This week, Freedom Foundation attorneys successfully forced her union to release Queen George from membership and fully reimburse dues wrongfully taken from her.

A clerical associate in New York City’s Office of Child Support Services (OCSS), George’s repeated attempts to exercise her constitutional right to refuse to pay for a union’s politics were, for seven months, greeted with stony silence by American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 37, Local 1549.

In 2017, George signed a membership and dues authorization that allowed her to end her membership and authorization at any time provided she inform both the union and her employer.

On June 6, 2022, she did just that.

But Local 1549, under the authority of state law and with the direct aid of OCSS, continued to compel her membership and financial support for the union’s political speech for seven additional months, violating her First Amendment free speech and free association rights, as well as her Fourteenth Amendment rights to due process.

Instead, Local 1549 expected George to:

• Notify her employer and union that she no longer authorized deductions and political spending using her money and ask for a copy of her union agreement.
• Receive no acknowledgement or response back from either.
• Visit her payroll department.
• Be told: “We have nothing to do with union issues. We just follow whatever the union tells us to do.”
• Contact the union directly.
• Be informed that the union never received her letter, and even if it had, it would “throw it right in the trash because it was not notarized.”
• Retain a lawyer.
• Ask her lawyer to write a demand letter to the union, requesting she be released and that her improperly seized dues be refunded.
• Receive no response back from the union.
• Ask her lawyer to write a second letter just to attempt to get a copy of her union agreement.
• Again, receive no response back from the union.
• Ask her lawyer to call the union.
• Be told by a representative of Local 1549 it has “no idea what the membership cards say,” because they were retained by AFSCME, Council 37’s Membership Records Department.
• Be told by Membership Records it is not allowed to release membership and dues deduction authorizations without the approval of the union’s legal counsel.
• Be told by the union legal counsel representative that Local 1549 should have had a copy of the membership agreement and, in any event, Membership Records did not need the legal department’s approval in order to release it.
• Get transferred back to Local 1549 and again told it does not have a copy of the card.
• Once back on the line with the same representative in the legal department, be informed that the only option to secure a copy of a membership and dues deduction authorization is to subpoena a copy.

And on, and on, and on. Apparently, Local 1549 and Council 37 are unclear on who even retains copies of members’ cards, let alone when they can be released.

Obviously, this “process” falls far short of the notice, opportunity and access to a neutral third party required by the Fourteenth Amendment, which at its most bare bones requires something rather than the nothing provided to Queen George.

Unions routinely impose undue burdens on employees’ rights to opt out of membership and cease paying dues, but even by union standards hers is an extreme case.

Only after seven months of being ignored by the union, and the frustrating back and forth, including going to the length of having to get a lawyer, was George finally released from Local 1549 and given a $700 refund ¾ money the union took (and spent on politics) without her consent.

Unfortunately, given the immense power given them by state laws, including in both New York and California, this kind of union malfeasance has become all too common, and can only be overcome by the persistent and aggressive work of Freedom Foundation.