High court to hear dispute over public sector union fees

Will public employee unions wither away if the court rules they can’t collect fees from non-members?

At the center of the case is a California public-school teacher named Rebecca Friedrichs.

California’s teacher unions and their national affiliates have painted the case as an attempt to crush unions and their collective bargaining power.

Officials with OR public sector labor unions said the case is an attack on the democratic principles of labor unions and on the middle class, which has benefited economically from unions’ work for better wages and working conditions. Currently, workers must “opt out” of the political fees by checking a box on a form.

In addition, the state legislature has carved out certain hot-button matters that are not subject to bargaining at all.

But on Monday Justice Scalia called into question claims that the unions could not survive without the compulsory dues from non-members.

He reasoned that free-ridership existed because labor law itself created it. And thus, the law “requires the union to carry” and “to go out of its way to benefit” these nonunion workers, “even at the expense of its other interests”.

If the Supreme Court indeed proposes to overturn the Abood compromise, why not do so in a principled and logical manner? She and a group of other teachers eventually chose to file a lawsuit in April 2013. After 28 years on the job, she is now a third grade teacher in Buena Park near Anaheim, Calif. “Those cases start with Abood“, she said.

A ruling allowing non-union workers to stop paying “agency fees” equivalent to union dues, now mandatory under laws in California and numerous other states, would deprive the public sector unions of millions of dollars, reducing their income and political power.

Heins added that he in fact got involved with the union because of concerns about teaching – especially No Child Left Behind and its “incessant” testing. The case affects more than 5 million workers in 23 states and the District of Columbia. Three vote for one restaurant, the fourth for another. Carvin replied that those fees are not at risk. “There is no restriction on any individual employee’s speech… either in the workplace or out of the workplace”, he said.

But according to David Frederick, a lawyer for the union, the positions the union takes in contract negotiations are outside of what is typically protected by the First Amendment, as they involve what he contends are “bread-and butter employment issues”. The ruling’s details will obviously matter, but it’s likely public-sector unions will still bargain on behalf of public-sector workers – union members and non-members alike – though workers will have far less of an incentive to pay dues to a union once they’re voluntary. Aren’t free lunches and free rides anathema to genuine conservatives?

That’s the crux of the issue, and seems to lead in the ultimate direction of treating public-sector unions as illegitimate.

“The only reason to do that would be to inflate the governor’s war chest”, Carvin stated. And more importantly, it would inevitably weaken unions. That suggests “at least some members of the court viewed it (that outcome) as a foregone conclusion”, a New York Times story said. When bargaining for taxpayer money, everything is political: Paying teachers more means spending less on something else, which is a political decision.

In the 1977 decision, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the Supreme Court made a distinction between two kinds of compelled payments.

Even laws imposing harsh penalties for public employee strikes were ineffective.

A photo shows the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC.

Forced unionization of government workers may be on the brink of ending in the United States if questions asked Monday by justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are any indication.

The unions have seen the consequences quite recently when Republican-dominated state governments eliminated fair share fees.

The argument, if I understand it correctly, is that collective bargaining itself – since it includes taking positions of benefits and salaries and so forth – itself is a 1st Amendment issue, which seems silly unless you just don’t think unions should exist in the first place.