Free speech at the center of debate over union dues

LATER this month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, in which the plaintiffs argue forcing individuals to join unions and pay associated fees is a violation of First Amendment rights.

The court has previously ruled people may be forced to pay union dues that are related to collective bargaining efforts, but that union members can obtain a refund for any portion of fees going to expressly political activity. Yet unions are allowed to calculate the amount of those refunds, which creates great potential for abuse.

The Janus case is about an even more fundamental issue. The petitioner, Mark Janus, is an Illinois state employee legally required to pay agency fees to AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.

In 2015, AFSCME began bargaining with Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner. Among other things, Rauner wanted to provide $1,000 merit pay for employees who missed fewer than 5 percent of assigned work days; overtime after 40 hours; a merit raise system; and drug testing of employees suspected of working impaired.

Those are hardly draconian conditions. Most private-sector employees already work for businesses with similar policies, and there’s been no mass outcry. One would think reasonable union members would have no problem with such policies. In fact, you’d think good workers would welcome the chance to obtain bonus pay merely for showing up most of the time and that they would be glad to have drug-testing policies in place to remove impaired workers. Tolerance for on-the-job drug use and worker safety are incompatible. Yet the union opposed those proposals.

Thus, one plaintiff brief in the cases notes, “Janus and millions of public employees are subject to agency fee requirements that compel them to subsidize the speech of a third party (an exclusive representative) that they may not wish to support. This significantly impinges on the First Amendment rights of each and every employee who did not choose to subsidize the union’s advocacy.”

Put another way, workers who support drug testing on the job are forced to fund speech in opposition to drug testing as a condition of employment. That infringes upon their free-speech rights.

The free speech issue looms especially large in cases involving unions that represent government employees, as noted in an amicus brief filed by 18 states, including Oklahoma, that supports the plaintiff’s argument.

“When the party on the opposite side of the table is the government, bargaining is unavoidably about the use of public resources and about how elected officials will govern,” the brief states. “Bargaining concessions affect fundamental public policy issues such as wages, merit pay, pensions, hours, benefits, and other terms of public employment — the balancing of which affects, for example, the level of public services, priorities within state and local budgets, creation of bonded indebtedness, and tax rates.”

The brief then notes with understatement, “These are topics about which employees as voters are likely to hold strong personal views …”

It is fundamentally wrong to force people to engage in speech they don’t support. With this case, the high court has the chance to right a great wrong and make a stand for individual freedom.