**Harrisburg, PA (June 6, 2007)** — A federal judge has enjoined a Teamsters union local, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and two Turnpike Commission officers from continuing to seize union dues from the paychecks of 20 Pennsylvania Turnpike employees who brought suit to vindicate their constitutional rights. The preliminary injunction also blocks enforcement of a longtime union policy that bars thousands of employees in Pennsylvania from resigning from formal union membership for up to three years.

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is providing free legal aid to two groups of Turnpike employees from Harrisburg and Pittsburgh in their challenge to the unlawful collection of forced union dues. This injunction pertains to the Harrisburg lawsuit involving Teamsters union Local 77.

The employees filed the parallel lawsuits in March citing multiple violations of employees’ rights by Turnpike and Teamsters union Local 77 and Local 250 officials in confiscating forced dues from employees who, in the case of the Pittsburgh employees, who had resigned their formal union membership. In Pennsylvania, a compulsory unionism state, nonunion members can only be forced to pay for a union’s proven collective bargaining costs.

The Harrisburg lawsuit includes a potentially precedent-setting claim challenging the constitutionality of a clause in the collective bargaining agreement that prohibits employees from resigning their formal union membership except during a narrow 15-day window prior to the expiration of a three-year contract.

In granting the employees’ motion for a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher C. Conner noted that, under the policy, “the only way plaintiffs can resign from the union is to leave their employment” and employees are subject to union discipline and must pay full dues despite their “disagreement with the union’s ideology or politics.” The judge found that the policy “may have a direct and deleterious impact on plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendment,” and that union officials’ actions demonstrated a “real or immediate danger to their First Amendment rights.”

These so-called “maintenance of membership” clauses are common in the public sector in Pennsylvania and exist in several other states. Union officials use them to block employees from exercising their constitutional rights to refrain from formal union membership and cut off compulsory dues unrelated to monopoly bargaining.

“Union officials want to keep Pennsylvania’s public employees from exercising what limited rights they still possess to cut off payment of compulsory union dues,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “Until employees in the Keystone State are protected by a Right to Work law making union dues payment strictly voluntary, such abuses will inevitably continue.”

The union hierarchy is violating the minimal procedural protections required by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1988 *Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson* decision. In the Foundation-won Hudson case, the High Court ruled that before collecting any forced dues, union officials must provide an audited disclosure of the union’s expenses and give employees an opportunity to object to paying forced union dues spent for certain activities.

Download the Injunction

**Akron, OH (June 5, 2007)** – After several employees at the local Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (NYSE:GT) facility filed a wave of federal charges, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has agreed to prosecute the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) union for hitting nonunion workers with illegal retaliatory strike fines and waging an ugly campaign of threats, recriminations, and hate mail.

With help from attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, Goodyear employee Frank C. Steen III originally filed federal charges against the USWA union after officials levied fines of $620 each against several employees for refusing to walk off the job during a union-ordered strike. Union officials imposed the fines on each of the workers after ordering them to attend an internal “kangaroo” court (which the employees refused to attend) for continuing to do their jobs. Union officials also “accused” the employees of allegedly informing others of their legal right to refrain from formal union membership.

Between October 2006 and January 2007, USWA officials ordered employees to walk off the job at the Goodyear plant. However, in order to support their families, Steen and his coworkers resigned from formal union membership in November and exercised their right to return to work.

After USWA officials issued the unlawful fines, Steen filed federal charges against USWA union officials because they disregarded the employees’ November resignations and unlawfully continued to deduct full union dues from their paychecks.

After his resignation, Steen received approximately 10 pieces of hate mail from union officials. Similarly, on two different occasions, USWA union operatives shouted through bullhorns outside Steen’s residence, calling him a “low life” for refusing to abandon his job. In a separate incident, another union-strike supporter threatened one of Steen’s coworkers over the phone that he would be fined for “everything he made and then some” and would be fired once the strike was over.

“Union officials want Frank Steen and his coworkers to shut up and pay up,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “This case shows the contempt that union officials often have for employees who exercise independent judgment and who work to support their families during an unpopular strike.”

According to the NLRB Regional Director, the case will be heard before an Administrative Law Judge on August 21, 2007. The order for an official hearing comes after Goodyear saw a USWA union-ordered walkout of over 15,000 of its employees across its 16 plants in North America for several months.

“Unfortunately, as long as Ohio workers labor without the protections of a Right to Work law – which makes union affiliation and dues payment strictly voluntary – abuses of this nature will surely continue throughout the Buckeye State,” said Gleason.

Dowload the complaint

San Francisco, CA (June 1, 2007) — National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have filed a motion to intervene to stop a desperate, last-ditch effort by union lawyers to block the federal labor board from conducting a secret-ballot election in which 900 airport security screeners at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) may choose to end the union’s ability to seize compulsory union dues.

With 900 screeners forced to pay roughly $400 each per year, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) officials stand to lose upwards of $360,000 annually in compulsory dues if the employees succeed, and Foundation attorneys will ask the court to throw out the SEIU lawsuit.

That lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 20 Director, as well as appointed Members of the NLRB in Washington, DC. The suit claims that these officials do not have the discretion to allow employees to exercise their statutory right to an election. The NLRB has final jurisdiction over such “deauthorization” elections, and a federal court has no legal authority to enjoin the election.

Led by Stephen Burke, a four-and-a-half year employee of Covenant Aviation Security at SFO, the screeners are upset that SEIU officials became their monopoly bargaining agent in the first place — without a secret-ballot election, but rather through a coercive “card check” campaign — and almost immediately ordered the security screeners to pay union dues or be fired from their jobs.

Under coercive “card check” unionization, rather than a vote in a government-supervised secret ballot election, union operatives may browbeat dissenting workers into signing cards later counted as “votes” favoring unionization. Since gaining monopoly bargaining power over the screeners, many have reported that the union hierarchy is unresponsive, and unwilling to do anything other than collect forced dues. Many screeners have reported that this dissatisfaction fostered the deauthorization effort.

Hundreds of SFO security screeners apparently object to the mandatory union dues requirement. Over 45 percent of Burke’s coworkers signed the deauthorization petition, far beyond the 30 percent necessary to trigger the NLRB supervised-election. If a majority of all employees in the bargaining unit vote in favor of deauthorization, union officials will be stripped of their special privilege to compel payment of dues.

«Without the ability to withhold union dues, SFO screeners have virtually no leverage to keep union officials from continuing to act in their own self-interest,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation, a charitable organization that is assisting the screeners in vindicating their rights. “This desperate lawsuit against the Members of the NLRB demonstrates how aggressively union officials guard their special legal privilege to shake down employees for union dues.”

SEIU officials had previously tried to block the employees from obtaining the deauthorization election by challenging signatures collected in opposition to the forced dues clause before it took effect. However, the NLRB in Washington, DC, recently rejected that challenge and ordered the election to proceed.

**Chicago, IL (May 30, 2007)** – After multiple attempts by United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Locals 881 and 1546 lawyers to block a decertification election, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 13 ruled that over 300 employees of Treasure Island Foods, Inc. at six local stores have a right to vote on whether to oust the unwanted union.

Treasure Island employees originally filed for a union 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 thwarted it by filing a series of “blocking charges” at the NLRB against Treasure Island Foods for allegedly encouraging employee dissatisfaction with the union.

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 file multiple unfair labor practice charges against Treasure Island to block the election. UFCW union officials alleged that Treasure Island illegally sent letters to its employees encouraging them to file the petition, but an administrative law judge rejected that claim.

Finally, with help from attorneys at the National Right to Work Foundation, Schalin and his coworkers requested that the petition for decertification be reinstated. Late last week, the NLRB Regional Director ruled in favor of their request, stating that Treasure Islands’ written letters never tainted the employees’ showing of interest in the petition.

“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 generally an uphill battle for workers to obtain, particularly because union lawyers are adept at gumming up the works by filing baseless charges that often block an election for years. Under the National Labor Relations Act, a decertification election gives employees the opportunity to cast a vote to remove the union as the “exclusive bargaining representative” in a workplace, but one can only be sought during narrowly proscribed periods every few years. If the Treasure Island employees vote to revoke the unwanted UFCW union’s “certification,” employees at all six stores in the Chicago area will become nonunion and free to negotiate over their own wages and working conditions.

Download the Employee’s Request for Review
Download the NLRB’s Order Reinstating the Decertification Petition

**Springfield, VA (August 31, 2007)** – Experts from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and National Right to Work Committee will be available for comment and interviews on and around Labor Day September 3 about workers’ rights, union political activities, union organizing trends and tactics, union corruption, and other issues relating to organized labor in America.

The Foundation is a non-profit, charitable organization that provides free legal aid to victims of compulsory unionism abuse. The National Right to Work Committee is 2.2 million member grassroots citizens’ organization that is dedicated to the principle that no one should ever be forced to affiliate with a union in order to get or keep a job.

National Right to Work spokesmen are frequently interviewed on national television and radio programs, including The O’Reilly Factor, Special Report with Brit Hume, CNBC’s Closing Bell, and on CNN. Their writings frequently appear in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and scores of others. They are prepared to comment on or debate any issues related to the following:

• Union officials’ political efforts to pass legislation expanding union special privileges at the expense of rank-and-file employees;

• The growing support around the country for job-producing Right to Work laws that make union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary;

• How the Bush-appointed National Labor Relations Board has failed to rule on many of the most cutting-edge cases in American labor law – allowing union officials to step up their aggressive organizing tactics;

• The efforts of Big Labor’s allies in Congress to overturn state labor laws and give union officials monopoly bargaining power over firefighters and police officers;

• Organized labor’s war on the secret ballot election process for workers choosing whether to unionize; increasing use of coercive “card check” organizing campaigns against workers; and “corporate campaigns” to bully nonunion companies to unionize or go out of business;

• How the Foundation is helping workers battle back in the courts against forced union dues, union violations of religious freedom, union violence, and other infringements of employees’ individual rights;

• How teacher union officials have contributed to a decline in public education while blocking efforts at reform.

To schedule an interview – or for more information – call Justin Hakes at 703-770-3317 or email him at jah@nrtw.org

An audio clip from this statement can be downloaded at www.nrtw.org/audio/laborday.mp3

**Springfield, VA (August 31, 2007)** – Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and National Right to Work Committee, made the following statement regarding this year’s Labor Day holiday.

The Foundation is a non-profit, charitable organization that provides free legal aid to victims of compulsory unionism abuse. The National Right to Work Committee is 2.2 million member grassroots citizens’ organization that is dedicated to the principle that no one should ever be forced to affiliate with a union in order to get or keep a job.

“While Americans hit the beaches and fire up the barbeques to celebrate Labor Day, the holiday marks a bittersweet occasion for millions of hardworking Americans forced to join or pay dues to a labor union just to get or keep a job.

“In the 28 states without a Right to Work law that makes union affiliation strictly voluntary, millions of our fellow citizens would be fired if they refused to pay union dues.

“Despite their feel-good rhetoric about standing up for workers’ rights, union officials commonly target dissenting workers. Sadly, such retaliation often takes the form of harassment, firings, and even brutal violence.

“The National Right to Work Committee has spent most of 2007 fighting two dangerous union power grabs in Congress. Right now, Big Labor is seeking the forced unionization of our nation’s police and firefighters by federal fiat. Meanwhile, union officials are working to pass a so-called ‘card check’ bill to impose aggressive new recruitment methods on America’s workers – a process which would allow union officials to bully individual workers into signing forms that are counted as ‘votes’ for unionization.

“Meanwhile, National Right to Work attorneys fought at the U.S. Supreme Court to establish that nonunion employees should not have to say ‘no’ multiple times to cut off the use of their forced dues for union political causes they abhor. In Ohio, the Foundation helped a teacher strike down a law barring union religious objectors from diverting their forced dues to a charity unless they were members of certain state-approved religions. In California, Foundation attorneys are defending a 16-year-old grocery clerk saving for college after union officials tried to get her fired for refusal to pay union dues.

“And so, as Big Labor officials dish out their tired old Labor Day propaganda, let us not forget about those rank-and-file workers who have paid a high price for standing up to union officials and exercising their individual rights.

“These workers have nothing for which to thank organized labor. This Labor Day, in fact, they are owed an apology.”

In 2004, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed one of the complaints that led to this FEC conciliation agreement. As a group that defends employees against forced political confromity by unions, we were alarmed by the diversion of $26 million by officials of the Service Employees International Union, taken mostly from workers’ forced union dues, into partisan and overt electioneering activity.

See attached letter I received yesterday from the FEC.

This FEC action is a mere slap on the wrist. The big problem with the FEC’s «enforcement» action is, at the end of the day, not one cent of the millions of dollars illegally funnelled into federal election activity will be returned to the unionized workers forced to foot the bill as a condition of employment.

The SEIU union was the biggest ACT donor at $26 million, according to SEIU’s president Andy Stern, a founder of ACT. And many other millions of dollars in workers’ forced union dues were transferred into ACT by officials of other major unions.

Stefan Gleason
Vice President
National Right to Work
Legal Defense Foundation

**Akron, OH (August 20, 2007)** – In order to avoid impending federal prosecution by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), a local union backed down from its unlawful attempts to fine several Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company (NYSE:**GT**) employees $620 each for refusing to abandon their jobs during a union-ordered strike.

The settlement won by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys requires United Steel Workers of America (USWA) Local 2L union officials to stop threatening employees who are not formal union members with internal union fines, to discontinue holding internal union trials used to discipline such employees, and to cease coercing and intimidating employees who choose not to walk off the job during a union-ordered strike. The settlement also requires notices to be posted in visible areas throughout the Goodyear plant advising employees of their rights.

USWA union officials also must stop “using bullhorns to intimidate” and threaten retaliation against employees at their residences, according to the settlement. USWA union officials must now withdraw the illegal strike fines levied against Goodyear employees as well as expunge all internal union disciplinary records on file.

Foundation attorneys originally helped Frank C. Steen III file federal charges after union officials targeted him with illegal retaliatory strike fines, threats, hate mail, and other recriminations. Having issued a formal complaint in June 2007, the NLRB had scheduled a trial for tomorrow, August 21.

“The outright contempt that these thuggish union officials have for employees who refuse to toe the union line is despicable,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Such bully tactics underscore the Buckeye state’s need for a Right to Work law that would make union affiliation and dues payment strictly voluntary.”

Between October 2006 and January 2007, USWA officials ordered over 15,000 Goodyear employees across 16 plants in North America to walk off the job. However, in order to support their families, Steen and his coworkers resigned from formal union membership in November and exercised their right to return to work.

After resigning, Steen and his coworkers were ordered to appear at an internal “kangaroo” court (which the employees refused to attend), where union officials imposed the fines on the employees for continuing to do their jobs. USWA union officials also sought to retaliate against the workers for informing others of their legal right to refrain from formal union membership.

While at work during the strike, Steen received approximately 10 pieces of hate mail from union officials. On two different occasions, USWA union operatives shouted through bullhorns outside Steen’s residence, calling him a “low life” for refusing to abandon his job. And in a separate incident, another union-strike supporter threatened one of Steen’s coworkers over the phone that he would be fined for “everything he made and then some” and would be fired once the strike was over.

Download the settlement

**Gulfport, MS (August 14, 2007)** – Three employees of the Island View Casino have filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop union organizers from obtaining confidential information about Island View employees and from demanding other organizing assistance from Island View management in violation of federal labor law.

In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi with the help of National Right to Work Foundation attorneys, the three employees, detail how Teamsters, International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) and UNITE-HERE union officials are attempting to violate the Labor Management Relations Act by demanding that Island View hand over “things of value” to union organizers. Among these, Teamsters, IUOE, and UNITE union organizers have demanded confidential records containing personal information about employees, sweeping physical access to Gulfside’s properties for organizing, and control over all communications Gulfside has with its employees concerning the unions.

The federal law provisions at issue are meant to prevent sweetheart deals between employers and unions which induce union officials to sell out the interests of the employees they are supposed to represent.

The unions’ demands are part of a “Memorandum of Agreement” that union officials signed with the management of the Grand Casino Gulfport. The remaining assets of the now-defunct Grand Casino were purchased by the Gulfside Casino Partnership in December 2005 after the Grand Casino was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

So-called “neutrality and card check” agreements give union organizers sweeping power to browbeat rank-and-file workers into union ranks. Armed with confidential personnel information, union organizers often make “house calls” where they can intimidate or harass employees into signing cards that are then counted as “votes” for unionization. “Card checks” also deny employees the privacy and limited protections afforded workers during a National Labor Relations Board-run secret ballot election over whether to unionize.

In past National Right to Work Foundation-assisted cases, employees have reported being misled about the cards’ true purpose, and some employees have even had to threaten police action to get union organizers off their property. The Island View employees and their co-workers are particularly concerned about the prospect of home visits from union organizers, after hearing stories of intimidation during organizing drives at other area casinos.

“Union bosses are determined to force unionization on Island View employees from the top down, like it or not,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “These employees believe that the union bosses are more concerned with bolstering union ranks than with representing rank-and-file employees.”

Mississippi is one of 22 Right to Work states in which union membership and dues payment is strictly voluntary. However, if union officials are granted monopoly bargaining power over Island View employees, the workers will no longer be free to negotiate individually over their own wages and working conditions.

Download the Federal Lawsuit

**Los Angeles, CA (August 14, 2007)** – With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, 54 grocery workers of Albertsons and Ralphs grocery chains won a major settlement agreement from the Teamsters Local 952 union requiring it to rescind over $100,000 in illegal strike fines.

Under the settlement approved late last week by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC, Teamsters union officials will rescind all unlawful fines levied against employees during the Southern California grocery strike in 2003-2004.

The settlement also mandates that union officials allow several hundred – perhaps even thousands – of workers in eight different bargaining units to retroactively revoke their formal union membership and receive rebates of mandatory dues taken to fund union political and other non-bargaining activities. Under the settlement, the matter will now be remanded to NLRB Region 21 in Los Angeles, which will ensure the union’s compliance.

Led by Juan Saldana, Daniel Hernandez, Sr. and Mike MacDonald, dozens of Albertsons and Ralphs distribution center employees filed unfair labor practice charges in March 2004 with the NLRB after Teamsters officials issued illegal retaliatory fines against them ranging up to $7,200 per employee for refusing to participate in “sympathy strike” activity.

In fact, Teamsters Local 952 union officials socked employees with the confiscatory fines simply for observing the union’s own “no strike” contract with their employers. The targeted employees had continued to report to work during the crippling grocery strike ordered against Albertsons, Vons, and Ralphs by officials of a different union, the United Food and Commercial Workers.

“Although a significant victory for these employees, this case underscores that state law should not force any worker to affiliate with, or be ‘represented’ by, an unwanted union in the first place,” said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation.

Previously, an NLRB administrative law judge ruled that Teamsters Local 952 officials illegally failed to inform workers of their rights to refrain from formal union membership and to object to paying for the union’s nonrepresentational activities, such as politics. Because the employees thus cannot be considered voluntary members, the judge ruled that employees must be allowed to resign retroactively and thereby avoid internal union disciplinary measures taken against them. The ruling also overturned Teamsters officials’ illegal policy of forcing workers to renew annually their objections to financially supporting the union’s political activities, and to file such objections individually.

In the Foundation-won *Communications Workers of America v. Beck* decision in 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employees are entitled to resign from formal union membership and withhold forced dues for activities other than union monopoly bargaining, such as union political activities and lobbying. And only truly voluntary union members can be subjected to internal union discipline, such as fines