Labor allies in state governments and unions’ own hustle helped stem the potential losses in public sector union membership after the Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME ruling last year, according to a new study released Thursday.
The ruling, which said that workers in local, state, or federal government jobs could not be forced to back a union, has not led to the expected decline among the union rank and file, the study from the Manhattan Institute concluded, although it has hurt unions’ finances.
States with strong public sector unions successfully pushed statehouses and governors to protect them from the fallout of the ruling. At the same time, unions have been doing more ground level work to bolster their ranks, says Daniel DiSalvo, author of the study, “Public Sector Unions After Janus,” told the Washington Examiner.
“Within two weeks of the Janus ruling — and, in some cases, anticipating the ruling — about a third of the 22 affected states passed laws to help shield unions from its full impact,” DiSalvo said.
But they still lost financial support they were previously getting from nonunion members, he added. “The big thing is that the unions lost the agency fee revenue [from non-members],” he said. “So, they lost money even if they didn’t necessarily lose members.”
A total of 33.9 percent of all public sector workers were members of unions in 2018, according to Labor Department data, that’s down from 34.4 percent the prior year, a loss of about 50,000 members. Certain unions even increased their membership over the period.
Public sector unions are not required to file financial disclosures unless they also represent some private sector workers, so data on how the membership declines impacted their finances is often scant. Connecticut public sector unions reportedly lost $3.4 million in agency fee revenue from the 5,490 state employees who are not union members, according to data found by the Manhattan Institute. New York unions will lose over $100 million in agency fee revenue, about 10 percent of their total revenue.
The Janus decision was initially expected to cause deeper membership losses, since it prohibited union contracts that required public sector workers to either join the union or, if they declined, pay it a regular “security clause” fee to cover its expenses. Workers could still voluntarily join a union, but it was widely believed that the contract provisions were the main factor in getting workers’ support. Public sector unions depend on those contract provisions to ensure a steady flow of revenue, and many braced for a financial blow from losing them.
But new state legislation generally made it easier for unions to attract and maintain members by ensuring unions had contact information for public sector workers and requiring the workers to meet with them.
Some went further. California, Washington, and New Jersey prevented public entities from informing workers that they could opt-out. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, signed an executive order prohibiting public entities from sharing worker contact information, which prevented conservative groups from alerting the workers to their rights. New York has granted public sector unions a monopoly for providing workers with benefits, such as life insurance. New York and Rhode Island allow certain unions to refuse to represent nonmembers in grievance proceedings.
Unions also stepped up in terms of organizing efforts. AFSCME claimed that it had representatives meet personally with 600,000 workers represented by its contracts, translating into a 12,000-member net increase in 2018. On average, unionized public sector workers make 10-14 percent more in salary than their nonunion counterparts, so unions could often make a strong pitch.
Either way, workers benefit from the Janus ruling, DiSalvo says. “The unions have to be more responsive to their members and focus on the bread and butter stuff now.”
