Hotel Officials, Union Bosses Hit With Multiple Federal Labor Board Charges for Abusive Organizing Tactics

Union organizers verbally abuse Marriott employees and spy on workers in changing rooms after striking backroom deal with company officials

New York, NY (January 24, 2012) – A group of New York City Marriott (NYSE: MAR) employees – acting on behalf of their coworkers – have filed federal charges against the company and a local union for workplace intimidation and harassment.

The three SoHo Marriott employees filed the charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys.

New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council Local 6 union organizers entered into a backroom deal with company officials that allows union organizers unfettered access to the employees in order to install a union in the workplace.

Abusing this privilege, union organizers are attempting to browbeat the workers into supporting the union through a prolonged campaign of intimidation and harassment. Meanwhile, company officials deny workers' attempts to meet on company grounds.

Union officials have used video cameras in employee changing rooms, accessed employee lockers and handled employees' personal possessions, and have even resorted to verbal abuse. Union officials even took photographs of a female employee without her consent while she was changing her uniform in an employee changing room.

Read the entire release here.

Auto Parts Manufacturing Workers Seek to Disassemble Unpopular Union Boss Bargaining Powers

Labor board investigation throws wrench into case, finds union contract with company illegal

Long Island, NY (November 1, 2011) – A Levittown automobile parts manufacturing worker is asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to halt an unpopular local union from forcing its representation on him and his colleagues.

With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, Charlie Shannon filed unfair labor practice charges for himself and his coworkers against the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine, and Furniture Workers-Communications Workers of America (IUE-CWA) Local 463 union.

IUE-CWA Local 463 union officials no longer enjoy majority support from the employees after a majority of them signed a petition to remove the unwanted union from their workplace. However, union officials unlawfully continue to negotiate a new monopoly bargaining agreement with the employer, Sterling Instruments, Inc.

After investigating the matter, the NLRB regional office in Brooklyn found that IUE-CWA Local 463 union officials were illegally demanding forced union dues payments from the workers because the contract's forced-dues clause with the company was not valid.

Read the entire release here.

Worker Advocate Asks Federal Labor Board to Uphold Precedent Disallowing Forced Unionization of Grad Students

Foundation files brief supporting university teaching assistants' First Amendment freedom of association

Washington, DC (July 29, 2011) – The National Right to Work Foundation filed an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") brief with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) asking the Board to uphold its long-standing precedent to disallow union officials to corral university graduate students working as teaching assistants into unwanted union affiliation.

Foundation attorneys filed the brief with the NLRB in a case involving United Auto Workers (UAW) union organizers’ attempt to forcibly unionize graduate students at New York University (NYU) in New York City and ultimately to force them to pay union dues to maintain their status.

Seven years ago, Foundation attorneys filed an amicus brief in a similar case involving the UAW union attempting to forcibly unionize teaching assistants at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. In that case, the NLRB voted to return to its long-standing position of more than 50 years that teaching assistants have an academic, rather than economic, relationship with universities, and that teaching assistants are not “employees” as defined by federal labor law who can be subjected to union monopoly bargaining.

In their latest brief, Foundation attorneys argue that UAW union lawyers are using the NYU case as a means to overturn the Brown University case, even though the facts are different.

Meanwhile, Foundation attorneys undercut the union lawyers' arguments for new precedent that establishes teaching assistants as employees of the university, because grades are the central form of compensation for graduate students who are paid to teach, research, or perform temporary work.

Read the entire release here.

Bus Drivers Slam the Brakes on Teamster Union Boss Intimidation and Threats

Teamster bosses bullying independent-minded workers to sign self-disparaging letter just to exercise their constitutional rights

Long Island, NY (October 8, 2010) – Two Syosset-based bus drivers have filed federal charges against a local Teamster union for refusing to recognize, without condition, their constitutional right to refrain from formal union membership and instead are intimidating independent-minded workers who exercise that right.

With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, the two Acme Bus Corp. drivers filed the charges late last week with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional office in Brooklyn.

Teamsters Local Union 1205 officials are failing to acknowledge without condition the workers’ rights to refrain from formal, full dues-paying union membership established under Foundation-won precedent in the Supreme Court case Communication Workers v. Beck. Instead, Teamster Local 1205 union bosses are forcing nonmember employees to sign a self-disparaging letter characterizing themselves as “dues complainers.”

Read the entire release here.

Via Big Government, here's a damning video explaining the wasteful contract created by New York/New Jersey Police Union officials, which mandates that officers collect overtime pay even after they've been suspended for misconduct:

Of course, the Police/Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill threatens to spread this and other wasteful union boss instituted work rules to states and counties who have no desire to hamstring their public safety employees with union monopoly bargaining. If Big Labor gets their way on Capitol Hill, this video is a frightening portent of things to come. 

As the current economic downturn continues, many states across the nation are starting to find it increasingly difficult to stay afloat after having capitulated to the union bosses' extortionate demands.  Last week, the Wall Street Journal cited the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) -- an anti-compulsory unionism think tank that exposes the harm forced unionism inflicts on workers -- when discussing Big Labor's contribution toward the severe financial difficulties California, New York, and New Jersey are experiencing and the migration of workers leaving these forced-unionism states:

Powerful unions. Mr. Obama believes union power is a ticket to the middle class. The middle class is getting creamed in all three of these "progressive" states, where organized labor is king. The unionized share of the workforce is 20% in California, 19% in New Jersey and 27% in New York compared to 13% across the country. All three are non-right-to-work states, have super-minimum wage requirements and provide among the nation's most generous public-employee pensions.

Workers in these paradises are indeed uniting -- by leaving. New York ranks first, California second and New Jersey third in moving vans leaving the state. A study by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research found that over the past decade these and other high-union states (mostly in the Northeast) had one-third the job growth of states with low union penetration.

NILRR recently found an especially strong correlation between a state’s Right to Work status and its job growth, while employees in Right to Work states are benefiting from faster job growth and higher real purchasing power than their compulsory unionism counterparts.

Perhaps it's also worth revisiting a Wall Street Journal article penned late last year by National Right to Work President Mark Mix, reminding us that a massive expansion in forced unionism power played a key role in making the Great Depression longer and deeper.

In a troubling, but not unprecedented example of the abuses that come with radical teacher unions, the Associated Press reports that 700 public school teachers in New York City are enjoying full salaries of $70,000 to not teach:

Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that's what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its "rubber rooms" — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.

With the economy continuing to struggle and local and state governments facing budget shortfalls, the "rubber room" program's hefty $65 million per year bill to the taxpayers raises serious questions --  even putting aside the institutional problems of a compulsory unionism system that prevents individual teachers from discussing terms of employment with principals and school boards.

Let me see if I understand teacher union bosses' priorities correctly.  Teachers exercising their right to refrain from union membership?  A fireable offense.  Sexual misconduct?  $70,000 a year and a free place to hang out and play board games. Shameless.

Score another win for Big Labor at the expense of employee freedom. Yesterday in New York, Governor David Paterson signed a law making union dues mandatory for public employees who choose to refrain from union membership.

In the past, the law authorizing union bosses to force public employees to pay up as a requirement of keeping their job would expire every two years. The union boss spin is almost unbelievable:

[Union bosses] said on Wednesday that making the law permanent guaranteed that unions would have the money to adequately represent members and nonmembers alike, which they were required to do under a state law known as the Taylor Law. “In public employment, they have the right not to belong, but I still must represent them,” said Richard C. Iannuzzi, president of New York State United Teachers. “If under the law we’re obligated to represent every employee, then it’s only fair that every employee pays something toward the cost of being represented.”

Iannuzzi's language is fairly typical among union officials (they frequently use the term "fair share" to describe the dues they seize from nonmembers to pay for unwanted "representation"). But painting union bosses as hapless victims of the very special privileges they got enacted is absolutley absurd. Exclusive representation -- monopoly bargaining -- is a statutory power given to unions precisely because union bosses lobbied for it.

I'd love to call Iannuzzi's bluff -- will he and other union bosses actually consent to lifting federal and state laws which give unions the special privilege of monopoly bargaining? If they had a beef with the Taylor Law, why not just petition the state to repeal the offensive portions? No, instead, the union despots demanded even more privileges -- the power to line their pockets and entrench compuslory unionism.

Unfortunately, Republicans in the state Senate -- after years of refusing to make forced dues for nonmembers permanent -- gave in to Big Labor's demands:

The Legislature overwhelmingly approved the bill last month. Similar bills had passed the Democrat-controlled Assembly before, only to fail in the Senate. But with Republicans in a pitched battle to preserve their thin majority in the Senate, the party seemed unwilling to block a priority of organized labor. It passed the Senate last month by a 62-to-0 vote. The Assembly approved it 140 to 5.

Clearly, New York State Senate Republicans have abandoned principle for politics. But the leftist union bosses are always ungrateful -- if they get a chance to replace any of these Republican appeasers with a union-backed Democrat, they'll do it without hesitation.

The New York Times has a devastating article up on the incestuous relationship between public sector union officials and the New York state legislature. The actual controversy is downright farcical: legislators relied on a public sector union accountant to determine the cost of proposed increases to the state's employee pension plan.

A reasonable observer might suggest that this arrangement represented a clear conflict of interest, but to New York state legislators it was just good book-keeping. According to the Times, the union actuary "reviewed" hundreds of bills for the state before being exposed by the paper's investigation. What's more, the Times reports that the actuary neglected to mention additional legislative costs of up $500 million in his original reports.

The Times' description of the actuary's "methodology" is particularly mind-boggling (emphasis mine):

" . . . in an arrangement that had not been publicly disclosed, Mr. Schwartz [the union actuary] was being paid by labor unions. He acknowledged in an interview that he skewed his work to favor the [union's interests], calling his job “a step above voodoo.”

As a result, legislative leaders said they would no longer rely on Mr. Schwartz’s work, and a disciplinary board affiliated with the American Academy of Actuaries has begun a review of Mr. Schwartz’s conduct.

The Legislature relied almost exclusively on Mr. Schwartz — a consultant to District Council 37, the umbrella group of municipal unions as well as to unions representing firefighters, teachers, detectives and correction officers — to determine the cost of pension bills involving New York City employees."

Fortunately, Empire State legislators swung into action to reasssure the Times that they were monitoring the situation all along. I'm sure New York taxpayers are greatly reassured by their representatives' scrupulous accounting procedures:

"Despite legislative leaders’ assertions that they undertake independent financial analyses of the pension bills, neither the Senate nor the Assembly could provide any records to bolster that claim."

Unfortunately, this sort of lax book-keeping is par for the course when it comes to union pension funds which are often managed for the benefit of union bosses, rather than the pensioners. The incident also highlights the dangerous potential for union political activism in the legislative sphere.

When things get too cozy, there really are no breaks on political corruption. In another instance, Schwartz analyzed a Big Labor supported bill and basically lied to the legislature -- saying it would result in no additional costs to taxpayers.

"Mr. Schwartz conceded in an interview last month that he knew the bill would actually have a significant cost, explaining, “I got a little bit carried away in my formulation.”

He added that he made his projections look “as cheap as possible” to favor his clients."

Today's regretful passing of commentator William F. Buckley Jr. reminds us of how Mr. Buckley stood up to compulsory unionism with help from the National Right to Work Foundation several decades back. George Leef details the fight in pages 160-162 of Free Choice for Workers: A History of the Right to Work Movement.

After American Federation of Television and Radio Artists union officials told Mr. Buckley to join the union and pay up if he wanted to voice his opinions over the airwaves, he fought back in the form of a Foundation-aided lawsuit.

Though the case was batted between the courts and National Labor Relations Board, it ultimately led the AFTRA union to stop requiring formal membership from employees. (However, it could still compel dues from employees.)

Despite this, Mr. Buckley voiced satisfaction at his case's achievement. Mr. Leef cites:

Summing up his case, William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in his sydicated column, 'Thanks to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which funded this case...employees are precisely not bound to obey the union's rules any long, and the First Amendment has won a significant victory.'