City of Everett employee Xenia Davidsen has appealed to the Washington State Public Employment Relations Commission (PERC), seeking to overturn a previous decision that allowed union and city officials to continue collecting union dues from her paycheck after she had requested the deductions stop. Davidsen is represented by attorneys from the National Right to Work Foundation.
The case centers on Davidsen’s claim that American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union officials and City of Everett staff continued to deduct union dues from her pay after she invoked her rights under the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision. That 2018 ruling established that public employees cannot be required to pay union dues unless they have voluntarily waived their First Amendment rights.
According to the appeal, after Davidsen revoked her authorization for dues deductions in June 2024, the union informed the city that deductions should cease. However, the appeal states that the City of Everett did not act on this instruction because it failed to monitor the designated email address for such communications. As a result, dues were deducted from Davidsen’s paycheck over 14 pay periods, with AFSCME officials accepting these funds on 12 occasions.
Davidsen’s legal brief argues: “On none of those…instances did the Union stop to question why it was accepting dues that it knew were unauthorized to it.” The PERC Hearing Examiner did not find any violation of Washington labor law by the union or the city in this matter.
The appeal also challenges the Hearing Examiner’s reasoning, which cleared the City of Everett of responsibility for not acting on the union’s instructions: “Under the Hearing Officer’s reasoning…[the City of Everett] could indefinitely deduct dues that it has constructive notice it must put a stop to.”
Davidsen contends that each unauthorized deduction should be considered a separate violation under the law, rather than treating her original request as a single event outside the statute of limitations.
National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix commented: “AFSCME union officials believe they should be able to hold onto the hard-earned money of dissenting employees like Ms. Davidsen simply because they and City of Everett officials refuse to correct their own misdeeds. While this certainly shows the contempt that AFSCME officials have for public employees’ First Amendment Janus rights, it’s even more worrying that PERC officials are doing legal gymnastics to let union bosses get away with it.”
Mix added: “Under Janus, union bosses must now convince public sector workers to voluntarily support their agenda, and are not entitled to take – or keep – any money they know was seized without that voluntarism.”
