Donors for Suits

At a recent news conference, Conservative Television Commentator William F. Buckley Jr. sonorously explained why he had successfully sued his union, AFTRA, for the right to appear on television even though he chose to quit the labor group. "Paying dues," he asserted, "is a barrier to free speech."

Buckley's case is the star attraction in a growing string of similar lawsuits against unions brought by their own members--with legal and financial help from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is supported by corporate as well as individual donations. Labor leaders view the foundation's actions as an illegal sally by companies into old-fashioned union busting, and earlier this month ten major unions went to court to stop it.

The unions, which include the auto workers, machinists, farm workers and teachers, charge that the foundation is violating the Landrum-Griffin Act.

That law explicitly forbids an employer to finance any of his employees in a suit against their own union. Foundation officials contend that their efforts are legal because donor corporations contribute to a common fund and have no choice in deciding which suits get legal aid; thus, they say, no company is instigating suits by its own employees. Foundation President Reed Larson nevertheless refuses to disclose the names of the corporate contributors, although in effect the ten-union suit demands that he do so. If he did, says Larson, the unions would "try to intimidate these people to stop giving."

Though the foundation does not seek out cases, news of its activities is spreading, and it has more requests for legal aid than it can handle. At present its five full-time lawyers are assisting in 50 suits against unions by union members. Many are seeking the right to hold jobs without maintaining good standing in a union, even if a contract with management makes union membership compulsory. The foundation is also aiding a group of auto workers who are suing their union for the right to inspect financial records to see if their dues went to radical groups, including S.N.C.C. or S.D.S. In its biggest court victory, the foundation helped win a $342,000 award from the Communications Workers Union for Dale Richardson, a former employee of Western Electric in Omaha. Richardson claimed that he was fired at the union's behest after he asked to see who paid the bill for the local president's wife when she accompanied her husband on a business trip to New Orleans.

The foundation was started in 1968, coincidental with the beginning of the Nixon Administration. A tax-exempt offshoot of the National Right to Work Committee, which specializes in lobbying against compulsory unionism, the foundation has obviously been gaining great favor among well-heeled individuals and corporations. Its income from donations, which came to only $204,000 in 1969, will swell in 1973 to an estimated $2,000,000.

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