There are few certainties in life. Death, taxes and, of course, unions protecting their political coffers over employees’ interests.

Seven school bus drivers and cafeteria workers in rural Southington, Ohio, recently got a practical application of this maxim when they stood up to their union and finally emerged victorious. But not without a few handsome battle scars for their trouble. 

The Ohio Association of Public School Employees AFSCME Local 4/Local 673 (OAPSE) had negotiated into its collective bargaining agreement with the school district (CBA) a provision calling for the one-time distribution of $8,000 to a bargaining unit of employees consisting of bus drivers and cafeteria workers. This compensation (funded by the taxpayers through the district) was to be distributed to the employees according to work they had performed outside of normal working hours.

The problem with the CBA provision, however, was that the district tasked OAPSE with fairly distributing the money. 

Fox, meet henhouse. 

Instead of distributing the dollars fairly to the entire bargaining unit, OAPSE simply wrote checks to each of its members while ignoring employees who were otherwise qualified for the bonus except that they had exercised their First Amendment rights by declining to participate in or pay dues to the union.

The catch is, under Ohio law OAPSE cannot restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights, which include the right to resign union membership and remain non-union employees. Thus, by excluding nonmembers from the bonus pool, OAPSE committed an unfair labor practice under Ohio law. 

It motives were obvious. Unions want as many members as possible because increased rolls mean increased dues revenue and, in turn, a greater capacity to push their radical political ideology locally, regionally and nationally.

Because free-thinking individuals who refuse to be pawns in this high-stakes game don’t fit the narrative, we’ve seen unions across the country do their best to intimidate, deceive and coerce employees into funding their political coffers. 

But some employees fight back. 

The seven non-union employees contacted the Freedom Foundation for assistance and its attorneys promptly sent a letter to OAPSE asking an amicable solution to the case was possible without litigation. However, OAPSE rebuffed this olive branch in the most union of ways – by ignoring it.

That’s right, OAPSE had so little respect for non-union employees that it refused to even acknowledge their existence. 

The employees were left with little choice but to file an unfair labor practice complaint with the Ohio State Employment Relations Board (SERB). And the agency’s subsequent demand for a response couldn’t just be brushed aside.

Not that the union conceded the point or agreed to pay the workers, you understand. Instead, OAPSE made an attempt to justify its discrimination so weak even SERB didn’t buy it.

The employees countered by submitting evidence so overwhelming that even an administrative agency typically sympathetic to unions had to acknowledge the obvious.

SERB encouraged OAPSE to mediate – which ended up being a complete waste of time because OAPSE had no interest in distributing a single penny to the non-union employees. 

Left with no other option, SERB ruled that probable cause existed to believe OAPSE committed an unfair labor practice. OAPSE would be forced to defend itself at a hearing. Now OAPSE really could not ignore the employees. 

Finally, as the hearing date neared and more than a year after Freedom Foundation attorneys had sought an amicable resolution prior to litigation, OAPSE became interested in settling the case – not because it genuinely respected the employees it discriminated against, but because it recognized SERB was poised to issue a ruling that could be used as precedent against its ruthless activities in the future.  

Days before the hearing, OAPSE finally agreed to settle the case, rightly paying the employees what they had earned. In the meantime, OAPSE’s stubbornness ended up costing it a lot of money it could have saved had it done the right thing in the first place.

But OAPSE miscalculated. These employees were not going away, and neither was the Freedom Foundation. 

The seven non-union employees spent over a year fighting OAPSE tooth and nail to simply be treated fairly. For these employees, it was about principle, not politics. But for unions, it’s always about politics. It’s always about power. 

And the Freedom Foundation will always be there to defend employees.