Many people over the years, including former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, have said that public employee unions should not have the power, indirectly, to basically elect their bosses as they have been doing for many decades.
That concern seems to have been lessened by the Supreme Court's decision in the Janus vs. AFSCME case. The Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 vote, ruled that public employee unions cannot force state and local government workers to pay union dues (called “Agency Fees”) who do not want to join the union. The decision does not affect the existence of private employee unions.
The majority decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, used the 1st Amendment as the reason why they ruled as they did. The decision represented a major victory for conservatives who long sought to curb the influence of public sector unions – which often support the Democrat Party and liberal causes (over 95% of union political contributions go to Democrats).
The ruling will not ban the unions that represent public workers in both state and local governments. The public sector workers are almost 6 times more likely to belong to a union than workers in the private sector. Private sector unions now represent 6.5% of private sector employees, down from the upper teens in the 1980's.
The ruling does not not ban employees from joining a union, it only dictates that a union cannot collect dues (Agency Fees) from employees who do not want to join a union. The employees can still join the union, but those employees who do not want to join can stop paying “Agency Fees” unless they will consent to it. Two dozen states had required “Agency Fees” to be deducted before this ruling was made, now they will no longer be able to collect those fees.
This momentous ruling will affect the labor movement already reeling from diminished membership over the past decades. The ruling also will deprive the unions of a vital revenue stream, undercuts their ability to attract new members and to retain current members, and most important by spending money supporting candidates in political races, mostly Democrats.
Another reason given, by some, to be against public service unions is that they are working for the public not a private organization. Since they, the unions, can raise large sums of money through the collection of dues to give to campaigns of politicians who, if elected through those efforts, and by infusion of volunteer workers to help in the campaign, those politicians will be prone to reward the unions for their efforts for that campaign and future campaigns, in the areas of pay, pensions, work rules, and some patronage positions.
This in turn represents a situation whereby the union employees are able to vote for their “boss” who represents the public and who have access to the public treasury to reward the unions for their efforts on their behalf. Remember, it is not the money of the politician he can distribute, but the money of the taxpayers they will be doling out. This is a case of a “you wash my hands and I'll wash your hands” scenario, that has caused many cities and states to be flirting with, or are in, bankruptcy because of the lavish benefits given to the public service unions which the cities and states are now finding out they cannot afford. Those lavish pay scales, pensions, and lax work rules for the unions, are coming back to bite them in the butt big time, thereby creating vast deficits in their budgets they are unable to pay for.
So the answer to the headline, according to this writer, is that the Supreme Court ruling has thrown a monkey wrench into the efforts of the public sector unions to control the politicians who would become their boss like they have done in the past, as the money will not be available, like before, to be shoveled out to the politicians who have given the unions the goodies from the government treasury because of their tremendous support to help elect them to office. The old axiom of “follow the money” certainly will apply in this case.
Many people over the years, including former President Franklin D. Roosevelt, have said that public employee unions should not have the power, indirectly, to basically elect their bosses as they have been doing for many decades.
That concern seems to have been lessened by the Supreme Court's decision in the Janus vs. AFSCME case. The Supreme Court, by a 5 to 4 vote, ruled that public employee unions cannot force state and local government workers to pay union dues (called “Agency Fees”) who do not want to join the union. The decision does not affect the existence of private employee unions.
