Posts tagged National Right to Work Foundation
Ex-employee files charges with labor board against Pleasanton company, union
November 16, 2023 // A Pleasanton-based construction company and the union representing a majority of its employees are each facing charges brought by a former, non-union employee alleging that she had membership dues deducted from her paycheck against her will and was effectively terminated from her position for refusing to join the union. Alexandra Le filed the charges with the National Labor Relations Board on Oct. 4 against Construction Training Services and the International Union of Operating Engineers Local No. 3, with Virginia-based attorney Byron Andrus of the National Right to Work Foundation providing legal counsel.
Unions seek gains in hostile territory: ‘If you change the South, you change America’
September 15, 2023 // The Union of Southern Service Workers, an SEIU-backed group, is organizing low-wage workers from across the service industry. The National Domestic Workers Alliance, a non-union membership organization, is mapping blue-leaning Southern jurisdictions, such as Miami-Dade County, that could be open to enacting a floor of labor standards for homecare. That effort has already led to the passage of “Bill of Rights” legislation in 10 states and four cities. And the Southern Workers Assembly, an advocacy group for both union and non-union workers, is trying to educate and organize workplaces across the region.
NLRB restores Obama-era rule speeding up union election process
August 25, 2023 // The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Thursday finalized procedural changes that will speed up the union election process, which have been criticized by business groups for favoring organized labor. The Democrat-led board's rule restores changes to the election process that were adopted during the Obama administration and largely eliminated in 2019 when appointees of Republican former President Donald Trump led the board. Among the key provisions of the new rule are a requirement that elections be held before related litigation is resolved. Under the Trump-era regulation, the board had to rule on issues such as workers' eligibility to vote and alleged unlawful conduct by employers before holding an election.
Trump Makes Appeal to Unions Emboldened Under Biden Administration
July 28, 2023 // F. Vincent Vernuccio, senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Center’s director of labor policy between 2012 and 2017, said that some of the UAW jobs could be going away because of the president’s push for electric vehicles. He pointed to a recent report estimating that the new electric vehicle targets could eliminate 117,000 manufacturing jobs. “You’re seeing it reflected in jobs moving down south to right-to-work states,” he said, referring to states that make forced unionization illegal. Employees who want to cross the picket line and work when unions have issued a strike have to do it legally, else face fines or other disciplinary action from the unions. He said that large, industrialized unions tend to have one-size-fits-all contracts that benefit some but not all workers, making the administration’s push for unionization where there was none before a net negative. He advocates instead for term flexibility for workers, unionized or not.
Five years ago, U.S. Supreme Court strikes down forced public union dues
July 5, 2023 // Following the Supreme Court ruling, Janus left his job with the state of Illinois to join the Illinois Policy Institute, a free market think tank. The ruling affected union participation around the country. According to the Freedom Foundation, over a quarter of a million workers have left the four largest public unions since the Janus decision, which is a decline of about 10 percent. After the ruling, AFSCME Council 31, the union Janus sued, saw nearly a 20% drop in membership.
San Diego Gompers Preparatory Academy Charter School Educators Vote Out SDEA Union
June 9, 2023 // Even worse, shortly after the PERB’s ruling halting the original decertification effort, Chiscano and another Gompers educator filed charges maintaining that SDEA agents targeted them on social media for opposing the union hierarchy. California law makes it illegal for union officials to intimidate or retaliate against employees who exercise their right to refrain from union membership. Union boss-aligned state legislators even chimed in to pressure Gompers management to give in to union demands. In a letter to Gompers management, then-Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (now an AFL-CIO president) attacked the National Right to Work Foundation for simply providing legal aid to Gompers educators as they sought to exercise their right to hold a decertification election. Gonzalez was best known during her tenure for authoring AB5, a California law that drastically reduced opportunities for freelance workers and independent contractors across the state.
Mankato Mayo employee demands vote to remove union officials
May 15, 2023 // Employees from four Cuyuna Regional Medical Center locations across the Brainerd Lakes region sought Foundation aid in their 2022 decertification effort against Service Employees International Union officials, the foundation said. Mankato Mayo Clinic hospital registered nurses voted the Minnesota Nurses Association union out of the facility in a July 2022 election, according to board records. “Mayo Clinic Health System is aware of a petition filed by a staff member to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to vote on whether representation by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) should continue,” Mayo Clinic Health System spokeswoman Amanda Dyslin said in a Friday email to The Center Square. “This is a staff-led effort, and we are grateful for the confidence these individuals have in Mayo Clinic Health System.
Southern IL Aluminum Worker Forces IBEW Union Bosses to Abandon Illegal Dues Demands, Termination Threat
March 2, 2023 // Penn Aluminum International employee Mary Beck has successfully forced International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 702 union officials to stop illegally demanding money from her paycheck. National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys represented her for free before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Beck hit both the IBEW union and her employer with federal charges in June 2022, maintaining that union dues were coming out of her paycheck under a defective contract, and that union officials had ignored her resignation of union membership and her request to pay only the amount of dues necessary to keep her job under federal law. She added additional charges in August 2022, stating that union officials had acknowledged her demand, but threatened to get her fired if she didn’t pay an unspecified amount of money to the union. Beck filed charges to defend her rights under the Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision, which forbids union officials from having employees in non-Right to Work states like Illinois fired for refusal to pay for union politics and other expenses outside the union’s “representation” functions.
GOP Rep. Joe Wilson Reintroduces National Right To Work Act To Prevent Mandated Union Dues
February 28, 2023 // “As we near the fifth anniversary of the Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision this June, which clarified the constitutional rights of all public-sector workers in America to refrain from joining or paying a union as a condition of employment, it’s time to expand worker choice to all private-sector workers in America, too,” Austen Bannan, senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity, told the Daily Caller
Stephen Burke – Fighting Forced Dues in the Workplace
November 21, 2022 // “The screeners were really upset and the union forced us to pay dues or be fired. The employees didn’t understand they were signing cards in favor of the union, they just wanted the organizers out of their face.” –Stephen describing how union organizing tactics mislead employees “There’s absolutely no support for this union. They’ve forced themselves down our throats.” –Stephen speaking about how union officials slipped “card check” efforts past the screeners