WASHINGTON DC – A federal judge dismissed Monday some portions of a lawsuit brought by unions against the state’s right-to-work law but allowed other pieces to continue.
U.S. District Judge Steven Murphy, nominated to the bench by then-President George W. Bush, dismissed the lawsuit’s argument that the right-to-work law is invalid for infringing on federal labor law in a key aspect of the ruling. However, he said the question of whether the other portions of the law that remain subject to litigation are severable remains to be decided.
Unions contended the law’s prohibition on requiring employees working under a collective bargaining agreement to either pay union dues or a non-member agency fee is an attempt to supplement federal regulation of hiring halls, which are regulated under the National Labor Relations Act. The unions contended federal law thus trumped the right-to-work law.
“Albeit a sophisticated argument, it mistakenly presumes that (the right-to-work law) prohibits fees paid during a hiring hall,” Mr. Murphy wrote. “The plaintiffs essentially read (the law) as prohibiting all payments to unions made in the course of obtaining employment. The statute, however, only prohibits payments to unions required as a ‘condition of obtaining … employment.’ … The word ‘condition’ qualifies the rest of the phrase. And because conditions concern job requirements, prerequisites, and qualifications, it would strain the meaning of ‘condition’ to read the statute as embracing rules made by the labor organization running a hiring hall without evidence that the employer required or helped make those rules.”
However, Murphy ruled that another section of the right-to-work law giving workers the right to refrain from the right to organize and collectively bargain did infringe on federal law. Murphy found other similar language in the law designed to protect those choosing to join a union from discrimination as pre-empted by the NLRA.
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