Month: July 2018

The Janus Decision Explained

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There is widespread confusion about what the recent Supreme Court decision in the Janus case really means for unions. Justice Ruth Ginsberg, who wrote a strongly worded dissenting opinion, recently offered a concise explanation in easy to understand, non-legalese.

Public sector workers who don’t want to join a union don’t have to, and since 1947 they cannot be forced to pay union dues. This was already the state of affairs before this court ruling. However, public sector unions are REQUIRED BY LAW to provide services to both members and nonmembers who are part of the bargaining unit. What unions have done in the past is charged non-members fees for services.(Note: this is similar to what many membership based businesses do. For example, Amazon Prime). What this ruling does is make it illegal for unions to charge non-members fees for services provided. In other words, it requires public sector unions to provide services for free to those who don’t feel like paying for those services. NON members who do not pay for those services can sue unions for failing to provide the same services that they provide members (that is already true, before this ruling, and will remain so).. So what is wrong with this ruling is that the government is requiring unions to accept unreimbursed liability and provide unreimbursed services to anyone who feels like being a free rider, for whatever reason. It ensconces in law the “right” of nonmembers to be free riders who benefit from unions’ services without paying for them. What an odd thing for conservatives to support. I bet they wouldn’t want that to be the law for whatever businesses or nonprofits they own or operate. Imagine if a restaurant was required by law to provide anything on its menu to anyone who walked in and ordered it, but prohibited from charging anyone who didn’t feel like paying for it. That is the position that this ruling has put public sector unions in.
Ruth Ginsberg

An Important FYI …

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Last week the Supreme Court issued it’s ruling in the Janus Case, deciding in a 5-4 decision, that public sector employees across the nation can no longer be required to pay fees to a union as a condition of employment. In light of this ruling, we thought it necessary to alert our member to recent activity designed specifically to alienate in-service teachers and urge them to quit their union. Within hours of the Janus decision, a $10 million campaign was launched with the goal of breaking teachers’ unions across the United States.

The Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy has flooded public-school teachers emails nationwide advising them how to leave their unions. The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a Michigan-based think-tank, which in December of 2017  filed a 55-page amicus curiae brief with the Supreme Court in support of the Janus suit. What is even more troubling is that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her family have been major donors to the Mackinac Center.

Please alert your friends and family who are in-inservice NYSUT members about these potentially harmful emails, and visit the NYSUT Website  for more information on NYSUT on the issue.

A note from the R-UTN Executive Baord — The R-UTN is made up of individuals who retired from the Northport – East Northport district as members of the United Teachers of Northport. We are all very different people, with differing political views, and as such this website strives to avoid posting overt political messages. We do, on occasion, publish information of a political nature that is sent to us from NYSUT as it relates to the quality, and protection, of public education in the state. We do not directly endorse or comment on individual candidates, or make comments or claims about candidates or members of the state or national administration. The naming of the Secretary of Education is not something we do lightly, but this issue is too important to the future of American public education to be ignored.