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
Celine McNicholas, the Economic Policy Institute’s director of labor and policy, said the decision will have “profound implications” for “every working person throughout the country.” “Today, these billionaire-backed organizations finally got their decision, succeeding in advancing an agenda that weakens the bargaining power of workers,” McNicholas said in a statement. “The result will be a reduction in state and local government workers’ wages and job quality as well as in the critical public services they provide.” (Celine quoted throughout)
Salon
June 28, 2018
“A weaker union is going to be less able to protect its workers, and the people who basically need the most protection are those who are usually discriminated against,” Janelle Jones, an analyst for the Economic Policy Institute, told Marketplaceearlier this year. Unionizing particularly tends to benefit minority workers, especially women of color. In February, Jones and EPI labor counsel Celine McNicholas released a brief showing that black women could be especially harmed by the case, due to their high levels of participation in public-sector union jobs, including in the education system.(EPI cited throughout)
VOX
June 28, 2018
Other observers are preparing for “greater instability in state and local workforces,” according to the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-labor think tank. The EPI pointed to recent teacher strikes in West Virginia and Oklahoma, where thousands of teachers protested in actions that didn’t always have formal union backing.
CBS Moneywatch
June 28, 2018