If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you don’t work over the weekend, thank a union
The Janus Supreme Court ruling is bad news for all of us
Is this Supreme Court decision the end of teachers unions?” asked an NPR article responding to last week’s shattering decision in Janus v. the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. In the 5-4 decision, the justices overturned an older ruling that said public sector unions could require non-union members to pay “fair share fees” as a condition of union representation for negotiating things that benefit all workers, such as work hours, pay, vacation time and grievance procedures. This will undoubtedly rob unions of fees from “free riders” who benefit from collective bargaining while not paying for the privilege.
Yet if the last 12 months of organizing by teachers’ unions across the country has shown us anything, it is that unions will not go quiet into the night. In the right-to-work states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Arizona, and Oklahoma, teachers have organized quite dramatically in regional and statewide strikes. With their actions, they grabbed headlines in national papers, prodded Republican leadership to action, and in some cases won long overdue concessions in their contracts. Teacher won pay raises in West Virginia, Arizona, and Oklahoma, and the legislature agreed to increase the amount of money in the Department of Education budget in Kentucky.
In fact, the Supreme Court decision might even spark more such actions: With fewer negotiating tools available to them, teachers may feel their only option is to strike. This is not a good outcome — for teachers; for students who spend much of their week in schools; for black people, who have higher rates of union membership than white people; the Democratic Party, which benefits from political contributions from unions and their boots on the ground; and for all of the rest of us, even if we don’t believe in unions. After all, collective bargaining gave us the weekend.
Among full-time wage and salary workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), union members had median usual weekly Continue reading: If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you don’t work the weekend, thank a union
