Union must back down after attempting to fine worker who resigned to take a different job, union must inform other workers

Colorado Springs, CO (July 30, 2021) – Following an investigation by National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) officials, a formal settlement has now forced International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers (SMART) Local 9 union officials to inform workers about their right to resign their union memberships, and that it will not ignore such resignations or mete out internal union discipline on workers who resign.

The settlement comes after Colorado Springs metal worker Russell Chacon filed an unfair labor practice charge at Region 27 of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Denver in May after he received a message from Sheet Metal union bosses imposing $21,252 in union disciplinary fines on him. The fines were imposed despite the fact that Chacon had resigned his union membership and left a job at a contractor under Local 9’s power several months earlier to work at a Pueblo facility free from union control. Chacon received free legal representation from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

Although Sheet Metal union bosses informally rescinded their fine demands soon after Chacon filed his charge, NLRB Region 27 continued to investigate Chacon’s charge that union officials had instigated the discipline specifically in retaliation for his leaving the union. Decades-old federal law prohibits union officials from forcing internal union discipline on workers who have resigned union membership, and from restricting the exercise of that basic right to refrain.

The NLRB found merit in Chacon’s claims of retaliation earlier this month, forcing union officials to settle in order to avoid NLRB prosecution.

Chacon used to work for Colorado Sheet Metal, a Colorado Springs-based contractor whose employees are under the monopoly bargaining power of the Sheet Metal Local 9 union. According to his unfair labor practice charge, he sent a letter to Local 9 union officials resigning his union membership in November 2020 so he could work for Rocky Mechanical, a Pueblo-based firm outside Local 9’s control. The union fine demand, which came several months after his change in jobs, demanded Chacon fork over $21,252 to cover the alleged union “loss of funds” for a period through May 31, which included days that Chacon had not even worked yet.

The settlement requires Sheet Metal union officials to post a notice at the union office stating that they “will not fail to inform or misinform you about the proper process for resigning your membership,” “will not fail to give effect to resignations of membership from the Union,” and “will not restrain and coerce you by instituting and prosecuting disciplinary proceedings and levying fines after failing to give effect to resignations.” The notice also confirms that Chacon is no longer subject to the fine demands.

“As the conclusion of this case shows, Sheet Metal union officials were caught red-handed violating workers’ most basic right to refrain from associating with an organization they don’t want to be part of,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Although we are pleased that Mr. Chacon is no longer saddled with an outrageous fine demand, unfortunately other Colorado workers can still be forced to pay dues to these thuggish union bosses because The Centennial State lacks a Right to Work law.”

Mix continued, “Right to Work protections ensure that all union financial support is strictly voluntary, and no worker can be fired just for refusal to pay dues to unwanted union bosses.”

Supreme Court Orders School Board, Union Officials to File Response Brief

Washington, DC (July 28, 2021) – Amicus support is pouring in from around the country for a U.S. Supreme Court petition filed by two Chicago public school teachers, Ifeoma Nkemdi and Joanne Troesch, with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

Their class-action lawsuit against the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the Chicago Board of Education challenges a union boss-created “escape period” scheme that blocks workers from exercising their right to terminate dues deductions from their paychecks outside the month of August. In June, Foundation staff attorneys filed the petition for writ of certiorari with the High Court, seeking review of a Court of Appeals decision allowing the “escape period” restriction on the exercise of the teachers’ First Amendment rights recognized in the 2018 Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision.

Now others are urging the Justices to hear the case.

Attorneys General for Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia filed an amicus brief for their States asking the Supreme Court to hear the teachers’ case challenging the Chicago Teachers Union scheme that locks teachers into union dues payments.

The States’ brief argues union officials are engaging in widespread violation of public employees’ rights under Janus and that the Court ought to hear Troesch and Nkemdi’s case to stop these violations:

In Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018), this Court held that state employees have a First Amendment right not to be compelled to subsidize union speech. That is because forcing individuals to subsidize speech with which they disagree violates the “bedrock principle” that “no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.” Harris v. Quinn, 573 U.S. 616, 656 (2014). Unions thus cannot extract dues unless there is “clear and compelling” evidence that the state employee waived his or her First Amendment rights. Janus, 138 S. Ct. at 2486.

But Janus has been ignored. Across the country public-sector unions have resisted Janus’s instructions and devised new ways to compel state employees to subsidize union speech. Unions place onerous terms on dues forms that prohibit state employees from opting out of paying dues except during narrow (and undisclosed) windows during the year. Unions refuse to inform state employees that they have a First Amendment right not to pay union dues. And unions refuse to stop collecting dues despite unequivocal employee demands. The result is that tens of thousands of state employees across the country are having dues deducted to subsidize union speech without any evidence that they waived their First Amendment rights….

This case implicates these precise concerns. Respondents—the Chicago Board of Education (“Board”) and the Chicago Teachers Union (“CTU”), a public sector union—took dues from Petitioners’ wages without proof that the employees waived their First Amendment right not to subsidize the union’s speech. The Seventh Circuit’s decision upholding their actions warrants this Court’s review.

In addition to the 16-State brief, other amicus briefs filed by the Goldwater Institute, Cato Institute, Freedom Foundation, and Liberty Justice Center all bolster the teachers’ argument that the Supreme Court should take up the teachers’ case and ensure that Janus is being fully enforced.

On Tuesday the Court ordered the Chicago Teachers Union and Chicago Board of Education to file a response brief, a possible signal at least some Justices are interested in taking up the case.

Series of successful worker-led decertifications of Teamsters union bosses nationwide follow federal labor board rule change simplifying process

Chicago, IL (July 26, 2021) – Maintenance workers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago have successfully removed Teamsters Local 743 union officials from their workplace, following a vote in which more than 70% of those who cast ballots voted to free themselves from the Teamsters’ monopoly bargaining power. The election was held after worker Tim Mangia submitted a petition to National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 13 in Chicago demonstrating sufficient support among his coworkers for a decertification vote.

Mangia received free legal aid in filing the petition from a National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorney. The successful ouster is the latest in a string of successful worker-led decertifications of Teamsters officials across the country. Just last month, Frito-Lay salesmen voted Teamsters Local 657 officials out of their monopoly bargaining status in Del Rio, TX, and Eagle Pass, TX, a removal which followed Santa Maria, CA Allied Central Coast Distributing delivery drivers’ April dethroning of Teamsters Local 986 bosses. The workers who submitted petitions requesting decertification votes in each of these cases received legal help from Foundation staff attorneys.

Mangia and his coworkers are employed by Jones Lang Lasalle Americas, Inc. Mangia gathered the necessary signatures from his coworkers and on May 17, 2021 submitted the petition requesting that NLRB Region 13 supervise a secret ballot vote to remove the union. The ballots were counted on July 8 and by July 16 NLRB Region 13 confirmed that the workers had voted 25-8 to eject Teamsters bosses from their workplace.

For almost a year workers have been enjoying an easier pathway to exercising their right to remove unwanted union officials. The NLRB in Washington, DC, in July 2020 enacted new rules governing decertification elections which, drawing from comments Foundation attorneys submitted to the agency earlier that year, now forbid union bosses from indefinitely stalling worker-requested votes based on “blocking charges.” Those charges are allegations against an employer that are often unproven and unrelated to workers’ desire to oust union officials.

In Mangia’s case, the new rules may have prevented union officials from submitting “blocking charges,” as filing them would have neither delayed the election nor stopped the results of the vote from being released.

Had the effort by Mangia and his colleagues to oust Teamsters Local 743 officials been blocked, every full-time employee in Mangia’s workplace would have been forced to continue to suffer under union boss monopoly power. Additionally, the employees would have been forced to pay money from their wages to fund the union boss hierarchy because Illinois lacks Right to Work protections for its workers.

Right to Work protections ensure that no worker can be required to join or pay dues to a union as a condition of keeping his or her job. In a non-Right to Work state like Illinois, workers who choose not to affiliate with a union can still be forced to pay at least a portion of union dues as a condition of employment.

“Although Foundation-backed NLRB rule changes eliminated some of the barriers faced by Mr. Mangia and his coworkers in removing the Teamsters union from their workplace, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that it is wrong for so-called union ‘representation’ to be imposed on even one worker who doesn’t want it,” observed National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “States like Illinois which lack Right to Work protections compound the injustice of letting union officials force workers under union representation against their will by also empowering union bosses to threaten workers to pay union dues or else be fired.”

“We will continue to work towards a day when unions can neither impose their so-called ‘representation’ on individual workers against their will, nor force them to fund union activities,” Mix added.

Every single worker petitioned to remove Carpenters Union bosses as monopoly bargaining ‘representative’ but NLRB won’t even allow a vote

Washington, DC (July 20, 2021) – In March, Region 13 of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rejected a petition by a group of Indiana construction workers who wanted to remove union bosses from their workplace. This week, the full NLRB in Washington, DC, sided with union officials and left in place the Region’s decision to dismiss the petition, which had unanimous support from the company’s workers.

None of the employees at Neises Construction Company in Crown Point, Indiana are members of the Indiana/Kentucky/Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters union (IKORCC), but federal law empowers IKORCC union bosses to represent these employees as their “exclusive bargaining representative.” With free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys, Neises employee Mike Halkias submitted a petition to decertify IKORCC officials as the monopoly bargaining agent for him and his coworkers.

Though the petition bore the signature of every member of the bargaining unit, the NLRB regional office rejected the petition, pointing to ongoing litigation between IKORCC and Neises. At the behest of IKORCC officials, the NLRB is seeking to force Neises to bargain with union officials for a union monopoly contract, even though no Neises employee is an IKORCC member or supports the union. The Region used the pending case against the employer to justify dismissing the workers’ petition for a decertification vote.

Foundation attorneys argued in their appeal to the full NLRB that the employer’s dispute with IKORCC bosses did not take away the workers’ right to remove the unwanted union. As the appeal stated, “Halkias and his fellow employees are not children, but freethinking individuals who have the right to dislike the Union for a host of reasons having nothing to do with Neises or the Union’s unproven, unadjudicated allegations.” The appeal implored the Board to, at the very least, investigate whether the alleged employer wrongdoing had diminished the employees’ ability to make an informed choice about union boss “representation.”

Instead, the Board denied the appeal, accepting the Region and union officials’ reasoning that the pending employer charges should block the workers’ request for a vote, leaving the nine workers under union “representation” they unanimously oppose.

“It is simply outrageous that federal law lets union bosses force workers to accept unions’ so-called ‘representation’ against their will – even when workers unanimously oppose the union,” said National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix. “Federal law purports to protect workers’ ‘freedom of association’ and to ensure union representation ‘is of their own choosing,’ however, as this case demonstrates, the NLRB frequently protects union boss power to the detriment of workers’ freedom.”

“This outcome shows how federal labor law is broken,” added Mix. “These workers simply want a vote to remove a union they oppose, yet the NLRB response is not only to block any such vote but also to seek to force their employer to bargain further with a union supported by precisely zero rank-and-file workers.”

Union lawyers withdrew dilatory election objections after worker obtained assistance from Foundation attorneys

Las Vegas, NV (July 13, 2021) – Tammy Tarantino, a respiratory therapist at Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center in Las Vegas, successfully petitioned for a vote to remove SEIU union bosses from her workplace. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Nevada Regional office initially delayed Tarantino’s vote request, but scheduled an election once she obtained free legal representation from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys.

SEIU bosses had a monopoly over contract bargaining for Tarantino and her coworkers, all technical employees at the hospital. Tarantino filed a petition for a decertification election to remove SEIU bosses with NLRB Region 28 after collecting the requisite number of signatures from dozens of her coworkers. The Region initially resisted her petition, telling her it might not be possible to schedule a vote. In their effort to stop the workers from voting, SEIU lawyers raised issues designed to block the election, relying on pending and past charges it had filed against the hospital. Though these charges did not allege anything illegal affecting Tarantino’s petition the Union argued the election must be blocked.

Tarantino eventually enlisted the free legal assistance of Foundation staff attorneys, who filed a response to union lawyers’ arguments. The response pointed out that the union lawyers were ignoring updates to the NLRB’s rules on “blocking charges,” charges against employers used to block workers’ votes to oust union officials. Thanks to reforms pushed by the Foundation, decertification elections now can proceed more quickly and the results are announced sooner. Under the old rules, “blocking charges” that had no impact on employees’ desire to decertify the union could still be used to stall decertification votes.

Tarantino’s response further argued union lawyers hadn’t filed their objections in a timely manner, which thus could not be considered even if they hadn’t relied on outdated rules. Once the response was filed, SEIU lawyers signed a stipulated election agreement allowing the decertification vote to move forward.

During the NLRB-supervised election, which took place over July 7-8, the members of Tarantino’s unit voted 39-13 to remove SEIU bosses from their workplace. Employees must now wait until July 15 to see whether the union files “objections.”

“Instead of respecting the will of the workers they supposedly represent, SEIU bosses took advantage of the system and attempted to block the vote requested by Tammy Tarantino and her coworkers,” said National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix. “No worker should be forced to accept the so-called representation of union bosses they do not support. While we’re pleased that Tarantino got her vote, and that Foundation-backed blocking charge reforms worked as intended, workers shouldn’t need the assistance of an attorney to prevent unpopular union bosses from bargaining for them.”

New settlement requires union bosses to provide workers information on how union is spending their money

Buffalo, NY (July 13, 2021) – With free legal representation from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, Lockport, NY-based Student Transportation of America school bus driver Cynthia Roszman has won a settlement in her case charging the Teamsters Local 449 union with failing to provide information about how worker dues are spent.

As part of the settlement, Teamsters union officials must provide Roszman and her coworkers who have refrained from formal union membership sufficient information to decide whether to challenge the union’s dues calculation for nonmembers.

National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Region 3 in Buffalo is enforcing the settlement. Roszman, who resigned her union membership in May 2018, first hit Teamsters bosses with federal charges in September of that same year, asserting that they had not provided her with an independently-verified breakdown of the union’s expenditures and accompanying information about the process for disputing union officials’ calculation of the reduced dues rate for nonmembers.

The NLRB ruled in 1995 that under the 1988 Foundation-won CWA v. Beck case private sector union officials must provide nonmember employees with this information. Beck mandates that private sector union bosses cannot, as a job condition, force workers who have abstained from union membership to pay dues for anything beyond the union’s core representational activities.

In states that have Right to Work protections for their employees, union membership and financial support are completely voluntary and union bosses cannot force workers to pay any portion of dues as a condition of keeping a job. Even though New York lacks such protections, union bosses still must follow the requirements of Beck to justify their forced dues demands.

To avoid prosecution, Teamsters Local 449 officials initially entered into a settlement in the case in January 2019. They agreed to only deduct from Roszman the nonmember dues rate based on the Teamsters national union’s financials, so they could rely on the national union’s breakdown as opposed to providing one themselves. However, after about a year union bosses reneged on this agreement and resumed demanding Roszman pay Local 449’s nonmember rate, yet refused to give her the legally-mandated financial breakdown and information for challenging that rate.

The latest Foundation-won settlement now compels Teamsters Local 449 officials to give Roszman and her coworkers who have decided not to associate with the union “information that is relevant and sufficient to enable the objector to determine whether to challenge the calculation” of the union’s dues amount for nonmembers. Union officials must also post a notice at Roszman’s workplace informing employees of the settlement.

“Although this favorable outcome for Ms. Roszman is good news, no workers should have to battle union bosses for years just to get basic information on how the union is spending their money, and on how they can contest what union officials force them to contribute just to keep their jobs,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “All American workers deserve the protection of a national Right to Work law, which would ensure that no worker could legally be forced to pay dues or fees to a union boss just to get or keep a job.”

Teamsters officials pushed to have union representation vote by mail as opposed to in-person, worker presents evidence of union using system to illegally solicit ballots

Los Angeles, CA (July 2, 2021) – Nelson Medina, an employee at transportation company Savage Services’ Wilmington, CA, facility, has just filed a Request for Review to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in Washington, DC. He is demanding the Board review an NLRB Regional Director’s discarding of his objections to a mail ballot election pushed by Teamsters Local 848 union officials. This vote resulted in the Teamsters gaining monopoly bargaining power in Medina’s workplace, despite significant evidence that union officials manipulated the less-secure nature of mail elections to illegally solicit ballots, and despite evidence of other voter disenfranchisement that occurred due to flaws in the process.

Medina, who is represented for free by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, in his brief reiterates evidence that at least 12 of his fellow employees never had their votes counted purely due to errors by the US Post Office and the NLRB regional office. He also details that a union lawyer had “access to the tracking numbers for two of the ballots” which were originally considered late, indicating unlawful vote harvesting by union officials.

Medina seeks to have the NLRB in Washington overturn the NLRB Regional Director’s decision and order a hearing on voter disenfranchisement. His brief argues that, if the Board orders such a hearing and “ultimately finds merit to some, but not all of these objections, there is a chance that the ballot solicitation objections” involve enough ballots to invalidate the mail election win that Teamsters officials claim they have. He also demands that a rerun vote be administered for him and his coworkers.

On the issue of voter disenfranchisement, Medina’s brief states: “the evidence will show that the timing of the mail ballot election during the pandemic and the U.S. Presidential election” led to a substantial number of votes not being counted. The circumstances surrounding the election also didn’t meet any of the criteria the NLRB set forth in its Aspirus Keweenaw standard for administering a mail vote, the Request for Review argues. The NLRB generally prefers the security of in-person elections to mail ballot ones.

With regard to ballot solicitation, Medina’s brief contends that the Teamsters lawyer’s possession of the tracking numbers of the untimely ballots “is highly suspect and creates an inference that the Union was involved in or assisted with the mailing of those two ballots,” and that the Regional Director’s decision to reject these concerns and those about voter disenfranchisement without a hearing to evaluate the issues is impossible to justify.

Earlier in 2021, Foundation staff attorneys filed an amicus brief for Medina in Professional Transportation, another NLRB case in which workers asserted that union officials were soliciting and collecting ballots illegally. That brief pointed out that the under the NLRB’s Fessler precedent “unions faced with mail ballot elections are likely to engage in voter solicitation knowing that…they are unlikely to ever get caught,” even though employers would almost certainly be punished for attempting the same thing.

“Union bosses prefer mail ballots for unionization elections over in-person NLRB-monitored secret ballot votes for the same reason Big Labor advocates for ‘card check’ unionization: without direct NLRB oversight it is easier for union agents to apply pressure tactics, threats, and other coercive measures,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Mr. Medina and his coworkers deserve a secure in-person election so they can freely choose who will speak for them in the workplace, and Foundation staff attorneys will keep fighting for them until they get it.”

Foundation continues to assist workers fighting union boss violations of landmark First Amendment Supreme Court decision

Washington, DC (June 25, 2021) – Three years ago, the Supreme Court issued its decision in the landmark Janus v. AFSCME case, holding that it is unconstitutional to force public sector workers to pay money to a union as a condition of employment. In that case the plaintiff, Mark Janus, was represented by veteran National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorney William Messenger, who presented oral arguments before the High Court in February 2018.

Foundation President Mark Mix issued the following statement to commemorate the decision’s three year anniversary on June 27:

“Today we celebrate a victory for public sector workers across the country. In Janus v. AFSCME, the Supreme Court affirmed that it is unconstitutional to force public sector workers to pay money to unions just to keep their jobs. The Court held that public sector union officials cannot take workers’ money without first obtaining their affirmative consent. For decades, union bosses hadn’t bothered to get workers’ consent, taking money even from those who object to unions and their efforts to influence public policy.

Yet, despite the High Court’s clear ruling, even three years later, Big Labor continues the widespread violation of workers’ First Amendment Janus rights.

From coast-to-coast, union bosses and their allies in state and local government have enacted policies to trap workers into forced dues by declaring that workers can only stop paying dues during an ‘escape period’ that often lasts only a few days each year. These policies turn the Constitution on its head, by claiming that so long as you permit someone to exercise their First Amendment rights for a brief designated time, you can deliberately deny those rights the rest of the year.

This blatant violation of the law is frustrating, but it’s what you’d expect when Big Labor spends billions in members’ dues money lobbying the government and hiring an army of lawyers to argue against workers’ rights in court. Luckily, the National Right to Work Foundation is fighting back for independent-minded workers.

Foundation attorneys successfully defeated several union boss ‘escape period’ schemes, including one that affected nearly 30,000 Ohio public employees. But we haven’t stopped there, the Foundation now has 14 active cases challenging ‘escape periods,’ including two cases for teachers in New Jersey and Chicago that have been appealed to the Supreme Court. If either of these cases ends in another Foundation Supreme Court victory, it would eliminate ‘escape period’ schemes across the country and further solidify the groundbreaking protections won for public sector workers in the Janus case. Though union bosses will continue to resist, the Foundation will not stop fighting until the First Amendment rights of every worker in America are honored.”

Multiple cases headed to High Court seeking ruling against arrangements that violate workers’ rights under 2018 Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision

Washington, DC (June 21, 2021) – Staff attorneys from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation have just submitted petitions for writ of certiorari in two class-action civil rights cases seeking to enforce workers’ First Amendment rights. In both cases public educators are challenging union boss-created restrictions on their First Amendment right to refrain from funding unwanted union hierarchies in their workplaces.

One petition was filed for Chicago Public Schools educators Joanne Troesch and Ifeoma Nkemdi, whose lawsuit against the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the Chicago Board of Education challenges a union boss-created “escape period” scheme that blocks workers from exercising their right to terminate dues deductions from their paychecks outside the month of August.

The second petition was filed in a lawsuit brought by New Jersey teachers Susan Fischer and Jeanette Speck, who are suing the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) union for enforcing a similar annual window that restricts employees in the exercise of their Janus rights to just 10 days annually, less than 3% of the year.

Both lawsuits argue that these union dues “escape periods” run afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, which was won by Foundation staff attorneys in 2018. In Janus, the court ruled that no public worker can be forced to pay union dues or fees as a condition of keeping his or her job. The Court further held that union bosses contravene the First Amendment if they seize any money from an employee’s paycheck without an affirmative consent and a knowing waiver of that employee’s First Amendment rights.

Fischer and Speck, who both work in Ocean Township, NJ, attempted to exercise their Janus rights in July 2018, just a month after the High Court handed down the Janus decision. But Township officials told the teachers they could only stop payments and withdraw their memberships during an annual 10-day window. Unbeknownst to them, union partisans in the New Jersey legislature had actually established that “escape period” by law in May 2018 in an apparent attempt to defang the pending Janus decision.

Fischer and Speck’s suit argues that because the Janus ruling gave public employees the First Amendment right not to financially support union activities, the New Jersey law is unconstitutional and must be nixed. In addition to eliminating the “escape period” scheme, they seek a refund of membership dues for themselves and all other public employees who were blocked by NJEA officials from stopping dues deductions following Janus.

Nkemdi and Troesch’s original lawsuit explains that both educators “did not know they had a constitutional right not to financially support” the union hierarchy until the fall of 2019, when they discovered their Janus rights while looking for information on how to continue working during a strike that CTU bosses ordered that October. They sent letters the same month to CTU officials to exercise their Janus right to resign union membership and cut off all dues deductions.

Both educators received no response until November of that year, when CTU officials confirmed receipt of the letters but said that they would continue to seize dues from the teachers’ paychecks “until September 1, 2020,” as per the union’s “escape period” scheme. Troesch and Nkemdi demanded in their lawsuit that CTU union officials and the Board of Education stop enforcing the “escape period,” notify all bargaining unit employees that they can end dues deductions any time, and permit bargaining unit employees to claim back dues that were already seized without their consent.

“‘Escape periods’ like those forced on Troesch, Nkemdi, Fischer, and Speck serve no purpose other than to keep the hard-earned cash of public servants who oppose union officials’ so-called ‘representation’ flowing into union coffers even after those employees have clearly exercised their First Amendment right to object to such payments,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “With opposition to these schemes growing among public employees, the Supreme Court must quickly take up this issue and clarify that Janus does not permit union bosses to profit from curtailing workers’ constitutional rights.”

To avoid prosecution, Teamsters agree to inform workers of their legal rights & correct false statements claiming membership was mandatory

Queens, NY (June 21, 2021) – Teamsters union officials at a UPS warehouse in Queens, New York, settled charges brought by Kamil Fraczek, an employee who was misled by union officials about his legal rights. Fraczek received free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.

When Fraczek began working at the UPS warehouse full time, a Teamsters representative told him he must become a union member and sign documents authorizing dues deductions from his paycheck. The official said Teamsters officials would ask UPS to fire him if he did not comply.

Because New York is a forced-unionism state that doesn’t protect workers with a Right to Work law, Fraczek can be required to pay some union fees as a condition of his job. However, under the Supreme Court’s 1988 CWA v. Beck decision, won by attorneys at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, no private-sector worker can be compelled to financially support certain union activities unrelated to bargaining, like political lobbying. Further, under longstanding federal law, workers cannot be required to become formal union members.

When Fraczek independently learned of his rights, he returned to the Teamsters official and asked to become a non-member and a Beck objector. He provided a letter to the representative stating his intention to pay only reduced fees and decline union membership.

The Teamsters official doubled down on his prior misrepresentations, insisting that Fraczek must pay full dues and sign membership documents. The Teamsters official again threatened to have Fraczek fired if he did not comply with these demands. The official falsely claimed that only supervisors can opt out of the union, and that the federal laws protecting workers from funding union political activities only apply in Right to Work states, not in forced-unionism states like New York.

In response, Fraczek filed his NLRB charge asserting his right to pay reduced fees under Beck and not to join the union. Fraczek later was able to free himself from the union altogether by being promoted to supervisor, and Teamsters officials settled Fraczek’s charges. Under the terms of the settlement, Teamsters officials will post a notice to all employees informing them of their right to become a nonmember and pay reduced union fees. The notice also promises that union officials will not threaten to have nonmember employees fired, as the official did to Fraczek.

“Teamsters officials lied to Kamil Fraczek about his legal rights by telling him he would be fired if he didn’t become a full dues-paying member,” said National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix. “Fraczek escaped Teamsters bosses’ clutches on his own by getting promoted, but thanks to the charges he filed Teamsters officials will not get away with their illegal threats, as union bosses are being required to notify other workers in Fraczek’s warehouse about their legal right not to join the union.”