Agency Fees

The Supreme Court will hear a case on whether public-sector unions can charge non-members fees to cover the expense of representation.

The union fees case presents the question of whether to overturn a 40-year-old ruling. In that case, Abood vs. Detroit, the Supreme Court said it was reasonable to require all employees, not just union members, to pay to support the cost of bargaining because all of them benefited. By law, the unions are required to represent all employees, including by handling their grievances.

Update (October 14):  Sarah Lahm reports on further attacks against teacher's unions.

At the root of [several] cases is a singular claim: tenure and layoff rules protect “ineffective” teachers and deny students equal access to an education.

[The Partnership for Educational Justice] and 50CAN join[ed] forces to fight for state-level change, even though the tenure lawsuits have stalled thus far. ...Media Matters has pegged both PEJ and 50CAN as part of an education reform “echo chamber,” propped up by a “handful of conservative billionaires.” ... Both groups ... belong to a movement pushing for “conservative-backed policies” that “weaken labor unions” and promote school privatization schemes.

Update (November 18):  Bobbi Murray gives some background on the Supreme Court case.

Update (December 24):  Why do agency fees matter?

Florida Republicans are pushing a bill designed to ... decertify any union in which 50 percent of the workers don’t pay dues, thus preventing them from being able to collectively bargain. Despite the fact that unions negotiate for the benefit of all their workers, no employee is forced to pay dues in Florida, because it’s a “Right to Work” state.

Update (January 1, 2018):  Although members-only unions is an idea meant to combat the problem of "free-riders" in the absence of agency fees, Chris Brooks argues it only further weakens unions.

When labor activists imagine a world of competing members-only unions, they typically express hope that it will give rise to more militant, progressive and rank-and-file-led organizations that will challenge unions from the left. The experience in Tennessee, however, shows that this competition can produce further fragmentation as unions face business-aligned challengers from their right.

Update (February 19, 2018):  Dave Jamieson reports that public section unions are already preparing for the loss of agency fees.

The largest public sector unions have undertaken “internal organizing” campaigns to prepare for the case, trying to make committed union members out of the workers they already represent. The hope is that engaging with these workers now will make them much more likely to support the union when they no longer have to.

Update (June 27, 2018):  As expected, the Supreme Court struck down agency fees. The argument is that collective bargaining itself is political and thus "compelled speech". Justice Kagan wrote the dissent.

As Kagan noted, 28 states are “right to work” and do not allow fair share fees, while 22 states are not “right to work” and do allow them. The Janus ruling, she wrote, essentially makes the decision for local governments by banning them, “and it does so by weaponizing the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy.” She went so far as to call the majority “black-robed rulers overriding citizens’ choices.”

“The First Amendment was meant for better things.”

Update (June 28, 2018):  Amanda Marcotte is optimistic unions can handle the decision.

[T]his blow is being counterbalanced by good, old-fashioned people power of the sort that created public sector unions in the first place. Wildcat teacher strikes have been erupting across the country, even in states that have done everything possible to outlaw collective bargaining for government workers, and in most places, these teachers have found public support.

The degraded work conditions and pitiful salaries teachers often have -- because of public-sector union breakdown in those states -- have given them leverage, perversely enough: They can't be fired en masse because it would be too difficult to find replacements who will take their jobs. Inducing desperation in workers eventually backfires, by pushing them to the point where they feel have nothing left to lose by standing up for themselves.

Also, Aaron Tang explains that states could simply choose to reimburse unions directly for collective bargaining expenses.

Update (June 30, 2018):  Anthony DiMaggio refutes the Janus argument.

His hypothetical straw man argument that being forced to pay union dues is the equivalent of a state requiring residents to support a political party’s proposals is absurd on the face of it, and it speaks to the blatant intellectual dishonesty of Alito and other members of the court’s majority.

Update (July 6, 2018):  Glenn Sacks explains how weaker unions hurt others.

Teachers unions protect children because they protect a precious resource—teachers’ time. At nonunion schools teachers are often weighed down with taxing, unnecessary labor–yard duty before and after school, nutrition and lunch duty, chaperoning school functions and athletic events, and others. These duties reduce teachers’ ability to spend time helping students and preparing for classes.

Update (July 7, 2018):  How nice of billionaires to try so hard to "rescue" government workers from unions.

Update (August 8, 2018):  Voters in Missouri rejected a right-to-work law, but I'm wondering how much that helps given the Janus decision.