Schools Defend Unions To Supreme Court

The Supreme Court seemed poised Monday to deliver a severe blow to organized labor. She wants the high court to overturn a 39-year-old ruling that said states can require non-members to pay “fair share” fees to cover what it costs the union to represent them in bargaining as long as the money doesn’t go for political purposes.

“The union is basically making these teachers compelled riders on issues which they strongly disagree”, he said. Our Justice correspondent Pete wings explains why it’s a case that some say could be the beginning of the end for government unions. But he was consistently hostile Monday.

“The problem is that everything that is collectively bargained with the government is within the political sphere, nearly by definition”, Scalia said during the arguments. If the unions lose, as now seems likely, they will be weaker the next time they sit down to negotiate contracts for 10 million public employees nationwide.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority appears ready to strike down mandatory fees collected by the California Teacher’s Association.

However, the public employee unions, unlike their private-sector counterparts, could influence those negotiations by getting union-friendly politicians elected to the governorship and other statewide offices, to the Legislature and to thousands of city councils, school boards, county boards of supervisors and governing boards of special districts. And compelling them to support the advancement of political policies they oppose seemingly violates the First Amendment.

But the teachers argue that unions have become more political over time.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments today in a case that could undermine the financial stability of teacher unions in California and 23 other states.

Unions are concerned that a ruling throwing out the fees would give workers less incentive to join even if they generally agree with a union’s political stances because they would get all the benefits of collective bargaining without having to pay for it. The petitioner’s argument hinges on the idea that a nonmember should not be required to subsidize an outside advocacy group such as a union.

California teacher Rebecca Friedrichs is suing the California Teachers Association, arguing that being required to pay the non-member “agency” fees violates her First Amendment Rights. Non-members don’t pay the same fees as members.

Perhaps nowhere would the legal ripple be felt more than in California, which has 1.3 million unionized government employees -more than any other state, according to unionstats.com.

“While some may see this attack as only impacting unions, the reality is this is a direct strike at the middle class”, she said.

The California law includes a provision that allows those employees to opt out of fees relating to the union’s political activities by requesting a rebate.

Oregon’s public sector workers are under no obligation to join the union, but they often have to take action to opt out of paying full dues in favor of paying lower “fair share” fees, Cunningham-Parmeter said. “In this era of broken municipal budgets and a national crisis in public education, it is hard to imagine more politically charged issues than how much money cash-strapped local governments should devote to public employees, or what policies public schools should adopt to best educate children”.