(New Jersey Monitor)—A Mercer County plumber is suing Hamilton’s school district and a pipefitters union, alleging they forced him to pay union dues in defiance of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that bars mandatory dues for public sector workers.
In a filing submitted Thursday, Nicolo Giangrasso alleges he sought to resign from the union and stop paying dues after learning of the high court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME, but the union told him he must pay them as a condition of employment.
“I was told I had to join the union and pay dues to keep my government job. And now that I learned about my right to opt out, the union is still trying to take my money by playing word games about ‘dues’ versus ‘assessments,’” Giangrasso said in a statement. “What they’re doing is illegal.”
In Janus, the Supreme Court ruled public employers cannot compel workers who are not members of a union to pay dues, finding such a requirement would violate speech protections in the First Amendment.
In the suit filed on Giangrasso’s behalf by the conservative Liberty Justice Center, Giangrasso charges the United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices of the Plumbing and Pipe Fitting Industry of the United States and Canada Local 9 argued his payments to the union were not dues but an assessment applied as a condition of his employment.
“Government employees have a First Amendment right to decide whether they want their money to support public-sector unions—and whatever the union might claim, employees don’t lose their constitutional rights simply because a union relabels that money ‘assessments’ instead of dues,” said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center.
Liberty Justice Center represented the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case.
Prior to Janus, federal case law allowed public sector unions to collect dues from nonmembers because the unions still negotiated on their behalf during collective bargaining.
Michael Tranberg, the union’s business manager, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.