St. Louis-Area Worker Battles Illegal Union Threats to Get Non-Members Fired
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, March/April 2025 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
After divisive strike, IAM bosses demand non-members pay illegal ‘reinstatement fee’ to work
Robert Jacobs, an employee of power management company Eaton, filed federal charges showing IAM bosses clearly can’t manage their power: They are threatening union non-members with hundreds in illegal fees.
TROY, IL – “They’re threatening our jobs and livelihoods.”
This is how Robert Jacobs, an employee for power management company Eaton Corporation, described how International Association of Machinists (IAM) union bosses were treating him and his colleagues who dissented from the union’s agenda in an interview with the St. Louis Business Journal.
IAM officials ordered hundreds of Eaton employees at its St. Louis-area facility to strike in October 2024, which alienated many workers and made them question union bosses’ motives. Jacobs described seeing union agents take photos of his license plate during the strike and how he suspected union agents were following him home.
IAM Anti-Worker Activity Only Increased After Disruptive Strike Order
But for Jacobs and other workers, that was only the beginning of IAM’s coercive conduct. After the strike concluded, many Eaton employees chose to exercise their right to resign their union memberships. Even in states like Illinois that lack Right to Work protections, private sector workers are free to end their union memberships, even if union officials enforce a contract that requires non-members to pay some fees as a condition of employment.
Instead of respecting this right, IAM union officials began retaliating against those who wanted to cut ties with the union. With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, Jacobs slammed the IAM with federal charges for threatening to get him and other employees who resigned union membership fired unless they pay hundreds in “reinstatement fees” concocted by the union. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is now reviewing his charges.
“I and several of my colleagues don’t want to be part of the IAM union, but we are required by law to pay fees to union bosses just to keep our jobs,” commented Jacobs.
“That’s already something that we don’t want to do. But IAM officials are going even further and hitting us with hundreds of dollars in made-up fees just because we exercised our right to not be union members.”
IL Worker: Mandatory ‘Reinstatement Fee’ Not Permitted by Federal Law
Under federal labor law, which the NLRB is charged with enforcing, private sector employees have an absolute right to resign union membership. This right is codified in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and was affirmed by landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions such as General Motors v. NLRB.
Federal law further spells out that neither employers nor union officials can compel private sector workers to participate in union activities or refrain from such activities.
According to Jacobs’ federal charge, which was filed on the last day of 2024, “the Union is presently threatening Charging Party and [other employees who resigned from the union] with termination if they fail to pay a $306 ‘reinstatement fee’ by January 2025.” The charge argues that the IAM union is violating Eaton employees’ rights under Section 7 of the NLRA, which safeguards employees’ “right to refrain from any or all of ” union activities.
According to the Business Journal, IAM officials’ letter demanding this payment was what prompted him to contact Foundation attorneys. “[I]f you do not remit the total sum indicated in the enclosed letter within 30 days from receipt of this letter, the Union will be required to seek your termination from employment,” the letter read.
“Instead of seeking to win Eaton employees’ voluntary support, IAM union officials have decided to effectively extort the workers they claim to ‘represent,’” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director William Messenger. “Threatening to terminate workers if they don’t pay a fee which is apparently intended to punish those who don’t want union bosses speaking for them tarnishes employee rights and freedom.
“While we’re confident that Foundation attorneys will help Mr. Jacobs prevail in beating this illegal scheme, this case shows what self-interested union bosses will do to demand fealty from workers, and why all American workers deserve the Right to Work freedom to cut off financial support for such union hierarchies,” Messenger added
Massachusetts Trader Joe’s Employees Battle Divisive Union Organizing Campaign
Trader Joe’s workers demand vote to oust union, blast union bosses in Congress and media
Trader Joe’s employees Les Stratford (left) and Michael Alcorn want to restore the fun and independent work environment that existed in the store before union officials sowed discord.
HADLEY, MA – Union bosses and Big Labor-allied media cheered when the Hadley, MA, branch of supermarket chain Trader Joe’s became the first unionized location in the country in 2022. But what all their celebration concealed was the fact that union officials had swept to power at the location through a deeply deceptive campaign that demonized both the company and many employees. Now many of the Hadley-based Trader Joe’s employees are fighting to kick the union out.
“Officials of this union have sowed division and smeared both our workplace and anyone who dissents from the union’s agenda pretty much from the time the campaign began to unionize the store,” Trader Joe’s employee Les Stratford told Supermarket News about the situation.
Michael Alcorn, another Hadley Trader Joe’s worker who simply wanted to have a conversation with his coworkers about the ramifications of unionizing, said that union militants “weren’t going to have a meeting with us…immediately it was like ‘you either accept the union, or you don’t, and we’re not going to talk about it all together because if you don’t accept it, we don’t trust you.’”
Now, with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, Stratford, Alcorn, and many other Hadley Trader Joe’s employees are backing an effort to vote the union out of power at the store. Stratford in August submitted a union decertification petition asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold an election among his coworkers on whether to remove the union, which contained well over the support needed to trigger a decertification vote under NLRB rules.
Because Massachusetts lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, the union has the legal privilege to enforce contracts that require Trader Joe’s employees to pay dues or fees as a condition of keeping their jobs.
In Right to Work states, in contrast, union membership and financial support are strictly voluntary. A vote by the majority of Hadley Trader Joe’s employees against the union would free them from both the union’s forced-dues and monopoly bargaining powers.
Trader Joe’s Employee Exposes Union Tactics on Capitol Hill
In May, Alcorn brought the concerns many of the Hadley Trader Joe’s employees had directly into the halls of Congress when he was called by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce to testify about coercive tactics union bosses use to gain power and stay in power.
In addition to describing the union’s vilification of any skeptical employee, he noted that union organizers tried to foist union control of the workplace through “card check” — a process that bypasses the NLRB’s secret ballot election system and lets union officials aggressively solicit “cards” that are later counted as votes for the union.
Union organizers also “made inaccurate and incomplete press releases, creating false narratives about our workplace to promote their own agenda and personal vendettas,” Alcorn said.
Workers Need More Freedom to Oust Abrasive Union Bosses
The Hadley Trader Joe’s workers’ efforts come as the Biden-Harris NLRB announced a final rule which will make it much harder for rank-and-file workers to exercise their right to vote out union officials they oppose. The final rule, among other things, lets union officials prevent decertification votes from going forward by filing unverified “blocking charges” alleging employer interference.
While the Trader Joe’s employees’ petition will be unaffected by the rule change, the new policy will likely quash or substantially delay similar efforts in the future. “The situation at the Hadley, MA, Trader Joe’s store shows exactly why workers’ right to vote to remove a union they oppose must be protected,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Legal Director and Vice President William Messenger.
“During a union campaign, union officials often employ aggressive tactics and ‘us vs. them’ or hate-the-boss rhetoric that cause division and prioritize union bosses’ agenda over workers’ freedoms and individual choices.
“That the Biden-Harris Administration stripped workers of what few rights they had to challenge union officials that perpetrate these acts shows they are on the side of Big Labor, not individual workers,” Messenger added.
National Right to Work Foundation Files SCOTUS Brief Defending Alaska’s Protections Against Forced Union Dues
Alaska facing ASEA union lawsuit over arrangement which requires union bosses to obtain affirmative consent from employees before deducting dues
Washington, DC (September 29, 2023) – Today, the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Alaska v. Alaska State Employees Association. The brief supports the State of Alaska’s attempt to safeguard public sector workers’ First Amendment right to refrain from paying dues to a union they disapprove of. This right was first recognized in the Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court decision, which was successfully argued at the High Court by Foundation Legal Director William Messenger.
In the 2018 Janus decision, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment protects public sector employees from being forced to pay union dues as a condition of getting or keeping a job. The High Court further recognized that unions must obtain a worker’s freely given waiver of his or her Janus rights before deducting union dues or fees from his or her paycheck.
In an attempt to ensure his state wasn’t violating its employees’ constitutional rights, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued an executive order to protect workers’ Janus rights: The order requires the state to obtain consent from workers each year to deduct union dues from their paychecks. This arrangement ensures that the “freely given consent” element of Janus is satisfied, while also preventing union bosses from continuing to deduct money from a worker’s wages based on a “yes” given years ago.
However, Alaska State Employees Association (ASEA) union bosses sued the State of Alaska over its Janus protections, and were able to get the state’s highest court to block the arrangement. Even worse, as Foundation staff attorneys point out in the amicus brief, “five Circuit Courts have now held that states and unions can constitutionally seize payments for union speech from dissenting employees without proof they waived their constitutional rights.”
Amicus Brief: Lower Courts and States Are Letting Unions Seize Dues Without Workers’ Consent
The Foundation’s amicus brief maintains that, after the Janus decision, at least seventeen states either “amended their dues deduction laws…to require government employers to enforce restrictions on when employees can stop payroll deductions of union dues,” or “enforced restrictions on stopping payroll deductions under preexisting state laws.” Both lead to unacceptable restraints on public sector workers’ Janus rights, the amicus brief argues.
The amicus brief further contends that lower courts, especially the Ninth Circuit, have misinterpreted Janus to not require public employers to notify public workers of their Janus rights before collecting dues, which dips below the “waiver” standard mandated by the decision. Additionally, the amicus brief points out that the Ninth Circuit has issued decisions that free public employers from any obligation to prove that union bosses obtained authentic consent from workers before dues are taken from their wages.
“Unless the Court grants review and breathes new life into Janus’ waiver requirement, unions and their government allies will continue to severely restrict the right of millions of employees to stop subsidizing union speech,” the amicus brief concludes. “The Court should not tolerate this resistance to its holding in Janus.”
“Public sector union bosses, who prize their own dues-funded political influence far above the individual rights of the employees they claim to ‘represent,’ have tried everything in their power to dodge the Janus ruling and keep siphoning money from workers,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Vice President Patrick Semmens. “The Supreme Court has an opportunity in the State of Alaska’s case to set the record straight and ensure that workers’ free association rights can’t simply be molded according to their own schemes.”
Fox Cities Essity Employee Hits Steelworkers Union with Federal Charges for Illegal Termination Threat
Longtime employee of paper products company exercised right to leave union and stop dues deductions, Steelworkers union now demands her firing
Fox Cities, WI (February 16, 2023) – Greenville, WI, resident Kerri Wenske has just filed federal charges against United Steelworkers Local 2-1279 union officials at her Essity workplace in Neenah, WI. Wenske, who has worked for decades at Essity, maintains that Steelworkers officials ordered the company to fire her after she exercised her right to end her union membership and cut off dues deductions. Wenske filed her charges at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
Wenske argues that Steelworkers union officials are violating her rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which ensures that American private sector employees can abstain from any or all union activities. Wisconsin’s Right to Work law also forbids union officials from forcing Wisconsin workers to join or pay dues to a union as a condition of employment. In non-Right to Work states like neighboring Illinois, union chiefs can have workers fired for refusal to pay for union “representation” they don’t support.
Steelworkers President Hurls Termination Threat at Veteran Employee Who No Longer Supports Union
According to Wenske’s charge, she submitted a letter to Steelworkers president Bill Kilishek in early February in which she resigned her union membership and requested that all dues deductions from her paycheck stop, as is her right under the state’s Right to Work law. Because the dues deduction authorization form she signed allows for an immediate cessation of deductions upon resignation of her union membership as permitted by long-established NLRB precedent, Wenske’s resignation letter should be sufficient to end both her membership and any flow of union dues from her paycheck.
However, Kilishek told Wenske shortly after receiving her letter “that she would be terminated from her employment based on her decision to resign her union membership,” Wenske’s charge states. Afterward, a union agent from Steelworkers International even showed Wenske a copy of a letter written by the union ordering Essity to fire Wenske for resigning from the union.
“The Employer has yet to act on this request,” says Wenske’s charge.
Steelworkers Union Has Recent Streak of Employee Rights Violations
Wenske’s case is the latest in a number of recent cases in which Foundation staff attorneys have defended workers from Steelworkers union officials’ coercive practices. Just last month, metal workers at Latrobe Specialty Metals/Franklin Carpenter Technology in Franklin, PA, successfully voted Steelworkers officials out of their facility with free Foundation legal aid, after Steelworkers chiefs tried to trap workers under a contract they voted against twice. Also last month, Foundation attorneys spurred the NLRB’s prosecution of Steelworkers Local 832 for illegally seizing months of dues from Kentucky employee Melva Hernandez.
“Steelworkers union officials are continuing their nationwide campaign of punishing workers who disagree with the union’s agenda,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “That Steelworkers chiefs tried to get Ms. Wenske – a veteran Essity employee – fired merely because she no longer supports the union demonstrates just how little they care about the free choice rights of workers and winning over employee support voluntarily.”
“Essity officials should not become complicit in Steelworkers bosses’ illegal scheme, and Foundation attorneys will fight this and any further attempts to violate Ms. Wenske’s right to abstain from union activity,” Mix added.
