A federal appeals court rejected a health care union’s request that the judges reconsider their decision upholding the right of nurses not to be required to fund the labor group’s political lobbying.
The United Nurses and Allied Professionals (UNAP) union had asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit to reconsider its September 2020 ruling upholding Rhode Island nurse Jeannette Geary’s right not to be charged assessments used to cover the costs of lobbying and other political activities.
In its September decision, the judges, including former Supreme Court Justice David Souter, said they saw “no convincing argument that legislative lobbying is not a ‘political’ activity’” for which Geary can’t be forced to fund.
The September decision also upheld the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruling in Geary’s favor, saying the board was correct that Supreme Court precedent dictated that nonmembers could never be required to fund union lobbying.
Geary has been represented pro bono throughout her fight, which began in 2009, by attorneys from the National Right to Work Foundation (NRTWF).
There are currently 27 states that have adopted “Right to Work” laws that guarantee an individual no person can be forced to join a union as a condition of employment.
Previously, under President Barack Obama, the NLRB had ruled against Geary in 2012. But then, in a March 2019 decision, the board reversed itself, saying, according to the NRTWF statement: “The NLRB ruled 3–1 that union officials violate workers’ rights by forcing nonmembers to fund any union lobbying activities.
“It also ruled that union officials must provide independent verification that the union expenses they charge to nonmembers have been audited. Unwilling to stop forcing workers to fund lobbying activities, UNAP union bosses then asked the First Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn this ruling.”
Mark Mix, NRTWF’s president, said in the statement that “the First Circuit’s unanimous ruling for Ms. Geary, followed by denial of rehearing, demonstrates the clarity of the Supreme Court’s standard in Beck, and shows how flagrantly UNAP officials disregarded her and her coworkers’ Beck rights well over a decade ago.”
Mix added, “While it is just plain wrong to force workers to shell out cash for union political expenses as a condition of keeping their jobs, federal labor law as a whole needs reform so no worker is forced to accept or pay for the ‘representation’ of union hierarchies they don’t want and never requested.”
The decision to uphold the NLRB in the Geary case points to the importance of a controversy that exploded on President Joe Biden’s first day in the Oval Office.
Robb had about eight months left of his four-year term, and it isn’t clear if a president has the authority to terminate an individual in such a position prior to the completion of their term.
When Robb was terminated by Biden, his deputy, Alice Stock, became the acting general counsel, but she was also asked to resign and was fired when she declined to do so.
The NLRB now has an acting general counsel, Peter Ohr, who promptly repealed guidance that Robb had authored last year directing the board’s regional directors to enforce worker rights, as defined by the Beck decision.
Late on Thursday, Mix told The Epoch Times that “Geary’s victory today is a reaffirmation of the commonsense principle that workers who choose to dissociate from union bosses should not be forced to fund their political and lobbying activities, as recognized by both the Supreme Court in the Foundation-won Beck decision and the NLRB earlier in Geary’s case.
“This development makes it particularly outrageous that Acting NLRB General Counsel Peter Ohr just withdrew two guidance memos issued by his predecessor, Peter Robb, which sought to enforce workers’ rights under Beck.
“It’s clear that the Biden administration, which fired Robb on legally dubious grounds and replaced him with Ohr at union bosses’ behest, is intent on expanding union boss power to the detriment of individual workers.”
