Update:<\/b> On Tuesday, December 10, 2013, the United States Supreme Court announced that it \u00abdismissed as improvidently granted\u00bb the union appeal of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in Mulhall v. UNITE HERE<\/i>. The order leaves intact a significant victory for National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys and a Florida Mardi Gras Gaming employee in which the appeals court ruled that the company’s organizing assistance to union officials could be unlawful \u00abthing[s] of value.\u00bb<\/p>\n
The U.S. Supreme Court announced in late June that it will hear the National Right to Work Foundation’s 16th case before the Court: Mulhall v. UNITE HERE<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The case stems from a 2004 deal between UNITE HERE Local 355 and Mardi Gras Gaming in which union officials promised to spend over $100,000 on a gambling ballot initiative and guaranteed not to picket, boycott, or strike against the company. In return, Mardi Gras agreed to give union operatives workers’ personal information, grant union organizers access to company facilities during a coercive \u00abcard check\u00bb campaign, refrain from informing workers about the downsides of unionization, and waive a federally-supervised secret ballot election to determine whether the workers unionized.<\/p>\n
In Mulhall<\/i>, the Court must decide whether the company’s organizing assistance is \u00aba thing of value\u00bb and thus illegal under federal law.<\/p>\n
Barnes & Thornburg’s \u00abLabor Relations\u00bb blog stated<\/a> that Mulhall<\/i> \u00abcould end up as the most significant labor law decision the Supreme Court has handed down in a generation.\u00bb