I just got back from Pennsylvania. I met with fellow workers who are fighting to be let out of their union and the folks who are working to ensure government workers’ rights are recognized in the Commonwealth.
I told them I started this fight because I believe workers should have a choice. Let workers decide what’s best for them – union or not.
Knowledge is power.
Unions know that and deliberately keep information from their members. A recent article in Trib Live highlights the experience of Francisco Molina, a former SEIU shop steward. His efforts to share information about union guidelines and practices with his colleagues were not appreciated by union officials. And when he alerted his co-workers to a union initiative that would require them to pay union dues “even if they found another job or stopped being union members,” he was pushed out.
Last fall we contacted government leaders in more than a dozen states, alerting them the Janus v. AFSCME decision had restored government workers’ constitutional rights and freed them from mandatory union membership.
We also warned these public officials that they needed to fulfill their responsibilities and enforce that law. If they failed to do so, we would take action on behalf of government workers in their states. They not only ignored, but openly defied the Supreme Court ruling.
So we’re taking action.
Four Lebanon County employees have filed a federal complaint against the county and Teamsters Local 429 for unauthorized deductions of union dues from their paychecks.
A core issue of the lawsuit will be whether authorizations for the deduction of union dues provided before the June 2018 SCOTUS decision serve as freely given consent, given that there was no alternative save for non-employment at the time.
The Lebanon County lawsuit says the four employees informed Teamsters in July and September that they wished to resign from the union and to stop the withholding of union fees from their paychecks. The union insisted they could not immediately resign, the complaint alleges.
An attorney for the four employees then asked Lebanon County in October to stop withholding dues, but the county did not, it continues.
Pennsylvania lawmakers were warned last fall that if the state didn’t amend its laws to comply with the terms of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Janus v. AFSCME ruling, the result could be a host of legal complications. That warning is now ringing true.
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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