Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Workers win major Supreme Court case!

The Supreme Court has just dealt a major victory to America's working people. I said working people - so by definition, that excludes the Tea Party.

Today, the Supremes deadlocked 4 to 4 in the corporate-funded Freidrichs v. California Teachers Association case - thus leaving unchanged a lower court ruling that allows public employee unions to collect reasonable fees for the services they provide. If the court had ruled against unions, it would have effectively created a nationwide right-to-scab law that would have forced unionized public workers to subsidize nonunion labor.

What we should be surprised about is that we somehow ended up with 4 Justices who voted against unions in this case. There is no legal basis to rule against the unions - in fact, a 1977 Supreme Court case went in labor's favor on this very subject - and more importantly, to prohibit unions from collecting service fees would be an unconstitutional impairment of a contract. What's more is that schools and other vital services in so-called "right-to-work" states generally perform worse than they do in free-bargaining states.

The plaintiffs' arguments in the Freidrichs case would be downright laughable if there hadn't been a very real risk they might win. But today, workers won.

(Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/03/29/supreme-court-public-employee-unions-mandatory-fees-scalia/81123772)