Buyer’s remorse from union members can occur for a variety of reasons, including worker frustration over broken promises or a lagging collective bargaining phase with no contract in sight. Evidence of union corruption can also prompt individual members to take back their wallets, but unions do not always cooperate with these requests. That can be the case even in Right To Work states, where workers are protected from losing their jobs for choosing not to belong to a union and declining to pay union dues.
Then, there would be the even more audacious stance from those unions who refuse to stop withdrawing money from workers’ paychecks upon request or begin retaliating against, intimidating, and coercing those workers who begin the decertification process.
The National Right to Work Foundation has been stepping up on a pro bono basis to help workers in these situations file charges against unions, and here are a few examples from this year alone:
- The Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union allegedly threatened a L’Oreal employee with rhetoric that would sound right at home in The Godfather: “The union is like a big mafia…something bad is going to happen to you if the union leaves.” This worker filed for a decertification vote, which the union allegedly interfered with through intimidation tactics. Since New Jersey is not a Right to Work state, the union felt free to continue deducting dues from her wages. Pursuant to the foundation’s previous Supreme Court win in CWA vs. Beck, the foundation argues that the union’s lack of a collective bargaining agreement should remove the obligation to pay dues.
- The UAW must refund illegally seized dues as part of a settlement from a foundation-represented case based on charges from a Ford Louisville Assembly plant worker in the Right to Work state of Kentucky. The worker also alleged that union officials threatened her job, and she has further filed a charge against Ford for allegedly collaborating with the union while refusing to stop dues deductions.
- The United Food and Commercial Workers received notice of federal charges from a food manufacturing worker in Texas –a Right to Work state – at Danone North America. The worker maintains that the union “rebuffed or ignored” his multiple attempts to revoke dues authorization. The union also allegedly concocted a fictitious “window period” in an attempt to categorize the worker’s actions as “untimely” while requesting to no longer pay dues.
- The Communications Workers of America lost a federal case brought by a Catalus manufacturing worker who attempted to resign his membership in Pennsylvania, only to be told that he must remain union steward and continue paying dues earmarked for union politics. Following the lawsuit’s conclusion, foundation President Mark Mix argued that this case demonstrates why “securing Right to Work protections for all Americans is absolutely vital.”
The argument could be made that unions who behave like this – and these are not isolated incidents – are like vampires. Once they are invited into a business, they often refuse to leave. The trick to repelling them? To create such a flourishing workplace that no one can invade in the first place.
