The United States District Court for the District of New Mexico has approved a settlement of a precedent-setting civil rights lawsuit brought by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys that forces union officials to pay more than $146,000 to 471 non-union City of Albuquerque workers.
The settlement brings to a close one part of a long-running legal battle which resulted in rulings that American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union officials violated the U.S. Constitution by seizing forced union fees from nonmember City workers without adequately accounting for how the money would be spent.
Settlement discussions began after the court ruled that employees were entitled to compensatory damages and a jury trial on an unprecedented claim for punitive damages. The court had earlier certified the case as a class action for more than 750 current and former blue-collar City employees (471 of whom had been forced to pay union fees through mandatory deductions from their paychecks).
In certifying the case as a class action, the court issued an extraordinary rebuke of the union's lawyers. The court excoriated the union's lawyers for citing cases "...out of context under the apparent, and mistaken, impression that the Court would not read the cases cited in their brief." The court continued, "The credibility of both the Defendants' counsel and the arguments they make has suffered by counsels' repeated and deliberate misrepresentation of case law and false statements of law."
With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, the workers filed the suit against the City of Albuquerque and AFSCME Local 624, New Mexico AFSCME Council 18, and AFSCME International after they illegally seized the fees from August 1999 to July 2000.
"This victory is an important step toward limiting the power of union officials to shake down workers for political contributions," said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. "However, as long as New Mexico workers labor under a system of compulsory unionism, such abuses will inevitably continue."
The employees sued after the City unlawfully deducted forced union fees from their paychecks without proper procedural protections to prevent the monies' use for activities unrelated to collective bargaining, such as union political activities. The unlawfully seized fees amounted to roughly $74,000, of which some $23,000 was refunded during the litigation. Under the settlement, AFSCME will repay the balance, with interest, and pay another $95,000 to avoid the jury trial that the Court ordered to determine whether the union must pay punitive damages.
The actions of AFSCME union officials violated First Amendment protections articulated in the Foundation-won Supreme Court decision in Chicago Teachers Union v. Hudson. Under Hudson, union officials must disclose an independent audit of their expenses, justifying the lawfulness of the disbursements charged to nonmembers, before seizing any forced union fees from employees who choose to refrain from formal union membership.
Dismissing the union's arguments that it was too difficult to prove that its forced-fee demands were correct, Senior District Court Judge C. Leroy Hansen ruled, "accounting inconvenience is an insufficient excuse to allow the union to continue to violate the First Amendment rights of the Plaintiffs." Judge Hansen also likened the AFSCME union's funneling of forced dues through its affiliates with no explanation to "money laundering. (Aug-05-05)
[Information Provided By: National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation]
