**Aberdeen, MD (August 8, 2007)** \u2013 Following challenges by employees unlawfully unionized by \u201ccard check,\u201d International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM) union Local 2424 officials backed down and settled federal labor charges pending against them.<\/p>\n
The settlement came after federal investigators found that union officials had violated the employees\u2019 rights during a so-called card check organizing drive which bypassed the secret-ballot election process.<\/p>\n
Last month, three employees working for private contractors at the Aberdeen Test Center military facility obtained free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation. Foundation attorneys filed charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 5 office in Baltimore. The NLRB charges detailed multiple union violations of the employees\u2019 rights, including unionizing employees who did not support the union, unlawfully transferring these employees into a union bargaining unit, and threatening employees with termination if they did not join the union.<\/p>\n
To avoid an embarrassing NLRB prosecution, IAM officials formally settled the charges by renouncing monopoly bargaining privileges over the more than 150 employees who were unlawfully unionized. The union brass also agreed that they would not attempt to unionize the engineers under a card check scheme, but instead would only use the less coercive NLRB-supervised secret-ballot election process.<\/p>\n
\u201cIAM union bosses got caught red-handed violating the rights of the very employees they claimed to represent,\u201d said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. \u201cWhile this case highlights the coercion inherent in so-called \u2018card check\u2019 unionization, ultimately these abuses by union bosses will not end until their compulsory unionism privileges are eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n
The case is one of many documented instances of fraud and abuse in card check organizing drives. Under card check, union-controlled authorization cards are used as \u201cvotes\u201d for unionization. Employees report that cards are often collected under false-premises or through intimidation. In this case, the union declared a victory in their card check drive when it did not even have cards from a majority of employees.<\/p>\n
The employees also filed charges against their employers (Jacobs Technology Inc., LogSec. Corporation and Science and Technology Corporation) for their role in imposing the unwanted union on the workers by recognizing IAM officials as the employees\u2019 collective bargaining representative without proof that the union had the support of a majority of the employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
**Aberdeen, MD (August 8, 2007)** \u2013 Following challenges by employees unlawfully unionized by \u201ccard check,\u201d International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers (IAM) union Local 2424 officials backed down and settled federal labor charges pending against them. The settlement came after federal investigators found that union officials had violated the employees\u2019 rights during a so-called […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n