Fairness Center

A nonprofit public interest law firm offering free legal services to those hurt by public-sector union officials.

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[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

After more than two years of litigation, an Erie County judge ruled that “[t]he undisputed material facts of this case demonstrate that AFSCME breached its duty of fair representation” and said that the employees deserved monetary damages from the union.

Our clients ultimately settled their case to the mutual satisfaction of all parties.

Read more: https://t.co/kNf6f1o2gx

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

Mark Kiddo and his Erie Water Works colleagues felt betrayed after learning AFSCME officials deliberately misled them.

Union officials had just presented Mark and his colleagues, who were union members, with a four-year contract that the employees weren’t happy with. It included lower salary increases than they expected and kept in place a defined-benefit pension plan favored by union officials.

Union officials deceptively told them it was the only offer on the table. Reluctantly, and believing they had no choice, the employees ratified the contract.

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

Days later, they learned of a second offer, with higher salary increases, a 401k-style retirement plan for new employees, and an additional retirement benefit—an offer like what they had hoped for all along.

The truth, it turned out, was that AFSCME officials had intentionally hidden the better offer from their own members because the officials opposed moving away from defined-benefit retirement plans. AFSCME officials had trampled their members' rights in favor of their own priorities.

Then Mark and his colleagues found the Fairness Center.

Read more: https://t.co/kNf6f1o2gx

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

McFetridge says: "I filed a lawsuit to ensure my union follows its legal duty to fairly represent me and, of course, does not discriminate against me because I’m a woman.

"No matter what happens in court, I assure you that nothing will keep my daughter from getting the care she needs. It will either be hard, or it will be harder – but I will find a way."

Read more: https://t.co/baCWmhosjU

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

PennDOT worker Mindy McFetridge is "defending myself from a union that made me choose between my daughter’s medical needs and my job," she writes in @thecentersquare.

During COVID work shutdowns, McFetridge was told to use her paid time off or go on unemployment. Meanwhile, a group of male union officials and their friends remained working, despite Mindy having greater seniority than some of them.

"I was backed into a corner and didn’t know the right answer. I ended up exhausting nearly all my PTO before we resumed work," McFetridge says.

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

"I was stunned. I never questioned whether the union would honor seniority rights. It’s written into our contract. I could – should – have been working on that crew instead of burning through my PTO.

"But in a crisis, my local union officials watched each other’s backs and put me and my daughter at risk by making their own rules," she adds.

"I couldn’t afford a lawyer, but I researched a law firm, the Fairness Center, that is representing me for free."

Read more: https://t.co/baCWmhosjU

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

“No matter what happens in court, I assure you that nothing will keep my daughter from getting the care she needs. It will either be hard, or it will be harder—but I will find a way," Mindy said.

Read more: https://t.co/LoTZX2KoKU

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

During COVID work shutdowns, Pennsylvania transportation employee Mindy McFetridge was told to use her paid time off or go on unemployment.

Meanwhile, a group of male union officials and their friends remained working, despite Mindy having greater seniority than some of them.

Mindy alleges in a lawsuit that union officials violated their duty of fair representation by ignoring contractual seniority rules to benefit themselves.

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

The Fairness Center helped Ed file an unfair labor practice charge to hold the union accountable.

“By taking legal action, I am reminding [the union] that public employees deserve to be treated with dignity and that, when push comes to shove, we will defend our rights of free speech and association," Ed says.

Read more here: https://t.co/7Ewfhp8DFF

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

When NYPD tow truck operator Ed Seabron began asking tough questions about his union’s representation, a union vice president made social media posts to racially harass and intimidate him.

The union official even photoshopped an image to make it appear as if Ed were shaking hands with a KKK member.

Despite the public nature of this harassment, AFSCME officials did nothing to discipline the union vice president. So, Ed reached out to the Fairness Center for help.

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

"In February, two Connecticut public employees — criminal justice professor Earl Ormond and corrections officer Ryan Bilodeau — sued their unions, alleging that union officials ignored the state transparency law while regulators failed to act," @YankeeInstitute adds.

"After years of pushback, testimony, and litigation, CTDOL has now taken the necessary steps: new instructions to labor organizations, an online submission portal, and clear notice that annual financial reports are not optional. These are the basic requirements the law has always demanded — nothing more."

The report concludes: "Connecticut’s Labor Department deserves credit for finally enforcing the law — but not for needing years of scrutiny, testimony, litigation, and legislative resistance to remember that compliance was never optional."

Read more @YankeeInstitute: https://t.co/jN2iETixFR

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

"Connecticut’s Department of Labor has discovered a novel approach to state law: complying with it," @YankeeInstitute reports.

"On May 13, Labor Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo emailed the co-chairs and ranking members of the legislature’s Labor and Public Employees Committee to notify them that CTDOL had sent labor organizations new instructions on their reporting obligations under Connecticut statute 31-77. The agency also created an online form for unions to submit annual financial reports.

"This may sound like routine bureaucracy. It is not. It is the long overdue enforcement of a transparency law the Labor Department tried — twice — to erase."

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

On his behalf, we filed a federal lawsuit in March 2019 challenging the union’s illegal “closed shop” policy and seeking a declaration that the union was wrong to reject his resignation.

In May 2020, the UFCW provided John with the relief he sought in his federal lawsuit, and John voluntarily dismissed the suit. The union returned to John more than $1,700 in dues and interest, and they abandoned the contract provision that trapped John and his colleagues in union membership.

Today, because of John’s litigation, more than 1,500 Pennsylvania liquor store clerks can resign their union memberships because there is no longer a restriction on resignations in the union’s employment contract with Pennsylvania.

Read more: https://t.co/4pJHx6cZE4

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

When John Kabler walked into a mandatory orientation session when he first started his new job as a liquor store clerk in Pennsylvania, he didn’t know he would be led to believe he had no option but to join a union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1776.

In fact, UFCW President Wendell Young, IV sent John a letter stating: “It is a condition of employment with this company that you become a member in good standing with [the union].”

The letter also threatened that John would be taken off the work schedule if he did not maintain union membership.

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

A year later, John found out that none of that was true. Once he learned that union membership could not be a condition of employment, John tried to resign from the UFCW.

But the union refused to let him out and enforced a “maintenance of membership” provision in its contract with Pennsylvania that limited resignations to a 15-day window period.

This short window only appeared every few years, forcing union members, like John, to remain with the union for long stretches of time. Union officials continued to deduct membership dues from his paycheck.

Having exhausted his options, John turned to the Fairness Center.

Read more: https://t.co/4pJHx6cZE4

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

"On May 13, DOL Commissioner Danté Bartolomeo sent an email to the co-chairs and ranking members of the legislature’s Labor and Public Employees Committee informing them that DOL officials had earlier that day sent notice to unions subject to the reporting requirement, reminding them of their requirement to comply.

"The notice appears to mark a shift in DOL’s approach to the law. The agency, as alleged in a lawsuit brought by two public sector employees with pro bono legal help from The Fairness Center, has not enforced the reporting requirement or issued the $25 fine outlined in statute to unions who fail to file annual reports."

Read more: https://t.co/aYSLTqh7FP

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

Inside Investigator: "Officials at the Connecticut Department of Labor (DOL) recently took steps to enforce a state law requiring some unions to file an annual report with the department and to make that report available to their membership.

"The law is currently the subject of a lawsuit by members of several public-sector unions, who argue that DOL officials’ alleged failure to implement penalties and failing to enforce the law infringes on their right to be informed about their union," @ct_investigator reports.

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

"I was also sidelined procedurally with union officials belatedly sharing meeting agendas and disguising discussion topics, including those related to Israel, and making up participation rules."

Now, Karin is suing her union, alleging antisemitic discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

She says: "I am not asking for special treatment. I am simply asking that when UAW 4811 says it wants to protect immigrants, it means immigrants like me as well."

Read more @JNS_org: https://t.co/iCyPM9yZeU

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

UC Berkeley postdoc Karin Yaniv writes for @JNS_org: "My own union has made it increasingly difficult for me to work and feel safe, simply because I’m an Israeli Jew."

Karin says UAW officials "promoted anti-Israel protests and walkouts, and took part in a 'Union Village' inside an anti-Israel encampment."

Karin joined the union hoping to ease tensions, but she says things didn't get any better: "Israelis who spoke in meetings were mocked. One colleague, whose relatives were kidnapped by Hamas, was openly ridiculed for objecting to the union’s actions. The hostility became so constant that I stopped showing my face during Zoom meetings."

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

"Burns turned to his union to enforce the terms of the job posting and the contract it had negotiated. But despite years of paying dues, he says union officials refused to act on his behalf.

"Burns is now suing AFSCME Council 13 and the state, alleging that state and union officials worked together to violate his contract and deny him the promotion he’d earned."

According to McGrath: "Seniority rights enshrined in contracts are sacred to McFetridge, Burns, and thousands of other Pennsylvania employees, in no small part because unions have long held them out as fundamental protections. When union officials fail to defend them, they turn one of labor’s most basic promises into an empty one."

Read more: https://t.co/W9qMi81EyL

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

"Ask a worker why they joined their union and seniority rights will likely be at the top of their list. That was certainly true for Mindy McFetridge of Venango County, who works a PennDOT road crew," Fairness Center president Nathan McGrath writes in @cumberlink.

"McFetridge has been a member of Harrisburg-based AFSCME Council 13 for more than a decade. She says seniority 'trumps everything' and that 'every day of seniority matters.'

"Her union just argued the opposite in court.

"But the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania recently rejected AFSCME Council 13’s claim that McFetridge suffered no real harm when, as she alleges in a lawsuit, state and union officials kept her off the job during the COVID shutdowns while workers with less seniority continued working."

[Fairness Center @FairnessCenter]

"A Commonwealth Court panel affirmed her stance that seniority — every day of it — matters, writing that McFetridge alleged a 'relative loss of seniority' that was 'not merely speculative' and left her at greater risk of being 'leapfrogged' by less senior employees in the future."

"My law firm also represents a Public Utility Commission employee who says he experienced firsthand the kind of leapfrogging the court warned of.

"Todd Burns sought out his PUC job in part because it came with AFSCME Council 13’s representation. Burns earned the highest possible performance rating and later applied for a promotion. To his knowledge, he was the most senior and most qualified applicant.

"But, he says, the promotion was awarded to a less senior, less qualified candidate who was also a friend and former colleague of the hiring manager. "

Read more: https://t.co/5OiRuwKYt9