Experienced constitutional lawyer: Congressionally-imposed monopoly bargaining for state and local government infringes on workers’ rights

Washington, D.C. (June 26, 2019) – Today, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorney William Messenger will testify before the House Committee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, and urge the body to reject legislative proposals that would install monopoly bargaining across all states for public sector workers. Messenger’s testimony falls approximately one year after the Supreme Court issued its decision in the landmark Janus v. AFSCME case, which Messenger successfully argued for Illinois public employee Mark Janus.

Messenger’s testimony exposes the various tactics that union bosses use to shore up their grip on power, but identifies monopoly bargaining – which forces employees under union officials’ representation even against their will – as at the core of Big Labor’s coercive powers. Messenger’s written testimony explained why those powers are particularly offensive in the government sector:

“In the private sector, negotiations between an employer and a monopoly bargaining representative concern issues that affect that employer and its employees. In the public sector, negotiations between government officials and union representatives concern political issues that affect third-parties: individual citizens…In state after state where unions have gained monopoly bargaining powers in the public sector, costs skyrocket while quality of service declines. But monopoly bargaining allows unions to become the most powerful force in state politics and to pour millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours into electing public officials, allowing unions to sit on both sides of the negotiating table.”

Messenger instead praises legislation like the National Right to Work Act (NRTWA), which would reorient public and private sector labor law to protect the individual freedom of workers. Messenger emphasizes in his testimony that “rank-and-file workers want Congress to protect them from Big Labor, not to give union officials even more power to control their lives and paychecks.”

“No American worker should be forced to surrender their workplace voice to a private organization,” observed National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “The endgame of the anti-worker legislation that is currently being considered by the House of Representatives is clear: granting Big Labor control over public policy at all levels of government to the detriment of taxpayers, voters and the freedoms of the very workers government union bosses claim to represent.”

According to charge, UFCW bosses told other employees to conduct surveillance on and impede work of charging employee who worked during strike

Boston, MA (June 21, 2019) – Another Stop & Shop employee has turned to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation for free legal aid in the wake of the April strike by the United Food and Commercial Workers union (UFCW) against the supermarket chain. The unfair labor practice charge just filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) maintains that the worker was misled regarding his rights, and that union officials made illegal threats and engaged in unlawful retaliation against the worker because he exercised his right to continue working despite the union strike demands.

According to his charge, Saood Rafique began working at Stop & Shop in 2011 and joined the UFCW as a result of misinformation given him that union membership was required as a condition of employment. Rafique works in the meat department at Stop & Shop’s Jamaica Plain location.

When the strike was declared in April, he exercised his right to continue to work during the strike but abstained from formally renouncing his union membership because he still believed it was compulsory. Eventually he discovered that mandatory membership is a violation of federal labor law and then resigned from the UFCW.

Union bosses launched a campaign of illegal retaliation against Rafique when the strike was ending, his charge notes. A UFCW steward “[told] employees to not work with Charging Party in order to make his job duties in the meat department more difficult to carry out.” Later, UFCW union agents posted a notice in Rafique’s Stop & Shop store which scolded him and others who had continued to work during the strike and instructed employees to surveil Rafique and the other listed individuals and report their activities to union officials.

Additionally, UFCW bosses sent Rafique a letter which threatened illegal union disciplinary action and even his termination from Stop & Shop. The letter read in part that “workers have the right to bring you to trial in front of the Executive Board.” It claimed, contrary to federal law, that the union tribunal had the power to cause Rafique and the other workers to be “fired from Stop & Shop since it is a union shop.” The “union shop,” where full membership is required, was outlawed under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) in 1947.

Rafique’s charge argues that the union boss-devised campaigns against him and others who chose to work during the union work stoppage are blatant violations of worker rights under the NLRA, which protects “the right to refrain from any or all” union activities and prohibits union officials from “restrain[ing] or coerc[ing]” any employee in the exercise of that right. The charge also asserts that Rafique was never a voluntary member of the UFCW because he was never properly informed of his rights, and thus cannot legally be subject to any union discipline.

Rafique joins Matthew Coffey, a clerk at a Stop & Shop in Northampton, MA, in filing unfair labor practices against the UFCW union with the help of the Foundation. Coffey was another victim of misinformation about his legal rights and also was targeted with personal slurs by UFCW agents after he exercised his right to continue to work during the strike.

“Once again, union bosses have been caught red-handed lying to workers about their legal rights, then retaliating against workers who eventually learn the truth and exercise their right to defy union officials’ strike demands,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “As these cases demonstrate, the legal rights of rank-and-file workers are frequently the first casualty when union bosses attempt to bully workers into abandoning their jobs as part of union strike actions.”

Mountain State union lawyers’ legal challenge seeks to re-impose Big Labor’s power to have workers fired for refusing to pay union dues or fees

Charleston, WV (June 20, 2019) – National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys have just filed an amicus brief urging the West Virginia Supreme Court to uphold the state’s popular Right to Work law in a case challenging that law brought by a coalition of unions. The brief is being submitted on behalf of West Virginia employee Donna Harper, who works as a laundry aide and nursing assistant at the Genesis HealthCare Tygert Center in Fairmont, West Virginia. The West Virginia-based Cardinal Institute and Americans For Prosperity are also listed along with the National Right to Work Foundation on the brief submitted to the West Virginia Supreme Court.

Harper’s brief was filed to defend her rights, as without the protection of West Virginia’s Right to Work law she could be fired solely for refusing to fund union activities. Under Right to Work union membership and financial support are strictly voluntary, whereas without such protections union officials can order a worker fired simply for refusing to pay union dues or fees. Because the workplace where Harper works is under Chauffeurs, Teamsters and Helpers Local Union No. 175 monopoly representation, elimination of her Right to Work protections would result in her being fired for refusing to financially support the union’s agenda.

West Virginia’s Right to Work law was passed in February 2016 when West Virginia legislators overrode then-Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s veto, making West Virginia the 26th Right to Work state. There are currently 27 states with Right to Work laws. Additionally, all public employees have Right to Work protections under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision, which was briefed and argued by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.

In 2016 lawyers for several state unions brought the case, now called West Virginia AFL-CIO, et al. v. Governor James C. Justice, et al., attempting to overturn the popular law. Polling consistently shows that Americans back Right to Work laws. A scientific survey also found that eighty percent of union members supported the Right to Work principle that union membership and dues payment should be voluntary and not required as a condition of employment.

Harper’s brief responds to the legally dubious arguments that were made by union lawyers, and accepted by Judge Jennifer Bailey of the Kanawha County Circuit Court. Similar arguments to the union lawyers’ primary arguments in this case for why the Right to Work protections for workers should be overturned have already been rejected by a Federal Court of Appeals and the Indiana Supreme Court when they were raised in cases involving Indiana’s Right to Work law. Furthermore, the brief points out that the Kanawha County Circuit Court decision ignores nearly 70 years of legal precedent upholding the constitutionality of state Right to Work laws, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions.

“Big Labor bosses are waging this protracted legal battle to return The Mountain State to a time when millions of dollars in workers’ money were forcibly shunted off to serve their own priorities,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Right to Work laws simply put individual freedom back at the center of a state’s labor laws, and all American workers deserve that freedom.”

The National Right to Work Foundation has a long history of successfully defending Right to Work laws in state and federal court. In addition to West Virginia, Foundation staff attorneys have taken legal action to defend and enforce new Right to Work laws in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Kentucky, all of which have passed Right to Work protections for employees since 2012.

Earlier this year National Right to Work Foundation won a settlement for a West Virginia worker who was illegally threatened by United Steelworkers after she resigned her membership, the first step towards exercising her rights under the Right to Work law. Foundation staff attorneys previously filed an amicus brief with the West Virginia Supreme Court in 2017, on behalf of another pro-Right to Work Mountain State worker, which led the court to overturn an injunction by a lower court judge so the law could go into effect.

Guards’ lawsuit challenges scheme designed to trap them into paying dues without their consent by limiting their constitutional rights to just 15 days per contract

Harrisburg, PA (June 18, 2019) – Several Pennsylvania state prison guards have filed a class action lawsuit against their union with free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys and the Pennsylvania-based Fairness Center. The workers allege union officials’ policy and the Pennsylvania law that authorizes it violates their First Amendment rights.

William Weyandt, Mark Mills, Chris Taylor, Brandon Westover, and Cory Yedlosky, who work as prison guards at Huntingdon Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania, filed the lawsuit against the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association (PSCOA) and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. They allege that PSCOA union officials’ “escape period” policies and the state law that authorizes these policies unconstitutionally restrain them from exercising their First Amendment rights as public employees, rights recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Janus v. AFSCME case.

Unlike the majority of states in America, Pennsylvania has never adopted a Right to Work law to protect all workers from compulsory unionism. However, the Janus decision extended these protections to all public employees at the federal, state, and local level, which includes the prison guards employed at Huntingdon Correctional Institution.

Successfully argued and won at the Supreme Court by Foundation staff attorneys in June 2018, the Janus decision held that all public employees in America have the right to choose not to subsidize any union activities. The High Court said that workers must opt-in to union payments and that any union fees seized without an employee’s consent violate their First Amendment rights.

Union officials across the country have engaged in a widespread effort to block workers from exercising their rights under Janus. In particular, union officials claim state and union “escape period” policies can limit workers’ First Amendment rights to just a few days once a year or even once every few years.

In response, Foundation staff attorneys are currently litigating dozens of cases to enforce workers’ Janus rights and have already won several notable settlements. These lawsuits could force union bosses to refund hundreds of millions of dollars in unlawfully seized dues and fees to tens of thousands of government employees.

“Pennsylvania state prison guards’ legal rights cannot be locked away by this blatantly unconstitutional union boss policy,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “This case demonstrates once again that union officials will resort to extreme measures to force workers they supposedly ‘represent’ into paying union fees against their wishes.”

“It is long past time for union bosses to respect the rights of workers under the First Amendment and realize Janus means that union dues and fees should only be paid on a strictly voluntary basis,” Mix added.

Today, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys filed an amicus brief with the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of Ohio Department of Taxation employee Nathaniel Ogle. A copy of the brief can be found here.

The case seeks the refund of forced fees taken from Ohio teachers in violation of their First Amendment rights, as recognized in the Janus v. AFSCME US Supreme Court case, argued by Foundation staff attorney William Messenger. Messenger represents Ogle in a similar case in which Ogle is seeking the refund of potentially millions of dollars of forced fees taken from him and other state employees by AFSCME Local 11 union officials.

For more on Ogle’s case, read this article from a recent issue of the Foundation’s bi-monthly newsletter.

Today National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys filed the final brief in Riffey v. Pritzker before the US Supreme Court conferences to decide whether or not to hear the case. The case is a continuation of the 2014 Foundation-won Supreme Court Harris v. Quinn case, and now seeks the refunds of seized union dues for over 80,000 home caregivers in Illinois.

National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix offered the following comments on the filing of the Petitioner’s Reply Brief today:

“Illinois homecare providers should no longer be forced to jump through legal hoops to reclaim their money that should never have been taken from them in the first place. The Supreme Court already decided in Harris v. Quinn that forcing homecare providers to pay fees to an unwanted union is unconstitutional in principle, and subsequently in Janus the court clarified that any dues taken without consent is a First Amendment violation. Riffey’s petition simply asks the High Court to apply the principles it laid out in Harris and Janus to the tens of thousands of Illinois providers so they can reclaim the over $32 million dollars seized from them.”

Background

In February, with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, a group of Illinois homecare providers filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review their case in which providers seek the return of more than $32 million in union fees seized by SEIU officials in a scheme the High Court already declared unconstitutional.

The case, Riffey v. Pritzker, is a continuation of the 2014 Foundation-won Supreme Court Harris v. Quinn case. In Harris, the Court ruled that a scheme imposed by the State of Illinois, in which more than 80,000 individual homecare providers were forced to pay union fees out of the state funding they receive, violated the providers’ First Amendment rights.

In 2014, the case was re-designated Riffey v. Rauner (now Riffey v. Pritzker) and remanded to the District Court to settle remaining issues, including whether or not tens of thousands of providers who had not joined the union would receive refunds of the money taken from them unlawfully by the SEIU.

In June 2016, the District Court denied a motion for class certification. The ruling allowed the SEIU to keep more than $32 million in unconstitutional fees confiscated from union nonmembers who had not consented to their money being taken for union fees. Foundation staff attorneys appealed that ruling to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which also denied class certification.

In 2018, Foundation staff attorneys successfully petitioned the Supreme Court to review and reverse the Appeals Court’s ruling. The High Court did so the day after it issued the landmark Janus v. AFSCME decision, ordering the Appeals Court to reconsider the case in light of the Janus ruling, which struck down public sector forced union fees as violating the First Amendment.

In Janus, which was argued by the same National Right to Work Foundation staff attorney who is lead counsel in Riffey, the Supreme Court clarified that any union fees taken without an individual’s prior informed consent violate the First Amendment. That standard supports the Riffey plaintiffs’ claim that all providers who had money seized without their consent are entitled to refunds.

However, on December 6 a three-judge panel of the Appeals Court affirmed its previous ruling that no class can be certified for the more than 80,000 providers whose money was seized in violation of their First Amendment rights. The majority opinion, signed by two of the judges, denied class on the grounds that each individual homecare provider would have to prove that he or she objected to the taking of the fees when the seizures occurred.

In their petition for certiorari asking the Supreme Court to hear their case, the providers argue that Janus requires that the lower court’s class certification order be reversed. Foundation staff attorneys point out that the Janus precedent does not require a worker to prove his or her subjective opposition to forced union fees but held that the First Amendment is violated anytime union dues or fees are seized without clear affirmative consent.

Foundation attorneys argue that the case is of exceptional importance not only because it concerns the return of more than $32 million seized from some 80,000 homecare providers in violation of their First Amendment rights, but also because the lower courts’ ruling sets a precedent that could result in the denial of relief for millions of public employee victims of forced unionism.

All the briefs in the case can be viewed on the US Supreme Court’s docket here.

Lawsuit seeks to enforce Right to Work law provision that Wisconsin Attorney General Kaul refused to defend at the US Supreme Court last month

Burlington, Wisc. (June 4, 2019) – An employee at Packaging Corporation of America’s (PCA) Burlington, WI facility has just filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin against United Steelworkers Local 231 for enforcing a dues collection policy in violation of both federal labor law and a provision of Wisconsin’s Right to Work law.

According to Martin Carter’s lawsuit, which was filed with free legal representation from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, United Steelworkers (USW) union agents subjected him to a dues checkoff authorization policy that violates federal law by being irrevocable for longer than one year, and violates Wisconsin’s Right to Work law by not allowing employees to stop dues deductions at any time with a 30-day notice.

According to the complaint, Carter believed upon being hired that signing off on the dues checkoff authorization was a condition of employment. When he tried to revoke that authorization later and exercise his rights under Wisconsin’s Right to Work law, which makes union dues and membership voluntary, union agents stonewalled his attempts deliver his revocation letter.

Carter’s lawsuit follows controversy surrounding Wisconsin’s new Democratic Attorney General, Josh Kaul. Last month Kaul withdrew the state’s petition asking the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision that part of Wisconsin’s Right to Work law, which gives private sector employees the right to revoke their dues “checkoff” with 30 days’ notice, was preempted by federal labor law. Rather than defend Wisconsin’s law, Kaul sided with union officials whom reports show gave his campaign for attorney general more than $400,000 in direct contributions, with union affiliates being his seven largest contributors.

Kaul’s capitulation left standing a divided 2-1 U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision that federal law preempts states like Wisconsin from protecting workers seeking to stop dues payments. Carter’s lawsuit brings this issue back to federal court, potentially giving the U.S. Supreme Court an opportunity to decide an issue that it was blocked from considering when Kaul reneged on his campaign pledge to defend Wisconsin laws, even those passed under the Walker administration.

“Martin Carter’s case shows there are real worker victims of Attorney General Kaul’s dereliction of his duty to defend all of Wisconsin’s laws,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “As this case shows, union bosses play fast and loose with workers’ rights in their attempt to trap them into forced dues payments against their will, which is precisely why Wisconsin legislators enacted the Right to Work law’s provision giving workers the option of cutting off dues payments within 30 days of asking to do so.”

After being unionized through coercive “card check,” workers are blocked from holding secret ballot vote by biased NLRB rules

Milwaukee, Wisc. (June 3, 2019) – A clerical employee at trucking company USF Holland’s Milwaukee, WI facility has just asked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to overturn an NLRB Regional Director’s dismissal of her petition to hold a vote to decertify the Teamsters Local 200 union as the monopoly bargaining agent at her workplace.

Diane Damask’s petition, filed with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, challenges the so-called “merger doctrine,” which allows union officials to “merge” employees in a small bargaining unit into a much larger one to block them from voting to decertify the union. Damask’s request for review notes that the Teamsters performed such a scheme at her small clerical office in an agreement with USF Holland – without fully explaining the ramifications to the employees.

According to the request for review, Region 18’s dismissal of her petition wrongly stifles her rights because it “makes it effectively impossible for employees in such mega-units to exercise their…rights to decertify a union through a secret ballot election” under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). As the petition points out, this is not the first time the workers’ statutory rights to hold a decertification election to remove a union they oppose has been stifled by internal NLRB rules not mandated by the NLRA.

The Teamsters originally had scheduled an NLRB-supervised unionization election in January 2018, but then cancelled the vote after cutting a backroom deal with USF Holland to bypass the protections of a secret ballot vote, and instead unionize the workers through the coercive “card check” process. Upset by the situation, Damask and her colleagues quickly circulated a petition to trigger a secret ballot decertification vote only to be told by the NLRB that – under the controversial “voluntary recognition” bar adopted by the Obama NLRB – the workers would have to wait up to a full year before they could file a petition.

Having waited a full year for the NLRB-created “bar” after a card check to expire, now the workers – a majority of whom signed the decertification petition – find themselves blocked again from holding a secret ballot vote by a merger agreement over which they had no real say. In fact, it was not until after Damask had her decertification petition rejected that she learned that, according the merger agreement, she and her eight coworkers at their facility were now deemed part of a nationwide “mega-unit” of approximately 24,000 employees working for multiple employers.

Because triggering a decertification vote requires the signatures of thirty percent of workers in the bargaining unit, under the “merger” such a petition is virtually impossible as she would need to collect 7,000 signatures from workers across the country she has no way of even locating.

Damask’s petition argues that the Teamsters and USF Holland improperly “‘waived’ the Milwaukee clerical employees’ rights under the [NLRA] to decertify an unwanted union” and that “if the…clerical employees constituted a separate appropriate unit for purposes of selecting the Teamsters to represent them…the Board should still consider them a(n)…appropriate unit for purposes of removing the union.”

“This case shows how union bosses, aided by biased NLRB-concocted rules, can trap workers in union ranks for years even when a majority of the workers want out,” said National Right to Work President Mark Mix. “It’s time for the NLRB to stop dragging its feet and reform its arbitrary rules, including the so-called ‘merger doctrine,’ that are being used to eviscerate workers’ statutory right under the National Labor Relations Act to hold a vote to remove a union opposed by a majority of employees.”