Does free speech protect free riders?
January 12, 2016 11:50 AM   Subscribe

Oral arguments were heard on Monday in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a Supreme Court case in which the plaintiffs are attempting to invoke their First Amendment right to free speech to avoid being compelled to pay their share of the costs of union representation. Summarizing the oral arguments for SCOTUSblog, Amy Howe notes that "public-employee unions are likely very nervous, as the Court’s more conservative Justices appeared ready to overrule the Court’s 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education and strike down the fees."

Though oral arguments are often a misleading indicator of a case's outcome, conservative court-watchers are upbeat, while liberals seem resigned to a stinging loss when the verdict is announced later this year.

Forbes.com says that a ruling for the plaintiffs in Friedrichs could fix the "40 year-old mistake" of Abood:
In Abood, the Court transplanted to the public-sector the same justifications for allowing compulsory dues in private-sector. As city and state budgets around the country groan under the weight of their obligations to public-sector workers, that mistake Abood becomes all the more obvious. Public-sector unions are categorically different than private-sector unions, and everything they do, whether at the bargaining table or in supporting candidates with ads, is an attempt to extract favorable concessions from the government.

[...]

Longstanding precedents like Abood can be justifiably overruled when important questions were never properly vetted by the earlier courts. It is now clear that public-sector unions are little more than another political group seeking special favors and influence in the government, and there is no reason why the government should be allowed to put a thumb on the scale to privilege public-sector workers.
while The American Prospect's Harold Meyerson provides an in-depth look at the history of the Republican party's changing attitudes toward collective bargaining, and places Friedrichs in a historical context along with other more recent Supreme Court cases:
What's changed since 1977, I suspect, is the regard in which conservatives now hold collective bargaining itself. In acknowledging that pure collective bargaining, if such a thing were even ascertainable, might justify fees from nonmembers, and simply by the act of concurring, Powell was bowing to the reality that collective bargaining was an established American institution that conservatives couldn't frontally attack. Today, in the private sector, it's a disestablished institution. Over the past 60 years, the rate of unionization in the private sector has fallen from roughly 40 percent to just 6.6 percent. In the public sector, it's at 35 percent, but some key states that had long afforded collective-bargaining rights to public employees-most notably Wisconsin and Indiana-have effectively repealed them in recent years at the behest of Republican governors who are far more anti-union than Republican governors in the years when the Court ruled on Abood.

[...]

The difference between Powell and Alito, then, isn't a difference of belief, but rather a difference in their sense of what is politically permissible. It's the difference between the postwar business and Republican elites, which didn't like unions but felt compelled to tolerate them in regions where they had members and power (not the South), and today's business and Republican elites, which feel free to smash them now that their power has waned almost everywhere. That this smashing has coincided with and contributed to the shrinking of the American middle class-well, that no concern of theirs.

[...]

By seeking to diminish these unions' membership and budget, the conservative justices on the Court would effectively tilt elections toward the Republicans-which they already did in such campaign-finance decisions as Citizens United. Far from being the anomaly its authors said it would be, Bush v. Gore has spawned comparably partisan progenies: First, Citizens United, and now, in all likelihood, Friedrichs v. CTA.
Facing a potential free-rider led death spiral if Abood were to be stuck down, unions may feel compelled to use their own right to free speech in response:
In a recent UAW Local 412 newsletter obtained by The Detroit News, a list of 43 workers "who choose not to pay their fair share" was published alongside "conditions" that will apply to workers who opt out and no longer pay — or partially pay — union dues.

Listed conditions for "ex-UAW members" range from rudimentary things such as not being allowed to attend union functions or vote in local elections, to having to "pay all unpaid dues and/or dues in arrears as well as an initiation fee" if one decides to rejoin the union.

Singling out workers who decide to leave the union isn't unprecedented, but it's seen by some as an intimidation tactic to deter others from leaving - and pressure those who have left to rejoin.
posted by tonycpsu (110 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
I listened to NPR's coverage of this last night, and I wanted to punch Justice Kennedy:
Chief Justice Roberts - what's your best example of something the union negotiates that's not political? Mileage reimbursement rates and safety measures, replied California's lawyer. But that's all money, replied Roberts. How much money is going to have to be paid to the teachers? Answered Dumont - what's fundamental is that we need to be able to run our workplaces, and the most efficient way of doing that is by negotiating with a single democratically elected union that has the power to bargain over matters that, of necessity, do involve some public policy issues. Moments later, Justice Kennedy replied caustically, a state is always more efficient if it can suppress speech.
Did he miss the "democratically elected union" reminder from a moment before? Is he saying that democracy is actually a suppression of free speech?
posted by filthy light thief at 12:09 PM on January 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


What's changed since 1977, I suspect, is the regard in which conservatives now hold collective bargaining itself.

Conservatives only oppose collective bargaining for workers. The right of owners/shareholders to bargain collectively through their Board of Directors and CEO has never been in question.
posted by rocket88 at 12:09 PM on January 12, 2016 [60 favorites]


(As a former union member, I'm ok with this)

I'm somewhat surprised that there aren't many more people dropping out of unions to be honest, especially in places like Tennessee, given the current intersection of southern blue collar workers, conservative voting and anti-union sentiment.

Only 40 workers out of about 1000 in Spring Hill? I would have expected much more.

I wonder if it is inertia (you're presented with union membership as kind of a fait accompli when you are hired, in my experience) or is it a lack of knowledge (do people know the closed shop is illegal)?
Or maybe it's just ... accidental hypocrisy. People like what the union provides to them personally, while voting for candidates that are anti-union as a whole.
Perhaps I am way off base entirely, and the Spring Hill plant is a bastion of progressive thought in an otherwise conservative state.
posted by madajb at 12:12 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also, singling out one person out of 3,000 is pretty damn tacky, regardless of how you feel about their choice.
posted by madajb at 12:13 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well the labor movement was nice while it lasted.

We can't rely on companies to treat their workers right. We can't rely on the legislature to force companies to treat their workers right. Now we'll struggle to organize what little is left of ourselves to try and beg companies to treat their workers right.

Do they even realize that the people they are pushing to the bottom are their customers? It's like a snake eating its own tail.
posted by Talez at 12:13 PM on January 12, 2016 [17 favorites]


This is really pretty bad.

My local has a really small budget already - I was surprised. It pays for, basically, 1.5 union organizers at a very modest wage. We'll be down to one if this goes through.

And what's dumb about this - we just won the first decent contract settlement in years. The union toughed it out. We would have gotten basically zippo - the university told us that they considered the existing contract "mature" and would not be open to any changes, in particular no raises and no bringing our parental leave up to the level enjoyed by administrators. (The children of the administration and the professional staff got six weeks of parent presence at birth; the children of the proles are mere animals and barely even deserved the two weeks they got. That was what really frosted me - the whole "working class kids don't deserve the same start in life as elite kids" thing. But our union toughed it out. I thought we were going to lose and was pretty dispirited, but we didn't.

Everyone is going to benefit way, way more in the next two years from this contract than they would from the situation without a union.

People were temp labor here for their whole careers before the union came in. The union here benefits all staff - and for that matter, it provides a floor for the professional and civil service staff, because the university has to give them anything they give us and then some.

People just don't get it - with our union weakened, do they really think the university has any incentive to give them anything better?
posted by Frowner at 12:14 PM on January 12, 2016 [54 favorites]


This will be a disaster.
posted by Ironmouth at 12:15 PM on January 12, 2016 [11 favorites]


The union can just buy their own Congressional representatives, mass media, and Supreme Court justices if they don't like it.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 12:16 PM on January 12, 2016 [15 favorites]


Oh, and here are some additional links with background, opinion, and analysis of the implications of a plaintiff victory in Friedrichs that I found while putting together this post, but left out for the sake of brevity:
  • The American Prospect's Sarah Posner: Anti-union SCOTUS Challenge Threatens Church-State Separation:
    While the plaintiffs in Friedrichs base their claims on a free speech argument that many find dubious, tucked away in the case lies another, real First Amendment concern: the separation of church and state. The lead plaintiff in the challenge before the High Court is Rebecca Friedrichs, a teacher in California’s Savanna School District; she is joined in the suit by nine additional individuals, and one organization: the Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), which bills itself as an alternative to the “secular” teachers’ unions, and argues openly that the Constitution does not bar teachers from imparting their Christian faith in their classrooms. Should those unions find themselves on the losing side of the Friedrichs case, an important bulwark against the incursion of religion in public schools will be undermined.
  • Richard D. Kahlenberg, in a New York Times op-ed: Strong Unions, Strong Democracy:
    Democracies are also more likely to thrive when a vibrant middle class can support them, an insight that goes all the way back to Aristotle. Large inequalities of wealth can create political inequality, and vice versa. Theodore Roosevelt warned of the dangers of having “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.” Strong unions ameliorate extreme inequalities.
  • Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog: Assumes Conservative Support for Democracy That's Not in Evidence:
    Kahlenberg appears to be under the mistaken impression that modern conservatives actually want to strengthen democracy. They want no such thing. Conservatism thrives when economic inequality is increasing. The formula is simple: Take good jobs at good wages from blue-collar whites. When they express anger and anxiety, blame non-white recipients of social services provided by "big government." Lather. Rinse. Repeat, ad infinitum. [...] Conservatism has been thriving in a period when ordinary Americans haven't been participating in civic associations and experiencing "democratic acculturation." In the low-civic-engagement era described in Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone, we've moved almost seamlessly from one Republican demagogue to another -- from Reagan to Limbaugh to Gingrich to Bush and Cheney to the Tea Party rabble-rousers in Congress and the strongmen in statehouses all over America, Scott Walker and Chris Christie and Paul Le Page and Rick Snyder and Rick Scott -- and now we're moving on to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. This all may be getting out of hand for the right at this moment, but it's worked pretty well so far. Much of the public is primed to be skeptical of democracy, and of government, and is thus happy to accept a dictatorship of the powerful.
  • Diane Ravitch: Supreme Court Seems Likely to Rule Against Unions:
    By the way, I received an email with a Facebook posting by the President of the Santa Ana, California, Education Association, who knows one of the plaintiffs. She posted this on Facebook and asked that it be shared widely: "I normally don’t post my frustration against people but I will make an exception. I [met] Peggy Searcy when I was working at Lathrop. She is now one of the plaintiffs in the Freidrichs vs CTA case. When Peggy was working, she was able to transfer from Franklin to Lathrop and Lathrop to Greenville because of the protections bargained by SAEA; between 2008 and 2012 she did not have furlough days thanks to the work of SAEA and is currently enjoying a wonderful pension which was fought for by CTA! She is now working hard via the Friedrichs case to destroy the unions as we know them! She wants to ruin it for all of us who are still working! Shame on you Peggy!"
posted by tonycpsu at 12:17 PM on January 12, 2016 [17 favorites]


Also the invaluable Dahlia Lithwick: What Would Happen if the Court Kneecapped the Unions? We’re about to find out.
posted by Gelatin at 12:29 PM on January 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


While the plaintiffs in Friedrichs base their claims on a free speech argument that many find dubious, tucked away in the case lies another, real First Amendment concern: the separation of church and state. The lead plaintiff in the challenge before the High Court is Rebecca Friedrichs, a teacher in California’s Savanna School District; she is joined in the suit by nine additional individuals, and one organization: the Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), which bills itself as an alternative to the “secular” teachers’ unions, and argues openly that the Constitution does not bar teachers from imparting their Christian faith in their classrooms. Should those unions find themselves on the losing side of the Friedrichs case, an important bulwark against the incursion of religion in public schools will be undermined.

I wonder if the secular parts of America will stand for a backdoor reintroduction of Christianity in schools. Compared to 1962 where religiosity in America was at its peak and the court was first taking religion out of public schools with Engel v. Vitale and then Abington School District v. Schempp, the modern religious landscape of America is far more secular. In a lot of America (anywhere outside the midwest) the desire for evangelical versions of education is very much in the minority now and religious educators who want to backdoor Christianity back into the classroom may not find the silent majority either silent or still "their" majority. I can see this severely backfiring in urban California even if they do succeed in their quest. Anaheim may be Republican but they're not batshit religious crazy like the Central Valley.
posted by Talez at 12:29 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's refreshing, by the way, that Lithwick overtly declares the Republican members of SCOTUS are putting partisanship first.
Ordinarily you might think that overruling a 40-year-old precedent—around which thousands of union contracts are organized, and upon which half of the states have come to rely—would be a heavy lift for a court that prizes humility and restraint. Nah.
posted by Gelatin at 12:35 PM on January 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


People just don't get it - with our union weakened, do they really think the university has any incentive to give them anything better?

But the authors of this disgrace will be busy blaming immigrants and welfare queens.
posted by Gelatin at 12:39 PM on January 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


This new 19th century America is going to be a disaster.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:51 PM on January 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


Just a holding pattern anyway, The Teacher Of The Future will not need or expect unions, well or pay for that matter.
posted by sammyo at 12:52 PM on January 12, 2016


It's like the Prosperity Gospel: give away all your money rights and protections to God corporations, and worldly riches will follow! Didn't work? It's because you didn't give enough away. Try again!
posted by The Card Cheat at 12:59 PM on January 12, 2016 [7 favorites]


Public-sector unions are categorically different than private-sector unions, and everything they do, whether at the bargaining table or in supporting candidates with ads, is an attempt to extract favorable concessions from the government.

When someone is setting up a sentence to reveal a categorical difference, I expect something besides telling me how two things are largely the same.

Or I used to. Thanks for keeping me on my toes, Forbes!
posted by namespan at 12:59 PM on January 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


Why can't unions just negotiate for union members only? That avoids the free rider problem, and means no one is forced to pay for political views they don't care for.
posted by corb at 1:22 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


How would that work? They hire you and make you an offer, and they either have to offer you the union rate or let you negotiate your own (lower) rate - that gives them an incentive to hire only people who self-negotiate lower rates than the union. Which means that they have an incentive to hire only people who don't want to be in the union.
posted by Frowner at 1:26 PM on January 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


It's just like minimum wage - why can't people who are desperate be allowed to work for $2 an hour, leaving behind all those toxic values about living standards and pay rates? Why, because there will always be desperate people who will work for the least possible in order to get the job.
posted by Frowner at 1:27 PM on January 12, 2016 [14 favorites]


On top of that, the notion that anyone genuinely considers basic union negotiations of work hours and safety practice a political view is simply charming.
posted by Gelatin at 1:28 PM on January 12, 2016 [14 favorites]


Most RPGs have some sort of a dispel spell that tries to magically remove any obstacles in your way. In the RPG called "America", that spell seems to be called "First Amendment".
posted by Pyrogenesis at 1:28 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Why can't unions just negotiate for union members only? That avoids the free rider problem, and means no one is forced to pay for political views they don't care for.

My response is the same as when you asked the same question a few years ago.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:28 PM on January 12, 2016 [34 favorites]


And one more, sorry! For public sector employment, we have wage scales and parity rules. So let's say you're hiring a secretary. All the other secretaries do roughly the same job, have college degrees and five to ten years experience, and get paid $30,000. You find a candidate who has a college degree and six years experience, but he is desperate for work and he's willing to take 23,000 and no benefits. You write up the hiring proposal and think you're getting a great deal for the department. But HR will tell you that you're not allowed to offer someone with comparable experience and education significantly less money to do the same job. You have to offer pretty close to what comparable employees make - not necessarily the same, but there can't be a big discrepancy.

(How do I know? I was reclassified and got an unexpected raise when my responsibilities increased and I got a better title - I had been told I would not get a raise, but I had to be given one because literally everyone else with my title and experience was making significantly more than I.)

If someone were negotiating as an individual with a giant bureaucracy, they would end up taking less than the union negotiates for them. Past a certain point, that simply isn't permitted by the general rules of public sector work.
posted by Frowner at 1:32 PM on January 12, 2016 [12 favorites]


I wonder if the secular parts of America will stand for a backdoor reintroduction of Christianity in schools.

I wonder if they'll be able to prevent the other parts of America from adopting it locally.
posted by delfin at 1:33 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


As came up in the court arguments, it is already the case that federal workers cannot be required to pay agency fees to a union. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone familiar with federal government workplaces who could comment on how unions function in that sector, and what strategies they have employed to stay relevant.
posted by kickingtheground at 1:40 PM on January 12, 2016


It seems like public unions should be able to back-door this in the next negotiating round by accepting a salary concession in return for direct payments from the state to a union trust. Now nobody has to pay 1% union dues, everyone gets a 1% pay cut, and the union trust gets paid 1% of aggregate compensation.

I work for SUNY, and so am in United University Professionals, yay, and there's some of this. There are some union dues (or representation fees) but the state also pays directly into some stuff the union does.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:40 PM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Seriously, how could that even work? "We are offering you a forty hour a week job. Union rate is $40,000 to $42,000 and full benefits for someone with your experience. What are you willing to do the job for?" You would have a huge incentive to make yourself an attractive hire by offering under the union rate, and they would have a huge incentive to hire only people who offered less.

When it was annual raise time, how would that work? "Union members get 1.5%. You know we're in tight budgetary times and we're looking at maybe laying some people off. What raise do you think you should get?" Again, you'd have a huge incentive to say "yeah, those union people are so greedy, I'm glad to just have a job, I don't need any raise."

Really, the idea that an individual in a relatively non-specialized job is going to be able to out negotiate a large employer is just silly. My department might be happy to offer me better than union raises just to keep me because I have useful skills and institutional memory, but my department isn't the negotiator, it's the university - and the university would be perfectly happy to replace me with a good-enough person who didn't have those things but would work without benefits. The university employs the people who want to give me raises, and does not, in fact, necessarily want what those people want.
posted by Frowner at 1:42 PM on January 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


"Why can't unions just negotiate for union members only? That avoids the free rider problem, and means no one is forced to pay for political views they don't care for."

A big point of the union is that your shop votes to become unionized, and a majority of employees vote to form the union. Then, statutorily, the union is the only body who can negotiate contracts for the workers in your shop. So for starters, allowing people to negotiate outside the union contract is contrary to the law.

But the larger problem, and the reason that conservative anti-union groups are pushing these lawsuits so hard across the country, is that if your shop of 50 votes to unionize by a vote of 40 to 10 BUT NOT ALL WORKERS ARE REQUIRED TO USE THE UNION CONTRACT, the shop promptly goes out and hires 50 MORE guys, who are hired for less than the union pays, typically on the specific (illegal) stipulation that the new workers NOT join the union. (Often such ploys target immigrant workers who are not familiar with union laws in the US and have trouble getting work due to language barriers; even better if they're from countries where unions are actual extortion rackets so the immigrants are afraid of the union.) Then you have a re-vote, and your new majority votes 60 to 40 to NOT unionize, and then you lay off all the union guys so you're back down to 50 substantially cheaper employees who don't know their employment rights and won't ever unionize.

We have watched states and sectors de-unionize so we know how it happens and what strategies unscrupulous employers will use to break the unions. Wages drop like a stone, employment conditions become terrible, turnover skyrockets, and quality tumbles. (Then, if it's manufacturing, the new low-quality company gets bought out cheap by some conglomerate that ships the entire factory to China.)

Public sector unions are important because bureaucratic employees are NOT subject to partisan hiring shifts (that is, the new governor can't fire the entire DOT and fill it with his cronies), but historically individual workers are very poorly able to defend themselves against this sort of cronyism. Not until unions began speaking for the workforce, and carrying enough clout to provide a counterweight to politicians, did state workforces start to get free of political patronage hiring and job stuffing. Unions make for better government. (And it's not a fight that's over. Patronage remains an ongoing problem in Illinois and often the unions are the only ones who care enough to protest, right up until some unqualified DOT patronage hire fails to fix a bridge and people die.)

It's really not a First Amendment case. It's a union-busting case wearing First Amendment clothing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:48 PM on January 12, 2016 [59 favorites]


As came up in the court arguments, it is already the case that federal workers cannot be required to pay agency fees to a union. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone familiar with federal government workplaces who could comment on how unions function in that sector, and what strategies they have employed to stay relevant.

Yeah, I was going to point that out. I'm a member of a federal employee union. Joining the union is optional and yet we have plenty of members of our union and we have plenty of power. There are benefits to joining the union like you can only join the union dental plan if you join the union... some unions like APWU have a health plan option you can only join if you're in the union or pay a fee to affiliate with that union.

Our union has used up front dues rebates and recruiter bounties to get people to sign up. We also have a variety of benefits that are available through union (like when you join any affinity group), plus things like scholarships that are only available to union members and their families.
posted by Jahaza at 1:50 PM on January 12, 2016


Public sector unions are important because...

And yet public sector federal unions do that job without mandatory membership or agency fees.
posted by Jahaza at 1:51 PM on January 12, 2016


The thing is, federal unions are really strong compared to most unions, as far as I can tell - at least, you-all are doing a lot better than we are, contract wise, most years. Something that works well in a large, strong, entrenched union is going to work a lot less well in a small, weak, newish union with a hostile employer.
posted by Frowner at 1:57 PM on January 12, 2016


corb: "Why can't unions just negotiate for union members only? That avoids the free rider problem, and means no one is forced to pay for political views they don't care for."

The standard answer that I learned in school (back in communist Canuckistan) is that unions can also negotiate for things like workplace safety requirements and procedures. In general, there aren't really decent ways to exclude non-union members from those (e.g.: "nuh-uh, this fire extinguisher is for union members only").
posted by mhum at 2:14 PM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Yeah, that's a thing - the union got [a start on] some language about workplace bullying this time around. Would that not be binding on non-union members? It would be okay to bully non-union members? Non union members get two weeks' parental leave and union members get six? How would that work?

It is hoped, of course, that this type of thing could be put in place and create a multi-tier system full of resentment and competition, so that everyone is weaker.
posted by Frowner at 2:16 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's worth noting that the IWW is totally willing to organize only half a shop, even if the pie cards aren't.
posted by corb at 2:19 PM on January 12, 2016


My union does a hell of a lot for me. It bargains for my paycheck. It makes sure work is safe, and proper procedure is followed. I should pay for that. And I'm happy to pay for that.

This has nothing to do with free speech. I mean, there's not even an argument to be had here. I'm paying for services.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:20 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


It's worth noting that the IWW is totally willing to organize only half a shop, even if the pie cards aren't.

What does this have to do with people being able to opt out of the union? "We are willing to organize half a shop if that's the only thing we can do" is a far cry from "we should set things up so that half the people who work here bargain individually with the bosses". It so happens that I know a fair number of IWWs, actually, and I can tell you that getting as many people as possible signed up is a typical goal, because it makes it easier to win a campaign.

Also - and not to impugn some very hard-working organizers - the IWW's great days are either ahead of it (hopefully) or behind it in most places. There's not a lot of IWW shops, and many of the ones that exist are co-ops or nonprofits where there was basically no meaningful union-busting. When the IWW went up against Borders and Jimmy Johns, they lost pretty hard.
posted by Frowner at 2:24 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Americans in general seem to have a really hard time with the idea of paying small amounts into one big pot for future benefits they may or may not need.

Unless it's for a lottery.
posted by emjaybee at 2:25 PM on January 12, 2016 [18 favorites]


Mwah hah hah, the Evil Doktor Reagan's plans are almost at fruition! Who can save labor now? Is there a Union Man? Can we have Union Man now?

Fuck me.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:25 PM on January 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


given that legal recognition of unions is sliding back toward nonexistence, just like how unions weren't legally recognized / legal at all back in the 1930s, likely the most effective union tactics going forward are going to be the extra-legal ones that worked back then — sit-down strikes and occupations like in Flint and Toledo, where workers win concessions through physically seizing their workplaces and all the machinery inside, and refusing to leave until concessions were won.

In Flint, what caused the cops and the owners to relent in the end was that they knew the workers were sufficiently united and staunch in their support for the action that any attempt to take back the factory would end up not just killing workers (who cares — they had killed plenty of workers already) but would also result in the destruction of very expensive factory machinery.

When I first started saying things like this, I was posturing. But now I'm basically mortally afraid that I've been right all along: workers rights only exist if workers have a meaningful lever over employers, and the only meaningful levers under our current legal regime — where technically workers have no rights — are illegal strikes and similar actions.

Winning rights for workers isn't about winning arguments through moral suasion or an appeal to equality, because the argument isn't about fairness or morality at all. It's never been about fairness or morality. It's about power and control. Peacetime in America, or the illusion of peacetime in America, is ending, and it scares me half to death.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:28 PM on January 12, 2016 [16 favorites]


Also, frankly, being in a union that's more organized and stronger than the IWW has taught me that pie cards vary tremendously. The 1.5 of 'em we have around here are pretty good, and I wish they were 3.
posted by Frowner at 2:31 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


And one reason why I've been trying to taper back my metafilter reading time / metafilter commenting time is that often these conversations become conversations where everyone complains that it's not fair, as if the world has ever been fair, and everyone says something so idealistically cynical about how it's not fair, and everyone walks away feeling hopeless.

Rights don't win themselves; they're won through struggle, and oftentimes they're won by brave workers who are willing to put their bodies in front of police bullets. Rights aren't won through moaning about how things aren't fair, as if the owners and the judges and the cops didn't realize what they're doing. They know exactly what they're doing. We have to be as honest with ourselves about the situation as they are.

Don't moan. Organize.

Even if they make it illegal to organize.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:33 PM on January 12, 2016 [14 favorites]


If we can keep a Dem in the White House, this and a bunch of other malarkey from the past 15 years will be overturned in the SC. So we need to do that.
posted by persona au gratin at 2:37 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


yes of course, a Clinton appointee would be better than a Cruz appointee, so if your political involvement consists solely of voting, go vote for Clinton if you're in a swing state. But please don't pretend that a vote means anything by itself, and please don't pretend like you're involved in democracy if your only interaction with democracy is voting every two years (or worse, every four years), or even if you just vote and give money. Though vote! and give money! just realize that voting and money will never be enough by themselves.

If you're not putting your own personal body out there and talking and working with other people who have also put their own personal bodies out there, you're not involved with politics. You're just a bystander.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:42 PM on January 12, 2016 [9 favorites]


Public-sector unions are categorically different than private-sector unions

I'm always baffled when I see this argument, because it is such obvious horseshit.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 2:42 PM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


SCOTUSblog's Lyle Denniston asks the question all justices ignored when the case was argued:
The premise has two parts: first, everything a union representing government workers does in bargaining over workers’ benefits is, solely because it is a union making the demands, an action driven by ideology and politics; and, second, because of the political nature of the union, every non-union worker represented by that union objects to subsidizing anything it demands. Would there have been no value in questioning the breadth of either premise? Both went unexamined.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 2:46 PM on January 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


If we can keep a Dem in the White House, this and a bunch of other malarkey from the past 15 years will be overturned in the SC. So we need to do that.

I wish. Dems are too cautio nous to follow the rule of law and respect processes put in place by their predecessors. They don't have the "burn it all down" take no prisoners drive. They believe in government, so they handle it with respect. Which is the way it should be, except the opposition doesn't believe in government, and there fore, use its failings to further their goals. One team plays by the rules, the other smashes it all down with a baseball bat.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 2:49 PM on January 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


If you're not putting your own personal body out there and talking and working with other people who have also put their own personal bodies out there, you're not involved with politics. You're just a bystander.


It's not enough of course but donating to the right cause also helps. Who do we donate to that fights for the rights of organized labor though?
posted by Potomac Avenue at 3:32 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I mean I know a bunch of socialist organizations that are doing useful work, and other people here know a lot of anarchist organizations that are doing useful work, but neither of those are probably what you're looking for

My short answer right now is to support workers organizing for higher minimum wages, though other people here may have better suggestions. Also, right now it doesn't hurt to give money to the Sanders campaign, though there are probably better groups to donate to, and even though my metaphorical scars from the Dean campaign keep me personally from getting too emotionally invested in Sanders.

If you live in a major metropolitan area, there are almost certainly fast food workers and retail workers (especially Wal*Mart workers) in your area who are risking their livelihoods to picket. Please join them.

(I'm half posting this as a reminder to myself; a couple of times recently I've skipped local fast food workplace pickets for dumb reasons related to laziness, and I need to stop doing that).
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:46 PM on January 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


Or maybe it's just ... accidental hypocrisy. People like what the union provides to them personally, while voting for candidates that are anti-union as a whole.

I think a huge factor is that no-one has seen what unions do - no-one in the workforce was a worker before the unions reshaped society in the 30's. We were all born into a world with the silver spoon (of workers rights) in our mouths, it's all we've ever known, we don't comprehend it's not how things must be, that it will be lost without ongoing struggle to maintain.

The only aspect of unions many of us have any visceral comprehension of are fees are strikes and impediments.

The old status quo is always scraping away trying to get back. One tiny flake scraped away here exposes another tiny flake there and incrementally the achievements of the past are being erased. We don't notice. We're frogs being boiled too slowly to react.
posted by anonymisc at 3:49 PM on January 12, 2016 [8 favorites]


rather, I've skipped fast food worker pickets because of laziness and because I had to catch up on work because I wasted too much time on stupid Metafilter.

relevant Le Tigre track.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 3:54 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


There has been very poor reporting about the nature of the Friedrichs action. It is actually quite a bit bolder than people characterize.

The plaintiffs aren't saying "I hate the way the union lobbies for gay marriage and illegal immigration and I don't want to pay the agency fee because routine labor representation dollars are fungible."

They are saying, "the routine labor representation is itself political action and it's political action with which I disagree, viz. raising taxesfor the schools, higher salaries for the teachers, defending teachers against dismissal etc.. In other words, the agency fee is political speech just as much as the separate union political dues that they don't have to pay.

The court basically needs to decide if that is a plausible analysis of what public employee unions do (i.e., it has a political character because they are negotiating with a political body), and then strict scrutiny kicks and the agency fee goes away.

I expect that if the Court does that the decision will have some very significant dicta encouraging states that permit public employee union shops or the unions themselves to create anti-free-rider provisions.
posted by MattD at 4:01 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Raising taxes for the schools does actually qualify as political action, imho, in a way that higher salaries would not.
posted by corb at 4:04 PM on January 12, 2016


Also -- a great point was made on another board I sometimes read, which was that state of California (in this case, the state argued for the unions) are very focused on the bad outcome for the unions and government which would result from losing, and not very focused on negating the free speech arguments of the plaintiffs.

Which is a complete fail in front of this Court. It's essentially the same bad strategy deployed in Citizens United and the Lessig copyright life litigation: "Look at the terrible result if we follow the Constitution the way the other guy says we should" doesn't even slightly undermine the Court's confidence in the other guy's interpretation.
posted by MattD at 4:05 PM on January 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


Also to add on to You Can't Tip A Buick, it is worth noting that pickets today are nothing like the pickets of most of our youth, and if you are looking for the latter, you may be unintentionally crossing picket lines.
posted by corb at 4:06 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Raising taxes for the schools does actually qualify as political action, imho, in a way that higher salaries would not.

So the money for higher salaries is made by magic, ok
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:07 PM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


if you are looking for the latter, you may be unintentionally crossing picket lines.

How can you unintentionally be crossing picket lines by joining a picket line?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 4:09 PM on January 12, 2016


Remember, it's only judicial activism when it's liberals.
posted by T.D. Strange at 4:12 PM on January 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


My short answer right now is to support workers organizing for higher minimum wages,

There are a bunch of unions recently doing this thing where they demand minimum wage increases, then demand that unionized workplaces be exempt from the minimum wage. I'm pretty cynical, but that one floored me pretty good.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:18 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


When I said "looking for" I mean, "before you enter a shop."
posted by corb at 4:19 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Should those unions find themselves on the losing side of the Friedrichs case, an important bulwark against the incursion of religion in public schools will be undermined.

Given that there's no direct relationship between unions and secularism, I find this framing exceptionally odd. If unions want to alienate more people than they already do, mission accomplished.

Maybe they could start posting evangelicals' names and addresses in their newslettets.
posted by jpe at 4:19 PM on January 12, 2016


Remember, it's only judicial activism when it's liberals.

The first amendment is pretty prominent. No one has to go snipe hunting for it amidst the penumbras and emanations of any othet amendments.
posted by jpe at 4:20 PM on January 12, 2016


Corb, the reason that unions can't negotiate for only dues-paying members is because the law quite explicitly states "(1) A labor organization which has been accorded exclusive recognition is the exclusive representative of the employees in the unit it represents...An exclusive representative is responsible for representing the interests of all employees in the unit it represents without discrimination and without regard to labor organization membership."
posted by workerunit at 4:32 PM on January 12, 2016


There are a bunch of unions recently doing this thing where they demand minimum wage increases, then demand that unionized workplaces be exempt from the minimum wage. I'm pretty cynical, but that one floored me pretty good.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:18 PM on January 12 [1 favorite +] [!]

Then don't support those unions. Support #fightfor15. Jaded disappointment is a type of idealism that we no longer have luxury for. If you identify a bad organization, don't support that organization — but don't let that stop you from supporting good organizations, either. Class war isn't pretty and it isn't easy. But some workers have in fact started to fight back.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:34 PM on January 12, 2016 [6 favorites]


I mean I'm clearly just a revolution LARPer. For chrissake I have a picture of Enjolras on my profile. but even revolution LARPing me can see that there are in fact organizations worth supporting.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:36 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm somewhat surprised that there aren't many more people dropping out of unions to be honest, especially in places like Tennessee, given the current intersection of southern blue collar workers, conservative voting and anti-union sentiment. I wonder if it is inertia (you're presented with union membership as kind of a fait accompli when you are hired, in my experience) or is it a lack of knowledge (do people know the closed shop is illegal)?

For the moment, I am a state employee and union member. It literally costs nothing to join the union, because dues and fairshare are the same (1.7 percent of income), and issues (political contributions) is only $2.75 a month. At most, fairshare representees can only opt to have that $2.75 directed to a scholarship fund. Yes, issues is a pittance compared to actual dues.
posted by pwnguin at 5:15 PM on January 12, 2016


Why is it that capitalism is ok with capital organizing, but not labor?
posted by notsnot at 5:56 PM on January 12, 2016 [13 favorites]


I look forward to the shareholder lawsuits where they get to deny corporations the power to lobby politicians.
posted by srboisvert at 6:12 PM on January 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


I mean I guess I just don't see where labor is like "you know what I'm going to ignore everything that brought me on this path and helped me to be successful in the first place. Taft Hartley is totally the best I will ever get and not at all more slanted to the bosses. I'm totally going to listen to it and only act in total accordance with the law that doesn't serve me. Wildcat strikes and general strikes are for chumps!"
posted by corb at 6:17 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


wat
posted by tonycpsu at 6:26 PM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]




If money is equivalent to speech, what, exactly is taxes?
Does compulsory taxation impinge upon my first amendment right to free speech? What is an interest rate? Debt?

Do tax breaks create government privileged speech?
posted by Freen at 7:08 PM on January 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Does compulsory taxation impinge upon my first amendment right to free speech?

oh jesus hell don't give them any ideas
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:11 PM on January 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


feckless fecal fear mongering: I agree! I don't think they've totally thought through the potentially far reaching consequences of equating money with speech.
posted by Freen at 7:15 PM on January 12, 2016


Why is it that capitalism is ok with capital organizing, but not labor?

This, so much this. You'll hear that if employers did what unions do it'd be illegal. When in fact a bunch of capitalists getting together for is not called a monopoly, it's called a corporation.

Similarly, if you work for a company part of the added value you generate them may well go to political speech you disagree with. Your recourse is to not enter into agreements with those employers, and if that limits your career options in your chosen field then you have a decision to make, right?

For the record I've never been a union member and at this stage of my life I am very much management (and maybe even capital). But for christ's sake, you're stopping customers from banding together to challenge companies in class action lawsuits and employees from doing it in unions, is there any way this ends up with corporations not grabbing way too much?
posted by mark k at 8:09 PM on January 12, 2016 [8 favorites]


For the moment, I am a state employee and union member. It literally costs nothing to join the union, because dues and fairshare are the same (1.7 percent of income), and issues (political contributions) is only $2.75 a month. At most, fairshare representees can only opt to have that $2.75 directed to a scholarship fund. Yes, issues is a pittance compared to actual dues.

So the cost of just bargaining and collective agreement enforcement for non-union members is exactly the same as the cost to provide union members with bargaining, contract enforcement and all the other non-contract benefits?
Well, that's a coincidence...

And if you choose not to contribute to the union's direct political speech, you get a mandatory donation to someone's college fund?
I wonder, is this scholarship open to all or just to union members and their families?
posted by madajb at 8:20 PM on January 12, 2016


Similarly, if you work for a company part of the added value you generate them may well go to political speech you disagree with.

My wife's company has set up a PAC, to which donations are "optional" yet strongly encouraged.*
I assume this is partially a tax dodge and partially so they can say "It's not us lobbying for reduced oversight, it's this completely independent PAC!"

*I do wonder about the regulations/laws surrounding this.
Clearly as referenced above, the union has access to employee lists and can compare that with people who aren't on the union rolls to see who has dropped out/non joined.
Do PACs have access to the same information? Does my wife's manager actually know if she's contributed?
Clearly HR knows as you can have it taken directly out of your paycheck. Can they share that information for ...encouraging employees to donate?**

**It seems like "there oughta be a law" about that. Probably the kind of thing a union would protect you from...

posted by madajb at 8:42 PM on January 12, 2016


My wife's company has set up a PAC, to which donations are "optional" yet strongly encouraged.*
I assume this is partially a tax dodge and partially so they can say "It's not us lobbying for reduced oversight, it's this completely independent PAC!"


I was actually thinking of direct lobbying by the company in my example--if you make (or sell or design) widgets and make the company thousands or millions of dollars that way, the typical company uses part of that profit to lobby against unions or healthcare or regulation or closing loopholes or whatever. A pretty strong analogy for part of those profits going to the union (even if the official accounting first "gives" it to you--the difference is only in the book keeping.)

What you describe happily isn't a big deal at my current employer but as I understand it is pretty common. My last place people above a certain level were "expected" to donate to it--they'd put updates in the company newsletter. I'm sure they typically give them access to company e-mail as well.
posted by mark k at 9:02 PM on January 12, 2016


It's interesting that many states have laws specifying that a union needs individual permission from each individual union member to spend one dollar of that member's union dues on lobbying, yet corporate CEOs can funnel millions to their preferred candidates without asking a single shareholder.
posted by JackFlash at 9:57 PM on January 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


My union is going to have to adapt or die, because most of us will probably be opting out.

This is not the fault of the conservatives. It's the fault of the union.
posted by kanewai at 4:50 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Clearly HR knows as you can have it taken directly out of your paycheck. Can they share that information for ...encouraging employees to donate?**

HR generally is anti-union, IME. A union business still has lots of non-union employees. It's metafilter standard to say that HR doesn't work for you, it works for the employer - why would you expect HR to turn around and be pushing union stuff?

It is a far greater advantage to an employee in a fair-share shop to avoid the union, because both HR and at least some of the managerial staff see being in the union as being a troublemaker, even if you are, like me, a giant marshmallow who feels hugely guilty about almost everything.

It would do a lot of people good to see how an actual union operates, because people have all these absurd ideas about how sinister things must be. Admittedly, some of this is the fault of the Teamsters, but a lot of it is the fault of propaganda.

Yes, my union knows who is in the union and who is not. It would be difficult not to know this in any business that didn't basically consist of a giant shop floor with hundred and hundreds of employees. How does the union know this? Partly because yes, one does have access to information about who are new hires [that's in the contract, not some giant secret], but mostly just because, like, we have union members. I know who in my area is union and who isn't, because I work with them and we talk and/or go to union stuff and/or decline to go to union stuff and/or strike and/or decline to strike.

The terrible, terrible consequences for not being in the union? Well, sometimes, maybe every other year, one of the stewards will have the spare time to stop by your desk and talk up the advantages of membership. Also, you don't get the union newsletter, or invited to the picnic. On the other hand, you don't have to take all the calls pushing you to go to events, which if you hate phone calls as I do, is a plus.

I stress that being a free rider advantages you - it gets you in good with management and you still get the benefits of being in the union.

Not being in the union does not disadvantage you.

There was a brief moment in the seventies when industrial unions had a lot of power in many situations, and some abused this power. Don't mistake this historical anomaly for the situation today.
posted by Frowner at 6:19 AM on January 13, 2016


I want to stress that management is anti-union. HR will never encourage you to join a union. HR may or may not be obliged to tell you that there is a union - that may be the responsibility of the union.

Management will not use its sinister powers to "encourage" you to give the union money. Every couple of years, management attempts to break the union by hiring anti-union consultants during contract negotiations. This is something that people don't think about - your very bosses, yes, them, are routinely spending company money on consultants who specialize in union decertification. Consultants who will tell you how to refuse things like equal parental leave for all employees or any kind of agreement on anti-bullying language.
posted by Frowner at 6:24 AM on January 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


"I want to stress that management is anti-union."

While in general they are, they don't HAVE to be. Where I was in management, more than half of management had come up through the union ranks, and four of the seven board members were pretty strongly pro-union ideologically. Which isn't to say OUR PERSONAL unions (we had six, ranging in size from three members to 1400 members) didn't piss us off all the time, because that's what unions do, fight with management, sometimes about stupid counterproductive shit. But in general we supported the IDEA of the unions and the existence of our actual unions, and there are many benefits to management for having a union. Like, when you are firing someone, it is pretty nice to have the grievance procedure all laid out and predictable and to know you're going to be dealing with union reps and union lawyers and not strange maverick weirdo lawyers who take weirdo cases for no reason. Or, when it was contract time, negotiating one big contract that covered a whole bargaining unit of 1400 was more time-intensive at the start, but a lot nicer than when we did a group of 28 management employees who all had the same job but whose contracts all had to be negotiated separately. The 28 took a lot more time in the aggregate than the 1400, and the union negotiating team was a lot more sophisticated than each of the 28 individual managers, which makes for a smoother negotiation -- like, they knew their healthcare inside and out and had numbers immediately available for how a change in premium share would affect their membership, and they knew what numbers management was looking at, so we were all at least in the same universe of facts.

Anyway, unions can provide significant benefits to management if management is savvy and genuinely pro-employee.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:18 AM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Unions have been doing a pretty good job of stabbing themselves over and over and over. Conservatives are really good at pushing on the knife.

I was a member of the teachers union. I do not miss the politics and the bullshit and, while the corporate world has it's own issues, they are issues that I can either work with or around. On the one hand, the union got me good benefits. On the other hand, it made the relationship with administration so adversarial that getting anything done was more of a pain in the ass than it should have been. I also watched the union go to bat for people that should have never been in the teaching profession and who abused the system so badly that all they did was bring bad press to the union in particular, and the teaching profession in general. Good people were grouped in with slackers.
posted by prepmonkey at 7:20 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


The one advantage of this ruling would be breaking police unions, so I assume there will be some targeted efforts to ensure that they can remain horrible forever while teachers and other civil service employees suffer.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:08 AM on January 13, 2016 [4 favorites]



I stress that being a free rider advantages you - it gets you in good with management and you still get the benefits of being in the union.

Not being in the union does not disadvantage you.


Just to clarify - I am in my union and have struck with my union; having the opportunity to be in the union and not being in the union would never occur to me. I was responding to a comment upthread that was suggesting that management and HR will use their sinister powers to force innocent employees into unions for some reason.
posted by Frowner at 8:13 AM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Whether the union is good or bad for the workers, or convenient for their public agency employers, is basically irrelevant to the case.

The questions are whether an entity whose entire purpose is affect tax rates, government spending and government employment policies is a political organization or not ... and, if so, whether it's of the nature of political organizations that one can be compelled to support.

A point that many union supporters make is that you can be taxed to fund government policies which are political and which you oppose. The Supreme Court, in the ACA decision of 2012, actually was willing to recharacterize payments that weren't clearly taxes as taxes in order to find that the health care mandate was within the power of Congress, so it wouldn't be impossible for that kind of decision to come here.

(It would effectively change the union budgets from worker-provider to employer-provided, which is a problem with private sector unions under federal law, bu public employee unions are mostly unregulated by the federal government.)
posted by MattD at 8:46 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


The Supreme Court, in the ACA decision of 2012, actually was willing to recharacterize payments that weren't clearly taxes as taxes in order to find that the health care mandate was within the power of Congress, so it wouldn't be impossible for that kind of decision to come here.

It was Justice Roberts alone who came up with this tortured interpretation. The other four members of the majority stated in a separate dissent that the long standing precedent of interstate commerce was sufficient.
posted by JackFlash at 9:04 AM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


JackFlash, the go-home-team-rah-rah-rah votes of the liberal justices were never material to the outcome of the ACA cases (2012 and 2015).

They were each entirely about whether the conservative-leaning majority would find a basis to defer to Congress and the bases it found to do so (mandate = tax in 2012, scrivener's error doesn't justify overturn in 2015) were the decisive pieces of interpretation in the two cases.
posted by MattD at 9:32 AM on January 13, 2016


They were each entirely about whether the conservative-leaning majority would find a basis to defer to Congress ...

The conservatives weren't seeking a basis to defer to Congress. The tax gambit was an invention of Roberts alone, doing great damage to the long standing precedent of the commerce clause. What? You think Scalia and Alito were in on it with Roberts and pulled straws to see who would take the fall.
posted by JackFlash at 9:50 AM on January 13, 2016




Scott Lemieux: This might be the end of organized labor
In theory, public sector unions should have had a reasonable chance of prevailing in the court. Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy have long held that the First Amendment rights of public sector employees should be minimal. In 1990 case, Scalia and Kennedy dissented from an opinion holding that it violated the First Amendment rights of public employees to be required to join the Republican Party as a condition of employment. If public sector employees can be compelled to join a political party as a condition of employment, it's essentially impossible to argue that they can't be required to pay dues for the benefits they receive from union representation.

But to be optimistic about Scalia and Kennedy assumes that they will principle above politics. Alas, there's little reason to believe this.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:31 AM on January 13, 2016


Homunuculus, the unions are contending that the agency fees don't help the Democratic Party because they are strictly for union non-political operations. If this is both an honest and correct contention, how can the Washington Post piece you link be correct, that this is an attack on the Democratic Party -- loss of agency fees should have exactly zero impact on the Democratic Party.
posted by MattD at 10:46 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Antonin Scalia, strict constructionist, the Last Honest Judge.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 10:59 AM on January 13, 2016


loss of agency fees should have exactly zero impact on the Democratic Party.

So if agency fees go to zero, as is the goal of this case, the unions will still keep supporting the Democratic party even though they don't exist anymore? Impressive!
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 11:01 AM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


So what we're saying, here, is that agency fees enable unions to function as unions, at all. The fact that unions tend to support Democrats is a separate issue, but the challenge to unions is a political challenge. Agency fees enable the union to exist. No agency fees, no union.

I can say from my own experience that all the actual political lobbying by union members is done on a volunteer basis.

We have "Day On The Hill" when we go to the Capitol to request more support for the university - but that's actually something the University also does, and that all students, faculty and staff are encouraged to do. It's not a democratic-issues thing.

What's going on, I think, is that people are using a fake argument to cover up class issues.

Union people are working/lower middle class. Working class and lower middle class people frequently support Democrats, and even if they're Republican, tend to be sympathetic to "Democratic" ideas like national health care and expanded social security. What's happening is a heuristic strategy - if you knock out the unions, you may knock out a few conservative working class people, but you'll hit the liberal ones hardest.

Also, public sector unionized jobs are some of the few places where women and people of color really have something resembling a fair shake, because we have some meaningful data tracking and processes for making sure that hiring is fair[er]. And we all know that white women and POC of both genders tend to vote more left. Hit the unions, and you hit those people.

There is this pretense that this is about "political speech" when really it's about weakening unions.
posted by Frowner at 11:13 AM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


No agency fees, no union.

Unions existed before agency fees did.
posted by Jahaza at 12:45 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


No agency fees meaning nobody is paying dues meaning the union has has no members and has been successfully busted.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 1:09 PM on January 13, 2016


Unions existed before agency fees did.

Yes, before agency fees, every employee was required to belong to the union and pay fees so agency fees were unnecessary. Agency fees came about as the result of chipping away at the union security agreements by the right wing.

There are three types of union agreements.

1. The oldest is the closed shop. This means that employers were only allowed to hire from a pool of union members provided by the union. This was ruled illegal under Taft-Hartley in 1947.

2. This was replaced with the union shop. This means that the employer could hire anyone they wanted, either union or non-union, but that the employee was required to join the union after starting the job. This agreement was whittled away in over a long period and superseded by the agency shop.

3. The agency shop means that no employee must be a member of the union but the union is permitted to collect an agency fee for services provided to the non-union member. In exchange, the union must negotiate identically for union and non-union members and must provide the same legal and grievance assistance for both. This was affirmed in the the Supreme Court in 1988.

4. The current case is the latest effort to weaken unions, removing even agency fees, by overturning previous Supreme Court precedent.
posted by JackFlash at 1:24 PM on January 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


Not being in the union does not disadvantage you.

You mean other than not having any input or decision-making whatsoever in the negotiations and determination of the rules governing the wages, hours and working conditions that comprise best hours of the best days of your life, right?

Of course, other than that, Frowner is pretty much correct. HR is the enemy of the workforce. Clueless management does see union membership as an indication of a troublemaker (even if reality shows some of their executives came up through the ranks, starting as a Union Man). And it is absolutely true that you being a "free rider" definitely gets you all the financial protections of being in a union for no contribution to the common good whatsoever.

But I can wait you out. Sooner or later, you or one of your cow orker-friends are going to run into one of those clueless managers, who's going to arbitrarily and capriciously try to screw with you, after which you'll come running to me or Frowner to pull your ass out of the fire. And, if you're right -- or, at least, close to right -- we will save your butt. And then, a week or so later, one of us stewards will stop by your desk and talk up the advantages of union membership and I bet we can then get you (and many of your cow orkers) to sign the union membership authorization cards we hand out.
posted by workerunit at 5:01 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


So the cost of just bargaining and collective agreement enforcement for non-union members is exactly the same as the cost to provide union members with bargaining, contract enforcement and all the other non-contract benefits? Well, that's a coincidence...

I'm guessing that fairshare is defined as everything not explicitly covered as political speech. This seems like it gives some credence to the 'money is fungible' argument.

And if you choose not to contribute to the union's direct political speech, you get a mandatory donation to someone's college fund? I wonder, is this scholarship open to all or just to union members and their families?

"Awards are based on financial need and scholastic ability. You must be an active member for one year to apply for these scholarships."
posted by pwnguin at 5:20 PM on January 13, 2016


You mean other than not having any input or decision-making whatsoever in the negotiations and determination of the rules governing the wages, hours and working conditions that comprise best hours of the best days of your life, right?

This is basically the situation for most nonunion employees in the US anyway.
posted by melissasaurus at 5:37 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


"There are a bunch of unions recently doing this thing where they demand minimum wage increases, then demand that unionized workplaces be exempt from the minimum wage. I'm pretty cynical, but that one floored me pretty good."

The last time I saw this widely claimed about a local union, I looked at their actual position, which was that they wanted to be exempt from the literal per-hour minimum wage in exchange for greater employer benefit compensation, which would leave the total compensation benefit higher than the minimum wage, but not meet the statutory minimum wage as written. I don't think it was necessarily the best strategy, but I understood why they wanted it, and it wasn't so that union workers could get less money overall, but rather to have more flexibility in negotiating total compensation packages.
posted by klangklangston at 1:14 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


and I am certain that the content producers who pushed the story about unions wanting to exempt themselves from aspects of the minimum wage law had the best interest of workers in their hearts, minds, and souls. Certain of it. I am positive, entirely positive, that it wasn't part of the ongoing FUD campaigns against unions.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:50 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Well, it was on reddit, so…
posted by klangklangston at 11:35 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


well I mean conversation over. if there's one group of people who we can trust to support workers, it's reddit.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 6:41 AM on January 16, 2016 [1 favorite]


In fairness to media and reddit and whoever, the failure of the average worker to understand total compensation is pretty epic. That's really a cumulative thing from a lot of different influences, ranging from pre-tax dollars paying for things in general to the sizable increase in cost of pre-tax health care coverage over the last twenty years to politicians not wanting to address how fucked our system is about the things that some people get at a sizable discount because they're in a high tax bracket. Being unable to communicate that and overcome all the language pollution the right has done against unions is not a huge failing.
posted by phearlez at 3:49 PM on January 16, 2016 [2 favorites]


the failure of the average worker to understand total compensation is pretty epic.

I got an e-mail from the Enormous Transnational I work for that lined out precisely what my "total compensation" was, down to the life insurance policy and estimated corporate discount usage. They worked hard to make sure I know I'm getting more than the dollars on the contract - I think more companies should do that.
posted by Shohobohaum Za at 4:42 PM on January 16, 2016


I think more companies should do that.

My meager state employee paycheck lists pretty much every employment related expense for my benefit, in dollar amounts. Basic life: one dollar exactly. Workman's comp: 2.48. Health insurance policy in 2015: $10,993.71.

Corporate discount's new though.
posted by pwnguin at 10:53 PM on January 16, 2016


I think Obama floated concepts like this a few years back, and it certainly seems to be on an upswing. But having been in the workforce for business large and small for *gulp* 30 years now, my personal experience is that it is extremely rare except as a bunch of codes and junk on pay stubs and end of year W2 forms. Actually communicating that there's stuff they get of personal benefit to them beyond a dollar in their pocket is unusual.

Which isn't too surprising. Why would they want to draw attention to the 7.5% above and beyond the pay that goes into social security when the anti-gov crowd has convinced everyone that SSI is less than useless and they'll never get to collect it? Why talk about the workman's comp and unemployment insurance if everyone who collects on these benefits is a lazy deadbeat who ought to be yanking on their bootstraps instead of laying about?
posted by phearlez at 9:56 AM on January 17, 2016


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