Indiana Worker Wins Settlement at Labor Board After Being Forced to Wear Union Regalia Despite Being Nonmember
Indianapolis automotive supplier employee was illegally required to be a walking billboard for a union he isn’t a member of and doesn’t support
Indianapolis, IN (January 14, 2019) – An employee of an automobile component plant in Indianapolis, Indiana has just won a settlement before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) after bringing federal charges against his employer for requiring employees to wear union logos on uniforms, whether or not the employees were union members.
With free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, David Thomas filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB against his employer, Faurecia. The charge was brought following a new policy adopted by the company requiring employees like Thomas to wear uniforms displaying the insignia of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 1424.
Thomas, who chooses to exercise his rights under Indiana’s Right to Work law to refrain from union membership and dues, refused to wear the union regalia and at the behest of union officials was disciplined for refusing to wear the uniform promoting a union he opposes.
Under the National Labor Relations Act, employees are protected from being forced to associate with a union, making the company’s policy a clear violation of federal law.
The settlement reached between Thomas and company representatives requires Faurecia to rescind the uniform policy and expunge the verbal warning from Thomas’ employee records. A notice about the settlement and removal of the uniform policy will be posted for all of the company’s employees to see.
An additional charge against the uniform policy was filed by a second Faurecia employee at the same time as Thomas’ charge. This charge was settled privately in favor of the employee, who had been dismissed by the company for challenging the union logo policy.
“Federal law, along with Indiana’s Right to Work protections, clearly provides that forced union affiliation is a violation of workers’ legal rights,” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “Independent workers should never be forced to be a walking billboard for a union they oppose, and this case makes it clear that such a policy is a violation of workers’ rights.”
West Virginia Worker Wins Settlement from Steelworkers Union after Receiving Threats for Exercising Rights
USW union officials violated federal law by threatening seniority and overtime when Petersburg worker moved to resign her union membership
Petersburg, West Virginia (January 8, 2019) – With free legal assistance from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, a West Virginia worker has won a settlement against the United Steelworkers (USW) Local 1017 after she filed an Unfair Labor Practice charge against the union with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Tammy Hedrick, an employee of Adell Polymers in Petersburg, West Virginia, originally brought the federal charge against the union after she was threatened with the stripping of her seniority at the behest of union officials, a violation of federal law.
When West Virginia passed its Right to Work law in 2016, Hedrick attempted to exercise her right to resign her union membership and cut off dues payments, as had been explained to her by her employer. Her contract, however, was grandfathered in, as it had been enacted before the passing of the law. In retaliation, union officials sought to strip Hedrick of her seniority and overtime pay.
The settlement agreement requires union officials to end attempts to demote Hedrick or any other employees, or otherwise punish employees, for exercising their legally protected rights. Union officials are also required by the settlement to post notices informing all of Adell Polymer’s employees of their legal rights and the end of union officials’ efforts to remove Hedrick’s seniority.
In addition to Hendrick’s settlement, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys are fighting to defend West Virginia’s Right to Work law in state court. Foundation staff attorneys have filed amicus briefs in West Virginia AFL-CIO, et al. v. Governor James C. Justice, et al., urging the Kanawha County Circuit Court and the West Virginia Supreme Court to uphold the state’s Right to Work protections.
“Tammy Hedrick has halted these illegal threats by union bosses against her for seeking to exercise her rights as protected by federal law,” said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “The outcome of this case should serve as a reminder to all Mountain State workers that under federal law they have the right to refrain from union membership, and that union officials cannot legally retaliate against workers who choose to exercise these protected rights.”
“Any worker who needs assistance in exercising these rights, or who like Tammy Hedrick is threatened for doing so, should know they can always turn to the National Right to Work Foundation for free legal assistance,” continued Mix.
Massachusetts Supreme Court Hears Educators’ Challenge to Teacher Union’s Government-Granted Coercive Powers
Four Bay State educators argue that MTA scheme violates their rights by prohibiting nonmembers from having influence over workplace conditions
Boston, MA (January 7, 2019) – Tomorrow, a National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorney will deliver arguments at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for a group of Massachusetts educators. The educators are challenging state law that grants union officials’ monopoly bargaining privileges which union officials use to gag nonmembers from having a voice and a vote in their working conditions. The educators argue this violates their First Amendment rights.
The group of four educators, from the University of Massachusetts and Hanover School Committee, all believe they would be better off without representation from the National Educators Association (NEA) and its affiliates.
The plaintiffs argue their First Amendment rights are violated when they are forced to be union members to exercise their rights under state law to have a say in their workplace conditions. Under the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court Janus v. AFSCME decision, workers cannot be required to fund a union. However, under Massachusetts labor laws the educators must waive their First Amendment rights and become full members to have any say in their working conditions.
The four plaintiffs have chosen to refrain from union membership. The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, Dr. Ben Branch, is a finance professor. His colleague and fellow plaintiff, Dr. Curtiss Conner, is a chemistry professor, both at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Plaintiff Dr. Andre Melcuk is Director of Departmental Information Technology at the Silvio O. Conte National Center for Polymer Research at the University. Dr. Melcuk was born in the Soviet Union and opposes the union based on his dislike of collectivist organizations.
Plaintiff Deborah Curran is a long-term teacher in the Hanover Public Schools. The union officials who supposedly “represent” her attempted to invalidate her promotion to a position mentoring new teachers and pushed to have her investigated and suspended. She ultimately spent nearly $35,000 of her own money battling union officials just to protect her job.
In the case, Foundation staff attorneys argue that Massachusetts state law violates the educators’ First Amendment rights by barring their voice and vote in their workplace conditions if they decide to refrain from becoming union members, paying full union dues, and supporting union political activity.
In the June 2018 Janus victory, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that forcing any public sector employee to pay union dues or fees violates the First Amendment. The educators’ case points out that denying workers a voice in their workplace unless they are union members is another form of compulsion to support a union, and should be ruled a violation of the First Amendment.
“These are dedicated teachers and professors who are being forced to choose between losing their voice in the workplace or paying tribute to union bosses who clearly do not have their best interests in mind,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Although the Foundation-won Janus decision upheld public sector workers’ First Amendment right to choose whether or not to pay union fees, union officials still seek to twist workers’ arms into funding Big Labor’s coffers. A clear ruling is needed to uphold these educators’ right to refrain from union membership without fear of retaliation or coercion.”
Federal Court Asked to Order NLRB to Rule in Nine Year Old Case Attacking Forced Union Fees for Lobbying
Case pending at Labor Board for more than five years also challenges union bosses’ failure to adequately disclose how they spend compulsory union fees
Washington, DC (January 2, 2019) – Today, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys have filed a petition seeking an order that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) take action on a nine-year-old case that has been awaiting a decision for more than five years. The case was brought by nurse Jeanette Geary after union officials kept her and her colleagues in the dark about how their forced union fees are spent.
Foundation staff attorneys filed the mandamus petition at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit seeking a court order that the NLRB promptly decide Geary’s case. The Board had issued a decision in 2012, but after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Obama had violated the Constitution by making three illegal recess appointments to the Board, that decision and many others were invalidated. Of those invalidated, Geary’s case is among a few cases, if not the only one, still pending without a decision.
Geary, then a nurse at Kent Hospital in Warwick, Rhode Island, filed an unfair labor practice charge in 2009 with free legal aid from Foundation staff attorneys. Her charge stated that United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) union officials unlawfully spent her forced union fees and failed to meet financial disclosure requirements as to the amount of the compulsory fees required as a condition of employment.
Geary and other nurses informed UNAP union officials that they were exercising their right to refrain from formal union membership and from the payment of “non-chargeable” fees for activities unrelated to union bargaining, including politics, lobbying and member-only events.
UNAP union officials failed to provide Geary and other nonmember nurses with a disclosure of the part of union fees the workers are forced to pay, claiming Geary could be charged for union lobbying activities. According to the charge, union bosses failed to provide any evidence of an independent audit “beyond a mere assertion.” Moreover, union officials provided no breakdown of expenditures from a so-called “Defense Fund” despite claiming they included chargeable expenses.
In the Foundation-won Supreme Court Beck decision, the Court held that private-sector employees can only be forced to pay, as a condition of employment, union dues related to specific union activity. Additionally, union officials must provide employees with an independently verified breakdown of union expenditures showing how much objecting employees must pay to keep their jobs.
In 2012, President Obama’s illegally-appointed NLRB rejected Supreme Court precedent and granted union bosses power to charge nonmember workers for union political lobbying, including lobbying in other states. However, that decision was invalidated by the Court’s holding in NLRB v. Noel Canning that the Board lacked a valid quorum because of three unconstitutional “recess appointments” President Obama made.
“UNAP union bosses should be held accountable for their blatant refusal to respect the rights of the workers they claim to represent,” said National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Justice delayed is justice denied, and it’s long past time the NLRB issues a decision that affirms workers’ protections from union boss coercion.”
Grocery Workers Win Cases Against UFCW Union Bosses for Illegal Strike Threats
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, November/December 2019 edition. To view other editions or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Union officials forced to refund seized dues, cease misleading workers about their rights
Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, seen here on the UFCW picket lines in April, sided with the union bosses who violated workers’ rights in an effort to secure their forced-dues-backed support in her campaign.
BOSTON, MA – This September, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys won precedent-setting settlements for Massachusetts Stop & Shop employees Saood Rafique and Matthew Coffey. The two men charged United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union agents with multiple violations of their rights during the April 2019 union boss-ordered strike on the grocery chain. Rather than face continued prosecution, union officials settled their cases by remedying all of the violations of the workers’ rights stated in their respective unfair labor practice charges against the union.
Both Coffey and Rafique were misled by union agents from the start of their employments into thinking that joining the UFCW was a condition of employment at Stop & Shop. Such an arrangement, sometimes called a “closed shop,” was outlawed by the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947. UFCW bosses also charged each of them full union dues illegally for years.
UFCW Agents Ramp Up Violations During Strike
Once the strike was ordered by UFCW bosses in April, Coffey and Rafique both found out — independently of what any union official had told them — that union membership could not be mandated as a condition of employment and that they had the right to rebuff the strike order and return to work.
Because they exercised their right to return to work, union agents targeted Coffey and Rafique with vicious campaigns of intimidation during the strike. Their initial unfair labor practice charges, filed with free assistance from the Foundation, reported that UFCW agents hit them with threats of termination, harassment and other forms of illegal retaliation after they decided to go back to work.
“The union threatened that, as soon as the company came back, I was gonna be fired immediately, because in order to work at Stop & Shop they claimed that you had to be part of the union,” Coffey told CBS Western Mass News during the strike. “Which was a blatant lie.”
Coffey and Rafique also experienced illegal retaliation after the strike, with Coffey receiving a letter from union officials demanding he appear before a UFCW kangaroo court to be punished for exercising his right to keep working, and Rafique reporting that UFCW agents had told his coworkers to spy on him.
Settlements Order Remedies for All UFCW Rights Abuses
The class-wide settlements for Coffey and Rafique, approved by National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 1 in Boston, order UFCW bosses to post remedial rights notices in over 70 Stop & Shop stores, as well as on the internet and in the union’s monthly newsletter, to inform all employees of their rights to both abstain from union membership and pay only the part of union fees directly germane to bargaining. These settlements enforce the Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision.
The remedial notices also announce that UFCW officials will return to Coffey and Rafique dues seized from them in violation of their Beck rights. Also included in the notices are declarations that UFCW officials will “process resignations and objections of [all] bargaining unit employees who have resigned” union membership and “will not threaten [employees] with internal union discipline or fines” for returning to work during a strike. The settlements totally remedy the unfair labor practices suffered by the two grocery workers.
“These victories should serve as a reminder to all American employees — and union officials — that the individual rights of workers don’t cease to exist when union bosses call a strike,” commented Ray LaJeunesse, Vice President and Legal Director of the National Right to Work Foundation. “Workers who are subjected to strike intimidation or union bosses’ illegal misinformation can turn to the National Right to Work Foundation for free legal aid to hold union bosses accountable for their illegal actions.”
New York Employee Also Wins Case After Illegal Dues Demands
The two New England grocery workers were not the only Stop & Shop employees to win settlements against the UFCW recently. John Smith, a former employee of the Stop & Shop branch in New Hyde Park, New York, also won a victory with Foundation aid this September.
Smith had charged UFCW agents with similarly misinforming him that the grocery store was a “closed shop” when he was hired in November 2018. When he asked about how to resign his union membership, he was misled by several union officials about his right to resign and cut off a portion of union dues.
Smith’s charge also noted that union officials never apprised him of his right as a non-member to pay only the amount of union fees directly related to bargaining, as the Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision requires.
His settlement, approved by NLRB Region 29 in Brooklyn, orders union officials to post notices that union officials will inform employees of their rights to refrain from formal union membership and pay only union fees directly related to bargaining. Smith will also be refunded dues that were taken in violation of his Beck rights.
“As Smith’s case shows, union bosses won’t hesitate to mislead workers regarding their legal right to resign their union membership and full union dues,” added LaJeunesse. “Unfortunately this type of misinformation will continue to be spread as long as workers lack Right to Work protections that make union membership and financial support completely voluntary.”
2018: The Year of the Landmark Janus Victory
Of the over 250 cases litigated by National Right to Work Foundation Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys in 2018, no case attracted more attention than Janus v. AFSCME, which resulted in a landmark victory at the U.S. Supreme Court on June 27, 2018.
Foundation staff attorney William Messenger argued before the High Court in February that civil servants like Illinois public employee Mark Janus could not legally be forced to subsidize union activities as a condition of working for the government. On June 27, the Supreme Court agreed, issuing a ruling that forcing any public school teacher, police officer, firefighter or any other public employee to fund a union violates the First Amendment.
News outlets across the country took notice of the important victory for Right to Work. Among the major outlets that covered this win were the Associated Press , USA Today, CNN, The New York Times, and many others. The Wall Street Journal profiled William Messenger, the Foundation staff attorney who successfully argued the Janus case at the Supreme Court.
One the day of the Janus ruling, Fox News interviewed National Right to Work President Mark Mix about the case live from the steps of the Supreme Court. “It’s a great day for individual employees, independent-minded employees, not only in Illinois but across the country,” Mix told host Bill Hemmer:
Since the Foundation-won Janus case, Foundation staff attorneys have already pursued 20 lawsuits to enforce the Janus decision across the country, with more requests for legal assistance pouring in from public employees every day.
One of these cases is Fischer v. NJEA, which is a class action lawsuit filed by two New Jersey teachers who were not allowed to cut off union dues because of an unlawful “window period” scheme. One of the teachers, Susan G. Fischer, explained the case during a television interview with NJTV.
The Foundation continues to receive requests for assistance from workers whose First Amendment rights are being violated by union bosses. To assist workers, the Foundation set up a special website for public employees seeking to exercise their rights: MyJanusRights.org
New Mexico State Worker Files Class Action Lawsuit to Recover Unauthorized Dues Seized by CWA Union Officials
Constitutional rights of hundreds of public employees likely violated by CWA union “window period” scheme to deduct dues by force despite Supreme Court’s Janus ruling
Santa Fe, NM (December 27, 2018) – A New Mexico state employee has filed a class action lawsuit in federal court because union officials violated his First Amendment rights through a scheme to require him and other state employees to pay money to the union as a condition of employment.
IT technician David McCutcheon, employed by New Mexico’s Department of Information Technology (DoIT), filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico against the Communication Workers of America (CWA) union, CWA Local 7076 union, and New Mexico Personnel Office Director Justin Najaka on December 20 with free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.
McCutcheon’s suit states that CWA officials seize unauthorized membership dues out of his paycheck and refuse to allow workers to opt out of union payments except during a union dictated “window period.” The lawsuit asks the court to end this scheme and seeks a refund of union membership dues and fees for all New Mexico public workers who were similarly victimized.
Union officials forced McCutcheon to pay nonmember union fees to keep his job beginning in April 2017. However, in Janus v. AFSCME on June 27, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to require any public employee to pay union membership dues or fees without his or her explicit consent.
Following the Janus ruling, McCutcheon informed union officials in writing that he did not consent to any deduction of union fees. Union officials responded that his request had been “submitted for processing.”
But, instead of halting deductions, union officials began seizing full membership dues, rather than the lesser nonmember fees, from McCutcheon’s wages without his permission starting in September. According to union officials, under the union contract McCutcheon could only stop these larger deductions by again revoking authorization during the annual two-week December “window period.”
Because union officials refused to respect his legitimate request, McCutcheon has asked the district court to recognize his First Amendment rights to free speech and free association in accord with Janus and strike down this unconstitutional “window period” scheme. McCutcheon also seeks a refund of membership dues and fees seized from himself and the likely hundreds of other public employees in New Mexico who have been similarly victimized during the past three years.
“Contrary to the wishes of New Mexico union bosses and their allies in state government, First Amendment rights cannot be limited to just a couple of weeks per year,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “All civil servants should be able to exercise their rights to free speech and free association by cutting off union payments whenever they choose without interference by union officials.”
“Unfortunately, even after the Foundation-won Janus decision by the Supreme Court, it appears more legal action is necessary to force union officials to end their ‘massive resistance’ and respect the rights of the very workers they claim to represent,” added Mix.
Workers’ Lawsuits Challenge State Attempts to Restrict their Janus Rights
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, November/December 2018 edition.
Cases seek to strike down laws that let union bosses block workers from stopping dues payments
Foundation staff attorney William Messenger argued Janus at the Supreme Court. The Foundation’s victory must be vigilantly enforced.
SPRINGFIELD, VA – Since the 2012 passage of Right to Work legislation in the Wolverine State, Foundation staff attorneys have provided free legal assistance to Michigan workers in more than a hundred cases. With 41 ongoing cases and another 61 closed as of the publication of this article, Michigan cases continue to make up a disproportionate amount of the Foundation’s caseload of approximately 220-230 active cases at any given time. Developments in Foundation legal cases in recent months show that despite dozens of victories for workers, Michigan union bosses continue to attempt to force workers to pay dues despite the Right to Work laws.
These federal lawsuits are among dozens of legal actions workers have pursued, with the assistance of Foundation staff attorneys, to enforce the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling. As decades of Foundation litigation has amply demonstrated, without relentless enforcement, Big Labor ignores precedent and violates the rights of rank-and-file workers.
In California, Foundation staff attorneys are assisting Mark Smith, a court worker in Contra Costa County, who attempted to exercise his new protections days after the Janus decision.
Mr. Smith submitted his resignation from membership in American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 2700 and told union officials they did not have his authorization to deduct union dues from his paycheck.
AFSCME officials continued siphoning Mr. Smith’s hard-earned money without his consent and despite his multiple attempts to resign. When Mr. Smith sent his resignation via certified mail, postal service records show union officials left the delivery unclaimed.
After his requests were repeatedly ignored, Mr. Smith came to Foundation staff attorneys for free legal aid in filing a federal lawsuit against AFSCME officials and his government employer.
In the complaint, Mr. Smith challenges union officials’ violation of his First Amendment rights and a California law requiring public employers to deduct dues at the union’s request, even if the worker revokes authorization. This egregious law, enacted mere hours after the Janus decision, also blocks public employers from informing employees of their Janus rights.
In Pennsylvania, school bus driver Michael Mayer attempted to exercise his rights under Janus just weeks after the ruling. He resigned his membership in the Teamsters union on July 20 and hand-delivered a notice in August demanding that his employer stop deducting membership dues from his paycheck.
However, Teamsters Local 312 officials refused to honor his resignation, and his employer, Wallingford-Swarthmore School District, continued withdrawing union dues from Mr. Mayer’s hard-earned wages.
Teamster bosses claimed Mr. Mayer only had a 15-day window to escape from the union’s new monopoly bargaining contract under a section of Pennsylvania’s Public Employee Relations Act (PERA). Such a policy directly conflicts with the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling, which held that dues taken without workers’ clear and knowing affirmative consent violate the First Amendment.
When dues continued to be seized from Mayer’s paycheck in September, Foundation staff attorneys filed a federal lawsuit against the Teamsters union and the school district for violating his rights.
The lawsuit seeks a refund of the dues that the Teamsters conspired to take without his consent after his resignation and asks the court to rule that the PERA violates his First Amendment rights by restricting his ability to resign union membership and stop paying dues.
“Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, rather than work to earn the voluntary support of the workers they claim to represent, union officials coast-to-coast are resorting to illegal schemes to block workers from exercising their rights under the Janus decision,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “These cases likely won’t be the last challenging attempts to prevent workers from exercising their Janus rights.”
Seattle Housekeeper Challenges NLRB Policy Blocking Secret Ballot Vote to Remove Union
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, November/December 2018 edition.
Foundation attorneys seek to overturn Obama-era ruling that traps workers in union after abuse-prone “card check”
Foundation staff attorneys have asked the Trump NLRB to repeal Obama-era rulings that granted coercive powers to union officials, such as AFL-CIO top boss Richard Trumka (right), at the expense of worker freedom.
WASHINGTON, DC – Since 2011, a Big Labor-friendly ruling by the Obama National Labor Relations Board has barred workers from holding secret ballot votes to remove an unwanted union from their workplace.
Foundation staff attorneys have urged the new Trump NLRB to overturn the case called Lamons Gasket to restore employees’ protections against union officials’ coercion. The latest appeal, the third this year brought by staff attorneys, is on behalf of Seattle hotel housekeeper Gladys Bryant.
Bryant works at Embassy Suites. UNITE HERE Local 8 union officials unionized the workplace through a card check drive, which bypasses an NLRB-supervised secret ballot election and is often characterized by manipulation and intimidation. Union organizers misled Bryant and her fellow workers into signing cards, and then counted those cards as “votes” toward unionization.
When Bryant realized what had happened, she led a group of colleagues in filing an NLRB petition for a secret ballot decertification vote with free legal aid from Foundation staff attorneys.
However, the election petition was dismissed by a regional career NLRB official using the Lamons Gasket ruling.
Under the Foundation-won Dana decision, workers could collect signatures to request a secret ballot election during a 45-day window following notice that they had been forced under union representation via card check. Dana had provided an important, although limited, protection for workers against coercive card check drives. However in the 2011 Lamons Gasket ruling, an Obama-selected NLRB overturned Dana. This means that no matter how many workers sign a petition seeking to oust a union, they can be barred for one year before they can file for a secret ballot vote.
Instead of ceding her workplace voice when her secret ballot vote petition was dismissed under Lamons Gasket, Bryant continued the legal battle with help from Foundation staff attorneys.
Foundation attorneys have submitted an appeal to the NLRB asking the Board to overturn Lamons Gasket and restore workers’ protections against the coercive tactics union officials use to force their monopoly bargaining privileges onto employees.
Such protections are especially important for workers in states like Washington that lack Right to Work protections. In those states, private sector employees can be forced to pay fees as a condition of employment to a union about which they never even had the chance to vote.
“Ms. Bryant’s situation reveals the coercive nature of a card check drive, and why the Trump Labor Board must end the Obama Board’s disastrous precedent,” said National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse. “The Lamons Gasket decision means that workers can be forced to pay union fees even if the majority of the workplace wants to vote out the union. Workers must be allowed to fight back against this coercive process.”
Foundation staff attorneys also filed unfair labor practice charges, still under NLRB investigation, for Bryant against the union and hotel management for coercive tactics used in the union card check process.
Homecare Providers Seeking to Recover Seized Union Fees File Petition at Appeals Court for Rehearing
Full 7th Circuit asked to review decision blocking return of $32 million in union fees seized from 80,000 providers in violation of First Amendment
Chicago, IL (December 20, 2018) – National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys have filed a petition asking the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to rehear their case in which Illinois homecare providers seek the return of over $32 million in union fees seized by SEIU officials in a scheme the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional.
The case, Riffey v. Rauner, 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 over 80,000 individual homecare providers were forced to pay union fees out of the state funding they receive, violated the providers’ First Amendment rights.
Earlier this year, Foundation staff attorneys successfully petitioned the U.S. 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 case, 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 the Riffey case, the Supreme Court clarified that any union fees taken without an individual’s informed consent violate the First Amendment. That standard supports the Riffey plaintiffs’ claim by 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 from the over 80,000 providers whose money was seized in violation of their First Amendment rights. The panel based its decision on the ground 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 2014, the case was re-designated Riffey v. Rauner 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 the over $32 million in unconstitutional fees confiscated from union nonmembers who never consented to their money being taken for union fees. Foundation staff attorneys appealed that ruling to the Appeals Court.
Now Foundation staff attorneys have petitioned the Appeals Court to rehear the case en banc. The petition argues 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. Rather, Janus held that the First Amendment is violated if union dues or fees are seized without the worker’s clear affirmative consent.
The petition argues that the case is of exceptional importance because it concerns the return of more than $32 million seized from some 80,000 homecare providers in violation of their First Amendment rights.
“The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that SEIU had illegally confiscated union dues from thousands of Illinois homecare providers, but the ruling challenged by this petition denies those same caregivers the opportunity to reclaim the money that never should have been taken from them by SEIU in the first place,” said Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “If SEIU’s bosses are not required to return the money they seized in violation of homecare providers’ constitutional rights, it will only encourage similar behavior from union officials eager to trample the First Amendment to enrich themselves with the money intended for the care of individuals who need it.”
