Pols join in support of public employees
can Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees violates his First Amendment rights — that precedent will disappear.
The erosion of a dues-paying membership could cripple the public-sector labor movement, union advocates say.
Mayor de Blasio on Saturday declared New York “the biggest union town” in America.
“We are proud of that . . . . We want to be a place where everyone who works hard is treated with dignity and lives a decent life,” he said.
“In D.C . . . . President Trump and his cabinet of millionaires and billionaires are trying to take away your rights,” he added, calling out the Republican Party and the billionaire conservative Koch brothers who have helped finance the Janus vs. AFSCME case.
“Are we going to let them do it? Are there more of us than there are of them? And now we fight. The 1% has gotten away with it for too long,” the mayor told the spirited crowd.
Lia Council, a special-education teacher at Riverside High School in Yonkers, sported a hat that said, “Janus Is Not Us.”
Like plaintiff Janus, Council believes the case is about the First Amendment — but she views it from a different angle.
“My First Amendment rights will be taken away from me if (Janus) wins. I won’t have the right to have my union in the way that I have my union now. And that’s really important,” she said.
“I’m a teacher. And so I am the voice of my students. I wouldn’t be able to advocate for them if I didn’t have certain protections as a teacher,” Council added.
Fast-food worker Christina Klein, 19, said she’s hoping to join a union — and that she took part in the Fight for $15.
“I’ve been working fast food since I was 14, 15, and it’s not something I don’t enjoy. But I don’t enjoy management taking advantage of me and my co-workers and denying us basic rights,” she said.
In 2016, the Supreme Court heard Friedrichs vs. California Teachers Association, also funded by right-wing groups and also arguing that paying union fees was a First Amendment infringement on workers who were not members.
The justices heard Friedrichs arguments in January 2016 — but the death of Justice Antonin Scalia a month later resulted in a 4-to-4 deadlock. The case reverted to the ruling of the lower court, which found in favor of the teachers union.
But the labor movement’s relief was short-lived, because the Janus case now looms.
Scalia’s replacement, Justice Neil Gorsuch, is a constitutional originalist, meaning he believes the document should be construed as intended by its initial drafters.
That hasn’t given labor leaders much hope that he will side with unions — and as Gorsuch will likely be the decisive vote, the expectation is that AFSCME will lose.