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Judge knocks down right-to-work provision

By: Dan Shaw, [email protected]//January 3, 2017//

Judge knocks down right-to-work provision

By: Dan Shaw, [email protected]//January 3, 2017//

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A federal judge smacked down part of Wisconsin’s right-to-work law last week, but not in a way that is likely to be of long-term benefit to unions.

In a decision handed down on Dec. 27, Judge William Conley of the Western District of Wisconsin found that a provision in Wisconsin’s so-called right-to-work law comes into conflict with the federal Labor Management Relations Act. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit that a union local and its parent organization filed in February questioning an employee’s right to cease paying union dues simply by providing 30 days’ notice of that intention.

Federal law allows employees to voluntarily enter agreements requiring them to pay union dues throughout the course of a yearlong period. These so-called “dues checkoff authorizations” are automatically renewed after the year is up unless employees give notice within a specially set 15-day window that they no longer want to participate.

Wisconsin’s right-to-work law would instead allow employees to get out of the agreements by giving notice at any point during the year. Once that notice was given, the obligation to pay dues would end after 30 days.

The International Association of Machinists District 10 and its Local Lodge 873 argued the Wisconsin provision is unconstitutional because it comes into conflict with a federal law governing dues checkoff authorizations. Judge Conley agreed with them last week, finding that the U.S. Supreme Court had settled the question in a similar case dating to 1969.

Because the precedent set in that case “was affirmed by the Supreme Court and has not been overruled by any subsequent Supreme Court decision, this court is bound by it,” Conley wrote.

Conley wrote that the courts have established over the years that jurisdiction over labor law belongs to the federal government, rather than the states. Deeming Wisconsin’s provision regarding dues checkoff authorizations unconstitutional, Conley placed a permanent injunction on its enforcement.

A spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Justice said state officials are still reviewing the decision and their options.

This particular challenge of Wisconsin’s right-to-work law arose after Lisa Aplin, an assembler at a John Deere plant in Horicon, decided to invoke Wisconsin’s new right-to-work law and give 30 days’ notice of her intention to cease paying union dues. District 10 of the International Association of Machinists refused to comply, citing federal law.

Aplin appealed to the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development’s Labor Standards Division, which sided with her. John Deere later refunded Aplin part of her dues.

In winning in federal court, the International Association of Machinists has managed to ensure labor organizations will be able to collect dues a bit longer than they would have otherwise. But the main provisions of right to work remain in place, pointed out Paul Secunda, a law professor at Marquette University.

That means that employees who are now locked into year-long dues checkoff authorizations will merely have to wait until those agreements are up to get out of paying dues permanently.

“This helps unions a little bit,” Secunda said of last week’s decision. “It allows them to collect dues for a little longer. But, eventually, it allows people to opt out of paying these dues.”

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