Labor Unions Sue Against Right-To-Work, Ethics Complaint Against Bevin

Robert Kahne

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My Old Kentucky Podcast

7 min readJun 7, 2017

Labor Unions sue to block Right to Work

If you’ve been a long-time MOKP listener, you’ll remember Robert’s Right to Work segment. To put it most simply, it means unions can’t require people to pay dues as a condition of employment. This means there could be two classes of workers — union and non-union — working under the same union agreement, giving non-due paying members the benefit if being in the union. Why is this bad? Well, it can weaken unions because they have less members and less money from dues, making it more difficult to bargain and get good wages, contracts, benefits, etc.
Right to Work was one of the first bills passed in the 2017 session,
Now we have two union groups who have sued to block the legislation (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and Local Teamsters 89)
The complaint named the governor and the labor secretary, Derrick Ramsey, as the defendants
Bevin’s communications director says it’s politically motivated, which sounds like what they say every time he gets sued. Also called it frivolous and said that they are interrupting political momentum for political gain
Still stating that Brady Industries came to Kentucky because of RTW
Union groups believe, however, that the Kentucky Constitution has protections that would prevent “unequal corporate special legislation” and that the law is discriminatory because it treats unions differently than other groups that collect dues
What’s the constitutional argument?
Takings Clause
Takings Clause is part of the 5th Amendment that is near and dear to free market conservatives
Provides that private party should not be taken for public use without just compensation
RTW compels one private party to provide benefits to another private party with no compensation. Opponents believe that right-to-work laws, which permit represented workers to quit their union and stop paying fees while simultaneously obligating that union to continue to spend resources representing them, are an unconstitutional “taking.”
The Takings Clause argument is a federal argument. The Kentucky lawsuit was filed in state court and alleges violations of the Kentucky Constitution, but we also have a takings clause!
RTW requires a union to represent all of a business’ workers in collective bargaining, even those who aren’t members. Unions, whenever possible, insist on provisions in their contracts with management forcing non-members to pay fees for that representation. Unions call these “security clauses.” Suetholz (attorney for labor groups) argues that prohibiting them is the functional equivalent of robbing the union of its property.
Why this argument might not work
The Takings clause usually applies to real property and this argument applies it to workers
Federal law does not require unions to act as an exclusive representative. Thus Right-to-Work laws do not force unions to represent nonmembers free of charge.
7th Circuit rejected the Takings argument
Special legislation clause
Clause forbidding special legislation
This clause lists certain things that the General Assembly cannot pass local or special legislation for
Can’t grant divorces, change names, enforce an invalid will
List of 29 different things
Contains a provision about special acts regulating labor
What makes something special vs. general?
a law that applies to a particular place or especially to a particular member or members of a class of persons or things in the same situation but not to the entire class
Unions are just one group that require dues/membership and they are being treated differently. “Kentucky Farm Bureau, for example, requires everyone with their insurance to pay a yearly membership fee in addition to their insurance premiums. The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and the Kentucky Bar Association are organizations that only provide services to dues paying members. Why then are other organizations besides unions banned from requiring dues/membership fees for their services? The answer, of course, is simple; this legislation was designed solely to target unions, and therefore is in violation of the special legislation clause in the Kentucky Constitution.”
Other RTW suits: Indiana’s was upheld by the 7th Circuit (Not our circuit), West Virginia’s struck down by the trial court), and will be heard by the state supreme court in the fall.

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Bevin’s House Draws Ethics Complaint, Also the Governor Tweets

We’ve talked on the show before about Bevin’s house, but as an update: he bought a house in Anchorage through an LLC. The seller was a man who the Governor placed on the KRS board, and it was later shown that the seller (Neil Ramsey) had invested (and received a tax break for investing) in Neuronetrix, a start-up company that Matt Bevin has said he is the lead investor in. Tom Loftus has been doing the majority of the reporting on this story, for the Courier-Journal.
This week, Common Cause Kentucky (a group that promotes transparency in government) filed an ethics complaint about the governor. Common Cause is led by Richard Beliles, and Andy Beshear pledged to give all the money he received from Tim Longmeyer to that group when it was identified that Longmeyer received kickbacks for raising it.
Andy Beshear, for his part, said “This is pretty simple: a governor can’t buy a mansion from a state contractor for half off and he can’t create a brand new $250,000 job for his best friend. Those are the types of things that aren’t Democrat or Republican, they’re just right or wrong. So there is and continues to be a lot of smoke here.”
I’m not totally sure about the process of formal complaints to the Executive Branch Ethics Commission. There are five members of the commission, three of whom were nominated by Steve Beshear and two of whom were nominated by Matt Bevin. I think what happens is that complaints trigger an investigation by the Commission and then if they believe it is necessary, the Commission can sue government employees.
Beshear is worried that the Ethics Commission will be “co-opted” by the Governor. While the structure is currently 3 Beshear appointees to 2 Bevin appointees, one of the Beshear appointees’ terms ends 3 days before the next meeting.
Governor Bevin has pooh-poohed this whole process as political. He believes that Common Cause is in the tank for Andy Beshear. At a press conference on Friday the 26th, he blasted the complaint and the media for 15 minutes. He said things like “You (the media) are destroying good people and their reputations”. From a story by Ryland Barton of WFPL:
Bevin said that coverage of the deal could have a chilling effect on people who want to work in state government because reporters try to “destroy them, vilify them, smear and slander them.” “People that are making the decisions to actually fix the pension system are the very same people that you’re trying to destroy,” Bevin said. “How do you expect to get men and women with any competence at all to actually serve on boards like the Kentucky Retirement System, to serve in the state legislature?”
Governor Bevin wasn’t done after the press conference, however. He took to twitter and said “A sick man…@TomLoftus_CJ of the @courierjournal was caught sneaking around my home and property..Was removed by state police..#PeepingTom”
The Courier-Journal’s Allison Ross wrote a story about this tweet, which apparently references an occurrence from March, which precipitated this whole story. Loftus apparently went to the house before it was clear who lived there and began asking questions. He said he “never got closer than 20 feet to the house”.
Matt Bevin has faced blowback from many of the newspapers in the state. While he has consistently criticized the Courier-Journal and the Herald-Leader, but has mostly steered clear of criticizing the CNHI properties. However, Ronnie Ellis, the best columnist for those properties, wrote a great column essentially defending journalism and criticizing the Governor’s stance against the media.
This story is the biggest scandal of the Bevin administration now, by far. Matt Bevin is taking the tact of attacking the media. Do you think that will work?

Resources

Malpractice Panels Beginning To Form

The Paducah Sun had an article about the formation of Medical Review Panels, which are new in Kentucky after the passage of SB 4.
The chief sponsor of this legislation, Danny Carroll, is from Paducah.
If you remember, Jazmin did an episode about Torts, which you should listen to.
Med Mal verdicts on the decline,
Med Mal makes up 2% of nation’s healthcare costs
If done poorly, these panels could run afoul of the 7th amendment.
These panels will include three lawyers, and any member of the bar can apply at the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services. Lawyers will be compensated $250 a day, with a maximum of $2000 per case.
The panels review whether or not “standard of care” was breached in civil suits against health care providers. They can render one of three opinions, which are “standard of care WAS breached”, “standard of care WAS NOT breached”, and “standard of care was breached, but this was not the proximate cause of injury”.
The panel’s opinion is permissible in court, but not binding. So…what’s the point? Good question.

Resources

http://www.paducahsun.com/news/local/053017_PS_Medical-review-panel-2863791

Quick Hits

Jim Bunning, former US Representative and US Senator from Northern Kentucky, died this week. He was also a hall of fame MLB pitcher who once threw a no-hitter on Father’s Day.
Amal Thapar, the judge from Kentucky who President Trump nominated to be on the US Court of Appeals, was confirmed by the Senate on a 52–48 party line vote.
A “wildcat strike” occurred at the Omni Hotel construction site last week when about 100 non-union laborers, mostly immigrants, walked off their jobs hanging drywall. They were being paid about $24 an hour, while other union workers were being paid about $45 an hour. They had been told the repeal of the prevailing wage law prevented them from being paid, but that is not the case. They eventually returned to work and many stated they were seeking union represetntation.
Kentucky set a record for promised investment this year, with $5.8 billion being pledged to projects across the state. This was the actual purpose of the governor’s press conference on Friday. The Governor credits the right-to-work law passed this year, but we think the story is more complicated than that. Regardless of the cause of the investment, however, we all hope that all the promised investment comes to fruition.
We had the first bill of the 2018 session prefiled this week. John Schnickel and Sal Santoro, Republicans from Boone County, filed a resolution seeking to honor school bus drivers in the month of May.

Labor Unions Sue Against Right-To-Work, Ethics Complaint Against Bevin

Written by Robert Kahne