The Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC) filed a lawsuit today on behalf of Marcus Todd, a Minnesota Direct Care and Treatment employee, alleging that AFSCME Council 5 forged his signature on a union membership card and relied on that forgery to take part of his wages for nearly a year.
The complaint, filed in Nicollet County District Court, asserts claims for civil theft, unjust enrichment, and tortious interference with contractual relations. Mr. Todd seeks repayment of unlawfully deducted wages and punitive damages.
When Mr. Todd started working as a security counselor at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program in St. Peter in 2014, the law gave him no choice but to pay over part of each paycheck to the union: he could either join the union and pay dues, or decline to join and be required to pay almost the same amount as a so-called “fair share” fee. Faced with that choice, Mr. Todd reluctantly joined the union. In 2018, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that government employees cannot be required to pay “fair share” fees to unions like this. Mr. Todd decided he wanted out and told the union he was resigning. That’s when he discovered that Council 5 or one of its agents allegedly forged a 2018 membership card imposing restrictive resignation terms not found in Mr. Todd’s original agreement.
So when Mr. Todd attempted to resign his union membership, Council 5 informed him that dues deductions would continue until May 2021 based on the allegedly forged authorization. Although Mr. Todd repeatedly objected and showed the union evidence that the signature was not his, the complaint alleges the union continued collecting dues until April 27, 2021.
“This case is about accountability,” said Doug Seaton, President of UMLC. “If a union takes a worker’s wages based on a document he never signed and refuses to stop even after being notified, that conduct violates basic principles of law.”
Click here to view the complaint.
