Richmond, Va. (January 5, 2005)<\/b> \u2014 The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has unanimously overturned a controversial National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling that handed union officials the power to force non-union employees across America to wear union insignia on their work uniforms or be fired. <\/p>\n
The NLRB made its controversial ruling during the first year of President George W. Bush\u2019s term while the federal labor agency was still dominated by appointees from President Clinton\u2019s second term.<\/p>\n
The case began in 1996 when National Right to Work Foundation attorneys assisted BellSouth Communications technicians Gary Lee and James Amburn of Charlotte, North Carolina, in filing charges at the NLRB against the major telecommunications company and Communications Workers of America (CWA) union after learning that BellSouth employees \u2013 regardless of union membership \u2013 must wear prominent union logo patches or risk being fired from their jobs. <\/p>\n
In 1997, the NLRB\u2019s General Counsel issued a complaint against the CWA union and BellSouth for unfair labor practices. The complaint accepted Foundation attorneys\u2019 arguments that forcing non-members to wear the CWA union logo violates their right to refrain from union activity and that the logo gave the false appearance that non-members belonged to or supported the union. (The employees exercised their right not to join the union under North Carolina\u2019s highly-popular Right to Work law.) <\/p>\n
However, in a decision filled with tortured legal reasoning \u2013 cited by the U.S. Court of Appeals as based on \u201cno evidence\u201d \u2013 the NLRB in Washington, DC, ruled that BellSouth\u2019s uniform policy requiring the patch was a \u201cspecial circumstance,\u201d which trumped the statutory right of workers to refrain from supporting the union. <\/p>\n