A Cole County judge ruled in favor of ordering Missouri to collect union dues from corrections officers, clearing the way for workers to sue the state.
“The amount of money that they've lost in union revenue I can imagine was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said attorney Timothy Intessimone of Joplin. “Finding this unconstitutional was step number one in that process.”
In his Oct. 6 opinion, Judge Jon Beetem wrote that refusing to collect dues from members of the Missouri Corrections Officer Association (MCOA) is “unconstitutional, arbitrary, capricious and unreasonable.”
Unions have a right under Missouri law to collect union dues, seek union members and provide union information as part of their First Amendment Right through the Fourteenth Amendment.
“We've long held that it is a protected right,” Intessimone said. “But union-busting has been around for a considerable amount of time in one way, shape, or form in Missouri and everywhere else so I’m not surprised this case came about and not really surprised on how Judge Beetem handed it down.”
As previously reported by the St. Louis Post Dispatch, litigation was lodged after the state had stopped collecting dues from members of the MCOA.
“The union has a strong case civilly to try and get the state of Missouri to pay at least a good portion of it back,” Intessimone told the St. Louis Record.
The state argued in 2019 during negotiations between the Office of Administration and MCOA that corrections officers were no longer a union because their contract had expired, according to media reports.
“Most unions are very political and generally the union provides monetary donations to Democratic candidates and with Governor Parson being a GOP politician, there's a lot of talk that this was done on purpose,” Intessimone said.
The MCOA reportedly closed its headquarters, lost funding as well as staff members, and was unable to pay members hardship benefits.
“All the union groups are very, very wealthy and very able on a nationwide scale to help their smaller individual state groups,” Intessimone added. “So, I think they'll be able to come back from this. With this finding, they can come back and figure out the amount that should have been placed into their funds that weren't and then move for the Office of Administration to provide that, or at least part of that and come back from there.”
Neither the MCOA nor the state has responded to requests for comment.