If you are a nonmember paying agency fees to the International Association of Machinists (IAM) union, you may be entitled to demand a refund if you have paid “reinstatement fees” to the union. The story is this: Anthony Lutz is a customer service agent employed by United Air Lines. He works under a union contract negotiated by the IAM union, but is not a member of the union and pays only reduced agency fees. For three months in the fall of 2001, Mr. Lutz took an unpaid medical leave of absence from United. After he returned from his leave of absence, an IAM union official twice threatened him with discharge unless he paid a “reinstatement fee” of more than $100 to the union. One demand letter from the union official specifically noted that if Mr. Lutz had been a full member of the IAM, he would not have had to pay this “reinstatement fee” as a condition of employment, because the union would have issued “unemployment stamps” to him. (That would have exempted him from paying this “reinstatement fee.”) But, since he was not a union member, Mr. Lutz was told that he could not participate in the “benefit” of unemployment stamps, and therefore had to “pay up” or be fired. When Mr. Lutz informed the union officials that his lawyers at the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation were preparing to file a federal court lawsuit against the IAM union, an official of IAM’s “Capital Air Lodge 1759” suddenly retracted her “reinstatement fee” demand. The retraction effectively conceded that Mr. Lutz legally could not be charged the fee. Did this or something similar happen to you” If you have paid such “reinstatement fees” to the Machinists union under similar circumstances in the past, or are being threatened with having to pay such fees, please contact us so we can discuss with you your legal rights. > The National Right to Work Legal Defense > Foundation
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