Filed on behalf of Pennsylvania state employees, the federal class-action lawsuit, Schaszberger v. AFSCME Council 13, demands a refund of the nonmember fees employees. These fees were ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME in June 2018.
This article first appeared November 7, 2019 on PennLive.com.
A group of seven current and former commonwealth workers filed a class-action lawsuit against Pennsylvania’s largest state employee labor union in hopes of recouping some of the non-member fees they paid to the union.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. Middle District Court on Thursday is asking for the court to order the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 13 to pay back an estimated $3 million in mandatory union fees taken out of nearly 10,000 state workers’ paychecks in 2017 and 2018.
It was limited to those two years because that’s all the statute of limitations in Pennsylvania allows, said Brian Kelsey, a senior attorney with the Liberty Justice Center, a nonprofit public interest law center at a Capitol news conference held to announce the lawsuit.
“They chose not to join the union yet they were forced to pay these monthly union fees just so they could continue to work for public service,” Kelsey said. “Think about that. These people were forced to pay money to a political organization just so they could keep their jobs. That is wrong.”
