Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Union settles security guards’ suit on deductions
A union settled a complaint filed against it by Las Vegas security guards who claimed that dues were unlawfully seized from their paychecks.
As part of the settlement agreed upon last month, the Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America union was required to refund more than $4,200 to two dozen security guards.
“It’s been an uphill battle, but it’s going in the right direction,” security guard Justin Stephens said. “I want people to see this and see that it’s possible. You can stand up to the union and not fail and not have fear of retaliation.”
Stephens became a security guard for North American Security in 2018, and earlier this year he and his colleagues submitted timely resignations from union membership to cut off the due deductions from their paychecks.
But their resignations were rejected by union officials, who on Jan. 31, the following day, extended their monopoly bargaining agreement with their employer.
The security guards filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, asserting that the union
did not acknowledge the timely revocation the employees made because the union officials’ hurried contract extension eliminated any opportunity the employees had to cut off union dues before the existing contract’s March 31 expiration.
Because Nevada has enacted right-to-work protections for its employees, union bosses are forbidden from requiring any employee to join or pay dues or fees to a union as a condition of employment.
Union officials chose to settle Oct. 14 and agreed to pay back the dues with interest. They did not respond to requests for comment for this story.
This isn’t the first time an SPFPA union has been ordered to pay back dues to workers.
In 2017, an SPFPA local was ordered to pay back approximately $20,000 in illegally seized dues from Washington D.C.-area workers despite a vote of a majority of workers to end the forced unionism clause in their contract through an NLRB deauthorization election.
A National Labor Relations Board spokesman said that the board encourages parties to settle rather than litigate whenever possible and that more than 90 percent of unfair labor practice cases filed with the board are settled by agreement at some point in the process.
The Las Vegas security guards received free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Vice President Patrick Semmens said the foundation works on about 250 cases a year, and virtually all of them involve a belief that employees’ rights have been violated by a union.
Semmens noted that the settlement is not an admission that the union violated the law. However, he said, “it’s very much an example of union officials putting their own power and interests ahead of rank-and-file workers who they claim to represent.”