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Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Meanwhile back at the not-at-all liberal SCOTUS

They're about to completely blow up public sector unions.

For decades, as private sector unionism has steadily diminished, public sector unions have grown. Traditionally, public sector unions have been easier to organize because the employer—federal, state, and local governments—is in a poor position to bust unions. The government cannot secretly spend millions on anti-union consultants, violate workers’ rights, and discipline or fire workers for their union sympathies. The result is that a third of public sector workers are currently members of a union, whereas only six percent of their private sector counterparts are similarly union members.

Now the Supreme Court has accepted for review a case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, brought by the rightwing Center for Individual Rights, that takes direct aim at public sector unions. In the case, a handful of California teachers argue that mandatory union fees violates their First Amendment rights. If successful, it would serve to sap union funds, further silence workers’ voices on the job and in the political arena, and would require unions to make radical changes to the ways they expend resources.



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