MIT Grad Student Charges ‘Marxist’ Union with Illegal Forced Dues for Politics
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, July/August 2024 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Five other MIT students also filed religious discrimination charges against radical UE
More clouds are gathering over at MIT as yet another graduate student targets the university with federal charges. She maintains the GSU union and MIT administration are illegally funneling student money into union politics.
BOSTON, MA – Following five Jewish students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) filing federal religious discrimination charges against the same union, the MIT Graduate Student Union (GSU-UE, an affiliate of the United Electrical Workers union) is now facing new federal unfair labor practice charges from civil engineering graduate student Katerina Boukin.
Under a series of controversial National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) rulings, graduate students at private universities like MIT are treated as “employees” of the university who can be subjected to forced union “representation.” Boukin’s charges, filed at the NLRB with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, maintain that union officials are unlawfully seizing money from her research compensation to support union political activities she abhors.
Extremist Union Politics Foisted on Graduate Students
“GSU union officials are going above and beyond what is legal and are forcing me to pay for their political activities, including their opposition to Israel and promotion of Leninist-Marxist global revolution, that I find deeply offensive,” commented Boukin. “The GSU’s political agenda has nothing to do with my research as a graduate student at MIT, or the relationships I have with my professors and the university administration, yet outrageously they demand I fund their radical ideology.”
Boukin’s charges seek to enforce her rights under the Foundation-won 1988 CWA v. Beck Supreme Court decision. This landmark ruling established that even in states like Massachusetts that lack Right to Work protections, union officials cannot legally compel individuals to pay for union expenses unrelated to bargaining activities, like union boss political activities.
According to Boukin’s charge, GSU union officials are violating the law by claiming she cannot exercise her rights under Beck because she missed a union-created annual “window period.” However, her charge asserts this restriction is blatantly illegal.
In fact, the GSU union was already forced to settle a prior Beck case, agreeing there to properly process students’ attempts to exercise their Beck rights. Boukin’s charges against the union argue that the union may be violating not only her rights but also the settlement it made with the NLRB.
GSU Union Bosses Also Charged for Illegal Religious Discrimination
MIT graduate student Will Sussman, along with fellow students Joshua Fried, Akiva Gordon, Tamar Kadosh Zhitomirsky, and Adina Bechhofer, have also filed religious discrimination charges against the GSU union with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). They’ve also obtained free Foundation legal help.
The students, who are Jewish, oppose the union’s advocacy for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) anti-Israel movement. Despite asking union officials for legally-required religious exemptions from union dues payment, GSU officials denied their requests and even attempted to explain in letters how the students didn’t truly understand their faith.
As of this article, those EEOC charges remain pending against the GSU, with a federal lawsuit likely the next step if the union refuses to stop its illegal discrimination.
“Freedom of association is apparently a foreign concept to GSU union officials, who are flouting layers upon layers of federal law to compel students to fund their radical political agenda,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger. “However, both this case and Foundation attorneys’ cases for the five Jewish MIT graduate students show on a deeper level that the choice to provide support to a union should rest solely with workers, who may have sincere religious, political, or other objections to funding any or all of a union’s activities.”
National Right to Work Foundation Submits Comments Opposing Proposed DOL Rule Loosening Union Financial Disclosures
Comments: Rule will let huge number of unions escape meaningful scrutiny over how union bosses spend worker funds while providing no tangible benefits
Washington, DC (July 31, 2025) – The National Right to Work Foundation has just submitted comments regarding the Office of Labor Management Standards’ (OLMS) proposed rule to significantly reduce financial disclosures union officials are required to file with the Department of Labor. The comments warn that the slated rule will deprive millions of rank-and-file workers of vital information on how union officials spend their dues payments, especially spending on union political and ideological activities.
Current financial disclosure rules for unions mandate that unions with $250,000 or more in annual receipts file an LM-2 report with the Department of Labor, while unions with less revenue must only submit less-detailed LM-3 or LM-4 reports, both of which consist of only a few pages. The OLMS’ proposed rule would eliminate the requirement to turn in an LM-2 for all unions except those with $450,000 or more in annual receipts, meaning a large number of unions currently subject to LM-2 reporting would only be required to provide substantially less-comprehensive filings.
“The ‘cost’ of the proposed rule—the information that workers and others will no longer be able to learn about unions—is considerable,” the comments say. “The rule’s ostensible ‘benefit’—reducing union reporting burdens—is not supported by evidence and is insignificant…The costs of the proposed rule greatly outweigh its nonexistent benefits.”
New Rule Will Block Millions of Workers From Seeing Basic Details About Union Spending
The comments emphasize the wide impact of the proposed rule, especially among those who work in states that lack Right to Work protections and for that reason can be forced to pay union dues or fees just to keep their jobs. “OLMS data for the past year…shows over 7,700 filings from unions with receipts under $450,000 that are located in states that lack Right to Work laws,” the comments say. “These unions reported combined annual receipts of over $523 million, annual disbursements of over $514 million, and over 4 million members.
“The lack of more detailed reporting requirements for these unions therefore harms over 4 million workers by denying them meaningful details” regarding how union officials spend their hard-earned money, the comments explain.
Much of this omitted information will include details on how much money union officials spend on overhead and administration as opposed to representational activities in the workplace, not to mention what union bosses are contributing to often-divisive political causes. While LM-2 forms let workers quickly see these figures, the comments say, “[t]he proposed rule will deprive workers of this information about many unions because the LM-3 does not include these reporting categories.”
Knowing less about union political spending will also impede workers’ ability to enforce their rights under the Foundation-won Communications Workers of America v. Beck Supreme Court decision, the comments point out. Beck blocks union bosses from forcing nonmember workers under their control to pay for union ideological expenses or anything unrelated to representational activities. The comments point to contributions disclosed on LM-2s to groups such as ActBlue, Black Lives Matter, and the Democratic National Committee that would no longer be disclosed to workers if the proposed rule were implemented.
Comments Debunk Union ‘Burden’ Arguments Cited by OLMS
The comments also reveal that the main impetus OLMS cites for pushing this proposed rule – that the regulatory burden for unions is too large – has very little evidence to support it. An estimate that OLMS put out about the number of hours that the proposed requirements would save unions is “out of date, fails to account for modern…software, and is not even an estimate of the time it takes impacted unions to complete LM-2 reports, but rather is an estimate of the average time it takes all unions to complete LM-2 reports,” the comments say.
The comments conclude by asking OLMS to eliminate the current system of graduated filing thresholds and instead require all unions to file LM-2 reports. “The benefit of this change is self-evident: workers, the public, and the Department will receive more information about union finances, which in turn will lead to more informed workers and deter and uncover more union corruption,” the comments explain.
“America’s top union bosses are routinely caught abusing the funds they demand from millions of workers across the country, all while promoting divisive and often radical political causes at every level of government,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “Acting in the best interests of workers means providing more clarity on how employee money is spent, not less.
“Make no mistake: The OLMS’ proposed rule will benefit union bosses at the expense of rank-and-file workers. Every worker deserves to know the basic details of how their money is being spent by those who claim to ‘represent them,’ and the slated rule would deprive millions of workers of what little information they already have,” Mix added.