A Supreme Court case involving union dues for public-sector employees is forcing labor unions to change the way that they manage their members, even though the justices have not ruled yet.
Union leaders are convinced that the court will use the case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, to overturn a 1977 precedent called Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that made it legal for public-sector workers to be required to join a union or support one financially. Losing the case likely would cause public-sector unions to lose members and funding.
The court is expected to rule narrowly against the union in the case. It split 4-4 on a similar case last year called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association before the newest justice, Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch, was confirmed.
Unions have braced themselves by getting lawmakers in friendly states to pass new laws intended to guide workers into joining unions.
“It’s not an existential threat, because people have planned for it,” American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten told Education Week on Tuesday. “In California, in New York, in New Jersey, they’re just trying to level the playing field so that people have an opportunity to talk to their unions.”
Those states recently passed laws that give unions guaranteed access to public-sector employees’ personal contact information. The New York law also allows unions to restrict the legal services they provide to nonmembers who are still covered by the union’s collective bargaining agreement. The California law, passed last year, requires workers to attend mandatory briefings by union representatives. The New York and New Jersey laws were passed this month.
Weingarten said the laws would help the unions stanch the expected membership losses by ensuring workers meet with unions as soon as they are hired. “What you learn in organizing 101 is ‘first friend, best friend.’ And they want to make sure they have that opportunity. This is really good practice regardless and should have been done years ago.”
A study by the labor-backed Illinois Economic Policy Institute released last month predicted that public-sector unions would lose 726,000 members, or about 8 percent, should the justices overturn Abood.
The Janus case involves whether an Illinois state government employee can be forced to a pay his workplace’s union a regular fee even though he declined to become a member. The fees — dubbed “security clauses” — are a common feature of labor-management contracts and were first approved by the court in the Abood case.
