Sacramento, CA (February 3, 2014) \u2013 With the help of National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, eighteen California civil servants have filed a class action lawsuit in U. S. District Court against the SEIU Local 1000 union. The lawsuit challenges the union\u2019s policy of requiring nonunion employees to affirmatively object to paying for union politics and asks that the SEIU seek employees\u2019 permission before deducting union dues for political activism. <\/p>\n
The lawsuit builds on a landmark, Foundation-won Supreme Court decision from 2012. In Knox v. SEIU Local 1000, the Supreme Court held for the first time that a union should not have collected dues for a political spending campaign without nonmembers\u2019 affirmative consent. <\/p>\n
Although nonunion civil servants have the right to opt out of paying union dues for activities unrelated to collective bargaining, such as union political activism, many unions require employees to object to those payments before they\u2019ll cease collecting full union dues. The lawsuit seeks to shift that burden from employees, whose paychecks and rights are at stake, to union officials, who would then be required to seek nonmembers\u2019 permission before collecting full dues. <\/p>\n
The lawsuit notes that SEIU 1000\u2019s current policy \u2013 which requires nonunion public employees to object to union political spending \u2013 effectively rigs the game the union\u2019s favor. Although nonunion employees are supposed to receive notices informing them of their rights to opt out of paying for union politics, several of the plaintiffs never received such notices. Others were only notified after a union-designated window period for objecting to the payment of full dues had already expired. <\/p>\n
Nonunion civil servants who did receive the notice in a timely fashion found that it downplayed employees\u2019 right to opt out. Information about refraining from paying dues for union politics was printed in small text and featured below the union\u2019s more prominent pitch for full membership. <\/p>\n
If any employees received the notice in a timely fashion and were able to decipher the union\u2019s explanation of their right to refrain from paying full union dues, they then had to undergo an onerous, bureaucratic process to assert that right.<\/p>\n
\u201cNonunion civil servants shouldn\u2019t have to navigate a cumbersome opt-out procedure to assert their right to refrain from union politics,\u201d said Mark Mix, President of the National Right to Work Foundation. \u201cWe hope the courts recognize the importance of protecting independent-minded employees by requiring union officials to get their consent before deducting dues for political activism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sacramento, CA (February 3, 2014) \u2013 With the help of National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, eighteen California civil servants have filed a class action lawsuit in U. S. District Court against the SEIU Local 1000 union. The lawsuit challenges the union\u2019s policy of requiring nonunion employees to affirmatively object to paying for union politics and asks that the SEIU seek employees\u2019 permission before deducting union dues for political activism. <\/p>\n
The lawsuit builds on a landmark, Foundation-won Supreme Court decision from 2012. In Knox v. SEIU Local 1000, the Supreme Court held for the first time that a union should not have collected dues for a political spending campaign without nonmembers\u2019 affirmative consent. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n