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Union Activity Ramps Up in Advance of Supreme Court Decision
Unions, conservative groups race to reach members before high court rules on case that could make it easy for public-sector workers to stop paying dues
Some unions are asking members to sign cards that commit them to paying dues in the future and are legally binding in some states. Here, members of the Service Employees International Union rally in support of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees in Chicago on Feb. 26.PHOTO: SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
As organized labor braces for a Supreme Court ruling that could make it easy for public-sector workers to stop paying some dues, unions across the country are reaching out to hundreds of thousands of members to persuade them to keep paying dues.
The Service Employees International Union has sent text messages to 800,000 members as part of a program that includes meeting with workers and sending mailers to homes.
“We have a goal of speaking to every union member and getting them to recommit to the union,” said Mary Kay Henry, president of SEIU. Roughly half of its two million members are public-sector workers, she said.
At the same time, conservative groups in Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are alerting workers how to opt out of paying dues. They are gathering the names and addresses of tens of thousands of state and local workers through public-records requests. The goal is a political-style campaign using direct mail, phone calls and home visits.
“There is a subset of union workers that feel like they are being used and are forced to pay unions that don’t represent their interest,” said Carrie Conko, a spokeswoman for the State Policy Network, a limited-government nonprofit that connects 64 nonprofit groups in 49 states, providing support on this and other campaigns.
The pending Supreme Court case was filed by a child-support worker in Illinois against the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Mark Janus, who is represented by attorneys at the Liberty Justice Center and the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, said bargaining with public agencies is inherently political and a mandatory $45-a-month fee paid to the union violates his First Amendment rights.
The high court, with a 5-4 conservative majority, is expected to rule in his favor within the next several weeks.
Such a ruling could allow an estimated five million government workers in 22 states to stop paying so-called agency fees, the portion of union revenue that funds collective bargaining. Workers have the right in all states to decline union membership or pay full union dues.
Twenty-eight states have passed right-to-work laws, which allow workers to avoid paying agency fees. The current battle is around heavily unionized states in the Midwest and along the coasts that don’t have right-to-work laws.
A Supreme Court ruling that favors Mr. Janus could result in the loss of 726,000 union members over several years, the left-leaning Illinois Economic Policy Institute said in a May report.
“It could be quite a radical change,” said Robert Bruno, a professor of labor and employee relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who co-wrote the report.
Lee Saunders, president of Afscme, which represents 1.3 million public-sector workers, called the Supreme Court case a “blatant political attack” by groups that want to weaken unions. The union is asking its members to sign cards that commit them to paying dues in the future.
The American Federation of Teachers has contacted 800,000 teachers in 10 states and persuaded 237,000 to sign recommitment cards that are legally binding in some states, said Randi Weingarten, president of the 1.6 million-member union.
The wave of teacher walkouts across several states this year indicated growing support among teachers for their unions, Ms. Weingarten said. Many members were turned off by the message from state think tanks, she said.
Several groups are pushing back against recommitment-card campaigns, urging workers not to sign.
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The Freedom Foundation in Olympia, Wash., recently sent a mailer to corrections officers represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Below a neon Hotel California sign, a play on the Eagles lyrics warns: “You can sign up anytime you like but you can never leave!”
Bracing for losses, the National Education Association, the nation’s largest union with nearly 3 million members, cut its budget by $50 million. It fears losing agency fees from 90,000 members.
“What we are preparing for is the war that the right-to-work folks have already begun, to talk members into dropping their membership because they’ll get collective bargaining for free,” said Lily Eskelsen García, president of union.
Keith Williams, a recently retired high school English teacher in New Oxford, Pa., is helping start a campaign aimed at informing the state’s 330,000 public employees how they can avoid paying union fees following a Janus ruling.
“Our role is to make sure people know what their rights are,” said Mr. Williams, 43 years old, who started his position as director of outreach this week at a recently formed nonprofit in Pennsylvania called Americans for Fair Treatment.
Justin Baker, a 35-year-old public-school custodian in Bellwood, Pa., said the threat posed by such groups has galvanized the support at his SEIU local of 27 custodians, secretaries and cafeteria workers.
“At some point you’re going to need the union,” Mr. Baker said.
Write to Kris Maher at kris.maher@wsj.com
