Fresh off a Supreme Court loss that stripped them of millions of dollars in an annual revenue, California public employee unions are finding that they still have the big money they need to run statewide political campaigns.
It just might not be enough cash to keep up with their opponents.
The first test of California public-sector union spending after labor’s June defeat at the Supreme Court in Janus vs. AFSCME is unfolding in the race for state superintendent, a contest that typically attracts intense interest from education unions and groups that want to embrace charter schools.
Education unions have ponied up $12.3 million in an independent expenditure committee to back Democratic Assemblyman Tony Thurmond. Thurmond has raised another $2.3 million in his committee.
The nation’s largest teachers’ union is seeing the first signs of a membership exodus, according to a report from the news site The 74 Million.
The National Education Association has lost about 17,000 members since its last update in April, according to an internal document obtained by Mike Antonucci, a long-time union analyst who now writes for the 74. This membership loss is most likely due to a Supreme Court decision in June that prohibited public-sector unions from charging fees to workers who are not members of the union.
Before the high court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME, workers who didn’t want to join the union still had to pay “agency” or “fair share” fees to cover the cost of collective bargaining. However, those fees often cost nearly as much as a full membership, so many people went ahead and became members. Now, workers can exit the union and not have to pay any fee as a nonmember—so unions have predicted significant membership declines.
The NEA now stands at just over 3 million members, Antonucci reported. But the membership loss is likely to continue—over the summer, the NEA predicted a loss of more than 300,000 members over two years.
The National Education Association is feeling the first effects of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus ruling, which ended the practice of public-sector unions charging fees to nonmembers. New membership numbers obtained by Union Report show that NEA now stands at 3,001,570 total members — a decline of 17,000 since the last report in April. This erased much of the membership increase the union saw in 2017.
More damaging to the union’s coffers is the loss of its more than 87,000 former agency fee payers nationwide after the court’s ruling. The percentage losses are comparable to those of the Maryland State Education Association, reported here two weeks ago.
NEA already cut its budget in anticipation of these losses, but it is looking for additional ways to reduce expenditures. The first proposal is to cut the number of days at its annual convention by two, saving $1 million. The Representative Assembly itself, where the union’s delegates debate and vote on policies, endorsements, and the budget, would continue to last four days; some pre-RA activities, which previously ran for about a week, would be eliminated or consolidated.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Unions representing teachers and other public employees sued on Monday to try to block a new Missouri law that they claim imposes “a raft of harsh restrictions” that “effectively eviscerates” their right to organize and bargain on behalf of employees.
A Missouri law set to take effect Tuesday will require most public sector unions to hold recertification votes to continue their representation, limit the topics on which they can bargain, and require annual employee permission to deduct dues from paychecks and spend money on political causes.
The lawsuit filed in St. Louis County seeks an injunction and a declaration that the law violates several provisions of the Missouri Constitution, including free speech and due process rights and a specific right for employees “to organize and to bargain collectively.”
One-in-three public sector workers would leaver their unions given the chance, according to a new poll.
Government union members won the right to cease automatic fee payments to unions in June after the Supreme Court found that mandatory dues as a condition of employment violated the U.S. Constitution. A poll found that a large portion of workers plan on taking that option now that it is available to them following the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees ruling overturning coercive unionism.
“One-third plan to change what they are paying, with 6% saying they have already stopped paying dues and 25% saying they plan to stop paying,” the poll found.
Columbus, OH – On the heels of its two previous lawsuits filed in federal district courts in Minnesota and Ohio following the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision, The Buckeye Institute filed its third lawsuit and corresponding preliminary injunction in Maine calling for an immediate end to laws that compel public-sector employees who have refused to join a union to accept forced union representation.
The three lawsuits challenge the constitutionality of compelled exclusive representation, in which a government agency appoints a representative to speak on behalf of employees, in their names. The most recent case was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maine on August 10 (with a preliminary injunction motion filed on August 16) on behalf of Jonathan Reisman, an associate professor of economics at the University of Maine at Machias who served as the Associated Faculties of the Universities of Maine’s grievance officer.
“As his local union’s grievance officer, Mr. Reisman understood and greatly valued the role of his local union. But he could accept neither being forced to support a national and state union that advocated for a partisan agenda with which he disagreed nor having a union advocate for that agenda in his name, as his appointed representative,” said Robert Alt, president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute and an attorney on the case. “In filing this lawsuit, and others like it across the country, The Buckeye Institute is calling for an end to the unconstitutional, un-American, and unfair practice of compelled ‘exclusive representation.’ It is long past time to recognize that public employees have the same right to speak for themselves that everyone else has.”
It’s been two months since the Supreme Court handed Gov. Bruce Rauner a huge victory in a landmark case that curtailed the power of public-sector labor unions.
The 5-4 decision in the case of Mark Janus versus AFSCME Council 31 may have started in Illinois, but the ruling had national implications — though the full extent isn’t yet clear.
“It’ll certainly take a while to determine” the impact, said Robert Bruno, a labor expert who teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Hard numbers don’t yet exist, but by next year, filings with the federal Department of Labor will show any effects on Illinois’ major labor unions, he said.
Across the country, public school teachers are returning to the classroom. But this year there is something different: no teacher will be compelled to pay union fees. After the Supreme Court’s June ruling in Janus v. Afscme, teachers in every state will have the free speech right to decide for themselves whether or not they want to join their union. With millions of dollars on the line, unions aren’t thrilled at the prospect of losing members. They have even accused the Supreme Court of “weaponizing” the First Amendment. But the unions knew Janus was coming for a long time, and now they are faced with two paths forward in a post-Janus landscape.
The first option is to seek more government protection. Union’s may no longer be able to compel fees directly from unwilling employees, but they can still obtain some generous perks. Maryland and California, for instance, have introduced measure that will allow unions to pitch the benefits of membership to all new employees. A bill introduced in Hawaii would take things even further by having the government directly fund the union for the amount it would have raised in dues every year.
While the Hawaii proposal would guarantee the union their desired revenues in a way that bypasses the constitutional issues raised in Janus, it would still leave the unions with many of the problems that have afflicted them over the last several decades. Because the unions have relied on the state to maintain their cash flow, they haven’t had to devote as much resources to fostering membership and advocating for their core issues. Instead, public sector unions were free to devote significant resources to national politics.For instance, in 2016, AFSCME spent a mere $36 million representing workers. In the same year, they spent $55 million on politics.
On the 2018 EdNext survey, among respondents provided with information on average teacher salaries prevailing in their state, 49% of the public say that teacher pay should increase—a 13-percentage-point jump over the share who said so last year. This hefty spike in support for boosting teacher salaries is the largest change in public opinion observed between the 2017 EdNext survey and the 2018 EdNext survey. Forty-four percent of informed respondents say teacher salaries in their state should remain about the same, while just 7% say they should decrease. Support rose within both political parties, from 45% in 2017 to 59% this year among Democrats, and from 27% to 38% among Republicans. To learn more about these findings and others from 2018, read the full poll essay here. Two interactive graphics are also available that explore the 2018 findings as well as trends in opinion over time.
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that government workers cannot be forced to pay fees to a labor union. Many experts described this ruling as the most significant court decision affecting collective bargaining rights in decades.
To better understand how state government employees view this ruling, and whether they plan to continue or stop paying dues, a national survey of over 300 public-sector union members was administered in August 2018.
One public sector worker who participated in the survey said the following: “If the union is not supporting or representing the worker, then he or she should not be required to pay money for unfair treatment.” Another survey participant put it this way: “The union does not represent me. I think we should vote with our money, and if a union doesn’t do its job, it shouldn’t get paid by me.”
