‘Company unions’ deepen post-Janus threat to labor

You’d be hard pressed to find a more challenging threat to America’s labor movement than the Supreme Court’s recent Janus decision—which overturned 40 years of established legal precedent and the laws of 23 states in forcing public sector unions to represent non-members for free.

The Janus case was always about ideology and money.  Pushed by hyper partisan special interests that are philosophically opposed to the very idea of collective bargaining, the theory behind the case was that finding a way to reduce the number of workers willing to pay for union services would have the added benefit of weakening an important base of financial support for labor-friendly Democrats.

Since the court handed down its 5-4 decision, a myriad of ideas have been floated to try and minimize the damage.

UC Davis Law Professor Aaron Tang has gone ahead and set the standard for bad ideas by framing this as a resource problem.  Tang proposes requiring public employers—not workers—to fund union operations.   Under federal law, such arrangements are already illegal in the private sector.  But Tang is naively calling for public sector unions to surrender their independence from the boss and control of their finances in exchange for enough money to keep their operations afloat.

Unions with the highest rates of member participation win better wages and benefits and more security than either non-unionized workers, or unions with lower levels of participation.

It’s a great idea if your only goal as a union staff member is to keep collecting a paycheck.  Tang’s approach may also appeal to politicians who define “solidarity” in terms of campaign contributions.

But it’s a terrible strategy if you subscribe to the idea that a union only works if it belongs to its members.   Put more bluntly, if the boss controls your bank account, you’re no longer a union.   You are a conflict of interest.

What gives a union power is collective participation—up to and including funding the union’s work of bargaining wages and benefits, grieving disputes, and even its political advocacy.

And participation begins with the hard work of organizing, worker to co-worker.

There’s no real mystery here.  Research shows that unions with the highest rates of member participation win better wages and benefits and more security than either non-unionized workers, or unions with lower levels of participation.

Far from a solution, Tang’s proposal reflects a complacency problem that has been plaguing us for decades.  As union density has declined and so called “right to work” laws have taken hold, some have abandoned organizing to grow power in favor of trying minimize losses.

This is a false choice.

The reason we know is because even as Janus was working its way through the courts, public sector unions like AFSCME were growing—engaging in aggressive organizing drives and converting fee payers into full dues paying members.  And we can do it again.

More recently, we’ve seen teachers in openly anti-union (so called “right to work”) states mount massive protests and strikes to confront substandard wages, deplorable working conditions and destructive austerity measures.  While many of those educators were not paying union dues before these disputes, I have no doubt that many  would do so today having now seen the power of collective action first hand.

While peer to peer organizing must be the foundation of our efforts, policy makers can play a role in shaping in our new Post-Janus order.   They must embrace the intent of our labor laws by investing in more robust enforcement, guaranteeing more workers more opportunities to meet with union representatives, and ensuring they have more protection from outside influences with an ideological or financial motivation to erode their rights on the job.

One thing they should absolutely not do is take ownership of unions away from workers, and give it to the boss.
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Ed’s Note: Liz Perlman is the executive director of AFSCME Local 3299, which represents more than 24,000 employees at the University of California’s 10 campuses, five medical centers, numerous clinics, research laboratories and UC Hastings College of the Law.