A federal judge has opened the way for more than 600 professors and instructors at the University of Hawaii's 10 campuses to sue the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly for improperly collecting money from nonmembers. Judge rules nonmembers
can sue for UHPA refundBy Janis L. Magin
Associated PressThe suit was filed by Sandra Swanson, an instructor at Maui Community College who says the fees the union collects from her paycheck are equal to the cost of full union dues -- about 1 percent of her salary -- even though she is not a member.
The law allows unions in Hawaii to collect money from nonmembers, but the union is required to open its records to make sure nonmembers are not subsidizing union activities unrelated to collective bargaining, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is representing Swanson and other plaintiffs who may come forward.
"I do not have a problem with fees associated with representation, which is collective bargaining and mediation," Swanson said.
"The problem is that they're taking out a huge amount that does not relate to that," she said. "It's not being appropriately itemized. There's no accountability, and that's where the problem lies."
W. James Young, attorney with the Virginia-based foundation said, "It's not that they're collecting a fee, not that they're collecting too much. What it is is, they're collecting it without complying with the 'constitutional requirements for the union's collection of agency fees'" as determined by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1986 Chicago Teachers Union vs. Hudson decision.
"Our position is, they shouldn't have taken anything because the union didn't comply with Hudson," he said.
About 614 professors and instructors at the university are not members of the union, about 20 percent of the bargaining unit, Young said.
Those employees became eligible to join the lawsuit on Monday when U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor granted the case class-action status.
The suit also names the state comptroller as a defendant, since the state withholds the union's money from the university employees' paychecks.
A call to the state Attorney General's Office seeking comment was not immediately returned.
J.N. Musto, the University of Hawaii Professional Assembly's executive director, was in negotiations yesterday and did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
The suit seeks to have any money that did not go for collective bargaining returned, said Dan Cronin, a spokesman for the legal defense foundation. It also seeks to have the union, in the future, charge its nonmembers only for the cost of collective bargaining.
The Supreme Court has strictly limited union agreements to protect the nonmembers' free-speech and free- association rights. Workers cannot be forced to be full members, pay full dues or support a union's political activities, the Supreme Court has ruled.
The nonunion employees can be required to pay for a union's collective bargaining work, however, so long as the money is not spent on political and ideological purposes.
University of Hawaii Professional Assembly
Department of the Attorney General