Albuquerque, N.M. (July 28, 2004) – The United States District Court for the District of New Mexico found late yesterday that local union officials violated the constitutional rights of hundreds of nonunion City of Albuquerque employees by failing to properly disclose the union’s spending of their forced union dues. The Court then opened the door for the workers to seek precedent setting punitive damages against the union from a jury for intentionally or recklessly and callously violating the workers’ 1st and 14th Amendment rights. The Court also ordered a complete refund of all forced dues taken from nonunion City workers’ paychecks from August 1999 through July 2000.
The rulings came down in related cases brought for roughly 300 blue-collar Albuquerque City workers by National Right to Work Foundation attorneys. The workers sued the City of Albuquerque and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 624, New Mexico AFSCME Council 18, and AFSCME International after the illegal seizures began.
Under the rulings, the City and Local 624 must also strike an indemnification clause from their collective bargaining agreement. In that clause, the union promised the City that it would pay all of the City’s damages, attorneys’ fees, and expenses in defending any suit filed by employees about the forced union dues. The Court enjoined the City from accepting such indemnification from the AFSCME union in the future and ordered the City to repay all past indemnification.
“AFSCME officials will no longer be able to bribe the City of Albuquerque to seize union dues from its workers’ paychecks by promising to reimburse all legal costs that arise from violating the workers’ First Amendment rights,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Foundation. “This ruling is a significant step toward curtailing the power of union officials to shake down workers for political contributions where there is no Right to Work law prohibiting all forced dues.”
Foundation attorneys filed suit after the City unlawfully deducted forced union dues from the paychecks of nonmembers without proper procedural protections required to prevent the monies’ use for activities unrelated to collective bargaining, such as support of union politics. The amount of unlawfully seized dues amounts to roughly $52,000. The AFSCME union now faces the possibility of a substantial additional judgment awarding punitive damages for misrepresenting how union officials were spending the nonmembers’ forced dues.
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 dues from employees who choose to refrain from formal union membership.
Senior District Judge C. Leroy Hansen cited in his opinions that the notice to workers detailing the union’s expenditures was inadequate, stating, “The simple fact of the matter is that the union’s original notice did not include the information it was required by law to include.” Dismissing the union’s inability to prove that the forced dues amount was correct, Judge Hansen said, “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 the International, State, and Local affiliates with no record of how they were being spent to “money laundering.”
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.
