https://socialistaction.org/2018/06/28/janus-v-afscme-and-the-future-of-unions/
Janus v. AFSCME and the future of unions
/ 18 hours ago
July 2018 Union proud (Jeff Haynes:Reuters)
By ANN MONTAGUE
On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the 1977 decision in Abood
v. Detroit Board of Education. That decision said that making non-union
members pay for the union’s political activities violated the First
Amendment, but that it was constitutional to require non-members to help
pay for a union’s collective bargaining and contract administration
costs. The ruling added that this would ensure “labor peace.”
Now, in the Janus v. AFSCME case, the Supreme Court has ruled by a 5 to
4 margin that non-members should not be required to pay “agency fees” or
“fair share.” Doing so, the Court majority agreed, would violate those
workers’ rights to free speech and free association.
The Janus decision is a key step in the campaign by the ruling class to
hobble the unions and to divide workers from each other at local
worksites. In effect, the decision applies to an estimated five million
non-union workers in state and local governments where they benefit from
union contracts. Public-sector workers in all 50 states are now “Right
To Work.”
The case went to the Supreme Court after Illinois Governor Mark Rauner,
a Republican, had filed a 2015 lawsuit challenging the fees. When a
lower court dismissed Rauner from the case on grounds that he lacked
standing, the amended lawsuit was filed on behalf of Mark Janus, a
public-sector worker in Illinois, against AFSCME Council 31. Janus
maintained that since he is a government employee, all collective
bargaining decisions are inherently political, and that the First
Amendment protects him from having to support such political expression
unwillingly.
Janus’s legal fight was supported by the right-wing and anti-union
National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation and the Liberty Justice
Center.
President Trump tweeted after the Court’s decision, “Big loss for the
coffers of the Democrats!” Actually, the coffers for Democratic Party
politicians are still bulging, while the Janus case steals funds that
are used for collective bargaining, filing grievances, and other
measures used to enforce contracts for union members.
An organizing model in “Right to Work” states
Unions have been organizing successfully in “Right To Work” states, but
for large unions with a top-down governing structure, it will be a
challenge to move to an effective organizing model. Many SEIU organizers
who have been successful in “Right To Work” states like Arizona and
Florida have insisted on creating a structure to empower local work
sites. Members, they say, must be free to make decisions where they work.
One organizer pointed out, “The Executive Board or Board of Directors
are too remote from the worksite. With “Right To Work” there needs to be
new models. This includes taking power from the Board and giving it to
worksites.” This is a good beginning to advance union democracy and power.
Union growth and victories derive principally from the exercise of
strong working-class power. This requires a confident and democratically
engaged rank-and-file, with a militant leadership that can unite the
union and its allies.
While dues check-off and agency fees may facilitate the funding of
organizing and grievance procedures, these financial measures are
completely subordinate to the construction of unions in which membership
growth and financial contributions reflect the workers’ overall
confidence in the union’s cause. Taking solid measures to build
fighting, class-struggle unions that are fully democratic and responsive
to the ranks will be an effective answer to the Janus decision.
In the middle of the deliberations of the Janus case, there was an
upsurge of militancy in traditionally “Right To Work” states. The
strikes started with teachers in West Virginia in March and moved to
Kentucky, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma and North Carolina. All of these
states have laws banning strikes. One teacher said, “What are they going
to do, arrest 15,000 of us?”
The teachers were striking not only for their contract but to demand
that the legislatures fund public schools. In some states the union
tried to get them to return to work, but the teachers refused until they
got what they needed in writing from the legislature.
There are many lessons the labor movement can learn from these strikes.
No strike is “illegal“ if you have enough solidarity to say, as the
teachers did, “Come and get us.” They achieved more from the state
legislature in a couple of days than in years of sitting down and
“telling their stories” to disinterested legislators. They certainly got
their attention. As with all strikes, theirs ended when the bosses just
wanted everything to be normal again—i.e., “labor peace.”
How did we win union rights?
The Wagner Act of 1935 is often credited with giving basic rights to
some private-sector workers to organize unions and engage in collective
bargaining. But those rights were not simply handed over to workers from
President Roosevelt’s allegedly “sympathetic” Democratic Party
administration. They were granted only because workers had already been
organizing and fighting for their rights.
Two years before the Wagner Act was signed, several major labor
struggles erupted, and general strikes took place in Minneapolis and San
Francisco in 1934. A massive strike wave got underway, which resulted in
the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), in
which tens of thousands of workers were newly organized.
When President Roosevelt signed the Wagner Act, he explained that it was
to be a new compact between labor and the bosses for “labor peace,”
which of course was the goal of U.S. capitalists then as today.
The teachers showed us a moment in which independent working-class
organizations displayed their power in the political arena. The teachers
refused to be hijacked by the Democratic and Republican politicians in
the state legislatures. Building on the teachers’ example, U.S. workers
need to exercise political power with their own independent party. A
labor party, representing a fighting labor movement, could leave the
twin parties of capitalist war, racism, and economic plunder in the
dust. A labor party, working with its allies among all oppressed people,
would be an historic and permanent gain for the cause of the working
class in our country.
Photo: Jeff Haynes / Reuters
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June 28, 2018 in Labor.
Related posts
Teachers’ strikes: The rank and file takes the lead
Teacher strikes: New beginning for labor?
July 2017 Labor Briefing
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