Akron, Ohio (July 28, 2003)<\/b> \u2013 National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys today filed an unprecedented federal court challenge against Heartland Industrial Partners LLP and the United Steel Workers of America (USWA) union, seeking to overturn an illegal sweetheart arrangement that requires all companies acquired by the Heartland firm to help impose unionization on their employees.<\/p>\n
The suit calls into question the legality of a rapidly emerging organizing trend \u2013 especially prevalent in the automobile and hotel industries \u2013 in which struggling union organizers abandon traditional grassroots-driven unionization drives and instead elicit assistance from companies to impose compulsory unionism on their own employees through highly coercive top-down organizing methods. <\/p>\n
Foundation attorneys filed the suit, Patterson et al. v. Heartland Industrial Partners LLP et al.<\/i>, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, on behalf of Wanda Patterson, an employee of the Heartland-acquired Collins & Aikman company, an Ohio-based automotive parts manufacturer whose employees had rejected union organizing efforts on several previous occasions.<\/p>\n
Under the pact at issue, Heartland forces acquired companies to operate under a so-called \u201cneutrality agreement\u201d that requires company managers to assist USWA union officials in organizing their employees \u2013 including denying employees an opportunity to vote in a traditional secret ballot election, giving union organizers employees\u2019 private employment information such as home addresses, and, ultimately, forcing employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment. In return, union officials pour unsuspecting workers\u2019 trust funds into Heartland, promise to stifle employee rights under federal law, and limit employees\u2019 ability to influence their own wages, benefits, and working conditions.<\/p>\n
It is believed that this quid pro quo<\/i> violates civil and criminal provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act enacted by Congress to prevent corruption, conflicts of interest, and sweetheart deals between company and union officials that compromise the interests of rank-and-file employees.<\/p>\n