempt by union officials to divert her forced dues to the local union rather than a charity. Currently the EEOC is still investigating the charge.

Download the Federal Court’s Ruling

*This article originally appeared in Education Week*

**High Court Upholds Wash. State Law on Union Fees**

By Mark Walsh

*Washington*

The U.S. Supreme Court dealt a defeat to teachers’ unions last week by upholding a Washington state law that required them to get the consent of nonmembers to spend their representation fees on political activities.

But the court’s unanimous ruling on June 14 will likely do little harm in the long run to the Washington Education Association or other public-employee unions, legal experts said.

The court declined suggestions from so-called right-to-work groups to reconsider some of its basic precedents in the area of “agency fees,” which unions collect from nonmembers because they benefit from collective bargaining even though they haven’t joined.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a Springfield, Va.-based organization that represented a group of nonunion teachers in the Washington state case, said workers opposed to having their agency fees go for unions’ political agendas “are little better off after today’s ruling.”

The Supreme Court “avoided the more critical and far-sweeping question—whether union officials should be able to automatically collect forced dues for politics from nonunion members in the first place,” the foundation said in a statement.

**Unions Not ‘Hurt’**

Robert H. Chanin, the general counsel of the National Education Association, the parent of the WEA, said, “The court could have hurt us, and chose not to, and reaffirmed what we have been doing for 25 years.” He was referring to the complex rules for collecting and accounting for the proper use of agency fees that the high court has addressed in several cases.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the court in Davenport v. Washington Education Association Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader (Case No. 05-1589), said it does not violate the First Amendment speech or association rights of public-sector unions if states require them to seek an “affirmative authorization” before spending nonmembers’ money on election-related activities.

“We do not think that the voters of Washington impermissibly distorted the marketplace of ideas when they placed a reasonable, viewpoint-neutral limitation on the state’s general authorization allowing public-sector unions to acquire and spend the money of government employees,” Justice Scalia wrote.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Samuel A. Alito Jr. declined to sign on to some portions of Justice Scalia’s opinion, but the underlying judgment was unanimous.

Washington state amended the statute last month. The revised law clarifies that unions don’t need authorization for using nonmembers’ agency fees for political and other non-bargaining-related purposes as long as a union has enough money in its general treasury to pay for such activities.

Some legal experts had expected that the change, enacted by a Democratic governor and legislature some 15 years after state voters had approved the “opt-in” requirement in a ballot initiative, would lead the Supreme Court to send the case back to the Washington state courts without a full opinion.

But both sides had told the court the change in law did not make the case moot. Justice Scalia agreed, saying in a footnote that money damages were still at stake.

State officials noted that more than $500,000 in fines levied by the state against the WEA for violations of the earlier statute were also still dependent on the outcome of the case.

“The union is still subject to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fines,” Rob McKenna, the attorney general of Washington state, said in an interview. He said that unions were within their rights to seek a change to the law through the political process, as they did, but that his office was intent on defending the 1992 ballot initiative.

“The union clearly lost on the question of whether the law it violated was constitutional,” added Mr. McKenna, a Republican. “There’s no way to put a spin on losing a case 9-0 in the U.S. Supreme Court.”

But Mr. Chanin of the NEA said “the outcome is just fine from our point of view.” He added that he thought there was a good chance that the WEA’s fines would be reduced after further lower-court proceedings.

The case originated with a state probe of the WEA in 1994 after the union instituted a dues increase, partly to offset an anticipated drop-off in political contributions because of the 1992 initiative.

In 1998, the state reached a $430,000 settlement in a case against the union. In a subsequent legal action by the state, the union faced a judgment of $590,000 for failing to abide by the opt-in measure. The WEA was also sued by a group of four teachers who were not members of the union and objected to the use of their agency fees for political purposes.

In March 2006, the Washington Supreme Court struck down the 1992 law. The court said the law imposed a burden on the teachers’ union of confirming that a nonmember does not object to having his agency fees spent on electoral purposes. That burden may have infringed on the union’s First Amendment right of “expressive association,” the court said.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision threw out the state high court’s ruling and sent the case back for further proceedings in the state courts.

**Modest Returns**

In its arguments on behalf of the nonunion teachers, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation had urged the justices to rule that a phrase from a 1961 high court labor precedent applies only to voluntary union members, not to nonmembers.

In *Machinists v. Street*, which upheld the idea that nonunion members should not get a free ride when they benefit from a union’s bargaining activities, the Supreme Court at that time further said that “dissent is not to be presumed—it must affirmatively be made known to the union by the dissenting employee.”

The right-to-work group said that phrase was not meant to apply to nonunion members, whose refusal to join the union has already served to register dissent to the union’s acting on their behalf.

Justice Scalia said the Washington high court mistakenly relied on the “dissent is not to be presumed” principle to conclude that a nonmember bears the burden of objecting before a union may be barred from spending his or her fees for impermissible purposes.

The high court’s precedents set a “constitutional floor” for procedures to evaluate unions’ collecting and spending of agency fees, Justice Scalia said, not a “ceiling” for measures that states may enact.

Justin Hakes, the legal-information director of the National Right to Work foundation, suggested that his group has soured on the effectiveness of “paycheck protection” measures for nonunion workers.

“We don’t feel the underlying [1992] law was effective,” he said. The group contends that unions were able to evade the Washington state provision by changing their accounting methods and taking other steps to fall outside the scope of the regulation, which focused on election-related matters.

Timothy M. Sandefur, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on the side of the nonunion workers, said the Supreme Court’s ruling makes it clear that the states may enact stronger measures to attempt to guarantee that nonunion workers’ fees are not mis-used.

But even measures such as Washington state’s 1992 law returned relatively little money to such workers, adding to the ineffectiveness of the requirement.

“It doesn’t pay much for you to refuse to join the union—maybe five bucks back” after a year-end accounting of whether expenses were related to bargaining or not, Mr. Sandefur said.

**El Paso, TX (June 18, 2007)** – After attorneys from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation helped Juan Vielma file federal charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an administrative law judge ordered the local security guard’s reinstatement and back pay for his unlawful firing for exercising his right to cutoff payment of all union dues, a right protected by Texas’ Right to Work law.

But Foundation attorneys anticipate another attempt by union officials to stall the security guard from reclaiming his job by appealing the decision to the NLRB in Washington, DC. Vielma has yet to receive any back pay for wages he would have earned over the past year if he was still employed.

The Texas Attorney General has so far failed to prosecute these violations of the state’s Right to Work law, a criminal statute.

Vielma, an AKAL Security employee, prompted the NLRB to issue a complaint and prosecute the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America (SPFPA) union and his employer after he was unlawfully suspended without pay in retaliation for asserting his legal right not to pay union dues. AKAL and SPFPA union officials falsely claimed Vielma worked on federal property that is not protected by Texas’ Right to Work law, and thus could be forced to pay union dues or be fired.

After a hearing before the NLRB, Administrative Law Judge Gregory Z. Meyerson ruled that the SPFPA union hierarchy must submit a written request to AKAL requiring Vielma’s reinstatement, as well as reimburse all his lost earnings and benefits since his termination. Additionally, union officials must cease and desist from enforcing contract clauses that make payment of union dues a requirement of employment –– and union officials must post notices at the El Paso facility and SPFPA union headquarters informing employees of their right to resign from union membership and cut off all dues payment.

“Because the Texas Attorney General’s office is so far AWOL, Vielma is stuck with the slow moving processes of the NLRB,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Union officials are trying to destroy Mr. Vielma for standing up for his rights.”

The ruling described union lawyers’ last-ditch attempt to keep Vielma out of work as “a final effort in what appeared to be the inevitable” when they argued that the National Labor Relations “Act be ignored in any matters involving national security.” The ALJ referenced another Board decision to show that “this same Union argued that the NLRB has jurisdiction over airport screeners…whose work is obviously regulated by Homeland Security.”

Parallel to Vielma’s case, Foundation attorneys are helping Carlos Banuelos, a Corpus Christi security guard who filed federal charges against the SPFPA union. SPFPA union officials there are similarly attempting to enforce a forced dues contract clause in violation of Texas’ Right to Work law, which prohibits forced dues.

Below is a selection of the continuously growing body of work confirming both the ineffectiveness and imprudence of so-called “paycheck protection” campaign finance laws which hope to regulate the expenditure of union funds on politics. Included are news articles, commentary articles, academic studies, and legal briefs from the last ten years demonstrating the many failings of promoting these campaign finance regulations.

**April 1998**
*Investors Business Daily*: What Does Paycheck Protection Protect? by Bob Adams

Key quote: “No matter what the outcome of Prop. 226, Big Labor will score a victory in the long run. If it is passed, California workers – cruelly bombarded with false hopes for months – can only conclude that union political spending is a thing of the past. This false sense of security buys organized labor years to extract even more forced dues for politics. And if CRI loses, organized labor achieves a public relations coup, energizing its activists and convincing lawmakers that they’ll be steamrolled if they cross Big Labor.”

**April 1998**
*Seattle Times*: Piercing the popular myth of ‘paycheck protection’ by Michelle Malkin

Key quote: “If the experience in Washington State holds, unions across the country will have an easy time – on members’ dime – inventing new and improved ways to divert compulsory dues to fund campaign activities. And state law-enforcement officials will support them.”

**May 1998**
Public Service Research Council Special Report: “Paycheck Protections” and the Washington Experience: What impact did it really have on union politics? by David Denholm

Key quote: “Did the initiative’s requirement that political payroll deductions be authorized annually in writing reduce union political activity or influence» Apparently not.”

**June 1998**
*National Review*: Protection Racket: The Right’s favorite campaign reform idea sounds too good to be true. It is. by Michael Lynch (Washington editor of Reason Magazine)

Key quote: “these laws can regulate only a small portion of private sector union dues spent on political and ideological activity, and unions have a strong financial incentive to avoid even these regulations. Both deficiencies are on display in Washington State, which is hailed by backers of paycheck protection.”

**July 1998**
*Orange County Register*: Labor formed a plan to skirt Prop 226 rules by Jeff Jacoby

Key quote: “In short, the new [paycheck protection] law wouldn’t have changed a thing. Real paycheck protection is about ending compulsory unionism in the first place.”

**March 2001**
*The Weekly Standard*: One Cheer for Paycheck Protection: It won’t stop unions from political mischief by Jeff Jacoby & Michelle Malkin

Key quote: “Experiences in Washington state and California show that laws intended to stop unions from spending forced dues on politics have been vastly oversold. They have done little to reduce massive political expenditures of mandatory dues on left-wing lobbying, Democratic party-building, and soft-money “issues” ads designed to hurt Republicans. Worst of all, they do nothing to curb the power of unions to extract dues from dissenting members in the first place.”

**June 2005**
*Sacramento Bee*: ‘Paycheck protection’ measures have little impact in 4 of 5 states by Bee Reporter Andy Furillo

Key quote: “In Washington, the unions have blunted paycheck protection in the courts and are spending money on politics like never before. In Michigan, union outlays still reach into the millions, while in Wyoming labor spending only got higher after paycheck protection. Idaho’s voluntary contribution law has since been enjoined in the federal courts. Robert P. Hunter, a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich., a free-market public policy think tank, said paycheck protection has done nothing to curb union spending in the state.”

**August 2006**
Heritage Foundation Data Analysis Report: What Do Union Members Want» What Paycheck Protection Laws Show About How Well Unions Reflect Their Members’ Priorities by James Sherk, Bradley Fellow in Labor Policy at the Heritage Foundation (page 10)

Key quote: “Circumstantial reports certainly suggest that union leaders simply ramp up their unconstrained soft money spending when their members have the option of opting out of hard money donations… effectively sidestepping the law.”

**November 2006**
Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s “Friend of the Court” Brief in *Washington v. WEA* and *Davenport v. WEA* U.S. Supreme Court cases, authored by Eric Martin (pages 11-12)

Key quote: “Even if every non-member declined to opt-in to the use of dues for political purposes, the impact to the WEA would amount to less than ¼ of 1% of the WEA’s total expenditures…. Such a miniscule drop in funds available for political purposes hardly has the crippling effect complained of by the WEA…”

**January 2007**
*Pittsburgh Tribune-Review*: Laboring against free speech by George C. Leef, Execuive Director of the Pope Center for Higher Education

Key quote: “Union officials are adept at evading such «paycheck protection» regulations because the definition of politics covered is extremely narrow. After slight changes to their accounting and spending practices, union bosses can continue business as usual, and Washington’s experience proved no exception.”

**June 2007**
*The National Review*: Freedom to Choose the Union Label by Jim Bopp, general counsel to the James Madison Center for Free Speech

Key quote: «While the Court’s decision in Davenport v. WEA is welcome, other states should not rush to enact similar laws. They should instead address the underlying problem of state compulsion… A paycheck-protection act (PPA) actually endorses and supports this underlying compulsion and merely attempts to remove some of the objectionable effects of such compulsory arrangements.»

**June 2007**
*The Detroit News*: Don’t copy Washington state’s union dues law by Bradley A. Smith, former member of the Federal Election Commission and chairman of the Center for Competitive Politics

Key quote: «The problem of ineffectiveness is not the only reason why paycheck protection is a blind alley. By embracing the campaign finance regulatory approach, its promoters are trying to use the tools of the political left — that is, government regulations — to solve a problem caused by government. This path is fraught with danger and could continue to backfire, as it nearly did in Washington state. The real problem is that forcing employees to pay any dues — for politics or anything else — is fundamentally unjust.»