Employee maintains that both union and employer ignored requests to refrain from union membership and dues payments

Las Vegas, NV (March 12, 2025) – Rebecca Swank, an employee of foodservice provider Sodexo who works primarily at the Las Vegas Convention Center, has hit Culinary Workers Union Local 226 (a Unite Here affiliate) and her employer with federal charges for seizing full union dues from her paycheck despite her objections to both union membership and dues payments.

Swank filed her charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys. Swank’s charges also state that Sodexo officials forced her to get a job referral from the Culinary Union’s hiring hall in person immediately upon being hired.

The NLRB is the federal agency responsible for enforcing federal labor law, a duty which includes investigating and prosecuting unfair labor practice cases. Under federal labor law and Supreme Court precedents like NLRB v. General Motors, all private sector workers have the right to refrain from formal union membership, though union officials sometimes try to coerce union membership anyway, including by subjecting employees to intimidation during hiring hall encounters. Federal law also requires union officials to receive written authorization from a worker before deducting union dues payments directly from their paycheck.

Further, because Nevada has Right to Work protections for its workers, Culinary Union officials can’t legally force Swank or her coworkers to pay any union dues or fees as a condition of keeping their jobs. In states that lack such protections, in contrast, union officials can require workers to pay at least some union dues just to keep their jobs, though must still seek the written authorization of workers before collecting those forced fees by direct deduction.

“Culinary Union officials have been very abrasive in our workplace and have been ineffective in standing up for our interests,” commented Swank. “But now they’re doing something full-on illegal by stopping me from exercising my right under Nevada’s Right to Work law to stop financially supporting them. That’s wrong, and I hope the NLRB gets to the bottom of this.”

Challenge to Illegal Dues Seizures Follows Other Employee Cases Against Culinary Union

According to Swank’s charges against the union, she “submitted two written letters to the Union in which she resigned her union membership and revoked any dues check-off authorization she may have signed.” However, the charges state, union officials did not honor her membership resignation (if she had ever become a union member in the first place), and also refused to provide any documentation she may have signed in the past authorizing dues deductions.

“Finally, the Union has accepted dues deducted from [Swank’s] paycheck without her written authorization and despite her written demand that it cease to do so and to refund her,” Swank’s charges against the union conclude. Swank also filed a charge against Sodexo management for its role in keeping dues flowing from her paycheck to the union.

National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have a long history of helping workers at Las Vegas casinos and other venues oppose coercive Culinary Union legal maneuvers, including in 2021 when Foundation attorneys defended Red Rock Casino workers’ majority vote against Culinary Union control from a district court judge’s order imposing the union on the workers anyway. Foundation attorneys also defended Red Rock Casino slot machine technician Jereme Barrios and his coworkers from a similar situation 2022, when a regional NLRB official blocked him and his fellow technicians from exercising their right to vote themselves out of a Culinary Union work unit. The regional NLRB official cited specious reasons for why the vote couldn’t occur, including allegations of employer malfeasance that didn’t even relate to Barrios and his colleagues.

“Culinary Union bosses have a track record of ignoring and trampling basic employee rights, simply to gain more power over the workers that they claim to ‘represent.’ Unfortunately, it’s unsurprising that independent-minded workers seek to exercise their Right to Work freedom to stop all financial support for this union,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Culinary Union officials’ refusal to respect the exercise of basic rights is clearly at odds with both state and federal law, and our attorneys will defend Ms. Swank’s freedom of choice.”