Supreme Court’s union ruling will have little effect in Texas,
A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday that delivers a blow to unions will have little direct impact on Texas, according to labor experts.
The court struck down an Illinois law that required nonunion workers to pay fees that go to collective bargaining and overturned a 1977 law that required employees to pay so-called fair share fees.
But state law in Texas essentially prohibits public unions from requiring employees to pay fees.
“There really isn’t a direct impact from this ruling,” said Monty Exter, a lobbyist for the Association of Texas Professional Educators, whose members include about 100,000 employees, most of them public school teachers. “There are no agency fees in the state of Texas now, as it’s a right-to-work state. In addition, many of the arguments of the case that deal with free riders or the fees that are meant to apply to collective bargaining costs don’t apply because of laws prohibiting collective bargaining by public unions.”
He said there could be an indirect impact for local or state-level affiliates of national unions that benefit financially from agency fees in other states.
That money can go to organizing or recruitment, as well as legal representation and liability coverage.
Employer advocates agreed.
The ruling “mainly affects states where public employees can collectively bargain,” said Jon Fisher, president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Texas.
Louis Malfaro, president of the Texas affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, said that “this court ruling will have no immediate affect on Texas AFT or our 65,000 employees,” who, he said, “have voluntarily joined the union, and voluntarily pay the union.”
He said Texas has “historically been the beneficiary of support from our national union,” which, he said, is eager to organize in the fast-growing state.
“It will be more important now than ever to continue to grow to be able to build political power as an advocate of public schools and be able to rely somewhat less on parts of the country that have been historically strong union states,” he said.
He said the budget of the state affiliate, including lobbying at the Legislature, is “fully supported by members in Texas.”
But the national teachers union helps out with some organizing projects, he said.
With the ruling, “it might take us a little longer to get out to Muleshoe to make sure those employees have a union.”