Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Illinois could not force home care workers to pay “agency fees” to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). By its ruling, the Court chipped away at the idea that “non-union workers should help foot the bill for union bargaining that benefits them.” But, it also introduced a larger question of the difference between public and private sector unions.
The Court’s decision in the Illinois case applies narrowly to home care workers who, under Illinois law, negotiate independently with employees on working conditions, grievance procedures, benefits, etc. On the other hand, the SEIU could bargain for their salaries. Due to the SEIU’s limited role, the Court “decided it was a stretch for Illinois to wring the fees out of them as if they were actual state employees getting the full range of benefits from the SEIU’s collective bargaining.”
Although the issue is not resolved in his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito raises the question of “whether a government ought to compel any public employee to pay agency fees.” According to The News Tribune, Alito’s question is “where the difference between public and private unions becomes crucial.”
“In government, as opposed to business, spending is public policy. Attempts to redirect government spending – to wages, benefits or anything else – are political by definition. They are a form of lobbying, and they affect the public. In Tacoma, for example, compensation for public employees kept on climbing through the Great Recession and its aftermath even as the city skimped on public safety, libraries and street maintenance.
“Some maverick employees may feel they’re compensated well enough already; they may prefer that that public funds not be spent giving them another raise. They might prefer that the library stay open on Friday night, or that more potholes be filled.
“They have a right to feel that way. If they have chosen not to join a public union, they should also have the right not to subsidize collective bargaining that violates their convictions about government priorities.”
The potential violation of a worker’s convictions is important because, in the past, the courts have ruled that “agency fees must be spent only on collective bargaining.” This rule protects non-union member workers from unions using their fees to “pay for political lobbying and campaigns to put their [union] allies in public office.”
Taking into consideration this argument, The News Tribune rightly concludes,
“The argument for using state power to compel agency fees in the public sector boils down to: It’s good for unions. That’s true enough, but it’s a thin rationale for compromising a worker’s First Amendment right to political expression.”
I love this ruling!!! My grandson’s mom wanted to pay me through the state for daycare and I didn’t want to join the SEIU because of its political leanings. I don’t agree with them at all and I didn’t want to join. I argued with them. I called my Republican reps and senators in the state, and there wasn’t anything they could do. I refused to join and told her just to forget about paying me because of principal. I called the union to congratulate them on their Supreme Court LOSS.
What’s wrong, with YOU getting state $$$ for watching family, welfare Gma
Liberal Idiot.
Name calling numbskull, racist.
Racist? Nothing in this article had anything to do with race but you you threw out the loony lefts pejorative du jour. The weaker your position, the more shrill the attacks are. What a loser.
You’re a racist, because you display the typical racist’s need to group folks, while you spew your senile racism…
You’re WELCOME, senile racist fool !!!!
ps- If you’d ONLY commented on this article, you’d be marginally more honest, racist moron.
Look at his history, complete loser.
Andy (NO) Wood = Dog Crap :man:- Mt Vernon Wa AKA- the 12 year old furnace
filter changer, with no point, life, or success… Just jealous, I guess
!!!
Opened a business, lost the business = Wood “sucksess”.
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Libel is great, thanks for guaranteeing my pay rate !!!!
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( “I don’t care who ya are, that’s funny right there”)
“Some maverick employees may feel they’re compensated
well enough already; they may prefer that that public funds not be spent giving
them another raise. They might prefer that the library stay open on Friday
night, or that more potholes be filled.” “They have a right to feel that way. If they have
chosen not to join a public union, they should also have the right not to
subsidize collective bargaining that violates their convictions about government
priorities.” Such altruism
is rare in our materialistic society, to say the least. I will begin to believe this line of
reasoning, when those self same employees petition their employers to withhold
bargained pay raises and redirect the money elsewhere. Until that time, those employees are
accepting the largess of their co-workers, making this is a fanciful argument,
to put it mildly.
“Free riders” is the term used in legal discussions to
describe those who benefit from a union’s service but manage to avoid paying
for it. The act of paying for
those services is called “agency fees” and sometimes referred to as “fair
share”. The US Supreme Court, in
Abood, recognized the concepts of “free riders” and “agency fees/fair share” was their resolution.
Justice Kagan, in her dissent, writes that the Abood case, which is the precedent in this situation, “held that a government entity may, consistently with the First Amendment, require public employees to pay a fair share of the cost that a union incurs negotiating on their behalf for better terms of employment.” She goes on to mention something Justice Alito carefully avoided mentioning in the majority decision; “That is exactly what Illinois did in entering into collective bargaining agreements with the Service Employees International Union Healthcare.” Justice Altio made no mention of the negotiations between the union and the state, but made a big point of the fact that state involvement is limited to statutes that govern the industry. It would seem to be both a conscious and deliberate omission.
Since it is clear that negotiations between the union
and the state have taken place and will most likely continue to take place, the
Abood case becomes the appropriate precedent for deciding this case, unlike
Justice Alito’s characterization that this case (Harris v Quinn) is an
“anomaly”.
In Justice Kagan’s dissent, we learn that Harris and the SEIU workers are not the motivation of the law suit. It would appear that overturning Abood was the primary motivation. As Justice Kagan puts it, “The petitioners devoted the lion’s share of their briefing and argument to urging us to overturn that (Abood) nearly 40-year old precedent…” According to Kagan the best Alito could do was take “potshots at Abood”. She goes on to say, that Abood “is the foundation for not tens or hundreds, but thousands of contracts between unions and governments across the Nation.”
Those who think the Supreme Court’s decision in Harris
v. Quinn will open the doors to further limitations upon the use of agency fees
apparently have no qualms about creating classifications of secondary citizens,
or more likely no qualms about doing anything they can to damage the efficacy
of unions in general.