Posts tagged Janus v. AFSCME
Back-to-Back Opt-Out Milestones Suggest Record Year in New York
September 17, 2024 // Last year, the Freedom Foundation helped a record 1,351 New Yorkers take control of their paychecks by saying “no more” to government unions that don’t represent them. In 2024, we’ve already assisted with 1,025 opt-outs — and it’s only September! With nearly 76% of last year’s total and four months to go, the Freedom Foundation is expected to surpass 1,500 opt-outs in New York by year’s end. July 2024 marked New York’s best month ever for opt-outs, only to be outdone by August. These back-to-back record months prove that now, more than ever before, public employees are taking action to keep union dues in their own pockets instead of funding Big Labor’s ideological agendas.
Government Unions are Down — But Not Out
September 10, 2024 // For nearly a decade, the Commonwealth Foundation has tracked state-by-state changes in labor laws. Every two years, the Commonwealth Foundation releases its research on the ever-changing legal landscape for public sector unions, assessing each state’s efforts to promote public employees’ rights or cave to unions’ entrenched influence. This fourth edition examines government unions’ attempts, following Janus, to hold onto and expand special legal privileges under state laws. The research also highlights the states reining in government unions’ power and influence by empowering workers.
Unions pursue law changes to boost membership
September 8, 2024 // “The overarching theme is that the unions have really responded to the membership losses since JANUS to drive up union membership,” Osborne said. In the JANUS decision, courts held that unions could no longer collect “fair share” dues from non-members who benefit from collective bargaining agreements. Follow-up litigation has challenged the cumbersome process many former members had to overcome to leave the union and recoup dues improperly withheld. In the report, states known as union “strongholds” scored lower than others that have enacted collective bargaining reforms.
Op-Ed: Public Sector Unions Should Only Speak for Their Members
September 3, 2024 //
Union, hospital face more lawsuits from Michigan nurse over dues
August 23, 2024 // Madrina Wells, from Grand Blanc Township, had already sued Ascension Genesys Hospital and Teamsters in July, accusing them of threatening to fire her and a coworker for not signing forms authorizing the union to deduct dues from their paychecks. Now, Wells is filing additional complaints against those organizations for deducting union dues out of her paycheck anyway, without her providing the consent forms.
The Cases Against Sectoral Bargaining: The Practical Case
August 11, 2024 // The effect of sectoral bargaining on union corruption would be unclear. Scholars of union corruption have blamed enterprise bargaining combined with union monopoly representation for America’s unusually high levels of labor racketeering. There is truth to this, but it is also not the case that American unions involved in industries with more-sectoral-style approaches are “cleaner.” The New York City garment industry, which was exempted from various Taft-Hartley regulations on union conduct, was believed by the federal government to have been Mob influenced as recently as the 1990s. More recently, the United Auto Workers, which conducts a sort of pseudo-sectoral bargaining with the unionized Detroit Three automakers by “patterning” its contracts, was forced into a regime change after the largest union corruption scandal of the 21st century. Putting more power in the hands of America’s long-standing class of union officials, who are known for having their hands in the cookie jar, certainly is not an obvious approach to reducing or surveilling corruption in organized labor.
Liberty Justice Center Sues New Jersey Union For Violating Plumber’s Constitutional Rights
August 5, 2024 // Upon learning about his rights under the Janus decision, Giangrasso sent a letter to UA Local 9 resigning his union membership and requesting an end to the dues deduction. However, the union refused, arguing that the Janus decision didn’t apply because the deductions were termed “assessments” rather than “dues.”
CUNY Professors Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Case Challenging Forced Association with Antisemitism-Linked Union
July 23, 2024 // “Knight did not sanction a state forcing Jewish faculty members who are ardent Zionists to accept the representation of a union that supports policies they consider anti-Israel,” the petition continues. “The Court should grant this petition to clarify Knight and make clear that the First Amendment protects individuals’ right to dissociate themselves from advocacy groups that support policies contrary to their deeply held beliefs.”
Op-Ed: Union membership is now political. So can the government still require people to associate with a union?
July 10, 2024 // Since then, employees have argued that exclusive union representation does violate the First Amendment. Exclusivity saddles them with the “services” of nakedly political bargaining agents. Lower courts have turned those arguments aside mostly because of an older case, Minnesota Board for Community Colleges v. Knight, which suggested that exclusive representation was okay in the public sector. Knight seemed to say that when the government bargains about working conditions, it can choose its own bargaining partner. And if it chooses one exclusive union to bargain with, that choice burdens no one’s associational rights. But whether or not that’s what Knight meant, the decision has no bearing on private-sector bargaining. In the private sector, the government does not choose its own bargaining partner; it imposes one on private parties. And some of those parties object to their unions’ political views—views that are increasingly central to unionization itself. So private-sector bargaining raises a different question: can the government force private citizens to associate with a union when that union’s core purpose is increasingly political? (Elsewhere, I have argued at greater length that it cannot.)
As Janus anniversary draws nears, public workers retain right to union representation
June 28, 2024 // A union is required to represent even workers who are not members, due to its “duty of fair representation.” “It’s crucial that public employees understand the duty of fair representation to ensure their rights are protected,” Delie told CapCon. Unions have this duty because they also have the right of “exclusive representation.” Under it, the union negotiates with management as the exclusive representative of a group of employees known as a bargaining unit. Members and nonmembers alike are part of the bargaining unit, and the union must represent them all, including at any disciplinary hearings they may face.