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.
>> The article above was written by Ann Montague, and is reprinted from Socialist Action newspaper.
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