Nonunion UH faculty
get reprieve from judgeUHPA is told to stop collecting
dues from nonmembers until
a lawsuit is resolved
A federal judge has ordered the University of Hawaii's faculty union to stop collecting dues from nonmembers while a class-action lawsuit challenging the legality of such collections is pending.
U.S. District Judge Helen Gillmor issued the injunction last week, the National Right to Work Defense Foundation said yesterday.
The Springfield, Va.-based organization filed the lawsuit on behalf of Sandra Swanson, an instructor at Maui Community College who contends that the union is improperly collecting money from nonmembers.
Federal law allows unions in Hawaii to collect "agency fees" equal to the cost of full union dues from nonmembers, but the union is required to open its records to make sure nonmembers are not subsidizing union activities unrelated to collective bargaining, the foundation said.
In January, Gillmor certified the lawsuit as a class action, allowing some 625 nonunion members of the University of Hawaii's faculty to challenge the union's practice.
Union executives did not return telephone messages seeking comment yesterday.
Gillmor's order prevents the union from collecting agency fees from nonmembers until officials can prove they are spending such funds properly.
"For years, UHPA union officials have been trying to get away with hiding how they spend teachers' money," said Stefan Gleason, vice president of the National Right to Work Defense Foundation. "This injunction is a step toward getting them to shape up and start respecting teachers' rights."
The lawsuit seeks the return of any improperly spent money. 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.