Should government workers be forced to pay fees to a union they didn’t join to subsidize policies with which they disagree? On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a potentially landmark First Amendment case: Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. The Court’s decision could reshape public-sector labor law and extend freedom to 318,000 public employees in Ohio and millions more around the country.
Robert Alt, president of The Buckeye Institute and a well-regarded constitutional lawyer, filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the Supreme Court in September supporting teacher Rebecca Friedrichs. Robert challenged the factual basis of a key union claim: that public-sector union membership will collapse if workers have the right to stop paying “agency fees” and not be represented.
Today, in a two-part article on National Review’s legal blog, Bench Memos, Robert explains that—contrary to what unions and even some conservatives might assume—worker choice isn’t a death knell for public-sector unions. Instead, when forced to compete for workers’ affection (and money!), unions become more responsive to the needs of their members.
As a lawyer, Robert prefers actual evidence to assumptions. Currently, each state decides whether its public employees—like school teachers and state troopers—must pay for union representation. (Ohio requires it.) Fifty flavors of labor law offers a lot of variety and provides a classic example of the “laboratory of democracy” in action.
Robert examines the data from Michigan, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma that show what really happens to unions when government employees have the freedom to withdraw from union representation. These four states have recently changed their labor laws from forced representation to worker choice—and all four of them have demonstrated that, for good or ill, public-sector unions don’t go into a death-spiral when government employees are no longer forced to pay agency fees. The doom-and-gloom prophecies for public-sector unions are an unfounded myth, Robert concludes.
Teacher Rebecca Friedrichs
What, then, is the purpose of the lawsuit? Robert notes that a ruling in favor of Rebecca Friedrichs would provide relief for the minority of workers who disagree with their unions but are forced to pay the union or be fired. “For these employees, admittedly a minority, [a win for Friedrichs] would not put an end to their unions, but it would put an end to the violation of their First Amendment rights.”
