Rank and bile: how the Teamsters try to silence dissenters - International Brotherhood of Teamsters

Reason, Feb, 1999 by Michael W. Lynch

Combined with his enthusiasm is the economic reality that the Radakovitzes need each of Billy's roughly $800-a-week paychecks to keep current on their mortgage and enable his wife, Laura, to remain home to take care of their three children.

"I wasn't going to watch the bank take my house away because I was out of work," says Radakovitz. So before he went out on strike, he wanted some questions answered about the specifics of the proposed contract. For his inquisitiveness, Radakovitz now faces fines of $3,500.

"I'm quite surprised they would do this," says Clyde W. Summers, a labor law specialist at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and co-author of an ACLU handbook titled The Rights of Union Members. Labor law is a tangled thicket, and one normally needs the guidance of a machete-wielding lawyer to trudge through it. But the right of members to free speech is one area that labor law followers across the political spectrum agree is relatively straightforward.

Labor unions, as constituted under the National Labor Relations Act and The Railway Labor Act, are anomalous institutions in American society. They appear to be private associations and thus, like the Reason Foundation, General Motors, or a Bible study group, don't have to guarantee members free speech. And this is partially true. Unions aren't restricted by the Bill of Rights.

But since the federal government grants unions the rights of "exclusive representation," which they then use to justify the forced payment of dues from members and Beck objectors alike, they aren't private, voluntary associations. "The rights of individuals with reference to their union," Summers' ACLU handbook notes, "are much like the rights of citizens in reference to their government."

Just as the Framers of the Constitution attempted to limit the federal government's authority over individuals with the Bill of Rights, Congress attempted to limit the power of labor unions over the individuals they represent with the 1959 Landrum-Griffen Act. The first title of this act, the "Bill of Rights of Members of Labor Organizations," grants union members free speech rights that are at least as broad as those protected by the First Amendment.

The act's "freedom of speech and assembly clause states: "Every member of any labor organization shall have the right to meet and assemble freely with other members; and to express views, arguments, or opinions." There is an exception: "Nothing herein shall be construed to impair the right of a labor organization to adopt and enforce reasonable rules as to the responsibility of every member toward the organization and to his refraining from conduct that would interfere with its performance of its legal or contractual obligations." But courts have read this exception narrowly to include such obviously detrimental actions as advocating the decertification of the union or disclosing confidential bargaining strategy.

"I would say that this is a violation of their free speech rights under Landrum-Griffen," says Summers when I describe the Beard and Radakovitz's cases to him. Summers tell of a 1973 case, Kuebler v. Lithographers and Photo-Engravers Local 24-P, in which union members formed a caucus during a strike to urge a settlement. The union attempted to punish the caucus members, but the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that even speech during a strike was protected.