''Marquez v. Screen Actors Guild Inc.'', 525 U.S. 33 (1998), was a

United States Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

decision involving the validity of a union shop contract.

Background

The petitioner Naomi Marquez is a part-time actress who successfully auditioned for a one-line role in '' Medicine Ball'', a television series produced by Lakeside Productions. Pursuant to the union agreement Lakeside Productions had with the

Screen Actors Guild The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) was an American labor union which represented over 100,000 film and television principal and background performers worldwide. On March 30, 2012, the union leadership announced that the SAG membership voted to m ...

(SAG), Lakeside contacted the SAG to verify that Marquez met the requirements of the union security clause. It turns out that Marquez had previously worked in the motion picture industry for more than 30 days, thus the union security clause was triggered and Marquez was required to pay union fees before she could work at Lakeside. The petitioner tried to negotiate with the

SAG SAG, SAg, or sag may refer to: Land formations * Sag (geology), or ''trough'', a depressed, persistent, low area * Sag pond, a body of water collected in the lowest parts of a depression People * Ivan Sag (1949–2013), American linguist ...

which would allow her to pay the union fees after she completed her work with Lakeside. The negotiations did not result in any compromise. On the day the part was supposed to be filmed, Marquez still had not paid her union dues and fees. Lakeside hired a different actress to fill in the part. At some point afterwards, the

faxed a letter to Lakeside that it had no objections to the petitioner working in the production, but it was too late for filming had already started on schedule with the replacement actress. The petitioner filed a suit against the

and Lakeside claiming that they had breached its duty of fair representation by negotiating and enforcing a union security clause that used language from NLRA § 8(a)(3) but did not include the Court's rulings and explanation of rights in the terms of the agreement to intentionally mislead the workers within the union. At issue was whether a union breaches its duty of fair representation by negotiating a union security clause that uses statutory language without articulating the Court's interpretation of that language.

Opinion of the Court

The Court unanimously denied Marquez's claim.https://www.oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1998/1998_97_1056 The Court said that the statutory language incorporates all the refinements associated with the language, is a shorthand description of the worker's legal rights. The Court explained that if the petitioner's logic was used, there would be no stopping point because all contracts would have to spell out every intricacy of every term in the contract. Contracts would thus become massive, and yet there would be no real benefit from the increase in mass. The Court decided that it was perfectly reasonable for the union to use terms of art in a contract. '' NLRB v. General Motors Corp.'': An employee can satisfy NLRA § 8(a)(3) "membership" condition merely by paying to the union an amount equal to its initiation fees and dues. ''

Communications Workers of America v. Beck ''Communications Workers of America v. Beck'', 487 U.S. 735 (1988), is a decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that, in a union security agreement, unions are authorized by statute to collect from non-members only those fees and ...

'': NLRA § 8(a)(3) does not permit unions to exact fees or dues over the objection of nonmembers for activities that are not germane to collective bargaining, grievance adjustment, or contract administration.

References

{{reflist United States labor case law United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Rehnquist Court Screen Actors Guild Labor relations in the United States 1998 in United States case law