Public arguments are notoriously unreliable indicators of Supreme Court outcomes. But if today’s arguments were any sign, things look quite ominous for public sector unions. The case is Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association and it concerns the issue of union dues. It has long been the case that teachers in union workplaces can opt out of paying the dues which go to political activities, on the reasoning that that violates their 1st Amendment rights. But they have to pay the dues which fund collective bargaining because they benefit from the salaries, benefits, etc. that come from the collective bargaining process.
The new attack, pushed forward by pro-corporate activist groups working more or less hand in glove with the conservative faction on the Court, says that they should be able to opt out of the fees for collective bargaining too – basically kicking a massive free-ridership hole in the whole edifice of public sector unions.
The argument, if I understand it correctly, is that collective bargaining itself – since it includes taking positions of benefits and salaries and so forth – itself is a 1st Amendment issue, which seems silly unless you just don’t think unions should exist in the first place. So wanting the district to pay a higher salary to teachers is a political position (presumably one most teachers back?) which is itself a form of political activism. Think how far you have to contort your reasoning to get to that logic.
In any case, if you can get the benefits of higher salaries and not pay to support the negotiation process, why would you? And it seems like the Court, in a mode of hyper-activism, is about to mandate just that. And remember, as Wisconsin showed, state’s can strip unions of these rights all by themselves. This just forces the hands of states that choose to empower unions and public sector employees to operate in this way. Aside from being bad reasoning on the merits, it’s another push to move the country in the wrong direction.
