Posts tagged Forgery
Former Pa. Corrections Union President Facing Six Felony Theft Charges
August 10, 2023 // Corrections officers searching for the truth about their union’s finances have helped expose financial corruption within the Pennsylvania State Corrections Officers Association (PSCOA) that has led to criminal charges for two different union officials and major reforms within the union. In July, former PSCOA president Jason Bloom was charged by state police with six felony counts of theft for allegedly using the union’s credit card for personal expenses totaling $8,286. According to court filings in filed by concerned corrections officers, PSCOA officials also spent members’ money on golf outings, NFL tickets, a $12,000 Rolex watch, iTunes purchases, and personal expenses totaling more than $200,000 on union credit cards.
Public-Sector Union Membership Down 10 Percent Since Janus
June 20, 2023 // Maxford Nelson of the Freedom Foundation, a conservative union-watchdog group, has crunched the numbers and found that 733,745 workers have left the four largest public-sector unions since the Janus decision, which is a decline of about 10 percent. Those four are the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Unions Are Stealing Dues Through Forgery. The Supreme Court Must Step In.
February 12, 2023 // The Freedom Foundation, a national union watchdog group, has filed about a dozen cases where unions allegedly forged people’s signatures in order to keep taking money from their paychecks. It’s an issue that has become so pervasive the Supreme Court must eventually step in and correct the 9th Circuit’s decision.
Supreme Court Misses an Opportunity to Protect Workers from Public-Sector Unions
January 26, 2023 // The Supreme Court decided today that it will not grant certiorari in the case Wright v. SEIU Local 503, one of several union-forgery cases currently working their way through the court system. By not hearing the case, the Court is allowing confusion about public-sector workers’ constitutional rights to persist. The Freedom Foundation, a conservative union-watchdog group, has found about a dozen cases where unions allegedly forged someone’s signature in order to keep taking money from their paycheck. Though it may seem like a simple question, lower-court rulings have failed to address the issue head-on.
Forgery Cases Give Supreme Court Opportunity to Hold Unions Accountable for Shady Tactics
January 18, 2023 // aken collectively, the forgery cases clearly suggest a coordinated strategy on the part of unions panicked into breaking the law at the prospect of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in dues money when members they’ve spent decades preying on discover that the power to decide about workplace representation has always been in their own hands. The Supreme Court made its intentions in Janus crystal clear. Public employees have an iron-clad First Amendment right to keep their jobs even if they choose to have nothing to do with a union.
Forgery Cases Give Supreme Court Opportunity to Hold Unions Accountable for Shady Tactics
January 11, 2023 // Taken collectively, the forgery cases clearly suggest a coordinated strategy on the part of unions panicked into breaking the law at the prospect of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in dues money when members they’ve spent decades preying on discover that the power to decide about workplace representation has always been in their own hands. The Supreme Court made its intentions in Janus crystal clear. Public employees have an iron-clad First Amendment right to keep their jobs even if they choose to have nothing to do with a union.
THREE LAWSUITS, ALL INVOLVING UNION FORGERY, APPEALED TO SUPREME COURT
December 22, 2022 // In all three cases, dues continued to be deducted from the plaintiffs’ paychecks long after they requested to opt out because the union claimed they had signed a membership form stipulating they could only leave during a two-week annual window. In fact, none of the workers had signed any such authorization and, when the unions were forced to provide documentation, each turned out to be a crude forgery. Zielinski v. SEIU 503, Wright v. SEIU 503, Cindy Ochoa,
9th Circuit forgery decisions allow unions to rule by deceit and undermine workers’ rights
October 18, 2022 // This September, the 9th Circuit decided two cases brought by the Freedom Foundation alleging government unions forged public employees’ signatures on membership agreements to continue deducting dues from their pay. Walking a legal tightrope, the three-judge panel managed to acknowledge the membership cards in question were forged while simultaneously concluding a union can’t be held responsible for dues illegally taken from a public employee’s paycheck because a union isn’t a government agency; rather, it is merely a private organization. And conversely, the state is also blameless, the court concluded, because the state is free to delegate to the union all responsibility for deciding who does and doesn’t pay dues. In other words, the 9th Circuit claimed the state has no duty to protect its employees’ First Amendment rights. Got all that? The union forged a worker’s name on a membership form, and the state blindly accepted it as genuine. But neither is at fault, and the worker is simply out of luck, according to the 9th Circuit.
Should Union-Backed Fraud Be Legal?
October 11, 2022 // Last week, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued rulings in cases brought by the Freedom Foundation alleging that government unions forged public employees’ signatures on membership agreements in order to continue deducting dues from their pay. Perhaps the most egregious of the decisions is found in Zielinski v. SEIU 503, in which SEIU forged Mr. Zielinski’s signature twice on two separate dues authorizations. These decisions essentially authorize government-employee unions to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME by engaging in state-sanctioned fraud.
OREGON STATE GOVERNMENT, SEIU ENGAGING IN STATE-SANCTIONED FRAUD
September 28, 2022 // “In Ms. Wright’s case, SEIU 503 forged the employees’ signature electronically,” continued Millard. “Despite the fact the court accepted that the forgery took place, the decision means neither the State of Oregon nor the Union have any constitutional duty to obtain consent from the employee.” The decision is an unadorned get-around of Janus, in which the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot force public employees to pay money to the union unless the employee provides affirmative consent in the form of a waiver of their First Amendment rights. Zielinski v. SEIU 503, Jason Dudash,