Posts tagged Janus
Dearborn schools responds to CapCon story on illegal contract language
April 4, 2024 // Steve Delie, director of labor policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, thinks the contract poorly serves Dearborn employees. “Whether or not this language is enforced, it is still misleading,” he told CapCon. Keeping inoperative language in the contract is not the best practice, he said, as it requires teachers to be up to date on the latest legal developments. “School employees have a constitutional right to work without being forced to pay a union, and their contracts should clearly reflect that.”
Manchester workers union criticized for ‘free riders’ list of members allegedly not paying dues
April 1, 2024 // Frank Ricci, retired president of a New Haven firefighters union and now a fellow at the conservative Yankee Institute for Public Policy, said, “This pernicious threat equates to raw intimidation and coercion — against hard-working employees’ lawful exercise of their First Amendment rights under the Janus decision.” Joseph DeMeo, a Manchester water treatment plant operator who is a member of the union and not on the list, said it creates “a hostile work environment.”
Op-Ed: Public workers deserve full First Amendment protection from compelled union speech
January 8, 2024 // SCOTUS’s ruling in Janus logically leads to a conclusion that public workers’ income cannot subsidize a private matter on issues of substantial public concern without voluntarily waiving their First Amendment right. To voluntarily waive a fundamental right demands individual rights have been thoroughly communicated and understood. The First Amendment protects both the freedom to speak as well as the freedom to refrain from speaking. The state of Alaska urges the Supreme Court to reaffirm Janus which equally supports employees who wish to support union causes and those who “strongly object to the positions the union takes” as the court stated in 2018. Mountain States Policy Center firmly agrees with those asking SCOTUS to fully clarify the First Amendment rights of workers to not be forced to provide financial support to union causes or membership without direct consent first. We’ll soon know if the U.S. Supreme Court agrees.
Membership plunges again for Michigan and national teachers unions
January 5, 2024 // Since school employees got a choice in union membership, the MEA’s total revenue has declined by nearly $40 million annually. Despite a hike in dues, Michigan’s largest public sector union is bringing in more than 30% less each year.
It’s Time to Stop Passing the Buck—to Thieves and Forgers
November 21, 2023 //
A Tale of Two Teachers’ Unions
November 17, 2023 // Efforts to decertify the teachers’ union in Miami are possible because conservatives won elections and passed a good law that limits public-sector unions’ power. States with conservative governments should follow Florida’s lead and pass similar laws. States with progressive governments will continue to struggle under the burden of unrepresentative teachers’ unions.
U.S. Supreme Court will consider taking up Alaska union dues case no sooner than December
November 8, 2023 // Politically conservative organizations, including the Buckeye Institute, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, and the Goldwater Institute, have submitted documents in support of the state’s case. Those organizations, plus the state of Kansas (which also submitted documents in support of Alaska) are hoping that the Supreme Court will reinterpret its 2018 case and effectively put new restrictions on public employee unions. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that unions could not automatically collect so-called “fair share” fees from workers who benefited from union contracts but declined to formally join a union.
Opinion: Say it again, Supremes: Forced union dues in government are illegal
November 3, 2023 // Far from making sure that employees “clearly and affirmatively consent” before union fees are deducted from their pay, these states — under pressure from mobilized unions — deny them any independent workplace source of information about their right to refuse. Often new hires are simply given a dues-withdrawal form to sign along with all the other first-day paperwork. When disgruntled dues-payers later learn of their rights and seek to withdraw their agreement, they are routinely confronted with confusing rules intended to make it almost impossible to stop paying. The Freedom Foundation, a workers’ rights education and litigation institute, documents dozens of such cases in a recent Supreme Court filing.
City Workers Ditch Unions, Skip Dues, Following Supreme Court Ruling
November 2, 2023 // Pre-Janus, public sector employees had the option to explicitly opt out of union membership thanks to an earlier Supreme Court decision but still had to pay “agency fees” out of their paychecks to the unions. Union leaders, including New York City’s Municipal Labor Committee, warned before the decision of potentially large declines in union membership if signing up became optional. Any dramatic loss of dues-paying union members could threaten unions’ operations or even their ability to exist – a possibility on the horizon in some so-called “right to work” states.
Freedom Foundation bundles FIVE FORGERY cases into one appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court:
October 5, 2023 // Abernathy said. “First, there’s abundant case law showing that, in cases like this, the union is treated as a state actor and can be held accountable for its actions. And secondly, the Supreme Court had already ruled that dues can’t be deducted by either the state or the union without the employee’s consent. It doesn’t matter what state laws say. The U.S. Constitution takes precedence.” The Supreme Court has declined to consider several similar cases in recent years, Abernathy said, but the justices can only tolerate the lower courts’ errors for just so long. “Unless you enforce it, even a landmark ruling like Janus is just a piece of paper,” Abernathy concluded. “Unions and activist judges have been allowed to act as if Janus never happened since the day it was issued. At some point, the court has to demonstrate that it meant what it said and said what it meant.”