On Jan. 11, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case. At the core of this case is an attempt by the right wing to severely weaken the strongest section of the labor movement.
This is a continuation of the big business drive that historically sought to ban the existence of public sector unions and then at various times to ban the collection of dues or ban the right to bargain or ban the right of public workers to strike.
The attack was argued by a lawyer who has dedicated his life to fighting for big banks against regulation and fighting for Big Tobacco to save them from lawsuits. He has argued cases to end affirmative action and to limit voting rights. The case has been backed by the most right-wing legal institutes, funded by the most right-wing section of capital as represented by the Koch brothers and others.
Big Business through their Chambers of Commerce and other organizations have attacked private sector unions by pushing state laws to take dues money out of union treasuries and thereby weaken them organizationally. State by state they fattened politicians’ pockets and got “Right to Work” for less laws passed, which said that workers represented by unions who got the benefits of contracts and representation would not have to pay anything for that representation. They made it possible for them to opt out of paying any dues.
That campaign continues today with Indiana and Michigan passing such laws in the last four years. Now, 25 states and Guam are “Right to Work” and since 1947 that has meant lower wages and rights.
In 2011 in Wisconsin, the legislature passed Scott Walker’s Act 10 that severely restricted collective bargaining rights for public employees and at the same time banned the collection of dues. Within two years, public sector union membership was down 50 to 70 percent. Take-home pay for workers was cut by about $3,000 per year. Then, this year, Scott Walker signed a Right to Work law which ended the obligation to pay dues to private sector unions.
The objective of Friedrichs is to impose that same “Right to Work for Less” on all public workers across the country by way of one Supreme Court decision rather than by a state by state battle.
1. Public sector unions, the strongest section of labor, are being targeted
Every indication is that the Justices will issue a decision later this year which will attack the financial/organizational strength of public sector unions, which represent over 7.9 million city, county, state and federal workers. That is, it will directly impact more people than the total population of most states (only 13 states have a greater population than 7.9 million).
Public sector unions are being targeted because they represent the strongest section of labor. In the private sector, only 6.6 percent of workers are represented by unions. In the public sector, 39.2 percent of workers are represented by unions. And within the public sector, 45 percent of city and county workers are represented by unions.
Many people know that fire department employees are public workers and that public hospitals, libraries, parks and recreation are public services brought to us by public workers. But the list does not end there.
If your “check was in the mail” for social security or if you get food stamps, medical assistance or countless other benefits, they were processed by public workers. In many cases, benefits are delivered by letter carriers who are also public workers.
If your child went to school on a public bus, it was likely driven by a public worker, over streets maintained by public workers, leading to a school whose education is brought to life by public teachers, clerical staff and maintenance employees.
Most water and much of the electricity is provided by public entities with public workers.
To the extent that any environmental or food safety regulations exist, they are enforced by public workers. The problems in each one of these areas is that big business sees to it that these services are underfunded and understaffed and that the regulations they enforce are as weak and ineffective as possible.
Now they are coming after the workers.
2. Every worker, public or private, will be hurt
If you are not in a union, the level of rights, benefits and pay that you get is pushed up by the existence of public sector unions in your community, whose struggles to get good contracts set a certain standard in the community.
The wages and pensions where public workers are a part of the community are evident in the houses and cars in neighborhoods around the country. If public sector unions are weakened and wages go down, so will the overall conditions in every neighborhood.
In the areas with the greatest number of union members—California, New York, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey and Ohio—almost everyone knows someone who is a public sector worker represented by a union. These are your neighbors and friends who the right wing is attacking.
3. It will especially hurt women, African American, Latino, Asian, Native and LGBTQ communities
Workers represented by unions make on average $207 per week more than non-union workers. They get better benefits, they have more vacation and leave, they have better pensions. They got that level of pay and benefits by uniting in a union and fighting for them.
The union difference is even greater for women, African Americans, Latinos and others oppressed by racism and discrimination.
African Americans are more likely to be public sector workers than whites. That is because of the successes in the civil rights movement that forced open doors there first.
Over 60 percent of women in unions are in the public sector. Women have smaller pay differences with men in public sector, union represented jobs, they have greater access to parental leave and are better protected against discrimination.
LGBTQ workers have no state-level protection against discrimination in 17 states and uneven legal protection in others. Strong public sector contracts provide protection where none exists in law.
Public sector unions have been more active in the civil rights and other movements than other unions.
All of this helps to explain why over 70 civil rights groups joined in statements to the Court that supported the labor movement.
It also helps to bring into focus how weakening public sector unions will have an impact on the most oppressed.
4. Organizational power will be hurt
Friedrichs targets dues that are paid by workers who are represented and benefit from a union contract but who want to get those benefits for free without paying any dues.
For decades, at least since 1977, courts have recognized an obligation for all who are represented by a public sector union to pay their fair share.
The decision in this case is likely to overturn that principle.
They will have less organizational strength to fight cuts in public services that impact the community and the workers. They will have a less powerful voice to call for full funding for social programs.
With less money, unions will have less organizational power to resist management’s attempts to contract out work to non-union, low wage companies.
5. Dues are used to defend workplace rights—not for political contributions
Dues pay for the organization necessary to take cases of unfair discipline and terminations to an outside arbitrator. Dues pay for office rent, computers and staff.
Dues pay for representation at the bargaining table and for signs at demonstrations calling for saving community services.
Dues pay for the ability to effectively assert the right to a safe and healthy workplace and to fight against discrimination.
Dues do not pay for contributions to politicians. Money for the union’s political contributions is funded by members who opt for a separate, additional deduction.
Workers get a notice every year and when dues go up, alerting them to their options to claim any religious or similar objection to dues.
Collectively, dues represent the treasury of the union and its ability to have the funds necessary to mount a fight for justice.
6. The issue is not about free speech, but workers having power
The cover used for this legal attack is the claim that the free speech rights of anti-union workers are affected by paying union dues.
The fact that this is not about free speech, but only about power, was revealed in just the first few minutes of the hearing. While claiming to be for “free speech” against unions, the right-wing lawyer declared that workers must NOT have free speech against the employer. That he said is a key part of the workplace (in the capitalist system): “Restricting employee speech is an inherent part of the employment relationship. The employer has to be able to restrict the employee’s speech as this Court has frequently noted or you couldn’t have a workplace.”
7. The right wing is already making direct appeals to workers to leave unions
The right wing is not waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to make a decision. They are making direct appeals to workers in Midwestern and some western states like Nevada, subjecting them to messages to “give yourself a raise” by dropping union membership in preparation for paying no dues at all.
8. This case takes place in a right-wing racist, anti-immigrant climate
On Dec 5, 2015, workers at Trump’s hotel in Las Vegas voted to join the Culinary Workers Union, Local 226 and the Bartenders Union, Local 165 of UNITE HERE. A unit of 500 workers stood up for their rights. But in less than 10 days, management was challenging the election and trying to keep the hotel workers from becoming unionized. So much for free speech rights.
The fact that a racist anti-immigrant capitalist would be anti-union is not news. But it does symbolize what that Tea Party and other right wing formations are all about.
This case against the union movement has reached the Supreme Court at a time when this racist right-wing movement is gaining some momentum with Trump’s candidacy, and all of this shapes the environment in which the decision will be made.
9. The public sector plays a central role in the U.S. labor movement
Unions in the private sector continue to fight. Despite representing a very small percentage of private sector workers, contract struggles are continuing to be carried out on many important issues— health insurance, two tier wages, etc.
Forty years ago, everyone was looking at what was won by private sector unions as the example for what to fight for next. But now, it is the public sector unions who collectively are the lever of real change.
Their role in central labor councils representing unions in large geographic areas is changing. In many cases, they are leading these bodies and helping to change the positions taken so that they are more progressive.
By weakening the public sector unions, the right wing hopes to weaken all of labor.
The financial crisis caused by the banks in 2007 and 2008, and continuing in many ways today, highlights the important role of public sector unions.
As mass layoffs and foreclosures swept the country, city, county and state budgets were cut. Financial institutions controlling the bond market made demands on public employers. They insisted on austerity, on cutting services. They demanded that health care costs for public workers go up and that pensions be ended. Where they could, they tried to get cities to declare bankruptcy and end union contracts.
This was an assault on the whole community. The only entity that was in a position to mount a fight back against hospital closings and service cuts were public sector unions. That struggle went on in the streets and at the bargaining table.
The right-wing hopes to weaken public sector unions so that in the future the community will have less of a capacity to fight back.
10. The dramatic role of the public sector unions in the U.S. labor movement
While most people have read about historic strikes by auto or steel workers that resulted in great advances for labor, fewer people are aware of the key role that public workers have played in similar dramatic struggles.
Workers in public utilities, like street cars and electricity companies,, fought pitched battles with capital and in support of publicly owned and controlled services. In 1895, 7,000 street car workers went on strike in Brooklyn, N.Y., and faced off with police firing at them and hunting them down. In a similar strike in 1900 in St. Louis, 14 workers were killed. In Chicago, street car workers shut down the city and there was a near general strike in 1903. They pushed against the capitalist owned companies and called for public transportation, which was eventually won. Dozens were killed in similar battles across the country during that period
The 1910 general strike in Philadelphia began as a strike by street car workers (the papers called it “mob rule”) as did the general strike in Springfield, Ill. in 1917 and the near general strike in Bloomington, Ill. the same year.
Capital had sought to ban unions as illegal through much of the 1800s and then in the 1900s many jurisdictions sought to ban public unions. Where that didn’t work, the capitalists sought a ban on the right to bargain and the right to strike.
That issue came up repeatedly in the 1940s. The National Guard was called in to crush a strike by power plant workers in 1941 in Kansas City that had left the city dark. General strikes occurred in 1946 in Stamford, Conn.; Lancaster, Pa.; Oakland, Calif.; Rochester, N.Y.; Houston, Tex.; Hartford, Conn.; and Camden, N.J. Public workers or public utility workers were at the center of most of those strikes.
Through the years of the McCarthy period where union activism led by people with political vision was crushed, public workers organized and won representation and contracts despite laws that banned their unions. Sanitation workers, hospital workers and teachers were at the forefront of breaking the back of that reactionary period. Many of the most important struggles were led by African American public sector workers.
All of these struggles contributed to the level of rights and benefits that people have now. Were it not for their struggles, we would have even less today.
11. The courts are a tool of the capitalist establishment
The Supreme Court declared in Citizens United that corporations were people and in essence that they had more rights than real people.
Courts have always been an important tool of the capitalist establishment. And while even this body can be influenced by great social struggles, it is usually one of the last to be moved.
The justices who were expected by some to support the union position, in this case, never did so. Instead, they focused on procedural issues like whether the Court should overturn a prior ruling, and if so, under what circumstances. They never exposed the issue underlying “free speech” as one of power.
Unfortunately, the labor movement did not organize a huge demonstration outside to surround the Court. While such an action might not have changed the result, it could have helped the public at large understand how much is at stake.
12. Our history as workers shows us the way forward
A number of state agencies came forward to oppose the right wing. That may seem odd to many people, including many public workers who have to fight against many of these same agencies and people in other contexts. These state attorneys were representing the wing of capital that would rather try to control labor through regulation than by constant frontal attacks. They refer to the potential impact on the system of “labor peace.”
These proponents of “labor peace” (the peaceful taking of pensions, health care, etc.) should not be confused with the labor movement.
The dynamics that drive public sector workers to have to fight expose the false claim of “labor peace.” Finance capital that controls cities, counties and states in so many ways is driven by its needs to constantly press for cutting social programs and workers. Their vision of labor peace is a ban on strikes, and where possible, a restriction on what can be bargained.
Such laws have been put in place before but they have not stopped the struggle of labor. In 1947, the Ohio Supreme Court made it illegal for counties and cities to allow voluntary union dues deductions. There were bans on union recognition and on strikes. Yet in Ohio and around the country, public workers ignored those restrictions. They organized, they won recognition, they went on strike and they won contracts even when all of that was illegal.
The answer to Friedrichs is to organize and mobilize. When hundreds of thousands came out in Madison, Wis. in January, February and March of 2011 to try to stop Scott Walker and his plans for Right to Work, a shock wave went through labor in the Midwest and around the country. The participants began to feel their power and many knew that if the leadership had called for further action to really stop him, like a general strike, that the response would have been electrifying.
The Supreme Court can make its decisions, but the working class has the power to reverse them.
