State Employee Commission Rubber Stamps Union Boss Retaliation Against Employee Who Won Case against Union

Case highlights need to roll back union boss powers in the Garden State

Trenton, NJ (May 10, 2011) – Despite his previous legal successes, a New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) employee is learning firsthand how difficult it is to obtain justice in the face of union retaliation.

With free legal assistance from the National Right to Work Foundation, DEP employee Gary Lipsius filed charges against the DEP for reversing a promotion and pay raise allegedly in retaliation for his previous filing of a successful lawsuit against Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 1034 union bosses and the agency.

Lipsius successfully challenged the illegal deduction of compulsory dues from the paychecks of thousands of nonunion New Jersey employees in a 2004 class-action lawsuit against the CWA union. With free legal aid from the Foundation, Lipsius and two of his colleagues charged the CWA union with collecting compulsory dues for non-chargeable activities, such as politics, without properly disclosing the union’s expenditures. The suit forced CWA union officials to cease and desist their illegal actions.

Lipsius’ unfair labor practice charges against the DEP – which prompted the New Jersey Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC) to investigate and conduct a trial – sought back pay and a reinstatement of his raise and promotion. According to records provided by the New Jersey Department of Personnel, none of the approximately 440 other promotion requests between July 28, 2001 and June 25, 2005 – which were all initiated by the CWA union, the employee, or both – receiving consideration were denied.

However, the PERC failed to substantiate Lupsius’s claim despite his earlier legal successes in the case. Lipsius and Foundation attorneys are now considering their options on how to proceed with the case.

"CWA union officials made an example of Gary Lipsius to intimidate New Jersey public employees that refuse to toe the union line,” said Patrick Semmens, legal information director at the National Right to Work Foundation. “Such union boss thuggery is not only illegal, but it demonstrates the need for New Jersey to end union boss powers that grant union officials control over workers who want nothing to do with the union."

"Only then will independent-minded public workers be freed from union boss intimidation and retaliation for exercising their rights."