OpenMarket: Government Unions

Labor unions continue to deny the First Amendment rights of public employees despite the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Janus v. AFSCME, which ruled one year ago that non-union workers cannot be compelled to pay union fees as a condition of employment. Many public employees that want to drop their membership have found it can be exceedingly difficult to do so.

It has been nearly one year since the U.S. Supreme Court restored the First Amendment rights of public employees, but many members are still having difficulties exercising these new rights. In the landmark Janus v. AFSCME decision, public employees who are not members of a union can no longer be forced to pay agency fees, better known as forced union dues, as a condition of employment.

It has been difficult to gauge the impact of the landmark Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME. In this ruling, the Supreme Court held that forcing non-members to pay fees to a union as a condition of employment is a violation of the First Amendment. Predictions on the fallout from Janus ran the gamut. Some predicted a mass exodus, while other believed few public workers would resign their membership.

“When you’re hired as a teacher, you should be teaching,” said Judge Jose L. Fuentes of the New Jersey Court of Appeals. This statement is commonsense and uncontroversial. Unfortunately, commonsense is in short supply across the United States. A vast majority of states allow teachers, and other state and local employees, to perform union business instead of the job they were hired to do.

On Monday, March 4, the California Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, upheld a major provision in the state’s 2012 pension reform legislation, but punted on the broader question of whether pension benefits are protected as contracts under the state constitution—and therefore cannot be altered.

Taxpayer dollars should be used to benefit the general public, not special interest groups. Yet, the state of Florida doles out a massive subsidy to government unions on an annual basis. This subsidy is known as union release time and permits public employees to perform union business on the taxpayer dime.

Earlier this week, I took a look at legislation that has been enacted to undercut the Supreme Court’s decision last year in Janus v. AFSCME. Unfortunately, state legislatures are just getting started. Today, I’ll examine a bill introduced in Oregon.

Prior to the landmark Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, government unions were already devising ways to keep members and dues flowing. In a previous post, I discussed some of the ideas that the National Education Association put forth to lessen the impact of a potential Supreme Court decision that ruled forced union dues unconstitutional.

The United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) union contract negotiations with the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) have broken down. UTLA president Alex Caputo-Pearl called the contract offer from the school district “unacceptable.”

Labor unions like to promote the narrative that dues payments stay local. If you peruse union websites, a consistent message appears that reads something like this: “Most of your dues stay with your local union in order to fund activities that give workers more power at the bargaining table, in the statehouse and in the community.” Unions use the “dues stay local” slogan as a selling point during organizing campaigns and to recruit new members.