Cincinnati, Ohio (November 11, 2005) – Acknowledging irreparable harm to the constitutional rights of roughly 100 nonunion Cincinnati firefighters, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the City of Cincinnati and the local firefighter union late Wednesday, halting the use and further collection of their forced union dues for politics.
The ruling stems from a complaint filed by five local members of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters who have had separate, but ongoing, disputes with the union hierarchy, including charges of discrimination that allege racist treatment of minority firefighters by union officials.
Receiving free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the firefighters charged that IAFF Local 48 union officials acted in concert with the City of Cincinnati and seized compulsory union dues from them without first providing an adequate independent audit of the union’s expenditures, among other things. The complaint, filed in summer 2004, also named Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken, among other top City officials, for signing and enforcing an agreement with the union that resulted in the unconstitutional acts.
The firefighters filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio’s Western Division. They allege that IAFF Local 48 union officials intentionally seized the forced union dues without first providing the financial disclosure and procedures required by a long-standing U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Under that ruling, the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution protect objecting employees from demands to pay for union political activity and other non-bargaining activities.
After City and union officials renewed their contract authorizing the unlawful forced union dues seizures again without providing adequate notice and procedures, Foundation attorneys filed a renewed request for a temporary restraining order, prompting the Court to act.
“IAFF officials have repeatedly trampled the basic constitutional rights of those firefighters whose interests they claim to represent,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “So long as Ohio’s workers labor under a system of forced unionism, such abuses will inevitably continue.”
Under the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court decision Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson, before collecting any forced dues, union officials must first provide an audited disclosure of the union’s expenses. Such audits are intended to ensure that forced union dues seized from nonunion public employees do not fund union activities unrelated to collective bargaining.
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.
