This article was written by Kevin Mooney and first appeared February 10, 2019 on CapitalResearch.org. Summary: The school choice movement in Pennsylvania has remained at a
Seven current and former Pennsylvania state employees have filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to get back dues they claim they were forced to pay to a union that did not represent them.
If they’re successful, approximately 10,000 people could end up getting $3 million back.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) – A group of Pennsylvania state employees has filed a lawsuit against AFSCME Council 13, the government union that represents thousands of state employees in Pennsylvania.
Seven current and former state employees filed the federal class-action lawsuit, looking to recoup “fair share” fees taken out of their paychecks and sent to the union.
The U.S. Supreme Court in 2018 ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that those fees are not constitutional.
Labor union AFSCME represents many of the workers there. Schaszberger was never a member, but as was the case in many unionized workplaces, he still had dues deducted from his checks.
“Over the course of my 11 years with the commonwealth, they took about $4,000 out of my pay,” he said at a press conference announcing the suit.
“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.”
Schaszberger says he was forced to pay union fees to Harrisburg-based AFSCME Council 13, even though he wasn’t a union member.
“I didn’t seek their representation, I didn’t want their representation, and I didn’t feel that they represented my interests anyway,” Schaszberger said. “So, to be forced to pay them as part of my job just didn’t seem right.”
The law firm that brought the landmark case Janus v. AFSCME before the U.S. Supreme Court last year sued Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday over an executive order he signed to block union foes from seeking the contact information of state employees.
The Liberty Justice Center filed a petition this week in the New York Supreme Court in Albany, accusing the state of attempting to block workers’ constitutional rights by not releasing government employees’ ZIP codes. The center says an executive order limiting that information makes it harder to locate workers and notify them of their rights not to participate in unions.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it is unconstitutional to require non-union state workers in Illinois to pay “fair share” fees to a union, but a Chicago federal appeals panel is considering whether a union must refund millions of dollars in fees already collected.
The appeal was brought by former state employee Mark Janus to force the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees to reimburse him for “fair share” fees he had to pay the union as a non-union worker. The fees, which were slightly less than union dues, were allowed by Illinois law to cover the union’s costs of collective bargaining and representation.
A Twin Cities community college employee is suing the union representing campus clerical workers and the Minnesota State system of colleges and universities, alleging she was pressured to join the union without receiving sufficient information.
StandWithWorkers.org is operated by the Liberty Justice Center. There is a lot of misinformation surrounding the Janus decision. StandWithWorkers.org serves as an educational resource to help government workers understand their options.
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