Right to Work group backs lawsuit against Michigan teachers union – By Carol Thompson (lansingstatejournal.com) / Oct 22 2018
LANSING — A national right to work group has filed a federal lawsuit to force a Michigan union to repay dues it collected from public employees who dropped their membership after the state’s right to work law went into effect in 2013.
Attorneys with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation in Virginia are representing plaintiffs Linda Gervais, who retired from Port Huron Area School Districtin 2014, and Tammy E. Williams,a current Port Huron schools employee, in a class-action lawsuit against the Michigan Education Association. The case was filed in U.S. District Court this month.
Both women wrote resignation letters to the MEA in 2013, the year Michigan’s right to work law went into effect, and allege the union unfairly demanded they pay dues after their resignations, according to court records.
Neither paid. They were contacted by collections agencies this year about their outstanding dues – $647.30 for Gervais and $622.39 for Williams, according to the complaint.
Right to Work foundation vice president Patrick Semmens said the foundation wants the court to stop MEA from collecting payments from the plaintiffs and refund payments others may have made after stating they wanted to drop their memberships.
“For people who are non-members in the same situation and gave into the union’s threats, which we say are illegal, they [should] be refunded any money that was taken under that circumstance,” he said.
The legal complaint hinges on the June 27 U.S. Supreme Court decision that declared it unconstitutional for unions to charge non-members partial dues, or “agency fees,” a practice that was previously allowed if the dues were used for collective bargaining and not political or ideological purposes.
In that decision, the court sided with Mark Janus in the case he filed against a public-sector union. Janus wasn’t a member of the union, and argued the union violated his free speech rights when it charged him a fee to pay a share of the union’s collective bargaining costsfor employment contracts.
The Janus decision has re-invigorated right to work groups’ interest in battling with unions in the courtroom, said MEA spokesperson David Crim, who declined to comment specifically on the recent lawsuit.
“We believe the plaintiffs want these cases to reach the U.S. Supreme Court now that another far-right justice has been seated so that they can further erode workers’ rights,” he said in a statement.
MEA President Paula Herbart issued a statement after the Janus decision condemning it as misguided and favoring corporate interests over workers.
Although it’s central to the Tuesday lawsuit, Janus didn’t directly affect most Michigan public sector unions — just the police and fire unions that had been exempt from right to work. Other Michigan workers have been allowed to opt out of union membership and dues since the right to work law was enacted.
While the MEA’s collections attempts cited in the lawsuit preceded Janus, the decision reinforced the argument that workers shouldn’t be forced to pay union dues, Semmens said.
“Janus may have been decided in June, but it speaks to what the first amendment says in regard to mandatory union payments,” he said.
