Three men who worked to clean and maintain Nova Southeastern University's main campus told a federal labor judge on Monday that managers at the university illegally pressured them not to form a union.

The trial before the National Labor Relations Board will determine if the university interfered with the contract workers' right to organize and whether some lost their jobs because they supported the Service Employees International Union two years ago.

The workers in question were employed by NSU contractor Unicco in 2006 when the union began a campaign at the Davie campus, on the heels of a successful organizing effort of University of Miami janitors, who had also been employed by Unicco.

A few weeks before the NSU workers voted in favor of having a union, the school said it was canceling Unicco's contract. It was eventually rebid to several other contractors.

The union alleges that in that process about a third, or 100, of the Unicco workers were deliberately not rehired.

Leszier Brazile, a landscaper, was one of the workers who did get rehired. He testified on Monday that a supervisor told them that others lost work because ``they were part of a union.''

Another worker, Jose Sanchez, told the judge he took part in one of the strikes during the campaign, waving a broom on University Drive outside the campus. Months later, Sanchez said when he asked if he could get a job with the new contractor, he was told, ``Why don't you go back out on the line?''

The National Labor Relations Act guarantees certain rights for workers, including some rights to organize.

The NLRB case argues that the school's no-solicitation policy violated those rights, and that, in particular, one worker, Steve McGonigle, a painter employed by contractor Unicco, was written up and faced disciplinary action for passing out pro-union literature to other co-workers during nonwork hours.

The more serious charges include allegations that supervisors told employees they would not be hired because of their union activities.

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