Kidwell v. Transportation Com. Intern. Union

• Decision Date: 27 February 1990
• Docket Number: Civ. No. PN-85-3804.
• Citation: 731 F. Supp. 192
• Parties: Kathryn A. KIDWELL, et al. v. TRANSPORTATION COMMUNICATIONS INTERNATIONAL UNION, et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

731 F. Supp. 192

Kathryn A. KIDWELL, et al. v. TRANSPORTATION COMMUNICATIONS INTERNATIONAL UNION, et al.

Civ. No. PN-85-3804.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

February 27, 1990.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Milton L. Chappell, Silver Spring, Md., and Hugh L. Reilly, Nat. Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, Springfield, Va., for plaintiffs.

Edgar N. James, John J. Sullivan and Michael G. Dzialo, Guerrieri, Edmond & James, Washington, D.C., and Mitchell M. Kraus, Gen. Counsel, Transp. Communications Intern. Union, Rockville, Md., for defendants.

OPINION

NIEMEYER, District Judge.

The four plaintiffs, who are or have been railroad employees and who purport to represent others similarly situated, have sued the Transportation Communications International Union and two of its locals (collectively "the TCU" or "the Union"), complaining about the Union's expenditure of dues for purposes unrelated to collective bargaining and its method of reducing dues to nonunion employees. The TCU is the collective bargaining representative under an agency shop relationship authorized by the Railway Labor Act, which permits railroad employees to be union members or not, but requires that all employees pay for the costs of collective bargaining. 45 U.S.C. § 152, Eleventh.

One plaintiff, Kathryn Kidwell, is a member of the Union and has objected on First Amendment grounds to the Union's expenditure of her dues on expenses unrelated to collective bargaining. The other three plaintiffs, Michael Coffman, Helen Eades, and Ramona Ellis, are not members of the Union, although Eades was a union member until she retired in 1988. All plaintiffs challenge the methods used by the Union to account for and return dues that are attributable to expenditures unrelated to collective bargaining.

The parties have filed cross motions for summary judgment based on the record developed by discovery and have thoroughly re-briefed the issues in the light of Supreme Court cases that were decided since this action was filed.

For the reasons that are given hereafter, the Court concludes that the Union's use of Kidwell's dues over her objection for political or ideological purposes improperly infringes on her statutory and First Amendment rights. Her objection to the use of dues for other purposes unrelated to collective bargaining must be sustained as contrary to the Railway Labor Act. The remaining claims of the nonunion plaintiffs, challenging the method by which the Union accounts to them for expenditures unrelated to collective bargaining costs, are rejected seriatim on the merits or as moot.

I. UNION-MEMBER DEMANDS FOR DUES REDUCTION

Kidwell, who is a member of the TCU, objects to having her union dues used for any purpose unrelated to collective bargaining. She demands the same reduction in dues that is afforded to nonunion employees of the railroad who object to the expenditure of dues by the Union for political causes. She works under a collective bargaining agreement negotiated between her employer, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, and her bargaining representative, the Conrail System Board of Adjustment No. 86 of the TCU. This agreement provides for an agency shop, which is a variation of the union shop arrangement permitted by the Railway Labor Act. Under an agency shop arrangement, all employees are required, as a condition of employment, to pay an initiation fee and dues to the union, but they need not actually become union members.

For the years 1985-88, Kidwell objected to the use of her money for purposes other than collective bargaining, and the TCU granted her a reduction on the same basis as was granted to nonunion members. In 1989, however, the TCU modified its constitution to prohibit the reduction to union members. With the change, an employee can object only if he or she gives up union membership.

Kidwell is unwilling to resign from the Union and continues to object to its use of her dues for purposes unrelated to collective bargaining. She contends that she is illegally presented with a dilemma. On the one hand, she can join the Union and be required to support political causes to which she is opposed, and on the other, she can withdraw from the Union to preserve her First Amendment rights, but forego the rights of union members to participate in shaping the terms and conditions of her employment. Cf. Comment, The Regulation of Union Political Activity: Majority and Minority Rights and Remedies, 126 U.Pa.L.Rev. 386, 419-20 (1977) (discussing analogous situation under the NLRA).

In 1951 Congress amended the Railway Labor Act to add § 2, Eleventh, which authorizes a union shop. 45 U.S.C. § 152, Eleventh. That provision provides in essential part that a labor organization authorized to represent employees is permitted "to make agreements, requiring, as a condition of continued employment that ... all employees shall become members of the labor organization representing their craft or class." This authorization is subject to the requirement that union membership not be discriminatory and that termination not be permitted except for "the failure of the employee to tender the periodic dues, initiation fees, and assessments (not including fines and penalties) uniformly required as a condition of acquiring or retaining membership." 45 U.S.C. § 152, Eleventh(a).

Confronted with the constitutionality of this union shop provision in Railway Employes' Dept. v. Hanson, 351 U.S. 225, 76 S.Ct. 714, 100 L.Ed. 1112 (1956), the Supreme Court acknowledged that the adoption by Congress of an act that establishes exclusive representation of employees in a craft or class by a single union and that permits the union to enter into an agreement for a union shop is governmental action which would be restricted by the First Amendment. The Court stated:

If private rights are being invaded, it is by force of an agreement made pursuant to federal law which expressly declares that state law is superseded. In other words, the federal statute is the source of the power and authority by which any private rights are lost or sacrificed. The enactment of the federal statute authorizing union shop agreements is the governmental action on which the Constitution operates, though it takes a private agreement to invoke the federal sanction.

Id. at 232, 76 S.Ct. at 1798 (citations omitted). See also Abood v. Detroit Bd. of Educ., 431 U.S. 209, 226, 97 S.Ct. 1782, 1794, 52 L.Ed.2d 261 (1977) (RLA authorization of union shop is governmental action); International Ass'n of Machinists v. Street, 367 U.S. 740, 760, 81 S.Ct. 1784, 1795, 6 L.Ed.2d 1141 (1961) (Congress gave unions a role in effecting congressional policy).

Addressing the argument on the merits that a union shop agreement forces members into ideological and political associations that violate the Bill of Rights, the Court in Hanson concluded that it was within the power of Congress, in the exercise of its right to regulate commerce, to permit a union shop "as a stabilizing force." Hanson, 351 U.S. at 233, 76 S.Ct. at 1798. The Court noted that the Railway Labor Act, as amended in 1951, permissibly requires beneficiaries of trade unionism to contribute to the costs of collective bargaining. Id. at 233-35, 76 S.Ct. at 1798-99. "No more has been attempted here." Id. at 235, 76 S.Ct. at 1799. On that narrow basis, the Court in Hanson rejected the constitutional challenge. If, however, an employee had been required to contribute to costs beyond those related to collective bargaining, the result could well have been different. This issue was expressly left open by the Court.

The financial support required relates, therefore, to the work of the union in the realm of collective bargaining. No more precise allocation of union overhead to individual members seems to us to be necessary. The prohibition of "fines and penalties" precludes the imposition of financial burdens for disciplinary purposes. If "assessments" are in fact imposed for purposes not germane to collective bargaining, a different problem would be presented.

Id. (emphasis added) (footnote omitted).

The problem left open in Hanson was squarely presented in International Ass'n of Machinists v. Street, 367 U.S. 740, 81 S.Ct. 1784, 6 L.Ed.2d 1141 (1961), where employees of a railroad, who were represented by a machinist union by virtue of a union shop agreement entered into under the authority of the Railway Labor Act, objected to the use by the union of fees to finance campaigns of candidates for public office to whom the employees were opposed. Recognizing that the record in Street was fully adequate to test the constitutional question left open by Hanson, the Court nevertheless did not reach the constitutional issue. Rather, by relying on the legislative history of the Railway Labor Act, the Court concluded that the Act itself did not authorize the expenditures by the unions of monies on political causes because they were unrelated to collective bargaining.

The conclusion to which this history of the Railway Labor Act clearly points is that § 2, Eleventh contemplated compulsory unionism to force employees to share the costs of negotiating and administering collective bargaining agreements, and the costs of the adjustment and settlement of disputes. One looks in vain for any suggestion that Congress also meant in § 2, Eleventh, to provide the unions with a means for forcing employees, over their objection, to support political causes which they oppose.

Id. at 763-64, 81 S.Ct. at 1797 (footnote omitted). Although the statute does not explicitly prohibit the expenditure by unions of expenses to support political causes, the Court concluded that that was clearly the intent of Congress. The Court did not hold that unions could not engage in political action, but more narrowly, that it could not spend the "exacted money" of a dissenting employee. As the Court summarized:

Our construction therefore involves no curtailment of

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