Supreme Court May Crush Unions By Making Membership Fees Optional

Conservative US Supreme Court justices have voiced support for a legal challenge that could erode organised labour’s clout by depriving public-employee unions of millions of dollars in fees that many state laws force non-union members to pay.

The Supreme Court is poised to dent the political power of labor after conservative justices cast doubt Monday on public sector unions’ ability to collect fees even from workers who disagree with the union’s political or other demands.

The basis of the teachers’ argument is that California’s current law violates non-union workers’ First Amendment free-speech rights by requiring them to pay fees that support a political cause.

“Many critical points are matters of public concern”, he said, mentioning issues like tenure, merit pay, promotions and classroom size. “Today it seems like the court is finally ready to let them get off that train”, she said. Stewart concluded that it was fair and not a first amendment violation to require government employees to pay fees to the unions that represent them. The challengers are backed by the conservative Center for Individual Rights. While they may not be freed from paying representational dues to a union they don’t support with this case, these workers still have hope.

The government of California and the CTA have argued the Abood-challenging nonmembers have not indicated any specific collective-bargaining actions attributed to the CTA that they considered as “political”.

A loss for the unions “would call into question thousands of public-sector contracts covering 9.5 million public employees and affecting scores of critical services, including police, fire, emergency response and, of course, education”, says David Frederick, who will argue the case for union teachers from California.

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared poised to overturn a 1977 ruling that pro-union advocates say will damage the bargaining power of public sector employee unions nationwide. But the Friedrichs plaintiffs argue that collective bargaining in the public sector, even on pay and conditions, is by definition political.

The larger threat, the unions and their supporters say, is that a decision in the plaintiffs’ favor would encourage many workers who are perfectly happy with the work of their unions to make the economically rational decision to opt out of paying for it. No one is forced to join the union, and no one is required to pay any other fees, such as fees used for political activities. So wanting the district to pay a higher salary to teachers is a political position (presumably one most teachers back?) which is itself a form of political activism.

The result is an existential threat to the unions that rely on agency fees and have operated under the system the Supreme Court helped enshrine a generation ago.

A decision in the case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, 14-915, is expected by late June. Those who oppose public unions on ideological (or business) grounds know that opening the door for people to opt out of paying agency fees will inevitably weaken unions financially and politically.

Scalia went on: “In the context of bargaining, a union must seek to further the interests of its nonmembers; it can not, for example, negotiate particularly high wage increases for its members in exchange for accepting no increases for others”.