Opinion ID: 3013270
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Multi-occupational representation

Text: In addition to providing services to education professionals, PSEA’s affiliated local associations also provide collective-bargaining-related services to healthcare professionals. When PSEA calculates the expenses chargeable to fair-share payers, it does not allocate chargeable costs by profession. Rather, it includes as part of fair-share fees the expenses incurred on behalf of all represented employees, i.e., educators and healthcare professionals. Plaintiffs argue that the First Amendment bars PSEA from passing onto them costs incurred on behalf of healthcare professionals because PSEA has not shown that those costs “may ultimately inure to [their education unit’s] benefit . . . by virtue of [its] membership in [PSEA].” Lehnert, 500 U.S. at 524. The District Court granted summary judgment in favor of the Unions, holding that the plaintiffs failed to allege facts suggesting that any of the three Lehnert requirements were not satisfied (to repeat, that the expenditures are not “ ‘germane’ to collective-bargaining activity,” not “justified by the government’s vital policy interest in labor peace and avoiding ‘free riders,’ ” or that they “significantly add to the burdening of free speech that is inherent in the allowance of an agency or union shop”). In so doing, the District Court improperly placed the burden of proof on the plaintiffs when it belonged on the Unions. As Lehnert points out, “[t]he union [bore] the burden of proving the proportion of chargeable expenses to total expenses.” Id. Because plaintiffs do not challenge any particular expenditures, we evaluate, as a matter of law, whether PSEA may pool costs across occupational groups. We answer this question affirmatively. As discussed above, Lehnert held that “a local bargaining representative may charge objecting employees for their pro rata share of the costs associated with otherwise chargeable activities of its state and national affiliates, even if those activities were not performed for the direct benefit of the objecting employees’ 21 bargaining unit,” so long as there is “some indication that the payment is for services that may ultimately inure to the benefit of the members of the local union by virtue of their membership in the parent organization.” Id. In our case, the pooling arrangement confers potential benefits on the plaintiffs. First, the arrangement generates economies of scale that redound to their benefit. Second, by spreading the costs of otherwise-chargeable expenses over a pool of employees whose chargeable-expense levels are not perfectly correlated with their own (i.e., healthcare professionals as well as education professionals), education professionals reduce their risk of being assessed unusually high chargeable expenses in any given year. Moreover, this pooling arrangement does not necessarily increase the dollar amount of chargeable expenses assessed to plaintiffs for any particular year. Just as education professionals are assessed for healthcare professionals’ chargeable expenses, so too healthcare professionals are assessed for education professionals’ chargeable expenses. As PSEA correctly points out, this arrangement may result in lower fair-share fees than would have been assessed in the absence of such an arrangement. We also note that the Lehnert Court did not limit its holding only to bargaining units within the same industry, or within related industries. Instead, it stated a broad principle: “that part of a local’s affiliation fee which contributes to the pool of resources potentially available to the local is assessed for the bargaining unit’s protection, even if it is not actually expended on that unit in any particular membership year.” Id. at 523. Though this reasoning was not that employed by the District Court, it nonetheless supports its ultimate grant of summary judgment to the Unions.16