Janus Ruling
Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council
The Supreme Court, in Abood vs. Detroit Board of Education, upheld a case that allowed employers to charge public employees for representation by unions even if the workers are not members. The argument for the law is that the employee benefits the collective bargaining agreement of the association with the employer. Janus had a contrary opinion and challenged the law on the ground that it violates the First Amendment. The lawsuit presented by Janus was a landmark case regarding the authority of labor unions to receive payments from nonmembers.
The Janus decision affects approximately six million state and public employees who have union contract covers. The declaration states that unions must stop deducting monies from the wages of workers who are nonmembers. State civil unions of employees have lost vast amounts of agency fee revenue from the members who are not members of the associations. States are at risk of losing even more revenues out of the usual annual collections. The ruling of the court gives workers the mandate to revoke union membership hence avoiding union fees.
Consequently, there have been a lot of lawsuits seeking to overturn the decision. The Janus decision impacts the economy of public-sector unions negatively since they will receive lower levels of revenue from agency fees. The revenue collection could become much worse because workers are assured of representation even without paying for the services; the assurance of representation and other union benefits will lead to a departure from the unions hence loss of agency fees. The absence of fair-share fees will give workers an incentive to become free riders. Free rider problem is whereby some individuals do not pay for the benefits they receive; hence the cost is born by others in the society. The free-rider problem is one of the challenges in economics that leads to market failure. This means unions have to strive to convince employees to become and remain to be members. Apart from political pressure, unions will also suffer transition costs in the short run.
The Janus decision dictates that no state or any public employer across the country should allow a union to deduct fees from wages as a price for the cost of representing the workers. The opinion of the court is that compelling workers to pay agency fees is a violation of their rights. Violation of the First Amendment comes when employees pay fees and then forced coerced to support policies they do not like. Previously, the unions were allowed to charge the fees usually referred to as agency fees or fair-share as a way of public collective bargaining Unions that acted as bargaining units were permitted to share the representation costs among all the subscribers or members. However, the Janus decision implies that the unions have no authority to continue charging the fees(.Marianno& Strunk, 2018). The Janus case is a situation whereby the court overruled a recent decision that was made in 1977. The court overruled a decision ‘Abood v Detroit Board of Education’ whereby the ruling was that unions could force nonmembers to make payments for union services. The court believes that the Janus decision will not affect the public sector as much as stakeholders preempt.
The immediate effect of the Janus ruling is the reduction in the finances of the unions since nonmembers had to be refunded. Reports predicted that there would be a lot of employees opting out of unions, but this has not been the case for all units. However, the most significant associations of the public sector registered a high number of dropouts. The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees recorded a 98% decline, while the Service Employees International Union suffered a 95 % decrease (DiSalvo, 2019). In other cases, most of the workers have not quit their unions, and some unions have recorded an increase since the ruling. The rate of workers joining unions is still higher than that of those who opt-out. However, the impact of the Janus ruling cannot be confidently established because many employees are still not well informed. Future periods may experience further drops in membership because people will not be joining unions. The rate of joining the workers’ associations will be much lower than that of retirees being replaced.
Unions play a vital role in building and protecting workers in America, but the ruling is a scheme to rig the economy against workers by fighting the freedom of association in unions. I do not support the Janus ruling because it undermines the ability of workers to associate freely, thus increasing the power of employers over employees. Additionally, by protecting workers from avoiding to pay agency fees, governments have acquired the momentum to advocate for more anti-union laws. The decision by the court narrows the ideology of individual rights to deny the majority protection (Eidlin & Smith, 2018). However, some scholars argue that the Janus case ruling was for the better since unions will work harder to provide quality services. Another viewpoint is that this law does not entirely stop workers from joining trade unions. All in all, the long term effect will be to weaken the labor unions.
References
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/public-sector-unions-after-janus
Marianno, B. D., & Strunk, K. O. (2018). After Janus: A New Era of Teachers Union Activism. Education Next, 18(4), 18-26.
DiSalvo, D. (2019). Public-sector unions after janus: An update. Manhattan Institute Issue Brief.
Eidlin, B., & Smith, C. W. (2018). The Supreme Court’s Janus Ruling is Flawed. Canadian Legal History Shows Why. The Washington Post.