This message was sent to all AFT members today from President Randi Weingarten:
“I don’t write emails to our full membership and activist community often, but the Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court case warrants it.
“The case is challenging the 45-year-old precedent that 23 states have used to determine wages, hours, and other terms and conditions of public employees’ jobs. As the Illinois solicitor general eloquently argued at the Supreme Court yesterday, these 23 states decided that, for labor peace and the efficiency of services, public employees can be represented by a union, and, as long as the union represents everyone, those who do not want to join may instead pay a “fair share” fee. This fee is meant to compensate the union for bargaining contracts and other services; nonmembers are not required to pay anything toward any political activity by the union.
“Yesterday, I was at the Supreme Court listening to the oral arguments in the Janus case. I listened as the right wing launched attack after attack on unions and on what collective bargaining gains for working people, those they serve and their communities. Indeed, Justice Sotomayor nailed the right wing’s argument, pointing out, “You’re basically arguing, do away with unions.”
“Stand with us and tell us why you’re “union proud.”
“This case isn’t about petitioner Mark Janus, it’s about defunding unions. It’s about who will have power in our country—working people or big corporate interests. That’s why it’s being funded by the Koch brothers, the DeVos family, and other wealthy and corporate interests. First, they pledged $80 million to “defund and defang” unions. Then, the Kochs, after getting the Trump tax cut, upped the ante with $400 million to undermine public education and “break” the teachers unions. And now, with the Janus case, they are pushing to prevent workers from having a union at all. Why? Because unions are our vehicle to fight for and win a better life for people, and corporate interests see that as a threat to their power.
“Study after study shows that union workers have higher wages, better benefits, a more secure retirement and a voice in the workplace.
“Yesterday was about fighting in the Supreme Court, but we’ve been fighting on many other fronts as well—speaking out in the court of public opinion and, most important, making sure our members, families, friends and allies know what we are up against. That’s why, this weekend, workers held rallies in 30 cities and counties throughout the country to fight for our fundamental right to union representation on the job. And that’s why our locals have spent the last year engaging members in one-on-one conversations. This recommitment to one another has been catalytic and transformative, and overwhelmingly, our members want to be part of our union, and they know how important it is for them, their families and their communities.
“Tell us why you’re “union proud” and what it is you care about and fight for every day.
“This is a “which side are you on?” moment. Our country must not revert to a time when workers were systematically denied even the most fundamental rights—a voice and a better life.
“Now’s the time. Stand with us.”
In unity,
Randi Weingarten
AFT President
P.S. Watch our video re-capping Janus actions over the last week.
There’s a built-in problem with the mandatory agency fee… To have a job, the employee is required, in effect, to buy that job. There’s no way around it.
One bad consequence is that once the automatic payment is made, union leadership doesn’t have to be responsive to the rank and file member. I’ve seen this played out first hand, and it’s playing out in full view now, with the AFT’s and NEA’s complicity in things like bogus accountability and the Common Core.
It’s tough to be an alternative voice in a teacher union, or any union, it seems. Early union leaders were heroic Americans, but there’s also a long history of certain leaders exploiting their members and using their power for personal gain.
I’ve come to the conclusion, though, that the “agency shop” model is a necessary evil. It’s the best known way of ensuring a fair collective bargaining system. If that model is struck down, there will be a crying need for better union leadership.
You are both right and wrong.
I hear those arguing for more responsive union leadership.
One thing that should be accepted though is an imperfect Union may need to improve – but this is not the way to do it.
Punishing the union by defunding it to force it to change by “voting with your feet” can be a death spiral as much as it can be an impetus to change.
The union does provide a valuable service to all who get jobs covered by it. People should acknowledge that and pay for it.
If the union dies, the process to start a new one or competing ones is mired in so much politics, paperwork, and legalities, it practically can’t work.
There are ways the union can choose to be more responsive – putting them into funding crises and disempowering them is not a good route to that.
I don’t believe the “free speech” argument against the agency fee holds any water. The question to me is whether it’s fair (and constitutional) to compel a person to pay a portion of their employment income to a third party as a condition of employment.
My answer is that problems are inherent in such an arrangement, but that since the employee is entering into it voluntarily, it should be allowed.
It’s not an ideal setup, but it makes fair collective bargaining possible and helps public employees retain some rights. If the US becomes a “right to work for less” nation, public employees and the people they serve will suffer.
Governor Rauner of Illinois argues that public employee unions should be outlawed because their very existence constitutes a conflict of interest. It’s kind of ironic that he might have won his office because the incumbent Democratic governor signed a law reducing the benefits of retired teachers, which was (predictably) found unconstitutional by the Illinois Supreme Court. Teachers weren’t in a mood to campaign for Governor Quinn after that.
Illinois politicians–Democrat and Republican–have been shortchanging the public pension system for over fifty years. Now public employees get the blame for the state’s fiscal woes.
Everyone will be an underpaid and overworked WalMart type employee if the SCOTUS sides for Janus. Working conditions will be deplorable and the middle class will dwindle into nothingness. We will be living like it was pre WWI.
How is a person entering into it voluntarily? If you want to be a public school teacher in NYS you have to pay an agency shop fee equal to the union’s dues. You cannot work for a public school district and not be assessed this fee. This fee obviously covers more than “collective bargaining.”
You know the terms beforehand, and you agree to them. This is different from taking a job where you find out later there are strings attached. (This still happens in the US, especially with so-called unskilled workers.)
You’re free to move to a “right to work” state where the starting salaries are lower and the maximum salary isn’t a lot higher. And you’re not required to go into teaching in the first place.
Fed up Teacher, I don’t know where you work in NYS, but in the public school I work in NO ONE is required to join the union. However, if you don’t, you get no union benefits. (ie. Union representation in front of administration, etc.)
Don’t be fooled. Janus is the culmination of decades of agitation, propaganda, and lobbying intended to kill unions. No one will be better off and many working people will be much worse off when they have no organization to fight for better wages, pensions, healthcare and working conditions.
The problem with this is the same problem most of us face when we go to the polls. NYSUT and many of our locals leave a lot to be desired. Some might call them terrible. So we are asked to keep throwing our money at them because the alternative is even worse. We are asked to keep supporting people that do nothing to improve our lives as teachers. Those of us who are Republicans are asked to keep supporting union organizations that back the Democratic Party regardless of what it supports as far as APPR, charter schools, etc.
When we go to the polls we are usually asked to vote for a candidate because his opponent is even worse. This is the campaign slogan the NYS Senate GOP caucus uses ever two years to maintain its power. We are asked to support them because even though they are terrible, the Senate Democrats are even worse.
Yes, it is depressing. Right now the union doesn’t have to be responsive. It collects our dues regardless of how bad it is.
There’s no question that the plutocrats and phony freedom lovers (i.e., rapacious capitalists) have been up to no good for a long time. This doesn’t change the fact that union leaders have been resting on their laurels, taking their power for granted, and even enriching themselves at the expense of members over that same period. Yes, General Motors is responsible for the sorry state of Flint, Michigan, but the UAW bears some of the blame as well.
The standard idea of union leadership has been that the rank and file are sheep. That’s their idea of solidarity. And that’s a problem. It’s one reason the victory of Karen Lewis and her colleagues in Chicago over the old guard was such a huge deal. Dissenting members stood up against an unacceptable status quo and won.
The centralized power of Big Labor wasn’t especially good for democracy. In fact, the misbehavior of union leadership sowed some of the seeds for the anti-Union backlash that’s been going on for decades. If the Supreme Court decides against unions this time around, it will result in hardship for many, but it will also be an opportunity to reorganize and fight back with greater purpose.
I agree with Chiara that a cycle is being played out. Things will eventually turn around because there will be an obvious and massive need for change. If there is another financial meltdown–and the chances of that are good–I believe that along with widespread suffering there will be increased activism and organizing and an eventual turning against the anti-democratic forces led by the oligarchs (both the right wingers and the self-styled libertarians). Meanwhile, the risk of authoritarian rule and a new war may also turn real. At that point we may be more worried about basic survival than the ins and outs of labor law.
I hope the decision comes down on the side of unions, but if it doesn’t, there will be that much more reason to get active.
Sorry, Diane, but the unions helped create this mess. Randi taking money from Bill Gates and collaborating with Eli Broad shows that many teachers who hated the way she governed would have withdrawn their dues because she did things that they did not want and was against their interests. Randi has designed the voting structure of the union to make it virtually impossible to vote the president in and out. She is a lifetime, establishment neoliberal democrat.
Randi is a fraud and is in business for herself and the AFT whether you’re willing to admit it or note.
Still, it’s better to have unions than not. It’s best to have ones that are not corrupt.
it is easy to find fault with unions.
Without them, who will protect teachers against arbitrary treatment, who will provide legal defense, who will press for decent wages, Heath Care, pensions?
I know this case is about public employee unions, but it’s part of the larger issue of the general anti-union sentiment that’s taken hold in the US. The amazing & ironic point about the anti-union position behind this case is that many of the citizens supporting it are people who have benefited, or would, from union jobs. The good-paying industrial jobs, the loss of which are mourned by angry middle Americans, were all union jobs. If those jobs were to return tomorrow, they’d be filled by minimum wage gig-economy independent contractors — no company benefits such as vacations, sick days, pensions. One argument is that the money to pay for these better jobs would come out of the pockets of consumers who can’t afford it, but do companies’ existences really depend on the outsize corporate profits of recent years? What was wrong with the profit levels in previous years?
“But free market…” There are reasons antitrust laws were created (BTW, by a Republican administration). The free-market concept breaks down when one or a few participants gain disproportionate size, capital, & power, as has been caused by the corporate mergers that have, coincidentally, occurred during the same time period that unions, & therefore the workers they represent, have lost power. If in some cases unions haven’t kept up with the times & have made unrealistic demands, those are reasons to change, not abolish, the unions.
“Right to work”, a grossly misleading phrase that assumes the guise of advocating for workers, would be more accurately phrased as, “right to be reduced, through lack of bargaining power, to a state of desperation so deep you’ll capitulate to any conditions offered, no matter how dismal, because you really have no choice.” I’ll admit that “right to work” does flow off the tongue easier, & demands less of an attention span.
Disclosure: My wife is a retired UFT member. On the other hand, growing up, my family was management. My father owned a union shop, treated his workers better than the union required, & yet somehow managed to provide very well for his family.
Many people in this country have a deep-rooted idea of “making it” and becoming filthy rich because this is the country of the American Dream. Even the poorest ones think they can get rich and then start screwing other people over, and when this happens, unions, labor laws, state and government control will be just a hurdle.
“The free-market concept breaks down when. . .”
The free-market concept is intellectually bankrupt to begin with. A free market is nothing more than the description of an ideal interaction of equals in an economic exchange. The fact that there has never been that ideal action, mainly due to the unequalness of information/knowledge of one or the other individual, therefore negating the existence of said free market, doesn’t stop most everyone, but especially the right wing libertarians and/or supposed conservatives from using the concept as if it is one of the basic laws of nature (hint, it ain’t).
Using the concept of “free market” has caused untold exploitation of individuals as the blame for one person exploiting another economically then falls on a non-existent concept-the free market, and not on the individual who does the exploiting. I screw someone over in an economic exchange and it’s the free market’s fault. How friggin wonderful to exonerate me, eh!
On a lighter note: Can anyone give me directions to the “Free Market”?
When I “flew to it” on google earth it took me to 13, 33 14.99 North and 29 29 42.44 West. Pretty hard to drive there.
This is, in fact, a “which side are you on?” moment. Billionaires or everyone else? It’s not a “yes, but on the other hand…” moment.
I don’t think they’ll be able to kill labor unions, as an idea or concept. Labor unions were a response to a lack of government-instituted worker protections – political actors really left people no choice- it was join a union or have no power at all.
Along with the push to eradicate collective bargaining and contract rights they are gutting government regulations that protect working people. That’s a guarantee labor unions will appear again.
The teachers in West Virginia tried everything else before they went out on strike. Their government, their employer, ignored them. They don’t have any other way to speak in some way where they are listened to. It was either strike, find another line of work, or leave their home state. They probably don’t want to leave their home state and West Virginia probably shouldn’t chase them out because no one is going to replace them for 15 dollars an hour.
Labor unions, both public sector and private, were a response to a failure by government and the private sector to treat people fairly. They filled a hole. The hole is still there and it will get bigger as there are fewer and fewer labor unions.
There aren’t hundreds of options for employees as far as having power in the workplace. It’s either a union (or an organization that is a lot like a union) or government regulation. Since government has pretty much abandoned worker protections that will leave ONE option.
This is what I’m talking about:
“Wage laws are poorly enforced, with workers often unable to recover back pay even after the government rules in their favor.
That’s the conclusion of a nine-month investigation by POLITICO, which found that workers are so lightly protected that six states have no investigators to handle minimum-wage violations, while 26 additional states have fewer than 10 investigators. Given the widespread nature of wage theft and the dearth of resources to combat it, most cases go unreported. Thus, an estimated $15 billion in desperately needed income for workers with lowest wages goes instead into the pockets of shady bosses.”
The government is failing to enforce laws that were put in to protect them, and private employers are taking advantage of that failure.
They only have one choice left if they want to paid what they are owed. They either join together in some fashion that will end up looking a lot like a labor union or they continue to get cheated.
This is a failure. It’s a failure of private sector employers to obey laws and a failure of government to enforce laws. When that happens something or someone fills the void. That’s the entire history of labor unions in a nutshell- the state fails to protect working people, employers take advantage of that failure, and people turn to the only option they have left, which is to organize and bargain collectively.
In our “new gilded age” that cycle will repeat itself, because it ALWAYS has.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/18/minimum-wage-not-enforced-investigation-409644
6 states have NO investigative enforcement of wage laws. I mean, think about that. The laws are a joke. They mean nothing if they’re not enforced.
What are these people supposed to do to get paid the money they earned? Find a wealthy backer to take their wage theft case to the Supreme Court? Which wealthy backer is bankrolling that case? Not the Janus funders, that’s for sure.
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Randi-Weingarten-Explains-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Anti-union_Diane-Ravitch_Education_US-Supreme-Court-180228-250.html
What should be of interest in THIS matter is how the majority of the Citizen’s United decision in 2010 was worded. It called attention to the changes in campaign finance law, and, while affirming the “right” of corporations to donate as much money as desired to political campaigns, it went out of its way to specify that unions were free to do the same. Now, as then, I found this wording suspicious, and here is the agenda going back to 2010: destroy unions and destroy the countervailing voice of people not on the boards of corporations. It is a systematic attack on American freedom to assemble and free speech. Terrible.
Diane,
EDSOURCE provided additional info and commentary from the SCOTUS:
If, as many court observers expect, Gorsuch forms the majority siding with Janus, public employee unions in every state would have to persuade public employees to voluntarily pay into a union that is legally obligated to represent both members and non-members. About 29,000 teachers — slightly less than 10 percent of the CTA’s 300,000-plus members — pay agency fees. If many of the remaining 90 percent of teachers stopped paying dues, the loss would jeopardize CTA’s ability to employ enough staff to adequately serve its members and to raise tens of millions of dollars the CTA and other powerful unions spend to elect for union-friendly legislators and school board members.
Waiting in the wings is a California lawsuit, Yohn v. CTA, on an issue that the Janus decision will likely not resolve. Ryan Yohn, a 13-year middle school history teacher in Huntington Beach, and six other teachers argue that what they call a burdensome process of opting out of the CTA violates their rights. They must sign a form every year and then wait until the end of the year to be reimbursed for all but agency fees. Yohn said for years he didn’t know he even had the option. They want the court to require teachers to opt in if they want to join a union. The Center for Individual Rights, which represented Friedrichs, is handling this case, too.
The CTA argues that a one-page form, filed annually, is not burdensome.
WASHINGTON — A crucial voice was silent at Supreme Court arguments on Monday in a case that could deal a sharp blow to public unions. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who almost certainly holds the decisive vote, asked no questions, leaving some doubt, if only a glimmer, about whether he would join the court’s conservative majority to rule that forcing workers to support public unions violates the First Amendment.
Justice Gorsuch generally votes with the court’s conservatives, and he is likely to do so in this case. But his silence during the argument meant that observers knew no more about his thinking by the time it ended than when it had begun.
Two years ago, the court seemed poised to rule against public unions, but it deadlocked 4 to 4 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Monday’s case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, No. 16-1466, presented the same legal issue. The only real difference was that Justice Gorsuch had taken Justice Scalia’s place.
Once again, the heated questioning during Monday’s arguments confirmed that the court was sharply divided along ideological lines.
The court’s more conservative members said that requiring workers who choose not to join public unions to pay for collective bargaining and similar activities is an affront to their right to free speech.
A Supreme Court Showdown Could Shrink Unions’ Power FEB. 22, 2018
“When you compel somebody to speak, don’t you infringe that person’s dignity and conscience?” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked.
The court’s more liberal members said that states should have broad leeway in managing public workplaces. They added that a decision against the unions would require overruling a 40-year-old precedent, striking down more than 20 state laws, creating confusion about thousands of union contracts and disrupting the lives of millions of workers.
“I don’t think that we have ever overruled a case where reliance interests are remotely as strong as they are here,” Justice Elena Kagan said.
A decision overruling the precedent would conclude a decades-long political and legal campaign by conservative groups aimed at weakening public-sector unions. Those unions stand to lose fees from workers who object to the positions the unions take and from those who simply choose not to join while benefiting from the unions’ efforts on their behalf.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reflected on the consequences of ruling against the union in the case before the court. “It drains it of resources that make it an equal partner” with the government in negotiations, she told William L. Messenger, a lawyer for Mark Janus, an Illinois child support specialist who objected to positions taken by his union in negotiations. “And then you’ll have a union with diminished resources, not able to investigate what it should demand at the bargaining table, not equal to the employer that it faces.”
Near the end of the argument, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the case represented an existential threat to the labor movement. “You’re basically arguing, ‘Do away with unions,’ ” she told Mr. Messenger.
The case was a challenge to an Illinois law that requires government workers who choose not to join unions to “pay their proportionate share of the costs of the collective bargaining process, contract administration and pursuing matters affecting wages, hours and other conditions of employment.” More than 20 states have similar laws.
The Supreme Court ruled that such laws are constitutional in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, a foundational 1977 decision that made a distinction between two kinds of compelled payments. Forcing nonmembers to pay for a union’s political activities violated the First Amendment, the court said. But it was constitutional, the court added, to require nonmembers to help pay for the union’s collective bargaining efforts to prevent freeloading and ensure “labor peace.”
Conservative groups have long urged the court to overrule the Abood decision, and they have repeatedly gotten close to their goal. In 2014, the court stopped just short of overruling the decision.
When the court revisited the issue in 2016, the Obama administration argued in favor of the unions. The Trump administration switched sides in the new case, prompting a comment from Justice Sotomayor to Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco.
“This is such a radical new position on your part,” she said.
Justice Kagan noted that the administration’s position could open the federal government to First Amendment challenges in various kinds of workplace disputes. “It strikes me as a very unusual position for the government to be taking,” Justice Kagan said, perhaps reflecting on her own experience in representing the government as solicitor general in the Obama administration.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who is the court’s most ardent supporter of broad First Amendment rights, made clear that he had no patience with mandatory fees, calling them “compelled subsidization of a private party, a private party that expresses political views constantly.”
The lawyers in the case gave varying answers to questions about what would happen if the mandatory fees were eliminated. “When these kinds of obligations of financial support become voluntary, union membership goes down, union density rates go down, union resources go down,” said David L. Franklin, Illinois’s solicitor general, who argued in support of the union.
“When unions are deprived of agency fees, they tend to become more militant, more confrontational,” he added. “They go out in search of short-term gains that they can bring back to their members and say, ‘Stick with us.’”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said there were arguments on the other side.
“The need to attract voluntary payments will make the unions more efficient, more effective, more attractive to a broader group of their employees,” the chief justice said.
David C. Frederick, a lawyer for the union, said it should be free to fight for higher wages. “Most public servants are underpaid,” he said, “and I will stipulate to that before this body.”
That elicited a smile from Chief Justice Roberts, who was a successful lawyer in private practice and took a big pay cut when he became a judge.