Posts tagged union fees
Victory for Workers’ Rights: Liberty Justice Center Defends New Jersey Plumber Against Union that Illegally Withheld Money from His Paycheck
November 18, 2024 // After learning about these constitutional rights under Janus v. AFSCME, Nicolo Giangrasso—a New Jersey plumber employed by the Hamilton Township School District—resigned his union membership and requested the union stop deducting dues from his paychecks. The union refused, falsely claiming that the Supreme Court’s decision only applied to “union dues” and therefore did not apply to Mr. Giangrasso—because the union called the money it illegally took from his paychecks “assessments” instead. On August 1, the Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit against UA Local 9 on Mr. Giangrasso’s behalf, arguing that it does not matter whether the union labels the money withheld from an employee’s paycheck “dues” or “assessments,” because the Supreme Court held in Janus that neither dues, agency fees, “nor any other form of payment to a public-sector union” can be withheld from employees who have not agreed to the withholding—and Mr. Giangrasso had not agreed.
Unions pursue law changes to boost membership
September 8, 2024 // “The overarching theme is that the unions have really responded to the membership losses since JANUS to drive up union membership,” Osborne said. In the JANUS decision, courts held that unions could no longer collect “fair share” dues from non-members who benefit from collective bargaining agreements. Follow-up litigation has challenged the cumbersome process many former members had to overcome to leave the union and recoup dues improperly withheld. In the report, states known as union “strongholds” scored lower than others that have enacted collective bargaining reforms.
The Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: The Practical Case
August 11, 2024 // The effect of sectoral bargaining on union corruption would be unclear. Scholars of union corruption have blamed enterprise bargaining combined with union monopoly representation for America’s unusually high levels of labor racketeering. There is truth to this, but it is also not the case that American unions involved in industries with more-sectoral-style approaches are “cleaner.” The New York City garment industry, which was exempted from various Taft-Hartley regulations on union conduct, was believed by the federal government to have been Mob influenced as recently as the 1990s. More recently, the United Auto Workers, which conducts a sort of pseudo-sectoral bargaining with the unionized Detroit Three automakers by “patterning” its contracts, was forced into a regime change after the largest union corruption scandal of the 21st century. Putting more power in the hands of America’s long-standing class of union officials, who are known for having their hands in the cookie jar, certainly is not an obvious approach to reducing or surveilling corruption in organized labor.
Security Guards at Federal Buildings Across Delaware Voting Soon on Whether to End SPFPA Union’s Forced-Dues Power
June 27, 2024 // SPFPA union officials drew the ire of Bowden and his colleagues by signing a contract with GXC Inc. management without the workers’ knowledge or consent. While voting the union out of the workplace would be their next logical step, the NLRB’s so-called “contract bar” allows union officials to immunize themselves from worker-backed decertification attempts for up to three years after a union contract has been finalized. The “contract bar” appears nowhere in the text of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), the federal law the NLRB is charged with enforcing, but is the product of union boss-friendly decisions made by partisan NLRB members over the years.
Federal Lawsuit Hits Guards Union of America for Illegally Forcing DC-Based Security Guard to Pay for Union Politics
April 19, 2024 // Rosa Crawley, a DC-based security guard employed by Master Security, has just hit the International Guards Union of America (IGUA) Local 160 with a federal lawsuit, which maintains that full union dues, including dues for union political activities, are being illegally deducted from her paycheck. Crawley filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia with free legal aid from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys. Crawley, who with her coworkers provides security services to the Department of Homeland Security’s “Nebraska Avenue Complex,” seeks to enforce her rights under the 1988 Right to Work Foundation-won CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision. The Court held in Beck that union officials cannot force workers who have abstained from union membership to pay union dues or fees for any expenses not directly germane to contract negotiations. Nonmember workers who exercise their Beck rights are also entitled to an independent audit of the union’s finances and a breakdown of how union officials spend forced contributions.
Ontario, CA-Based Dependable Highway Express Employees Force Out Teamsters Local 63 Union Officials
April 3, 2024 // Prior to their ouster, Teamsters union officials stirred tension in the workplace by threatening Cwiek, who in January sent letters to his coworkers containing publicly-available Department of Labor data on Teamsters bosses’ salaries. In retaliation for Cwiek sending the letters, a union official appeared at Cwiek’s workplace the next day, made accusations against him, and threatened that Cwiek wouldn’t be working at Dependable Highway Express by the next contract period. These types of threats are illegal under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which protects employee speech critical of union officials, and protects employees’ right to refrain from union activities if they so choose. With Foundation aid, Cwiek separately filed federal charges against Teamsters Local 63 in February over this behavior. That charge was dropped in light of the union’s disclaimer of interest, and Cwiek remains employed at Dependable Highway Express. “I am deeply troubled by the blatant retaliatory actions taken by officials at Teamsters Local 63 in response to expressing the views of myself and several other hard-working drivers at Dependable Highway Express,” Cwiek commented at the time. “We will not be deterred by their bullying tactics and the baseless accusations they levy against myself and others.
Palo Alto Medical Foundation Nurses Vote Union Out at Sunnyvale and Mountain View Facilities
March 14, 2024 // Victory continues string of successful union decertification attempts by healthcare workers across the country Palo Alto Medical Foundation Nurses Vote Union Out at Sunnyvale and Mountain View Facilities
NYC profs see Supreme Court as ‘only hope’ in fight with ‘antisemitic’ teachers union
January 26, 2024 // In 2021, one such teachers union, Professional Staff Congress/CUNY (PSC), adopted a "Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People" which the group of six professors viewed as antisemitic, anti-Jewish and anti-Israel. These professors chose to then resign from the union, but under state law are still required to affiliate with and be represented in bargaining by that same union. "My family and I suffered severe anti-Semitic harassment and persecution at the hands of the Soviet Union for over fifteen years," professor of mathematics Avraham Goldstein said in a statement. "I hoped it was all in my past. But now I am forced to associate with a union that makes anti-Semitic political statements in my name without my permission or consent."
Second Group of Philly Ultimo Coffee Employees Successfully Remove Unwanted “Workers United” Union
January 18, 2024 // Within the last year, Starbucks employees in Manhattan, NY; two Buffalo, NY locations; Pittsburgh, PA; Bloomington, MN; Salt Lake City, UT; Greenville, SC; Oklahoma City, OK; and San Antonio, TX, have all sought free Foundation legal aid in navigating NLRB processes to decertify the WU union. Workers from a Center City Starbucks in Philadelphia are also pursuing a decertification petition against WU with Foundation legal assistance. Coffee employees in the Philadelphia area have scored a string of recent victories in removing unpopular union officials. In May 2023, workers at Guava and Java’s location at Philadelphia International Airport successfully voted to oust UNITE HERE union officials, and a few months later Good Karma Café employees cast ballots to remove the WU union. This month, Ultimo Coffee barista Samuel Tarasenko and his colleagues successfully forced WU out of the coffee shop’s Germantown-area location.
DC-Area Union Kitchen Employees Overwhelmingly Vote to Remove UFCW Union
January 9, 2024 // Silva and her coworkers’ effort began amid union boss-ordered pickets and boycotts against Union Kitchen Grocery locations, which inflamed tensions among workers. In some instances, union picketers endangered workers by blocking exits, requiring the intervention of police. “The vast majority of the workers at Union Kitchen are sick and tired of the UFCW’s picketing, harassment of employees, and constant disruptions of our day-to-day work life,” Silva said at the time. “If the union cares at all about what we want, they will respect our wishes and immediately disclaim their interest in representing workers who have overwhelmingly rejected them.”