Federal judge rejects challenge to Idaho’s ‘right to work’ law over fees, appeal likely

A federal judge in Idaho has ruled against a challenge to the state’s Right to Work law, but the case likely will be appealed to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge, in a ruling this week, found that the union representing workers at Motive Power, a Boise locomotive plant, could sue over Idaho’s requirement that it represent all the workers, including those who don’t join the union and don’t pay any fee to cover the costs of representing them.

But Lodge ruled against the union’s argument that Idaho’s Right to Work Law is an unconstitutional taking – that it takes property from the union by forcing “the union into providing uncompensated services to anyone who decides to opt out of union membership,” as the lawsuit alleged.

Idaho is one of 26 states with right-to-work laws, which forbid requiring union membership as a condition of employment. Among neighboring states, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming are right-to-work states; Washington, Oregon and Montana don’t have the union-restricting laws.

The union local in question, the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 370, which is based in Spokane, represents a locomotive plant in Boise with 400 workers, where just 32 percent are dues-paying members of the union. The other 68 percent aren’t, but the union still negotiates contracts for all 400 employees, and represents any of them, member or not, in grievances and other employment proceedings. As the bargaining representative for the plant’s employees, it’s required to do so by federal law.

Quoting earlier federal court decisions, Lodge wrote, “Even if Idaho’s right to work law could be said to ‘take’ Local 370’s ‘property,’ the union is justly compensated by federal law’s grant to the union the right to bargain exclusively with the employer. The reason the union must represent all employees is that the union alone gets a seat at the negotiation table.”

Unions have won initial rulings in similar cases in state courts in Wisconsin and West Virginia. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals narrowly rejected similar arguments in an Indiana case in 2014.

James Piotrowski, attorney for the union, couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday morning, but he said in September that if the Idaho federal court ruled against the union, he’d appeal to the 9th Circuit. Piotrowski also is the Democratic candidate for Idaho’s 1st Congressional District seat, challenging GOP Rep. Raul Labrador.

Idaho passed its right-to-work law in 1985. The state’s voters affirmed it in a referendum in 1986. The Idaho law says no one can be required, as a condition of employment, “to pay any dues, fees, assessments, or other charges of any kind or amount to a labor organization.”

In the lawsuit, the union argued that it’s been able to negotiate a small representation fee for non-union members in states without such far-reaching right-to-work laws, to cover its costs, and the Idaho law unconstitutionally barred it from negotiating such a fee in Idaho.