The Supremes v. the Unions
Recent rulings expose the high court’s anti-worker bias.
by Bill Blum
August 1, 2018
Toward the end of the oral argument in a pivotal labor case before the U.S. Supreme Court last February, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a comment that cut to the heart of the matter.
“You’re basically arguing, do away with unions,” Sotomayor said.
The case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31, concerns the right of public-employee unions to collect fees from nonunion workers. The plaintiff, Mark Janus, is an Illinois state public employee who refuses to join AFSCME, which acts as the bargaining agent for rank-and-file employees in his department, and objects to having “fair-share” fees deducted from his monthly paychecks.
Sotomayor’s remark was directed to Janus’s attorney William Messenger. It echoed the concerns of progressive activists across the country, who say the case poses an existential threat to public-sector unions, which rely on fair-share fees from nonmembers to defray the costs of collective bargaining and contract administration.
Messenger, a staff lawyer for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and member of the conservative Federalist Society, hemmed a bit at the justice’s bluntness, but he stuck to the central position he had advanced in his argument and briefs: that the case was about the First Amendment. He insisted that Americans have not only an affirmative right to speak but also a passive right not to be compelled to speak. And making nonunion public employees pay fees to a union, he and others contend, amounts to compelled speech.
https://progressive.org/magazine/the-supremes-v-unions/
Its just fine and dandy for corporations to give money to attack workers and call it free speech but when a majority of workers vote have there voices to be used in a collective voice and exercise their free speech, the minority of one voice "Janus" says ........................nope
-snip-
“You’re basically arguing, do away with unions,” Sotomayor said."
= new reply since forum marked as read
thinks that when one man "Janus" (scab) has more rights than a democratically elected agreed upon set of rules has more power than a majority.......................it is time to fight back.......................and this election means we have to take back the House, to change this "Janus" ruling.
I just finished a book called "Can Democracy Survive Global Capitalism, by Robert Kutter, and it explains in pretty good detail how financial and other right wing interests are undermining the very fabric of the worker and the agreements justs like this "Janus" ruling......................amazing.
A lot of members will take the "bait" and "drop out"
