High court to hear dispute over public sector union fees

These disagreements over salaries and benefits amount to fundamental political disagreements over the best use of tax dollars, said Terence Pell, president of nonprofit representing Friedrich, The Center for Individual Rights.

The lawsuit, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, challenges the right of states to require public sector employees to pay compulsory dues to unions doing collective bargaining on their behalf.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative wing cast doubt on requirements in more than 20 states that public- sector workers pay fees to the union that represents them.

Both Roberts and Kennedy appeared unsympathetic to the California Teachers Association’s argument that non-members would become “free-riders” if not required to pay the fees to fund collective bargaining activities because they would benefit from collective bargaining without having to pay for it. These fees are now collected by unions in 23 states. The California Teachers Association has argued that collecting dues from non-members prevents “free riders” – in other words, workers who benefit from collective bargaining without shouldering any of the cost.

“The problem is that everything that is collectively bargained with the government is within the political sphere, nearly by definition”, Justice Antonin Scalia said. Mandatory fees “require that employees and teachers who disagree with those positions must nevertheless subsidize the union on those very points”, he said.

The issue is esoteric and mired in legal complexities, but at a time when public employee unions are under political attack in states such as Wisconsin and New Jersey, the California clash is considered a crucial test for organized labor and its political wallet.

Now the ideological tables are turned, and the conservative lawyers who filed the suit against the teachers unions are looking for the same five justices to rule for them.

U.S. Supreme Court in Washington. Justices will decide whether California and other states can make nonunion public employees covered by union contracts pay partial dues.

He noted that if unions lose, they’ll have to market themselves to potential members.

Arguing for the 10 teachers, Michael Carvin said mandatory fees serve to “inflate the union’s war chest by people who really have not made a voluntary decision to do so”. And more importantly, it would inevitably weaken unions.

Justice Stephen Breyer pressed Carvin heavily on the role of stare decisis – the court’s practice of following its past precedents – and several of the four more liberal justices questioned what special reason there was to overrule Abood.

In recent years in two other cases, Knox v. Serv.

The public school educators argue that the mandatory fees violate the constitutional rights of workers who disagree with the union’s positions. They can start paying the smaller, non-political representation fees instead of full dues, but generally they have to go through a bureaucratic process.

The rationale was parity – that government workers should, like those in private employment, be able to join unions and have them negotiate labor contracts with state and local governments. About half of all members are now in the public sector, which has a membership rate of 36 percent.

Education, police and firefighters are the most highly unionized sectors, with a workforce that is about 35 percent unionized, compared to about 11 percent for the rest of the country, according to 2014 data.

Even if the court doesn’t overturn settled precedent, it could still give the challengers a partial victory.

“We recognize that many public employees agree with their union and want to support it. But the fact is that some do not”. Currently, workers must “opt out” of the political fees by checking a box on a form. What’s so disappointing and frightening is that this is so wrong and so obviously wrong: “telling someone they can only keep their job if they pay the union”.

The Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision in the case by the end of June.