Katrina Vandervee says working with high schoolers as a paraprofessional is a calling.
She said her interaction with a union has turned her dream into a nightmare. Now, she hopes the courts can make her dream come true again.
Vanderveer has worked at Pike-Delta-York High School in Northwest Ohio’s Pike-Delta-York Local School District for the past three years. However, by June 2024, she had had enough with the union and informed it via a letter that she was immediately quitting.
She demanded that the union cease deducting dues from her paycheck.
However, according to the Columbus-based Buckeye Institute, a free-market public policy think tank representing Vanderveer in a lawsuit, the union declined to do so. Instead, the union informed her that her “opt-out window” to stop the dues deductions started on Oct. 4, 2024.
That day, Vanderveer sent a follow-up letter as the union told her to do. However, the union continued deducting dues from her paycheck.
Vanderveer called and emailed; she sent additional letters on Nov. 12 and Dec. 9. The union’s response prompted Vanderveer to question whether it was intentionally prolonging the process.
Now, she’s taking them to court, demanding that the Ohio Association of Public School Employees (OAPSE) stop deducting money. She also wants the union to return what it has deducted since June 2024.
The Buckeye Institute is asking the court to order the unions to stop deducting money from Vanderveer’s paycheck.
“In yet another case, the Ohio Association of Public School Employees has refused to stop taking ‘dues’ out of our client’s paycheck,” Jay R. Carson, senior litigator at The Buckeye Institute and an attorney representing Vanderveer, said in a release. “As in our other cases, The Buckeye Institute is asking the court to order the government union to stop its illegal wage theft.”
The group filed a lawsuit in the Fulton County Court of Common Pleas on behalf of Vanderveer. It is the fourth such lawsuit the group has filed.
https://twitter.com/TheBuckeyeInst/status/1914760237640569004
In the lawsuit, Vanderveer and the Buckeye Institute cite Janus v. AFSCME, a 2018 Supreme Court ruling. In the decision, justices ruled that limiting the window to stop paying mandatory union dues is an illegal restriction on First Amendment rights.
They also want OAPSE to refund money taken from Vanderveer after she quit the union, award Vanderveer costs and attorneys’ fees, and decide if Ohio courts or the State Employment Relations Board, which is named as a defendant in the lawsuit, have jurisdiction in dispute cases involving union contracts.
In another case filed earlier this year, the Buckeye Institute represented a school custodian who claimed a school union continued to deduct dues from his paycheck even after the employee quit the union because, in part, he objected to its “political advocacy.”
Matthew Sheldon of Carrollton, backed by the Buckeye Institute, is suing the union, demanding it stop “illegal wage theft.”
Sheldon works as a custodian for Carrollton Exempted Village Schools, which has employed him for nearly 10 years. Sheldon signed a dues-deduction authorization card in August 2016. In December 2023, he quit the Ohio Association of Public School Employees/American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 541.
When he quit, Sheldon told the union to stop taking money from his paycheck. The union briefly obliged and stopped deducting dues in April 2024 and May 2024.
However, it resumed taking wages from his paycheck in May 2024 “while at the same time not providing services beyond those … the law requires to all members of the bargaining unit, regardless of their membership status,” according to the lawsuit.
The case is currently pending before the Carroll County Court of Common Pleas.
