Labor officials fear the existence of unions could be threatened if workers are allowed to get all the benefits of representation without at least paying fees to cover the costs of collective bargaining.
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Williams spent the first portion of his time profiling the case’s main plaintiff in Los Angeles teacher Rebecca Friedrichs, who has argued that she should not have to participate and pay into the teacher’s union since it “forces her to subsidize union positions she opposes, violating free speech”. Additionally, even a union effort to increase salaries and benefits for teachers is political by nature, they argue, because it calls into question the best use of taxpayer dollars, a point which Justice Kennedy reiterated.
But Chief Justice John Roberts responded that even mundane matters have the potential to become political whenever state money is involved.
“The union is basically making these teachers compelled riders on issues which they strongly disagree”, he said.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority signaled Monday that it is likely to substantially weaken government employee unions by overruling a 1977 decision that has allowed the unions to charge nonmembers for the costs of representing them. The court in that case, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, said the arrangement was justified to prevent non-members from becoming free riders. In her district, the union was pushing for pay raises for teachers, but to pay for those raises, the district would be forced to lay off some teachers.
What did the Justices have to say?
As a fallback, the challengers urge the court to rule that teachers should not have to “opt out” of paying the full amount of dues by filling out a form once a year. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling.
Laura Juran, a lawyer for the California Teachers Association, said teachers who disagree with the union’s views “are perfectly free to speak as citizens” to try to influence government decisions.
In two very recent cases (Knox vs. SEIU, and Harris vs. Quinn), the court’s growing discomfort with mandatory agency fees was so apparent that court watchers predicted a public employee would soon appear before the court to challenge those fees.
In his comments during the arguments, Justice Anthony Kennedy – who often provides the decisive swing vote between the court’s liberal and conservative factions, seemed to favor rejecting the union’s power to collect fees from non-members. Underlining the gravity of overturning a decades-old ruling, Verrilli said: “We’re talking about overruling a precedent of 40 years’ standing”.
“That’s quite a big deal”, Breyer said. Employers, therefore, are required only to negotiate with a single union rather than an unruly coalition of them. And clearly already-decimated private-sector unions will be the next target.
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Scalia went on: “In the context of bargaining, a union must seek to further the interests of its nonmembers; it can not, for example, negotiate particularly high wage increases for its members in exchange for accepting no increases for others”. If a public employee does not wish to contribute to the costs of collective bargaining, the employee need not do so, but also may not derive any benefit from what the collective bargaining achieves. Her suggestion to the union was for all teachers to take a small pay cut in exchange for all teachers being able to keep their jobs.
