Union officials barred nonmember workers from normal fee payment process and wouldn’t provide financials to prove charges were legal

Commerce City, CO (September 16, 2021) – UPS worker Mark Hamel won a settlement from Teamsters union officials after he filed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charges with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The settlement is a victory for Hamel, who in December 2018 charged Teamsters union officials with violating his rights under federal law by requiring him to subsidize union officials’ activities as a condition of keeping his job.

Under the Supreme Court’s 1988 Beck decision, won by Foundation attorneys, unions cannot require nonmembers to pay fees for certain activities like union boss political lobbying. Despite this longstanding precedent, Teamsters officials failed to provide Hamel with a legally required audited description of how it calculated nonmember fees.

Hamel sent Teamsters officials a letter in October 2018 resigning his membership and requesting an audit of the union’s expenditures. In November 2018 Hamel received a response from union officials that included a one page unaudited breakdown of its expenditures. Hamel then filed charges with NLRB against Teamsters Local 13, Teamsters Joint Council 3, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, contending their response was inadequate because federal law requires nonmembers be given an audited and verified breakdown of how mandatory fees are calculated.

Hamel’s charges argued union officials’ lack of transparency prevents workers from knowing whether their money is being used legally. Union officials are prohibited under Beck from charging nonmembers workers for anything beyond core bargaining and representational activities, but without a breakdown of expenditures audited and verified by a third party, workers cannot know whether their Beck rights were honored. The information the Teamsters provided did not include the audit and verification required under NLRB precedent.

Teamsters officials also refused to allow UPS to process Hamel’s fee payments, even though money was collected this way for other workers. Hamel argued the union requirement that he mail his fees via check unfairly subjected him to additional costs, put him at risk of being fired for missing a union-created and controlled deadline, and was merely an attempt to punish nonmembers.

Teamsters officials eventually backed down and authorized UPS to deduct fees from Hamel’s paycheck, but continued to resist providing a breakdown of how those fees were calculated. The case dragged on for nearly three years before union bosses signed a settlement the NLRB Region 17 director approved last Friday.

The settlement requires Teamsters officials to provide detailed, audited breakdowns of their expenditures, and give Hamel and other nonmembers the opportunity to challenge the calculations. They further are required to post notices at Hamel’s workplace stating that they will not restrict the rights of Beck objectors.

“Though Colorado and 22 other non-Right to Work states still outrageously allow nonmember workers to be forced to pay money to a union they do not support, the Supreme Court ruled in Beck that workers can only be compelled to pay union fees for union monopoly bargaining, not other activities like union boss political lobbying,” said National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation President Mark Mix. “Instead of choosing transparency, Teamsters officials resisted their legal obligations for nearly three years, demonstrating their contempt for the rights of the very rank-and-file workers they claim to represent.”

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.