Clarksburg, West Virginia (March 31, 2011) – A Dominion Hope utility worker has filed federal charges against a local union after union officials illegally attempted to force him into full-dues-paying union membership.
With free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, Dominion Hope employee Jeremy Dimick of West Union filed the charges with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Wednesday.
Utility Workers Union of America (UWUA) Local 69 union officials enjoy monopoly bargaining privileges over Dominion Hope’s employees. In November 2010, Dimick sent a letter to union officials stating that he was exercising his right under National Right to Work Foundation-won Supreme Court precedent in Communication Workers v. Beck to refrain from full-dues-paying union membership.
However, because West Virginia does not have a Right to Work law, workers who refrain from formal union membership can still be forced to pay a part of union dues as a condition of employment, but cannot be compelled to pay the portion used for the union’s political, lobbying, and member-only activities.
Despite Dimick’s letter, UWUA Local 69 union officials continued to extract full union dues from his paycheck. Then in December, union officials ordered him to file another objection letter and refused to provide him with a legally-required breakdown of union expenditures that had evidence that it was actually verified by an independent audit. Dimick contests the part of union fees used for forcing workers in different industries in the region into union ranks.
Meanwhile, Dimick requested that the UWUA Local 69 union hierarchy respect his First Amendment rights of free speech and let him remove the union logo patch from his uniform. Union officials refuse to honor his request.
“UWUA union officials are not only forcing workers to financially associate with their union, they are also forcing workers to act as walking billboards for an organization they do not support and want nothing to do with,” said Patrick Semmens, National Right to Work Foundation legal information director. “West Virginia desperately need a Right to Work law to protect workers from the very union bosses that claim to care about workers’ rights but clearly don’t.”
If enacted, a state Right to Work law would end compulsory union dues by making union membership and dues payment strictly voluntary. Polls consistently show that 8 in 10 Americans support the Right to Work principle, that no worker should be compelled to join a union or pay union dues to get or keep a job. Twenty-two states have already passed Right to Work protections for their workers.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.
