**Seattle, WA (July 13, 2006)** \u2013 With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a Safeway employee won a judgment this week against United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union officials forcing them to drop their discriminatory policy intended to deter workers from exercising their religious freedoms.<\/p>\n
Daniel Gautschi, manager in a Safeway meat department, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in early May after UFCW Local 81 union officials set forth conditions that forced him, if he should ever have an employment grievance, to affiliate with \u2013 and pay additional money to \u2013 a union that conflicts with his religious beliefs.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Gautschi filed his charges, the union hierarchy, governing Safeway stores in King and Kitsat counties, backtracked. Because federal law grants union officials many coercive privileges over employees, including the power to force their \u201crepresentation\u201d on workers who do not even want it, union lawyers recognized the union could not act discriminatorily toward nonunion members. <\/p>\n
The union hierarchy therefore adopted a policy that all costs associated with grievance and arbitration processing of any employee \u2013 including religious objectors \u2013 are to be paid out of the union\u2019s general treasury, which includes the forced union dues collected under its monopoly bargaining agreement. The settlement stipulates that union officials must refrain from further retaliation against Gautschi or any other employee who seeks to assert his or her legal rights to religious freedom. <\/p>\n
Union officials allowed Gautschi to divert his forced union dues (paid as a condition of employment) to a charity \u2013 an accommodation previously won by Foundation attorneys \u2013 before Gautschi filed his lawsuit. However, they continued to maintain an illegal scheme intended to deter employees from exercising their right to assert religious objections in the first place. The discriminatory scheme forced only employees who assert religious objections to pay the union all costs associated with use of grievance procedures under the bargaining agreement \u2013 even though union officials tightly control the process, and employees are totally barred from filing grievances on their own. <\/p>\n
As a devout Christian, Gautschi believes that supporting the UFCW union violates his sincerely held religious beliefs due to the union hierarchy\u2019s support for special rights for homosexuals.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis victory stalls UFCW union officials\u2019 all-out offensive on employees\u2019 right to freedom of religion in this part of Washington,\u201d said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Foundation. \u201cHowever, employees of faith should not have to take legal action simply to force union officials to honor their fundamental rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, union officials may not force any employee to financially support a union if doing so violates the employee\u2019s sincerely held religious beliefs. To avoid the conflict between an employee\u2019s faith and a requirement to pay fees to a union he or she believes to be immoral, the law requires union officials to attempt to accommodate the employee \u2013 most often by designating a mutually acceptable charity to receive the funds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
**Seattle, WA (July 13, 2006)** \u2013 With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, a Safeway employee won a judgment this week against United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union officials forcing them to drop their discriminatory policy intended to deter workers from exercising their religious freedoms. Daniel Gautschi, manager in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[888],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n