Daniel DiSalvo joins City Journal editor Brian Anderson to discuss the impact of last year’s Supreme Court decision in Janus v. ASFCME, in which the Court ruled that public-sector unions’ mandatory “agency fees” were unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
Unions provide an important source of financial support for politicians—primarily Democrats—around the country. In a new report for the Manhattan Institute, DiSalvo finds that blue states are taking steps to shield their public unions from the full consequences of the Janus ruling.
Daniel DiSalvo is an associate professor of political science at the City College of New York, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and author of Government Against Itself: Public Union Power and Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2015).
The Los Angeles teachers union and school district are being sued by a teacher who claims union dues are being deducted from her paychecks in violation of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
Irene Seager seeks class-action status for the lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court against United Teachers Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Unified School District. She was identified by the Los Angeles Daily News as a teacher at Porter Ranch Community School.
Negotiators reached a contract agreement the same day that resulted in the end of a teacher strike, with educators heading back to classes Wednesday.
Boston, MA – Tomorrow, a National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorney will deliver arguments at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court for a group of Massachusetts educators. The educators are challenging state law that grants union officials’ monopoly bargaining privileges which union officials use to gag nonmembers from having a voice and a vote in their working conditions. The educators argue this violates their First Amendment rights.
The group of four educators, from the University of Massachusetts and Hanover School Committee, all believe they would be better off without representation from the National Educators Association (NEA) and its affiliates.
The plaintiffs argue their First Amendment rights are violated when they are forced to be union members to exercise their rights under state law to have a say in their workplace conditions. Under the Foundation-won U.S. Supreme Court Janus v. AFSCME decision, workers cannot be required to fund a union. However, under Massachusetts labor laws the educators must waive their First Amendment rights and become full members to have any say in their working conditions.
A northwest suburban school employee is suing his labor union, saying he’s being blocked from opting out of membership despite a landmark Supreme Court ruling last year that barred public unions from requiring government employees to pay dues.
Erich Mandel, a diesel mechanic from Palatine, claims in the suit that he tried in August to end his union membership and cease paying dues in the wake of the June decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME, a case with Illinois roots that determined public sector workers could no longer be required to pay dues to a union as a condition of employment.
But Mandel’s lawsuit, filed last month in federal court in Chicago, says Service Employees International Union Local 73 continued to collect dues from his paycheck “based solely on a union card that (he) purportedly signed” prior to the Janus ruling, before he had the right to opt out.
Susan G. Fischer teaches Italian in New Jersey public schools. All in all, she calculates that she’s involuntarily ceded about $30,000 of hard-earned salary to union dues during her 30-year teaching career. Mandatory payments increase annually; her tab last year was $1,222. While she harbors no resentment toward the $25 a year she pays to her local bargaining unit at Ocean Township Public Schools and the $50 per year she pays to the Monmouth County unit, praising the collegial relationships and professional development opportunities, she’s always resented the $200 per year she pays to the National Education Association and, most adamantly, the $800 per year — Fischer calls it “highway robbery” — that goes to the state union, the New Jersey Education Association.
This system of involuntary payments to support lobbying that she mostly disagrees with was supposed to end with the Supreme Court’s ruling this past June in Janus v. AFSCME, which bars union shops from mandating membership and dues payments. Mandatory union membership, said SCOTUS, is a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech. But this system didn’t end in New Jersey, because legislators, with a heavy assist from NJEA sycophant Gov. Phil Murphy, preemptively circumvented the Janus ruling through a law called the Workplace Democracy Enhancement Act. Now, Fischer and her colleague Jeanette Speck have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against Murphy, NJEA, and the Township of Ocean Education Association.
BOSTON — Teachers unions in Massachusetts send the vast majority of members’ dues to state and national offices, instead of keeping the money for local chapters, according to a watchdog group.
A new report by the Pioneer Institute found less than 16 percent of dues paid by members of nearly two-dozen union locals affiliated with the Massachusetts Teachers Association and National Education Association go to local chapters.
Pioneer said the bulk of the money goes toward salaries, lobbying and other expenses in the state and national offices that have little to do with collective bargaining on behalf of unionized teachers.
Union officials are gloating that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Janus v. AFSCME has not affected the labor movement. But are they telling the whole story? A review of union narratives after Michigan adopted a right-to-work law suggests that unions are prone to downplay the effects of policies that create choices for union members.
In June the Supreme Court reversed a 40-year-old precedent and held that Mark Janus, an Illinois state worker, could not lose his job if he refused to financially support the union of his workplace. This ruling recognized a right to non-association in more than 20 states, which affects 5 million public employees. Prior to the June ruling, union officials had issued ominous predictions.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the case was an attempt to “gut … a strong and united labor movement[.]” Naomi Walker, assistant to the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), saw far-reaching consequences: “The progressive infrastructure in this country, from think tanks to advocacy organizations — which depends on the resources and engagement of workers and their unions — will crumble.” At the Janus hearing, the union’s attorney warned justices of “an untold specter of labor unrest throughout the country.”
Hello! We know there’s a lot of news out there, but we’re bringing you an education-centric take on the midterms, with big results in some key states.
Arizona
Arizona is one of five states that saw teacher walkouts this past spring. After a grassroots group of public school supporters put it on the ballot, what would have been the nation’s broadest school voucher expansion was overturned Tuesday 2-to-1 by popular referendum.
Arizona has been considered a model state by school choice advocates, so the rebuke is a notable shift.
Class action lawsuit challenges a NJ law that blocks workers from exercising First Amendment rights outside 10 day “window period”
Trenton, New Jersey (November 5, 2018) – Two New Jersey public school teachers have filed a federal class action lawsuit against the Township of Ocean Education Association (TOEA), New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) and the National Education Association (NEA) unions, with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys.
Teachers Susan G. Fischer and Jeanette Speck, for themselves and potentially thousands of other teachers across the state, are asking the U.S. District Court for New Jersey to order NJEA union officials to refund illegally-seized union dues taken from teachers without their consent and in violation of their First Amendment rights as protected by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Janus v. AFSCME.
In Janus, which was argued and won by National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys, the High Court ruled it unconstitutional to require public employees to subsidize a labor union. The Court further held that any union dues or fees taken without a public employee’s affirmative consent violates the employee’s First Amendment rights.
Teachers unions appear to have dodged a serious blow to their political activity and membership rolls following a sweeping Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, defying predictions that the unions’ traditional campaign organizing in advance of the midterm elections could be devastated.
Nine union leaders in eight states interviewed by POLITICO reported modest but anticipated drops in membership since the court decision, in addition to the loss of thousands of non-members who used to pay mandatory union fees. At the same time, union leaders reported an uptick in members attending rallies, canvassing neighborhoods and phone banking for the midterms, though the teachers unions’ national rankings in political giving to candidates slipped. Even conservatives acknowledged that teachers remained key to Democratic Party election organizing.
But firm numbers on current membership remain difficult to come by. Both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers declined to provide estimates for how many of their members have dropped out since the court ruling. Combined, they have more than 4.6 million members and each lost more than 85,000 non-members paying mandatory fees, according to Department of Labor filings.
