Future Of Public Unions At Stake In Supreme Court Case

Union officials say losing the revenue from compelled payments would weaken their negotiating power.

On Monday, the nation’s highest court heard arguments in Janus v.

Janus, the IL child support specialist who is suing the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, is represented by Jacob Heubert, an attorney with the conservative Liberty Justice Center, an Illinois-based, corporate-backed anti-union organization.

The islands’ public unions are already playing defense ahead of the Janus decision.

Big labor was handed another big loss Wednesday when the Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision in a union certification case.

Trump’s US solicitor general Noel Francisco, arguing in favor of Janus, suggested that a win for Janus won’t be as disruptive as some unions have said: In the federal sector, no workers are required to make payments to the union, and yet about 80 percent of union-represented federal employees pay union dues voluntarily, Francisco said.

“Collective bargaining is the core political activity, which we submit individuals can not be compelled to support”, Janus attorney Bill Messenger of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation said in oral arguments. This is the fundamental problem and the injustice of this particular situation. That’s just not true. In some cases it probably does. Conservative activists and union opponents have long objected to this decision, and today a majority of Supreme Court justices seem poised to reverse it. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.

“In order to work for his government and have a voice, he’s got to pay a private organization for that privilege”.

SEIU vice president Rocio Saenz said Trump’s eviction of the Salvadorans “is consistent with the pattern set by the administration over the a year ago to cause misery for immigrants, people of color, or working people”.

Bankrolling these efforts are a handful of anti-union organizations, including the State Policy Network and the National Right To Work Foundation. The Janus case is backed by a network of conservative groups whose funders also support Republican candidates. It won’t prohibit anything. They represent a variety of workers, including teachers, firefighters and police officers, many of whom are middle-class.

“If customers do not want their e-mails to be seized by the government, they don’t use Microsoft’s services”, Rosenkranz said. Some unions have sent out contracts to their members with “trap language” that essentially convinces them to give up in advance (at least temporarily) any new rights they might get following a Janus verdict. States, state workers, and the Bill of Rights will all be better off.

The justices will hear arguments Tuesday over whether the company, as part of an worldwide drug trafficking investigation, must comply with an American warrant for emails stored on a server in a Microsoft facility in Dublin, Ireland. Rebecca Friedrichs eventually lost that case with the court split after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

“Although not applicable to the facts here, [§ 111.83 (3)(a)] demonstrates that the legislature is fully capable of specifying where an assumption of continuing interest applies; thus, we should not read in that assumption where it is not specified”, Justice Ziegler wrote. That case involves a Colorado baker who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple, arguing it would violate his First Amendment right of religious freedom.

Gorsuch asks no questions in oral arguments… He said that with the appointment of Neil Gorsuch the Court is now ideologically tilted towards conservatism that often runs against the rights of unions. He explains that unions that only have a small amount of members paying dues will have trouble hiring organizers, lawyers, and other personnel to fight for the wages and rights of workers.

If his side wins, Mix says unions will quickly start looking for other sources of revenue and in left-leaning states that money might come from the taxpayers.

“What the president is actually asking Congress to do is give all of his Cabinet secretaries the power to fire federal employees they consider not loyal to the administration and its political agenda”, Cox said.

The federal appeals court in NY agreed with the company that the 1986 Stored Communications Act does not apply outside the United States.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has filed legal briefs and issued coalition letters against mandatory union dues as the case has worked its way to the highest court. The suspects in the case are also believed to be American.