A Las Vegas food service worker earlier this month complained to the National Labor Relations Board that her employer, food service giant Sodexo, is deducting union dues from her paycheck even though she sent the company an email saying she resigned from the union and is revoking the union’s access to her money.
“The Employer has deducted dues from Charging Party’s paycheck and continues to do so without her written authorization and despite her demand that it immediately cease all further deductions,” the complaint says. It was filed on March 4 with NLRB on behalf of the employee, Rebecca Swank, by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
“The employer responded back with an email saying, ‘We’re waiting for the union to tell us what to do,’” Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation, told Facilities Dive.
In a statement, Sodexo told Facilities Dive the matter is between the employee and the union. “We are not in a position to offer any public comment,” company spokesperson Paul Pettas said in an email.
The National Labor Relations Act, enacted in 1935, prohibits employers from making union membership a condition of employment and requires union officials to receive written authorization from workers before they can make payroll deductions for their dues, although in some cases unions can extract what’s called fair-share contributions from employees even if they don’t belong to the union. The idea is that, since non-union workers benefit from union activities, they should be made to pay some of the union’s costs.
In Nevada, one of 26 right-to-work states, the fair-share requirement doesn’t apply, which means employers can only extract a fair share contribution from non-union workers if the employee authorizes it.
In Swank's case, the conflict is between the employee, who works mostly at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and the union, Mix said. Swank had filed a separate charge with the NLRB against the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, an affiliate of North America hospitality union Unite Here, that accuses the union of withholding its authorization to Sodexo to stop making the deductions.
“They’re doing something full-on illegal by stopping me from exercising my right under Nevada’s Right to Work law to stop financially supporting them,” Swank’s complaint says. “That’s wrong, and I hope the NLRB gets to the bottom of this.”
In a statement posted to the union’s website, Ted Pappageorge, secretary-treasurer of the Culinary Local 226, said the claims are false and promised to fight the accusations. “We are confident the facts will show our actions were lawful,” Pappageorge said.
Even though the conflict is between the employee and the union, the case is a reminder that facilities operating with a largely unionized workforce can get caught in the middle of disagreements like this if they defer to the union, rather than act on the employee’s request, Mix said.
“From the standpoint of facilities managers, the context is, ‘Watch out,’” he said.
Complicating the matter is the lack of clarity over whether Swank explicitly authorized the union to make the deduction in the first place. Through her lawyer, she’s asked the union to produce the authorization and it hasn’t, Mix said.
“If they can’t produce any kind of authorization for a dues deduction, that’s an even bigger problem,” Mix said. “Because Sodexo should not have been taking dues out of their paycheck at all anyway if there’s no authorization for a payroll deduction.”
It’s not clear when NLRB will take action on the case. The agency can take years to investigate and issue a ruling, Mix said. The most likely outcome is a settlement.
“I assume … the employee’s going to get reimbursed and [she’s] going to win,” he said. “It may be the culinary union wants to fight us a little bit on it, but the question on the table in this litigation is clearly on the employee’s side.”
The highest the culinary union’s monthly dues goes is $49.50, the Las Vegas Review Journal reported.
