The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation announced on Tuesday its 11th case in which it was representing a worker or workers seeking to get paid back union funds automatically deducted from their paycheck, a practice declared unconstitutional this year by the Supreme Court. The suits brought by the nonprofit group, which represents workers who dissent from their workplace’s unions, illustrate the efforts undertaken by some workers to secure the rights granted in June’s Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees ruling.
The latest case involves Mark Smith, an employee of the Superior Court of Contra Costa County in California, who claims his effort to resign from the local branch of AFSCME that represented his workplace was not honored by the union, which continued receiving funds cut out of his paychecks. The Janus ruling said that it was unconstitutional for a public sector union to take a workers’ money without their “affirmative consent.”
The case challenges a California law, enacted immediately after the Janus ruling, which obligated all public employers to automatically deduct union dues from worker paychecks regardless of whether the worker themselves authorized it. The law also blocks public employers from informing employees of their rights under the Janus ruling.
Other states with union-friendly legislatures have enacted similar laws in the wake of the ruling, all apparently designed to limit the loss of members and dues that public sector unions could face. The funds public sector unions obtained through such automatic deduction clauses were a major source of revenue. An internal survey by AFSCME, the 1.6 million-member union in the Janus case, found that only a third of its members would voluntarily pay dues, and half of its membership couldn’t be counted upon to do that, according to a 2015 Bloomberg report. Fifteen percent would be certain to opt out of paying dues entirely.
Smith’s is the seventh such case the foundation has taken up on behalf of public sector workers in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico, as well as in Oregon and Minnesota, where it secured settlements. The foundation has also launched class action cases in Connecticut, California, and Illinois. The foundation hopes the cases establish a precedent that the Janus ruling can apply retroactively, which would be an additional drain on union treasuries.
“As we’re seeing in Mark Smith’s case and others across the country, in their greed for more forced union dues, union bosses are apparently willing to ignore even a landmark Supreme Court ruling like Janus v. AFSCME,” said Mark Mix, the foundation’s president. “Rather than respecting the rights of the workers they claim to represent, it will inevitably take litigation coast to coast to enforce public employees’ rights under Janus.”
