Heidi Shierholz is a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor. She said it’s already illegal for fair-share fees to be used for political activities. She said giving workers a choice about paying their share of costs associated with negotiating higher wages and benefits and filing workplace grievances is likely to produce what she calls a “free ride” effect. “Even if they value it highly, they may be unwilling to pay the dues, and that will starve the union of resources and will hurt the ability of the union to provide crucial services,” Shierholz said. “The real goal is to actually starve the unions to reduce their effectiveness.” Shierholz said she believes Wednesday’s decision is the result of a 40-year effort to weaken public-sector unions through the courts. In February, a report by the Economic Policy Institute identified a core group of wealthy foundations with ties to powerful corporate lobbies that bankrolled a long line of fair-share fee cases, including Janus.
Public News Service
June 29, 2018
Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, points out it’s already illegal for fair share fees to be used for political activities. And she says giving workers a choice about paying their share of costs associated with negotiating higher wages, benefits and filing workplace grievances is likely to produce what she calls a “free ride” effect. “Even if they value it highly, they may be unwilling to pay the dues, and that will starve the union of resources and will hurt the ability of the union to provide crucial services,” she states. “The real goal is to actually starve the unions to reduce their effectiveness.”
Public News Service
June 29, 2018
But Heidi Shierholz, a senior economist and director of policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the concerns go beyond union finances. “Worker wages and benefits are what will be hurt if unions don’t have enough resources to do their work effectively,” she said. Legal precedent allowing for agency fees was established in the 1977 Supreme Court case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. Wednesday’s decision overturns that opinion.
Route Fifty
June 29, 2018
He said union membership has been increasing. According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 2016 to 2017, the number of union members grew by 262,000, including 198,000 workers aged 34 and under.
MassLive.com
June 29, 2018
Janus’s racist context certainly doesn’t end with its historical roots. African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders make up a third of unionized state and local government workers. According to an Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report released in February, the group most affected by the court’s decision will be Black women. Janus is slated to potentially impact about 17 million public sector workers throughout the country and Black women make up almost 18 percent of that group, about 1.5 million workers. Additional EPI research shows that Black women only make 65 cents for every dollar that their white male co-workers earn. The pay gaps for Black women are less severe if they belong to a union. Black women in unions make almost 95 percent of what their Black male co-workers earn, while those not in a union make just 91 percent.
Truthout
June 29, 2018
Education Week
June 28, 2018
Without the ability to require employees to pay fees, public-sector unions across the country are expecting to absorb financial blows. That could weaken their ability to collectively bargain and represent employees in labor disputes — all activities that come with costs. They will now be legally required to represent workers who pay nothing for their services. “They’re going to have a harder time having unions negotiate for workplace conditions on their behalf,” said Celine McNicholas, director of labor law and policy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute.
The Washington Post
June 28, 2018
Yet unions will still be required to represent everyone in the collective bargaining unit, even if a worker isn’t paying that “fair share” fee, according to Celine McNicholas, director of labor law and policy at the progressive Economic Policy Institute. “This is going to make effective collective bargaining very difficult for unions that are going to be asked to do the same with fewer resources — potentially dramatically fewer resources,” McNicholas said.
Marketplace
June 28, 2018
“Unions are going to have to do more, obviously, with fewer resources when they’re not able to charge a fee for the services that they are legally required to provide workers,” Celine McNicholas, the director of labor law and policy at the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute, told VICE News.
Vice News
June 28, 2018
“The decline of unionization over the past generation has been a primary driver of economic inequality in the US, and the one place that has sort of stood up in the face of pretty fierce de-unionization has been the public sector,” Josh Bivens, director of research at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, told me. “This [case] is sort of a laser [trained] right at that.”
Vice News
June 28, 2018