State employees suing union
OLYMPIA – Eight state employees and two former colleagues on Wednesday filed suit against Washington’s largest state-worker union, saying that the union’s attempts to collect mandatory fees from thousands of public employees are unconstitutional.
“We should have the right to choose,” said Andy Opsal, a Spokane Valley man who works for the state Department of Social and Health Services. “Under protest and under duress,” he said, he’s paying 1.13 percent of his income to the Washington Federation of State Employees. The union’s members pay 1.37 percent.
Union officials say the lawsuit is a baseless attack orchestrated by large businesses and other anti-labor groups. The suing workers are being aided by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a Virginia-based group opposed to “forced unionism abuses.”
“They see a very big target,” federation spokesman Tim Welch said. “That’s why they’re going after our members and our contracts, but not anybody else’s.”
The case, filed in U.S. District Court in Spokane, is the strongest challenge yet to a contract requiring thousands of state workers to pay dues or other fees to the Washington Federation of State Employees. Two of the plaintiffs – Maxine Dunkelman and Patricia Woodward – said they had been fired solely for refusing to pay union dues or other fees.
A 2002 change in state labor law allowed state workers to negotiate salaries with the governor instead of lobbying the Legislature for pay raises. Prior to that, state workers had to resort to what former federation President Duwane Huffaker termed “collective begging” for pay raises every two years.
The new collective bargaining agreements cover about 50,000 government employees, plus another 18,000 in higher education and 26,000 home care workers, said Mike Reitz, director of labor policy with the conservative Evergreen Freedom Foundation.
The 2002 law also allows unions to collect fees from all the workers in a bargaining unit, even if those employees decide not to join the union. With some exceptions – such as for employees who have religious objections to the union’s work – workers who don’t pay risk losing their jobs.
“Union officials are doing all they can to force my agency to fire me,” said Kimberly Johnson, a worker with the state Department of Labor and Industries. “I never asked to be a part of this union.”
The lawsuit contends the federation violated workers’ rights by failing to give a proper accounting of how dues and other required union fees would be spent. The lawsuit seeks reinstatement for the fired workers, along with back pay and unspecified damages.
“The bosses of the federation must get the message: Washington’s state employees are not your personal ATMs,” foundation spokesman Justin Hakes said.
But even if the workers win their case, he conceded, it’s likely that state workers will still have to pay some money to the union for its collective bargaining work on their behalf.
There is no official tally of the number of workers who have lost their jobs for refusing to comply with the union-fee requirement since the federation’s contract went into effect last July.
Steve McLain, the state’s labor relations director, estimated that about a half-dozen workers have been fired under the rule. An unknown number of others who object to the mandate likely have resigned in protest, he said.
The federation represents about 38,000 workers, including state agency staff and nonfaculty workers at colleges and universities.
The union it has whittled the number of holdouts in state government to about 50, with many workers deciding that joining the union or paying bargaining fees is worthwhile, Welch said.
“You can choose to be a member of the union, you can choose to pay a fee,” he said. “But ultimately, if you do not like that, you can choose to be unemployed.”