17 Oct 2023

Federal Charge: East Bay-Area Construction Materials Worker Illegally Fired for Refusing to Join Union

Posted in News Releases

NLRB investigating IUOE union bosses for retaliatory termination and seizing dues from employee’s paycheck in violation of longstanding law

Pleasanton, CA (October 17, 2023) – Alexandra Le, an employee of Pleasanton-based materials testing company Construction Testing Services (CTS), has hit International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) officials and CTS with federal charges. The charges state IUOE bosses illegally demanded she join the union as a condition of keeping her job and instigated her firing by CTS when she refused to join. Additionally, Le’s charges maintain that company and union officials violated the law by deducting union dues directly from her paycheck without her permission.

Le, a firestop inspector, filed the charges at National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 32 in Oakland, CA, with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. She notes in her charges that IUOE officials not only failed to inform her of her right to abstain from union membership, but also never notified her of her right to pay a reduced amount of union dues as a nonmember.

Because California lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, Le and her coworkers can be forced to pay some dues to the union as a condition of keeping their jobs, even if they’ve abstained from formal union membership. However, as per the Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision, even in non-Right to Work states union officials can’t force nonmember employees to pay for union expenses beyond what the union claims goes to bargaining, such as union politics. Other Supreme Court precedents and federal labor laws protect workers’ right to refrain from formal union membership and require union bosses to seek workers’ express consent before deducting dues directly from their paychecks.

In Right to Work states, union membership and all union financial support are fully voluntary.

“It’s outrageous that IUOE union officials believe they can get me fired simply because I don’t agree with their organization and don’t want to support or affiliate with them,” Le said. “IUOE union officials have been far more concerned with consolidating power in the workplace and collecting dues than caring about me and my coworkers, and I hope the NLRB will hold them responsible for their illegal actions.”

Worker Demands NLRB Step in to Reverse Union-Instigated Firing, Illegal Demands

Le’s charge against the IUOE union states that, after she refused to affiliate with the union, IUOE bosses “caused Charging Party to be removed from the work schedule by her Employer as of October 2nd.” The NLRB v. General Motors Corp. U.S. Supreme Court decision protects the right of workers to refuse formal union membership, even in a non-Right to Work state.

As a remedy, the charge asks the NLRB Regional Director in Oakland to “invoke its authority under Section 10(j)” of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which empowers the Board to seek an injunction from a federal court to stop IUOE and CTS management from committing the unfair labor practices.

“Le’s charges show that IUOE union officials, in their apparent greed for forced dues, have ignored numerous longstanding legal protections for workers opposed to union affiliation,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “While the union’s anti-worker actions would be wildly unlawful in any state in the country, they reveal the importance of state Right to Work protections: No worker should be forced to give any amount of their hard-earned paycheck to union officials who threaten and misinform the employees they claim to ‘represent,’ or simply haven’t earned workers’ support.”

21 Jun 2022

National Right to Work Foundation Slams Decision Trapping Michigan Construction Workers in Unpopular Union

Posted in News Releases

NLRB rules that ballots employees already cast in vote to oust union cannot be counted, highlighting Labor Board’s pro-union boss bias

Washington, DC (June 21, 2022) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC, has permitted the destruction of hundreds of ballots already cast by Michigan Rieth-Riley Construction Company workers in an election whether to oust International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE) union officials. The decision shuts down a years-long effort by Rieth-Riley employees to remove IUOE Local 324 officials, allowing the union to stifle the workers’ vote with questionable “blocking charges” against Rieth-Riley management.

Rieth-Riley employee Rayalan Kent led the effort to vote out IUOE union officials. With the assistance of National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, he submitted two petitions in 2020 with enough worker support to trigger the NLRB’s administration of a “decertification vote.” A vote finally occurred in October 2020, but Regional NLRB officials in Detroit ruled, just hours before the ballots were to be counted, that union boss-concocted “blocking charges” invalidated the employees’ petition. The NLRB in Washington has now affirmed that decision.

Both rulings fly in the face of Foundation-backed reforms the NLRB adopted in 2020 regarding “blocking charges,” which provided that ballots in union decertification elections should be counted first before any unfair labor practice charges surrounding the election are dealt with. Moreover, even prior NLRB precedent required that an evidentiary hearing be held to determine whether there is any “causal nexus” between union allegations of employer misconduct and employee dissatisfaction engendering a union decertification effort. But the NLRB never held any such hearing in this case.

Settlements Foundation attorneys won in 2021 for Rieth-Riley employees Rob Nevins and Jesse London indicate that malfeasance by IUOE officials, not Rieth-Riley misdeeds, likely caused the company’s workers to push for the union’s ouster. London and Nevins decided to end their union memberships and keep working to support their families despite a union boss-ordered strike in 2019.

Nevins charged union officials with threatening to “blackball” him if he didn’t strike, and London reported that IUOE officials refused to hand over health insurance premium money they owed him for time he participated in the strike. The settlements mandated that IUOE union bosses not discriminate against London and Nevins for exercising their right to refrain from union membership, and also ordered them to pay London the health insurance premium money he was owed.

“The current decision demonstrates how the NLRB and its bureaucrats have twisted a law that is allegedly designed to protect the free choice rights of rank-and-file workers. Instead of supporting workers’ rights, this Board and past Boards have weaponized the National Labor Relations Act against workers solely to entrench union boss power,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Rather than apply the letter and spirit of the 2020 Election Protection rule, Joe Biden’s NLRB has undermined and rendered useless even those modest reforms. Given this awful ruling, it is now likely that Rieth-Riley workers’ votes to remove the union will simply be dropped in a trash can.”

Mix added: “Workers have a statutory right to vote out a union they oppose and NLRB bureaucrats should not be able to nullify that right on the basis of unproven and often unrelated allegations of employer misconduct.”