Last month, the Supreme Court’s agreed to review Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 (Cato filed a brief in support of the plaintiffs). The case is a First Amendment challenge to the “agency fees” that must be paid to a public-sector union by non-members. As a matter of existing First Amendment law, no employee may be compelled to join a union or contribute money to fund a union’s direct political activities, such as political ads. In roughly 22 states (the 28 “right-to-work” states outlaw agency fees), unions may compel non-members to pay agency fees that (ostensibly) only reflect the cost of the union’s representational activities, such as bargaining over wages and working conditions. The agency fee is the product of the Supreme Court’s decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977), in which the Court prohibited public-sector unions from compelling non-members to support political speech, but allowed for the compelled support of the union’s other “non-political” activities.
The plaintiff in Janus—like the 2015 Friedrichs case that stalemated after Justice Scalia’s death (in which Cato also filed a brief)—claims that, for public employees, the distinction in Abood between “political” and “non-political” is illusory because the terms and conditions of public employment are inherently a matter of public concern. A teachers union negotiates with a school system over salaries and benefits packages, merit pay versus seniority, the standards for teacher evaluation, and the controversial “tenure” provisions that in some states make it nearly impossible to fire even serial abusers. Each of these represents a core, political issue in education policy, and a teacher who believes that, say, merit-based pay systems would improve the quality of teaching in the school system (where perhaps her own children may attend) can currently be forced to fund negotiations against it.
Abood upheld the agency fee based, in part, on the “free rider” rationale. The Court reasoned that, since unions are required expend resources for dissenters’ benefit, dissenters may be required to cover that expense because otherwise they would get a free ride on the supposed union gravy train. Recently, in Slate, attorney Daniel Horwitz—drawing on the argument of a pair of law professors—took the issue a step further, claiming that forcing unions to represent free riders is unconstitutional. Horwitz argues that unions should not have to abide by the duty of fair representation—meaning they have to fairly represent the interests of both members and non-members—if non-members are not made to pay (that is, if Mr. Janus wins). But unions aren’t compelled to abide by the duty of fair representation; they choose to when they become the exclusive bargaining representative.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/myth-public-sector-unions-free-rider-problem
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