Posts tagged Forgery
Op-ed: It’s Time to End Government Unions’ Post-Janus Coercion
July 8, 2025 // These include, but aren’t limited to: acknowledging the workers’ right to opt out of union membership and dues, but refusing to honor their request to do so except during an arbitrary, union-determined two-week “opt-out window” of which the worker is unaware; inviting union operatives to make high-pressure, often-deceptive recruiting pitches to all newly hired public employees while denying the same privilege to organizations anxious to offer the workers an alternative point of view; refusing to open mail suspected to contain member opt-out requests; passing laws and filing lawsuits intended to prevent disclosure of government employees’ contact information — which is clearly a matter of public record — solely to keep organizations such as the Freedom Foundation from informing workers about their constitutional right to decline union participation; arguing that Janus provides no protections for union members, not even a constitutionally protected right to resign from the union; and, when all else fails, simply forging an employee’s name on a dues-authorization form.
Legal documents say union funneled $1.8M into lost trust fund
April 2, 2025 // A subsequent internal forensic audit uncovered credit charges totaling upward of $400,000 for personal frivolities for local and state union leaders. A $12,000 Rolex, tickets to a Miami Dolphins game, $3,000 bar tabs and luxury golf trips were among the charges listed in court filings. Five top union officials were faced with forgery and theft charges
Former Chattanooga police chief, unions strike deal over subpoena
January 30, 2025 // The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported in March that Murphy's Tennessee voter registration did not line up with a primary residence tax exemption she received in Fulton County, Georgia. Three months later, Murphy, 56, was indicted on charges including illegal voter registration, false entries on official registration or election documents, false entries in governmental records, forgery, perjury and official misconduct. As part of her criminal defense, Murphy issued the subpoenas to the unions.
Florida teachers union loses 20,000 members after government stops collecting dues
December 4, 2024 // In its annual Form LM-2 filed in November with the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL), the FEA disclosed having 111,133 employed, dues-paying members as of August 31, 2024, down from the 131,510 “active members” the union reported a year earlier. The precipitous decline far exceeds typical annual fluctuations in the union’s membership numbers and comes in the wake of Florida policymakers’ adoption of a package of government union reforms in 2023 championed by Gov. Ron DeSantis with the support of the Freedom Foundation and other conservative groups.
Commentary: The Media Are Doing Free PR for Big Labor
September 13, 2024 // According to a new report from the union watchdog Freedom Foundation (where I work), Big Labor’s return to the spotlight coincides with unionization efforts that have taken newsrooms by storm, securing one in six American journalists as dues-paying members. With journalists “more knowledgeable and sympathetic to labor issues” than ever before, recent union reporting insists that Big Labor is making a comeback; “that unions are good not only for individual workers but also for America itself”; and that legislation meant to ensure union accountability is a threat to democracy.
Journalists are hyping up a supposed golden age for unions while ignoring their corruption and declining popularity.
September 12, 2024 // The mainstream media’s coverage of Big Labor clearly misses the mark. Beyond recent labor reporting centering on hot-button events such as organization efforts at Starbucks and Amazon amid 2023’s “hot labor summer,” coverage of unions creates a false sense of reality. Headlines such as “Unions targeting Big Business: Disney, Mercedes-Benz, CVS face organizing campaigns,” for example, suggest sweeping unionization efforts across the private sector. But in the pharmacy industry, just 30 CVS pharmacists in Rhode Island and Las Vegas voted to join the Pharmacy Guild, a fraction of the 30,000 employed by the drugstore giant.
Recent Legal Battle Latest in War to Protect the American Worker
December 6, 2023 // To justify its actions, the union claimed Baker had signed a subsequent dues-authorization form in 2020 that included the opt-out window provision. But when she asked to see the document, the union refused. After being forced to hire an attorney, Baker was finally able to negotiate a settlement with CSEA in July 2022. Under its terms, her dues deductions would stop immediately, and she would be reimbursed for the dues that had been deducted from her pay since April. The union also acknowledged for the first time that Baker had not been considered a member since April 2022, which was news to Baker. CSEA also enclosed a copy of the dues authorization she had allegedly signed two years earlier. The document had an e-signature rather than a “wet signature,” and Baker denies ever having approved it.
It’s Time to Stop Passing the Buck—to Thieves and Forgers
November 21, 2023 //
Supreme Court ruled public sector workers cannot be forced to pay dues; unions take them anyway
October 28, 2023 // After the Janus ruling, Ms. Quezambra sought to invoke her rights to stop the involuntary union dues payments, demanding she be refunded going back to 2013. The union refused on the grounds that she had allowed the union to make the deductions. This was news to Ms. Quezambra. The union “presented Ms. Quezambra a membership and dues deduction authorization card containing a forged signature that she purportedly signed. Ms. Quezambra did not sign this card,” her complaint states.
Freedom Foundation bundles FIVE FORGERY cases into one appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court:
October 5, 2023 // Abernathy said. “First, there’s abundant case law showing that, in cases like this, the union is treated as a state actor and can be held accountable for its actions. And secondly, the Supreme Court had already ruled that dues can’t be deducted by either the state or the union without the employee’s consent. It doesn’t matter what state laws say. The U.S. Constitution takes precedence.” The Supreme Court has declined to consider several similar cases in recent years, Abernathy said, but the justices can only tolerate the lower courts’ errors for just so long. “Unless you enforce it, even a landmark ruling like Janus is just a piece of paper,” Abernathy concluded. “Unions and activist judges have been allowed to act as if Janus never happened since the day it was issued. At some point, the court has to demonstrate that it meant what it said and said what it meant.”