Labor’s Janus face

Following oral arguments Monday in a seismic case on the power of organized labor, the Supreme Court may make it far easier for public-sector workers to get all of the benefits of collective bargaining — with none of the dues. That would be a major judicial mistake. But it ought not be lost on public employees that the unions at risk of being dealt a huge fiscal blow by the nation’s highest court have made their own major mistake on the way to this crossroads.

Namely, they have taken for granted that workers’ dues payments are theirs to spend freely as political currency far beyond the bargaining table.

First, let’s dispatch with the most basic legal question in Janus vs. AFSCME, filed by an Illinois child support worker who claims forced payments to his union — known as agency fees — violate his First Amendment speech rights.

No one made Mr. Janus take his union-represented job, where he benefits from collective bargaining agreements and paid agency fees of about $50 a month as an alternative to costlier union dues. The Supreme Court provided for such fees many decades ago, additionally allowing workers to opt out of supporting lobbying, electoral campaigns and other political activities.

Janus’ argument for nixing even the more limited fees is that contract negotiations, unions’ meat and potatoes work, themselves constitute political speech. (That’s more or less the same argument made by plaintiffs in the 2016 case Friedrichs, on which the court deadlocked following the sudden death of Justice Antonin Scalia.) Baloney. Whether or not Janus and other co-workers pay, the union will speak for them. We all know about taxation without representation. For unions, representation without taxation equally pesky problem.

The court must not rule for Janus in a way that would kneecap public-sector unions by giving free rein to free riders.

But to say this is not to endorse the way unions routinely disrespect the rights of workers who balk at their increasingly aggressive, sometimes obnoxious political activism.

New York is among the states where public-sector unions attach umbilical cords to elected officials who reward their support with taxpayer dollars and in return receive plum endorsements and get-out-the-vote campaigns come election time.

Teachers unions gave $350,000 to Mayor de Blasio’s Campaign for One New York in 2014, even as they finalized a major contract agreement with him and gained a slew of new members via his universal pre-K program. They have a similarly lockstep alliance with the state Assembly, forming a united front to weaken charter schools.

Last year, unions spent $4 million to torpedo a ballot referendum question asking if New York State should have a constitutional convention.

Yet even as most public-sector unions function as virtual wings of the Democratic Party, they claim a preposterously small slice of dues go to politics.

The city’s United Federation of Teachers claimed just 2% of its $160 million take in the year ending July 2017 was political. This, despite UFT President Michael Mulgrew reporting he spends 30% of his time on such matters.

The Supreme Court ought to demand a clearer line of demarcation between representing members and playing politics, and make it easier for fee-paying workers to say they want no part of the latter. is an