Tag Archive for: Janus vs AFSCME

Estimated Impact of Janus on California’s Public Sector Unions So Far: $50M/year

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On June 27, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Janus vs AFSCME. An immediate consequence of this ruling was that public sector unions could no longer collect so-called “agency fees” from workers in their bargaining units who had opted out of full union membership.

The other main consequence of the Janus ruling was that those workers who were full dues paying members of public sector unions would have the right to terminate their memberships. In anticipation of a result unfavorable to them, which Janus certainly was, public sector unions have used their influence with lawmakers to pass numerous pieces of legislation designed to make it harder for union members to quit. As a result, the full impact of union members terminating their membership will not be felt immediately.

With nearly a year passed since the Janus case was decided, however, it is possible to begin to quantify the impact so far on union membership and on union revenues. It’s not at all an easy task. The mandatory disclosure requirements for public sector unions are minimal. Public corporations and private sector unions are both required to disclose much more information about their finances and operations than are public sector unions.

Nonetheless, over the past several months, the California Policy Center has filed numerous public information requests with public agencies in California, asking their payroll departments to disclose how many of employees had union membership dues and fees deducted, and how much those deductions amounted to. While much more information should be forthcoming as additional bureaucracies slowly respond, we now have data from four relatively large agencies – San Diego County, Orange Unified School District, Santa Ana Unified School District, and Los Angeles Unified School District.

Impact on Select California Agencies

The table below shows, at a summary level, what we’ve learned from these four agencies.

Before speculating on how this may translate into a statewide impact by extrapolating from these numbers, a few qualifying remarks are necessary. The columns headed by “# payers” include agency fee payers and full members. From the underlying details, some interesting facts emerged.

In the case of LAUSD, by far the largest agency, four bargaining units were summarized – the UTLA teachers union, the “Associated Administrators of Los Angeles,” the SEIU Local 99, and the CSEA bargaining unit. In all cases, the monthly payroll data used for “before Janus” figures were from January 2018. In most cases, the “after Janus” data was from November 2018 (in the case of CSEA, October 2018 was used). What the detailed data showed for all four unions was that agency fee payers and agency fee revenue ended in July 2018. The actual full membership numbers increased, in general, between January 2018 and November 2018, but not enough to make up for the agency fee payers who were lost. That is, these unions were not generally successful in converting their agency fee payers into full union members.

This same pattern was repeated when reviewing other agencies, although in most cases the only data provided was “total payers” which made it impossible to tell how many agency fee payers were lost in July 2018. It’s important cover this nuance, because it explains why the total drop in dues revenue, 6 percent, is only about one-third as great as the total drop in the number of payers, 17 percent. Many of those payers were not full members, paying full dues, but instead were agency fee payers, paying reduced amounts. One further complicating variable worth mentioning is the fact that some of these agencies were unable to differentiate between dues, agency fees, or payments to the union for other benefits such as supplemental health insurance.

Estimated Statewide Impact

In any case, if the experience of these four agencies is representative of what has happened in the rest of California’s unionized public agencies, it is possible to estimate the statewide impact so far of the Janus ruling.

California’s public sector unions collect and spend an estimated $800 million per year. If that amount has already dropped by 6.4 percent, than total union revenue has been reduced by around $50 million.

It is difficult to rely on this estimate. Did all of the unions have relatively similar percentages of agency fee payers? Did all of them convert a similar, and fairly low, percentage of their agency fee payers into full members? Are agency fees, as a percent of full dues, the same percentage in the rest of California’s bargaining units as they were inferred to be in these cases? For that matter, it’s not even that easy to estimate the total dues revenue of California’s public sector unions. Our current estimate of $800 million per year, released last summer, required revision after the California Policy Center received feedback from some of the public sector unions included in the estimate. It would be nice, of course, if California’s public sector unions would simply disclose their membership numbers and dues revenue. And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

In almost any other context, reducing by $50 million the annual revenue of a network of political players, especially at the state level, would be a catastrophe for the organizations involved. But this is California, and these are public sector unions. Losing most of their agency fee payers clearly had a permanent and significant impact on union revenues, but for them, and only them, it might be most accurately described as a one-time loss of manageable proportions. The bigger impact that the Janus ruling might have regards what is going to happen to their rates of full membership. It is now possible for public sector union members to quit their unions, but will they? And if they want to, will the unions be forced to make that an easier process?

Some of the tactics the unions have adopted to make the process of quitting more difficult are being challenged in court. These cases would include Uradnik vs IFO, which would take away a public sector union’s right to exclusive representation, or Few vs UTLA, which would nullify many steps the unions have taken to thwart the Janus ruling. How those cases play out, and whether or not public sector unions can remain accountable enough to their members to keep them in voluntarily, remains to be seen.

This article originally appeared on the website of the California Policy Center.

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The Varieties and the Potential Impact of Post-Janus Litigation

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The landmark ruling by the US Supreme Court in the Janus vs AFSCME case has given government workers the right to not only refuse union membership, but to refuse to pay any dues or fees to that union. In the wake of this ruling, new lawsuits have been filed on behalf of plaintiffs who allege the unions are attempting to circumvent the Janus ruling.

Enforcing Provisions of the Janus Ruling

A notable example of such a case is Few vs UTLA, In this case, the plaintiff, Thomas Few, is a special education teacher in Los Angeles. Few was told that he could end his membership in the United Teachers of Los Angeles union. But even as a nonmember, the union told him that he would still have to pay an annual “service fee” equivalent to his union membership dues. Few’s position, which is likely to be upheld, is that he cannot be compelled to pay anything to a union he does not choose to join, regardless of what the payment is called.

This lawsuit and others are likely to ensure that the Janus ruling is enforced. The practical result will be that government unions lose some of their members, and some of their revenue. But how many? After all, there is a valid economic incentive for public employees to belong to their unions. In California, unionized state and local workers earn pay and benefits that average twice what private sector workers earn.

For this reason, most people refusing union membership will be doing so for ideological reasons. They will find their objections to the political agenda of these unions to be more compelling than the economic reasons to support them. But there are additional ways the unions compel public employees to remain members.

For example, in some cases, within the same bargaining unit, unions will negotiate pay and benefit packages for their members that are more favorable than the pay and benefit packages they negotiate for the non-members. In some cases in academia, only union members are permitted to sit on faculty committees that determine curricula and hiring decisions.

Challenging Exclusive Representation

This right to exclusive representation is the next major target of public sector union reformers. They argue that it is unconstitutional for public sector unions – whose activity the Janus ruling verified is inherently political – to advocate on behalf of non-members, or to represent non-members, or to exclude non-members from participating in votes or discussions on policy, or to deny non-members the same negotiated rates of pay and benefits as members, or, possibly, all of the above.

Just filed this week in the US Supreme Court is the case Uradnik vs IFO, which worked its way through the lower courts in under a year. It is possible it will be heard in the 2019 session. This case calls for an immediate end to laws that force public-sector employees to accept a union’s exclusive representation.

Kathleen Uradnik, a professor of political science at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, alleges that her union (“IFO” or Inter Faculty Organization) “created a system that discriminates against non-union faculty members by barring them from serving on any faculty search, service, or governance committee, and even bars them from joining the Faculty Senate. This second-class treatment of non-union faculty members impairs the ability of non-members to obtain tenure, to advance in their careers, and to participate in the academic life and governance of their institutions.”

There is a strong possibility that within a few years, if not much sooner, this case will be heard and ruled on by the US Supreme Court in favor of the plaintiff. If so, the future of public sector unions will be altered in ways even more significant than Janus. Unions will be prohibited from discriminating in any way against non-members who are part of their bargaining unit. They also will be powerless to stop public employees from withdrawing completely from their bargaining unit to – gasp – represent themselves in salary and benefit negotiations, something that professionals in the private sector have always done.

The Impact of Non-Exclusive Representation

An impact of a favorable Uradnik vs IFO ruling that would have even greater consequences would be if it enabled the emergence of competing unions. What if two or more unions represented a bargaining group? What if a super-union emerged whose membership welcomed government workers from an entire state, or entire profession, or the entire nation. What if these super-unions embraced a political agenda that ran counter to the left-wing agenda that has dominated public sector unions for decades?

The possibilities are tantalizing.

What if faculty members in America’s colleges and universities had the option to join a conservative union with a national membership that advocated a return to pro-Western college instruction, an end to reverse discrimination, a restoration of academic merit as the sole criteria for admission and graduation, and the abolition of divisive courses of study that offer no useful skills? What if conservative faculty members who have been silent all these years had the power of a national union to protect them from the Left?

What if K-12 teachers across America had a national union to protect them when they objected to curricula designed to turn immigrant children against the people and traditions of their host culture? What if police and firefighters across America had a national union that advocated unequivocally for a merit-based system of immigration? What if civil engineers across America had a national union that was implacably opposed to the environmentalist extremism that has doubled the cost of infrastructure projects and quadrupled the time it takes to complete them?

Enforcing Janus will begin to undermine public sector union power, which is deployed almost exclusively in the service of the Left. Enforcing Uradnik may actually create a balance of power between public sector unions that lean Left vs Right, and that, in turn, would represent a seismic shift in the political landscape of America. At the least, it would neutralize the tremendous boost that public sector unions have given the political Left in America. At most, it might create a hitherto unthinkable consensus in America that public sector unions are indeed inherently political, and have far too much political influence, and must be subject to draconian restrictions including losing the right to collectively bargain, if not complete abolition.

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Imminent Janus Court Ruling May Severely Impact Government Unions

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The U.S. Supreme Court is about to rule on Janus vs AFSCME, a case that challenges the ability of public sector unions to force government workers to pay union dues. Depending on the scope of the ruling, this case could dramatically affect the political power of big labor in the United States.

The case hinges on the assertion by plaintiff Mark Janus, a public employee in Illinois, that everything a public sector does is inherently political. As a result, Janus argues, even the so-called “agency fees” the union charges – ostensibly to fund nonpolitical activities such as contract negotiations – are a violation of his right to free speech. He’s got a strong case, because nearly everything public sector unions negotiate have a direct impact on public policy.

When a public sector union negotiates for increased pension benefits, for example, every other budget item is affected. In states like California and Illinois, costs for public employee pensions are exceeding 10% of total tax revenuess in some cities and counties, crowding out other public services with no end in sight. And everywhere public sector unions are active, their impact on budgets, along with their negotiated work rules, significantly alter how our elected officials set policy priorities and how they manage our government agencies.

HIGH STAKES

The stakes in the Janus case are epic. Nearly half of all unionized workers in the United States are government workers. Public sector unions collect and spend nearly $6.0 billion per year in the United States. About a third of that – a staggering sum of money – is actually spent on political campaigns and lobbying, while nearly all of the rest funds “non-political” activity that includes get out the vote efforts, public education, and advocacy that stops just short of being explicitly political in nature, yet is blatantly political in its intent. Nearly all of public sector union money is contributed to Democrats, much of it in countless local elections where spending is not tracked.

Public sector union power is concentrated in large urban states such as California where over $1.0 billion per year is collected by these unions, and the result is clear. They have candidates active, and winning, in every political race from the top of the ticket all the way down to local agencies. Whenever necessary, and without blinking, they will spend millions on races as small as a school board seat. In 2005, when California governor Schwarzenegger put four citizens initiatives onto the state ballot that threatened public sector union power, they spent over $100 million in their successful campaign to defeat these propositions.

GOVERNMENT UNIONS ARE DIFFERENT FROM PRIVATE UNIONS

The differences between public sector unions and private sector unions are profound. A public sector union doesn’t have to exist in a competitive commercial environment, where if their demands are too extravagant they will put the company out of business. To get more money, they just demand higher taxes. And unlike private sector unions, public sector unions elect their own bosses, spending money on political campaigns to elect the officials who will then be tasked with managing them. Moreover, millions of zealous public sector union members populate the machinery of government, willing and able to make life a bit more difficult for any other interest group that may challenge their power.

Spokespersons for public sector unions, typically working for the finest PR firms money can buy, frequently attempt to convince voters that they are protecting ordinary “working families” from greedy business interests. But despite being devastatingly persuasive, this is a fabrication. Public sector unions only look out for government workers, which in the states controlled by government unions will often make twice as much in pay and benefits as private sector workers doing similar jobs – yet those private sector workers must pay the taxes to support these overmarket pay and benefits. As for business interests, the bigger a company is, the less likely they are to challenge these unions.

Big corporations not only don’t want to be targeted by public sector unions with retaliatory legislation that could hurt their bottom line. Many of them actually prefer doing business with these unions in charge of state and local governments. They can bid on bloated government public works projects. They can underwrite municipal bonds of dubious necessity and collect lucrative fees. They can help manage the hundreds of billions sitting in public sector pension funds. And they can benefit when excessive government regulations create barriers to entry that are too severe for smaller, potentially disruptive competitors to withstand.

There is a fundamental conflict between the natural agenda of government unions and the public interest. Because government unions prosper when government expands, regardless of the cost or benefit of new government programs. Even worse, when government programs fail, or when government policies harm the public interest – such as encouraging mass migration of destitute, marginally assimilable immigrants – the role of government expands to address the crisis. Whenever this happens, more people become members of government unions, increasing their wealth and power.

HOW THE UNIONS INTEND TO THWART THE JANUS RULING

If the Janus ruling makes it possible for public employees to refuse to pay union dues, these public employees will themselves share the moral conflict inherent in public sector unionism, pitting their own interests against the broader public interest. One may hope the majority of public employees will welcome working in a meritocracy, where their talent and skill and hard work will provide them with opportunities for raises and promotions. But those government employees who support the left wing political agenda of their union, or who prefer to fall back on work rules that give them job security and overmarket pay based on seniority, probably will remain members.

But even if the Janus ruling gives public employees the right to get out of their union, will they be able to? Across the U.S., union controlled legislatures are doing their utmost to stop them from leaving. In California, several laws have been passed in the last few months to mitigate the effects of Janus. Two new laws will make it difficult, if not impossible, for employers to discuss the pros and cons of unionization with employees. Two more will preclude local governments from unilaterally honoring employee requests to stop paying union dues. Another has modified the public records act so that only unions can gain access to employee information, preventing 3rd parties from advocating against unionization. And across the country, labor contracts are being rewritten to make it a bureaucratic obstacle course to opt-out of union membership. Some of these contracts even require employees to quit every year, by automatically reinstating their membership (and dues withholding) annually.

When unions of government workers control a state legislature, and they do in the populous blue states of California and Illinois and elsewhere, they can do almost anything they want.

To say that government unions are one of the root causes of America’s deepest challenges is not an overstatement. They are one of the biggest funders of left-wing politicians and activists, enabling the left to a degree far out of proportion to its actual grassroots support among Americans. They distort the political process to further their own interests. They intimidate and coopt business interests, especially in the financial sector. And they benefit whenever and wherever society fails, and government expands its power and reach in response.

Public sector unions should be illegal. The Janus vs AFSCME ruling will not go that far. But it is a gigantic step in the right direction.

This article originally appeared on the website American Greatness.

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A Post-Janus Agenda for California’s Public Sector Unions

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“If you do not prevail in this case, the unions will have less political influence; yes or no?” Kennedy asked. “Yes, they will have less political influence,” Frederick answered.
–  an excerpt from the Janus vs. AFSCME trial, quoted in the Washington Post, February 26, 2018

Earlier this week the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the Janus vs. AFSCME case. Mark Janus, a public employee in Illinois, is challenging the right of unions to charge “fair share” fees, because he disagrees with the political agenda which he claims his fees help pay for.

What if government unions were accountable to their members? What if the politics of these unions mirrored the politics of the members? Would Mark Janus still want out?

It’s already possible for public employees to “opt-out” of paying that portion of their dues that fund explicitly political activity, although in practice the unions typically make that opt-out process very difficult. But Mark Janus is arguing that all dues paid to public sector unions are political, because the consequences of collective bargaining in the public sector impact taxes, government debt, budgets and spending priorities. He is arguing that the agenda of public sector unions, including collective bargaining, is inherently political.

In reality, saying all public sector union activity is inherently political is itself an understatement. In California, public sector unions spend about $300 million per year on explicitly political activity – funding political campaigns, political action committees, and lobbyists. But they spend at least another $700 million every year not just on collective bargaining – which for government workers is inherently political – but on education campaigns that attempt to influence voters on countless political topics.

Equally important is the influence California’s public sector unions wield that doesn’t derive its power from how much money they can spend, but from the fact that elected officials come and go, but the union hierarchy is permanent. Public employees who want to advance in their careers do not cross these unions.

Government unions are so powerful that only a very aggressive outcome in the Janus ruling will suffice to significantly undermine their power in California. The court must rule that union membership must be renewed annually via a transparent opt-in process. Only then will these unions become accountable to their members.

If there is an aggressive ruling in the Janus case that truly forces public sector unions to become accountable, imagine how it may affect the political agenda of these unions. One may hope it would ignite a civil war within these unions. Even in California, for example, about 40% of public school teachers identify as conservatives. Among public safety employees, a majority identify as conservative. Yet these unions are the power behind a state legislature ran by the most liberal politicians in the history of the United States.

Just for a moment, consider what these unions could do, if their leadership was committed to making California a land of opportunity again:

A PRO-WORKER AGENDA FOR CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONS
(if they actually cared about all of California’s working families)

1 – Restore the balance in California’s colleges and universities so that the ratio of faculty to administrators is 2 to 1, instead the current ratio wherein administrators often outnumber teachers.

2 – End all discrimination and base college admissions purely on merit. Expand STEM curricula so it represents 50% of college majors instead of the current 20%.

3 – Enforce the Vergara reforms so it is easier to retain quality public school teachers and easier to fire the incompetent ones. Eliminate barriers to charter schools.

4 – Restructure the penal system to make it easier for prisoners to perform useful public services. For example. along with working the fire lines during fire season, they could work all year clearing dead trees out of California’s forests. Use high-tech monitoring devices to reduce costs. Reserve current prisons only for the truly incorrigible.

5 – Scrap the High Speed Rail project and instead use the proceeds to add one lane to every major interstate highway in California.

6 – Use additional High Speed Rail funds to complete plant upgrades so that 100% of California’s sewage is reused, even treated to potable quality.

7 – Pass legislation to streamline approval of the proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach, and fast-track applications for additional desalination plants, especially in the Los Angeles basin.

8 – Spend the entire proceeds of the $7.0 billion water bond, passed overwhelmingly by Californians in 2014, on storage. Build the Los Banos Grandes, Sites, and Temperance Flat reservoirs, adding over 5.0 million acre feet of storage to the California Water Project. Pass aggressive legislation and fund aggressive legal actions and counter-actions, to lower costs and enable completion of these projects in under five years.

9 – Permit slant drilling to access 12 trillion cubic feet of natural gas deposits from land-based rigs along the Southern California coast. Build an LNG terminal off the coast in Ventura County to export California’s natural gas to foreign markets. Permit development of the Monterey Shale formation to extract oil and gas.

10 – Permit construction of “generation 3+” nuclear power plants in geologically stable areas of California’s interior. Permit construction of new natural gas power plants.

11 – Repeal AB 32 and SB 375 and make it easy for developers to build homes on the suburban and exurban fringes, instead of just “in-fill” that destroys existing neighborhoods.

12 – Require California’s public employee pension funds to invest a minimum of 10% of their assets in infrastructure projects as noted above. They could issue fixed rate bonds or take equity positions in the revenue producing projects, or a combination of both. This would immediately unlock approximately $80 billion in construction financing to rebuild California’s infrastructure. At the same time, save the pension systems by striking down the “California Rule” that prevents meaningful pension reform.

These reforms would lower the cost of living in California, at the same time as they would create resource abundance and hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs.

It is encouraging to think that the Janus ruling will reduce the political influence of public sector unions. But another possibility is equally tantalizing, that Janus will force unions to become accountable to their members. This, in turn, could be reflected in these unions fighting, for a change, to help all Californians.

To expect public sector unions to pursue the agenda outlined above is fanciful. But if California’s public sector unions were as committed to that pro-growth agenda as they are to their current agenda which is bankrupting California’s cities and counties at the same time as it obsesses over race, gender, and environmentalist extremism, they could probably get all of it done. And no other special interest could do this.

Only California’s public sector unions have enough power to successfully take on their current allies; the environmentalist lobby, the trial lawyers, and their puppet masters, the leftist oligarchy. No other special interest could take on these profiteers who have gotten filthy rich spouting leftist tripe, while they impoverished a generation of Californians.

Post Janus, it is time for a civil war within public sector unions. Using, hopefully, their option to not opt-in, it is time for public servants who care about ordinary Californians to make their voices heard.

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