A UC Davis Medical Center worker is suing his union, saying AFSCME 3299 made it difficult for him to leave and is still charging him fees.

Terrance Marsh, a brain scan specialist at the Sacramento hospital, left the union in February after four months of trying, according to a legal complaint filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

Once he managed to leave, the union informed him he would have to pay a “service” fee equal to his membership dues, according to the complaint. The UC system is still collecting the fee despite his repeated efforts to stop paying it, the complaint says.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its Janus vs. AFSCME decision in June 2018 that public employee unions may not charge fees to non-members, determining the involuntary fees violate workers’ First Amendment rights.

Previously, public employee unions were allowed to charge so-called fair share fees to nonmembers who benefited from contracts and workplace representation.

The Freedom Foundation, a libertarian think tank based in Washington state, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Marsh and six other plaintiffs who work in the UC system.

The foundation is supported wealthy conservative donors and has been canvassing job sites to tell workers they can leave their unions. The group has filed six other lawsuits against unions in California in the last year and a half.

AFSCME spokesman Todd Stenhouse didn’t respond to a question about the fees. In a statement, he said the union represents 26,000 of the lowest-paid employees in the UC system.

“No serious person believes that these wealthy ideological extremists are actually interested in helping the workers we represent win better pay, benefits or more job security,” Stenhouse said of the Freedom Foundation. “Instead, this lawsuit seeks only to expand power for the wealthy and undermine unions at the expense of the most vulnerable workers in our economy.”

The legal complaint describes an involved process that Marsh and the other plaintiffs faced when they tried to leave the union. Marsh had difficulty getting union representatives to return his phone calls and email. Finally, someone told him he had to submit his request to leave in writing within 30 days of his union’s contract expiring.

After he did that, he learned of a new process he had to go through to stop paying the fees.

That process requires workers to submit another written request, this time within a 30-day window that runs from 75 days to 45 days before the anniversary of the day the worker joined the union.

“The entire process is just very vague from start to finish,” said Freedom Foundation attorney Mariah Gondeiro.

Workers who attempted to leave met with conflicting information from union representatives, Gondeiro said.

“The union did not inform them of their rights,” she said. “And when they asked to clarify, they evaded their request or provided information that was not true.”

AFSCME was named in a similar lawsuit last year from a UC Irvine worker who wanted to leave her union but couldn’t. Parties to that lawsuit are waiting for a judge’s decision.

This story was originally published November 27, 2019 at 5:30 AM.