FAIRMONT – The National Labor Relations Board says a Teamsters local union imposed a discriminatory pay arrangement on healthcare workers at the Tygart Center.
The NLRB issued the amended complaint against Teamsters Local 175 earlier this week to prosecute the union and require it to reimburse employees who claim they were denied extra pay under an arrangement that saw union stewards get paid more per hour than other employees. The complaint seeks a ruling from an NLRB Administrative Law Judge.
In the original complaint filed in December, Donna Harper made the claim against the Teamsters local. It said the Tygart Center at Fairmont Campus agreed to this discriminatory pay arrangement in the union bargaining agreement.
In June, the NLRB Region 6 issued a complaint on this issue and now has amended its complaint to ask for a more complete remedy. The complaint now “seeks an order requiring payment to the unit employees of the amount equal to the additional monetary benefit paid to” shop stewards under the policy.
NLRB Region 6’s complaint now incorporates a remedy requested by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys in a separate case against the Tygart Center for the role it played in the scheme. In the NLRB-imposed settlement in that case, Tygart Center officials agreed to only stop paying Teamsters union stewards more per hour than other employees going forward. Foundation attorneys had argued that employees should have gotten compensation for the difference in pay in the past created by the illegal scheme because it “denied a benefit to every employee who was not a Union steward.”
Teamsters Local 175 Secretary-Treasurer Luke Farley told The West Virginia Record the language in the contract is old, from several contracts ago. He also said a grandfather clause was added in 2016 and that the company has stopped paying the shop stewards the extra quarter already.
"The basis of that language has been around for a long time," Farley said. "It's not as if it's some sort of scheme. Every member had the right to vote on it or to delete that language, including Donna Harper. And no one ever did.
"We don't agree with the remedy proposed by the labor board, and all of the national Right To Work complaint has done is take money away from hard-working members. But, we will abide by the ruling of the board, whatever that decision is."
The case against the Teamsters will now be tried before an NLRB Administrative Law Judge. The hearing is scheduled for January.
Foundation staff attorneys also filed an amicus brief for Harper in the legal battle to overturn West Virginia’s Right to Work law. Under a Right to Work law, no private or public sector employee can be forced to fund union activities as a condition of getting or keeping a job. This protection was unanimously upheld in April by the state Supreme Court.
“Ms. Harper stood up against a blatantly discriminatory policy enforced by her employer at the behest of Teamsters union bosses, and this amended complaint puts her one step closer to ensuring her and other Tygart Center employees’ rights are vindicated,” National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix said. “That Teamsters bosses were willing to impose a scheme so clearly illegal demonstrates how out of touch they are with the rank-and-file workers they claim to represent, and how accustomed they had become to an environment where workers had to financially support them or be fired.
“Fortunately, because Mountain State workers now have the protection of Right to Work, West Virginia union bosses have to secure the voluntary support of workers instead of being allowed to threaten workers to pay up or be fired.”
In Harper’s lawsuit filed Dec. 17 in Marion Circuit Court, she claimed Chauffeurs, Teamsters & Helpers Local Union No. 175 and 1539 Country Club Road Operations LLC, which is doing business as Tygart Center at Fairmont Campus, violated her legal rights by demanding she join the union and pay union dues and fees to keep her job.
“Teamsters union bosses demonstrated a blatant disregard for the law by illegally demanding Ms. Harper and her coworkers pay union dues and fees just to get or keep their jobs,” Mix said then. “Contrary to Big Labor’s wishes, West Virginia’s Right to Work law is in full effect, meaning all union dues for workers covered by the law must be completely voluntary.”
Harper, who worked for the Tygart Center from February 2018 until September, claims she was informed when she began employment as a laundry aide and certified nursing assistant that she was required to join the union and her dues would be removed from her paycheck. Harper had previously worked for Tygart Center until November 2017.
The plaintiff sent a letter Feb. 4 to the union resigning her membership and revoking her dues checkoff authorization but received another letter two weeks later that the West Virginia Workplace Freedom Act was not applicable to her, but that she could elect non-member status if she sent a second letter reaffirming her resignation and refused to revoke her dues checkoff authorization, according to the suit.
Harper claims she sent a second letter March 14 reaffirming her resignation and, again, revoking her checkoff, however, despite resigning from the union, the Tygart Center continued to deduce full dues from her paychecks.
She claims the union told her in September that it could enforce the union security clause in her contract and require her to pay core fees because the contract was ratified before the right-to-work law was a valid law.
The union returned a total of $135 to Harper, which was not even half of what the union owed her, according to the suit. Her last day of employment with Tygart Center was Sept. 24. She claims her final checks still had union dues removed from them.
Harper is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. She is represented by Matthew B. Gilliam of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
Marion Circuit Court case number: 19-C-233