CALIFORNIA
FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2015, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2015, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“UNION DUES FOES MAY STILL WIN, DESPITE THREE BALLOT LOSSES”
The common assumption in California
politics is that labor unions will always be a major force because they have
been for the last 30-plus years. But change may be coming, even though
organized labor since 1996 has beaten back three ballot initiatives aiming to
end its influence.
The issue here is union dues paid by
public employees. Rules are different for unions covering workers in private
business.
In 1996, 2005 and 2012, conservatives
seeking to end labor’s donations to political candidates (almost exclusively to
Democrats) ran ballot initiatives aiming to end the obligation of
schoolteachers and other employees to pay union dues unless they want to.
All three measures called themselves
“paycheck protection,” seeking to force unions to get yearly written permission
from members before using their dues money for political purposes. The most
recent went a step further, aiming to ban direct contributions from unions to
political candidates.
All three measures lost, but never by
large margins. Each became a fairness issue: Labor would have a vastly
diminished political voice if any of these propositions had passed, but
corporations and wealthy individuals would not have seen their influence cut,
and that would tilt the electoral playing field in unprecedented ways.
After
losing three times and wasting more than $20 million on those efforts,
conservatives were forced to conclude voters won’t soon opt to deprive unions
of their political voice. So they turned to the courts.
The libertarian-oriented, Washington,
D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights
(CIR) found 10 California schoolteachers who don’t like being represented by
the 300,000-member California Teachers Assn. One of them, Rebecca Friedrichs of
Orange County, became the lead plaintiff in a case that will be heard this fall
by the U.S. Supreme Court, with a decision due by the end of June 2016 – just
in time for next year’s general election campaign.
The case, Friedrichs vs. California
Teachers Assn. et al, seeks to overturn a 1977 Supreme Court ruling that lets
public employee unions collect dues from everyone covered by their bargaining,
even if some of those people don’t want to be involved. In the CTA’s case, for
almost 40 years, those who don’t want to be covered have not had to pay the
roughly 35 percent of dues that normally goes to political donations and
campaigning.
But the Friedrichs lawsuit contends
that all public employee union activity is political, not just functions openly
labeled that way. “Bargaining with local governments is inherently political,”
argues the CIR. “Whether the union is negotiating for specific class sizes or
pressing a local government to spend tax dollars on teacher pensions…, the
union’s negotiating positions embody political choices that are often
controversial.”
So this case aims well beyond the
three failed ballot initiatives. This one seeks to deprive public employee
unions of virtually all their funding, unless workers voluntarily pay. No one
knows how many would, with annual dues in the CTA, for example, often topping
$1,000.
That makes this a life and death case
for the unions, and they can’t be certain of the outcome. One justice, Samuel
Alito, wrote in a previous union-related case that “…no person in this country
may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not
wish to support.”
Ironically, the unions’ best hope for
picking up the vote they need to expand beyond the high court’s four solidly
liberal justices might be that of Antonin Scalia, often the court’s leading
conservative. In a 1991 case, he wrote that because public sector unions have a
legal duty to represent all employees, it’s reasonable to expect all workers to
share the costs.
But Scalia doesn’t have to be
consistent, and sometimes is not. Meanwhile, frequent swing vote Anthony
Kennedy has not always been friendly to labor.
The bottom line is that no one knows
how this case may turn out. Which means candidates of all stripes should be
getting ready today for an earthquake-scale change in California’s political
funding, one that might come at a vital, key moment in next year’s campaign.
-30-
Email
Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough,
The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch
It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias
columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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