Breaking Down Janus
The Landmark Antiunion Supreme Court Decision and Its Effects On The Labor Movement
By ALPA Staff
On June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in the highly anticipated Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 31. Janus was the most recent in a series of lawsuits brought by “right to work” organizations challenging the requirement in many states that public employees who are nonmembers of public-sector unions pay their fair share of the union’s costs in negotiating and administering collective bargaining agreements.
In a 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court overturned a 41-year precedent, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, and held that Illinois law mandating that government employee nonmembers pay their fair share to the labor organizations representing them violates the First Amendment rights of dissenting nonmembers. Under the Janus ruling, going forward, a public-sector employee must affirmatively and voluntarily opt in to pay such fair-share agency fees. This ruling will allow nonmember employees in the public sector to escape paying for their representation. It could have a serious and negative impact on public-sector unions.
Agency shop or fair-share fee payments are a matter of simple fairness to dues-paying union members. No one is required to join a union or support its stance on workplace or political issues. Agency shop fees are in no way an effort to squelch the views or opinions of nonmembers. Under federal labor law, unions are required by the duty of fair representation (DFR) to represent both members and nonmembers regarding collective bargaining and other representational functions with the employers.
Because of this DFR representation requirement, unions must provide services to nonmembers, and nonmembers enjoy the benefits of the collective bargaining agreement and union representation services for which members pay. The reason for the contractual agency fee fair-share payment provision is to require nonmembers to pay their fair share for these services and to prevent them from “free riding” on the backs of the dues-paying members.
The National Right to Work Committee (NRWC) and other management-funded groups have long attacked these fair-share payment requirements in an effort to financially cripple unions’ ability to represent workers. The goal of these attacks is to create the fundamentally unfair situation in which nonmembers are not required to pay for union services that they benefit from—while the union is still required under the DFR to provide these services to nonpaying nonmembers.
No businesses or other membership organizations are put in the position of being forced to provide their services for free. The intent of these groups is to create an incentive for large numbers of dues-paying members to quit their unions, thereby weakening the ability of unions to secure better wages and working conditions on behalf of the employees they represent.
How the ruling will play out in the lower federal courts and courts of appeals regarding private-sector unions representing employees under the Railway Labor Act (RLA) or the National Labor Relations Act is not yet certain. The decision is not likely to have a direct and immediate impact on ALPA and its agency shop fee clauses in pilot collective bargaining agreements. However, it is very clear that the NRWC and other management-funded antiunion groups will attempt to use the decision as a basis to attack the agency fee structure of the RLA.
The Janus decision sets out important differences between the constitutional implications of the public- and private-sector agency fee regimes. ALPA will use those arguments to defend fair-share requirements in any subsequent litigation attacking the RLA’s agency fee provisions and agreements.
ALPA’s Legal Department is continuing to review and analyze the decision in more detail. The President’s Committee on Agency Shop will be receiving a briefing as it prepares to report to ALPA’s governing bodies on this important issue. Additional updates will be provided to ALPA members as they become available.
