Marquez v. Screen Actors, 525 U.S. 33, 11 (1998)

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Cite as: 525 U. S. 33 (1998)

Opinion of the Court

judgment on this issue, and so this claim was remanded to the District Court for further proceedings. 124 F. 3d, at 1041-1042. Second, we are not deciding whether SAG breached its duty of fair representation by failing to adequately notify petitioner of her rights under Beck and General Motors. The Board has held (and SAG concedes, see Brief for Respondent Screen Actors Guild 35-36) that unions have an obligation to notify employees of their Beck rights. See United Paperworkers Int'l Union (Weyerhaeuser Paper), 320 N. L. R. B. 349 (1995), rev'd on other grounds sub nom. Buzenius v. NLRB, supra; California Saw and Knife Works, 320 N. L. R. B. 224 (1995), enf'd sub nom. International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers v. NLRB, 133 F. 3d 1012 (CA7), cert. denied sub nom. Strang v. NLRB, post, p. 813. See also Nielsen v. International Assn. of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, supra, at 1114- 1115 (recognizing such a duty on part of union); Abrams v. Communications Workers of America, 59 F. 3d 1373, 1378- 1380 (CADC 1995) (same). The Board is currently in the process of defining the content of the notification right to give guidance to unions about what they must do to notify employees about their rights under Beck and General Motors. California Saw and Knife Works, supra; United Paperworkers Int'l Union, supra. Petitioner's suit alleges that SAG failed to notify her of her Beck and General Motors rights, but this claim, too, is not before us. The Court of Appeals remanded this claim to the District Court for reconsideration. 124 F. 3d, at 1042-1043.

With this background, the question we are resolving comes into sharper focus. There is no disagreement about the substance of the union's obligations: If a union negotiates a union security clause, it must notify workers that they may satisfy the membership requirement by paying fees to support the union's representational activities, and it must enforce the clause in conformity with this notification. The only question presented by this case is whether a union breaches the

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