United Food and Commercial Workers

Teamsters Have Employee Fired, UFCW Ignores Law & Grabs Dues

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• published: 05 Oct 2014
• views: 1865

Hello, and welcome to this week’s Right to Work news update. With free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, two Fort Wayne Kroger employees filed an unfair labor practice charge against the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union for ignoring their right to refrain from paying union dues. The employees resigned from the union and revoked their dues deduction authorizations effective with the expiration of the union's contract with their employer. Under federal labor law, employees can unconditionally revoke their dues deduction authorizations when a contract between the union and their employer terminates. Even though the employees followed all of the necessary procedures to exercise their legally-protected right to resign their union membership and cut off union dues, UFCW Local union officials continue to confiscate union dues payments from their paychecks. In other news, a former Ebensburg, Pennsylvania Pepsi bottling plant employee just filed charges with the NLRB against his former employer and the Teamsters Local 110 union. When Michael Romanchock was hired by the Pepsi plant in June 2013, he was not informed that the Teamsters were the bargaining agent for his workplace. He only learned about the Teamsters’ presence in March 2014, when he received a letter from the union demanding he pay full union dues and initiation fees. Not only did Teamster officials attempt to extract full union dues and initiation fees from Romanchock, they also failed to provide him with any information regarding how much he would owe if he remained a nonmember. In May 2014, Teamster officials informed Romanchock that they would have him fired by Pepsi if he refused to pay up. In June 2014, a Pepsi human resources representative told Romanchock that if he did not pay the Teamsters by July 1, he would be fired. On July 1, 2014, Romanchock was fired by Pepsi at the behest of union officials. We will keep you posted on these and more cases as National Right to Work Foundation attorneys continue to assist workers whose rights are abused by union bosses. Thank you for watching and see you next time.