(The Center Square) – Las Vegas food service worker Rebecca Swank has filed federal charges against the local culinary workers union, claiming union dues were taken from her paycheck against her will.
Swank, who primarily works at the Las Vegas Convention Center, will go up against her employer, foodservice provider Sodexo and the Culinary Workers Union Local 226. The allegations came only days after the high-profile casinos of the Las Vegas Strip unionized for the first time in the city’s history.
“Culinary Union officials have been very abrasive in our workplace and have been ineffective in standing up for our interests,” said Swank in a National Right to Work press release. “But now they’re doing something full-on illegal by stopping me from exercising my right under Nevada’s Right to Work law to stop financially supporting them.”
As is the case in about half of U.S. states, Nevada unions are not allowed to agree in contracts to require nonmember contributions for union costs under the state’s Right to Work law. In Nevada, even with the new union deal on the Las Vegas Strip, unions like the Culinary Workers are not allowed to make non-union workers help pay their costs of union representation.
But Swank said Local 226 acted otherwise.
She “submitted two written letters to the Union in which she resigned her union membership and revoked any dues check-off authorization she may have signed,” read the charges filed with the National Labor Relations Board. Swank is claiming the union did not accept her requests and continued to take the funds.
“These claims are false, and we are confident the facts will show our actions were lawful and that we will prevail,” said Ted Pappageorge, the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 secretary-treasurer, in a statement. “The real story here is that anti-union organizations, including the National Right to Work Foundation, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and right-wing ideologues like the Fertitta brothers, who own Station Casinos, will continuously try to deny workers’ rights and ability to join a union.”
Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, said it’s “culinary union bosses” who are have “a track record of ignoring and trampling basic employee rights, simply to gain more power over the workers that they claim to ‘represent.'”
The foundation agreed to cover Swank’s legal fees.
“Unfortunately, it’s unsurprising that independent-minded workers seek to exercise their Right to Work freedom to stop all financial support for this union,” Mix said. “Culinary Union officials’ refusal to respect the exercise of basic rights is clearly at odds with both state and federal law, and our attorneys will defend Ms. Swank’s freedom of choice.”
The case has not yet been ruled on.
