About the best thing that Big Labor can say
about the recently concluded Supreme Court
term is that it could have been much worse for them. Union leaders dodged two major bullets in
the cases Harris v. Quinn
and Unite Here Local 355 v. Mulhall that could have drastically limited union
power. The overall trend remains ominous for Big
Labor though. Since John Roberts became chief justice, the court has
signaled a willingness to re-think labor law.
A major point of emphasis has been the conflict between individual worker rights and union power.
Federal law generally assumes that a union's interests are the same as its workers'
but the court has taken up cases that test that theory.
This first became clear with the 2012 case Knox v. SEIU. In that, the court ruled that a union could not force nonmembers covered by its contract with management to pay into an emergency political campaign fund without first giving them a chance to opt out — a serious blow to union efforts to raise quick cash. Justice Samuel Alito's majority opinion even further though, saying that such compulsory union fees "constitute a form of compelled speech and association that imposes a 'significant impingement on First Amendment rights.' "
That sparked a lot of attention among labor
law experts, since it sounded like the same argument for right-to-work
laws, which prevent workers from being forced to join unions even in unionized
workplaces......To Read More.....
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