If Satan had nuts, you could kick 'em. Beat his unions...

With free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, a West Virginia truck driver has won over $10,000 in back pay and refunded union dues and fees that were illegally taken from his paychecks.

You see, last year Penn Line Service company officials gave Jeff Richmond an ultimatum: Make "voluntary" contributions to Laborers union Political Action Committees (PACs) or go home.

Even before that, the company began confiscating full union dues from Richmond's paycheck -- even though he did not join the union and did not authorize the dues deductions -- and siphoned the money to Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) Local 453.

Richmond stood by his convictions and refused to authorize the political contributions, so company officials literally took him home.

The political fundraising scheme was blatantly illegal.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the Foundation-wonCommunications Workers v. Beck case that nonmembers have the right to opt out of paying for union activities unrelated to workplace bargaining, such as union-boss politics, ideological causes, and members-only events.

While federal law provides some recourse to victimized workers, cases like this one demonstrate why forced-unionism states like West Virginia desperately need Right to Work protections.

When management and union officials keep workers in the dark about their rights -- and even outright lie -- workers must have the wherewithal to discover their rights on their own.

Fortunately, Richmond did just that and turned to your Foundation for help.

After Foundation attorneys filed federal unfair labor practice charges, the subsequent investigation revealed another Penn Line Service employee was entitled to over $600 in refunded union dues and fees illegally taken from his paychecks.

I'm not at all surprised.

Once you start peeling back more layers of the onion, the more it stinks.

Unfortunately, I estimate there are millions of workers who are subjected to illegal forced-dues-for-politics scams, especially during election years like last year when Big Labor went all-out to re-elect Barack Obama.

And union bosses are already scheming to spend more than a billion dollars of mostly forced-dues cash to elect more union-label politicians in the 2014 elections.

That's why your continued support is so critical.

Nothing would cripple Big Labor's agenda faster than ending forced union dues for politics, and our record of stopping illegal use of union dues for political purposes is second to none.

Thanks you for allowing us to take cases like this and blow apart these illegal politicking schemes.

Sincerely,
 
Mark Mix