A Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department employee filed suit against a government labor union last week, an organization that he once served as vice president.
Michael Craine, a helicopter mechanic, alleged in his complaint that the American Federation of County, State, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 19 refused to honor his request to opt-out of the union based on a membership card he signed in the 1990s. Craine has worked in the department for 22 years.
“He was dissatisfied with the representation the union was giving him for a long, long time to the point where he even ran for and served as actual management in his local for a number of years, trying to turn it around before realizing that the union was more interested in basically using members' money for politics than they were with actually representing them in collective bargaining,” said Timothy R. Snowball, an attorney with the Freedom Foundation, which is providing Craine with pro bono representation.
The lawsuit was filed in the Central District of California and is currently pending before District Judge Dale Susan Fischer.
Defendants include AFSCME Local 119, Los Angeles County, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
“The breaking point for him came last fall when employees were being fired by the County of Los Angeles for refusing to get a mandatory COVID vaccination,” Snowball told the Southern California Record. “The union could have come out and said that they were for or against it but instead the union was silent and took no position on it whatsoever.”
The union contacted Craine after the federal complaint was filed on May 17, agreeing to let him out of the union, stop the deductions, and issue a check for some $400, according to a Freedom Foundation press release.
“What happens next is in two or three days, Mike Craine is going to get his next paycheck,” Snowball said. “If they take the money out of his paycheck after representing to the court that they weren't going to do that, I think potentially we are going to have to file a second application for a temporary restraining order.”
Fischer denied the Freedom Foundation’s first application for an injunction.
"The point here is that the union could have done the right thing at any time," Snowball added. "When he originally requested to get out, the union simply could have effectuated the card that he signed with them in the 1990s, let him out, but they decided not to. They decided to just string him along like they do employees all the time and not do anything until he sued them and filed a temporary restraining order in federal court."