Teachers vs. Teachers Unions

“No one is precluding the right of teachers to speak publicly about their beliefs concerning merit pay, to lobby the legislature”, or express their views on important issues related to education, he said.

Labor supporters worry that losing the case in the high court could severely damage public sector unions, which represent far more of the overall public sector workforce than unions do in the private sector. They’re part of a concerted attack on organized labor mounted by conservative organizations. Thousands of contracts affecting potentially millions of people could be in play.

The anti-labor Center for Individual Rights found Friedrichs and bankrolled a legal offensive to turn her griping into a landmark case on labor rights, fast-tracked to the Supreme Court.

But the challengers say it’s impossible to separate their funds from the public unions’ political actions.

“These nonmembers don’t object to the higher wages and benefits they
enjoy as a result of collective bargaining”, Redmond said.

“Current law recognizes that people who are not union members, but who benefit from services that unions are required to provide them, should pay their fair share”.

Vernuccio agrees with the Friedrichs plaintiffs that collective bargaining by public employee unions is inherently political.

More than 300,000 California teachers are represented by unions like the California Teachers Association, seen here protesting proposed budget cuts in 2011.

“That’s always a public policy issue”, Roberts said.

As with AFSCME, members of APSCUF pay 1.5 percent of their salary – about $1,300 a year based on the average $87,795 full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty salary – while fair-share feepayers pay 90 percent of that amount.

The reason is the First Amendment. “You’re again talking about a whole class of persons whose speech has been silenced”, he said. Kagan and Justice Stephen Breyer also stressed the impact of the court taking the rare step of overturning Abood.

The California Teachers Union urges the court not to overturn its earlier ruling, which held that a state’s interests in an orderly workplace outweigh the modest interference with employee expression involved in paying a portion of union dues.

“A victory for the plaintiffs will challenge unions because it will reduce the resources they have to represent their members since they will have to represent non-members for free”, said Professor Ann C. Hodges, a professor of Law at the University of Richmond who signed a brief in support of the unions. Now, a new Supreme Court case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, could undermine this entire system. In 36 states, from 2000 through 2009, teachers unions spent more on state elections than the combined spending of all business associations.

Twenty-five USA states already have what is known as “right-to-work” laws that prohibit workers from being forced to pay fees to a union. “Bedrock First Amendment principles forbid the compelled support of ideological advocacy”, Carvin argued.

A decision in the case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, 14-915, is expected by late June. For example, the court upheld mandatory state bar fees for lawyers in 1990 and did so by citing its earlier ruling upholding mandatory fees for unionized teachers.

“For unions themselves, this is not a huge deal”, Vernuccio said. But since the union negotiates the contract that covers everyone, you are still required to pay your fair share fee, called an “agency fee”, to cover bargaining costs. The Vergara ruling struck at teacher protections unions want, but not at unions’ structure or influence.

“Petitioners’ attempt to demolish this Court’s settled framework for analyzing conditions of public employment would astonish the Founding generation and would stamp out the State-by-State variation in public-employment structures that has been the hallmark of this Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence for decades”, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli wrote.

In fact, unions disproportionately benefit women, workers of color, and LGBT workers, said Sarah Leberstein, a senior staff attorney at the National Employment Law Project in Washington, D.C. “Unions have done a lot to shrink wage, salary, and benefit disparities for these groups”, Leberstein said.

For LaPorte, a Saginaw schoolteacher for 11 years, his decision to give up his union membership wasn’t about politics, but frustration over an agreement that led to a pay freeze for younger teachers.