This year organized labor dodged a bullet when Justice Antonin Scalia’s death left the Supreme Court tied in the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. If Scalia had lived, the Court would have decided in Friedrichs that public sector workers cannot be required to pay for the services they receive from the union that represents the employees at their workplace. The decision to authorize workers to stop paying for services from which they benefit, like contract negotiations, and force unions to provide those services for free would have created a massive free rider problem for unions.
Unfortunately, for organized labor, Friedrichs is coming back under a different name: Janus v. AFSCME. In both cases, workers argued that requiring them to pay for union services violated their First Amendment right to free speech. The Supreme Court will almost certainly hear the case and could decide it as soon as 2018. President Trump will fill Scalia’s seat on the Court with a like-minded conservative, and that will mean organized labor will lose Janus.
A loss in Janus could cause a massive drop in union membership with dramatic collateral damage to progressive institutions and the democratic process itself. Many progressive leaders are elected on the strength of union grassroots organizing and money. Janus could decimate that source of progressive support. Labor and its allies had better be ready.
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