UNION UNFAIR PRACTICES;RESTRAINT, COERCION, INTERFERENCE OR DISCRIMINATION – Union Rules and Discipline in General; Union Dues and Fees; Fines, Assessments, Etc.

Single Topic for Decision 2277M

View all topics for Decision 2277M

Full Decision Text (click on the link to view): Full Text

The Board has held that an employee organization may suspend membership for conduct that attempts to thwart the fundamental objectives of the employee organization because a member has an inherent duty of loyalty and such conduct breaches that duty; the Board has drawn a line between life-threatening activities for which a member may reasonably be suspended from membership and other dissident activities that merely challenge a union’s leadership for which a member may not be reasonably suspended from membership; while employees in a bargaining unit are within their rights to refrain from joining or participating in an employee organization, an employee organization is within its right to take defensive action through disciplinary proceedings against members who actively work to harm the employee’s fiscal and other interests; where charging party advocated as a shop steward that members drop their union membership and become agency fee payers, such conduct threatened the existence of the union and was of sufficient seriousness to justify a self-protective response by the union of suspending charging party’s membership for two years.