The Supreme Court says a union must give nonmembers an immediate chance to object to unexpected fee increases that all workers are required to pay in closed-shop situations.
The court on Thursday ruled for Dianne Knox and other nonmembers of the Service Employees International Union’s Local 1000, who wanted to object and opt out of a $12 million special assessment the union required from its California public sector members. Knox and others said the union did not give them a legally required notice that the increase was coming.
The ruling was 7-2. SEIU and other labor unions raise dues without warning to pay for political campaigning and messaging in election years, giving members no choice and no means of opting out. These members tend to reside in states where union membership itself is forced on them by lack of right-to-work laws. Today’s ruling, which I may have mentioned wasn’t a close one, overruled a 9th Circuit ruling that the unions could continue the practice.
So there are only two committed communists left on the court now? I find this mildly encouraging. And nanny nanny boo boo the the 9th cicuit.
Once again the 9th Soviet is reversed, and this one was a no-brainer. The 9th did the same thing with the WA case a few years ago; upheld the WASC’s turning the 1st Am. on its head to keep teachers’ union dues in place. In both cases, there was no doubt the complainants would prevail on the merits but the delays caused by Democrat state courts, federal district courts, and the 9th Soviet enabled the unions and Democrats to keep the illegal money in play longer.
In a sane world, Swartzenegger should have been able to support some fee objectors or have some third party find and assist some forced dues payers in challenging the dues schemes of the CA unions BEFORE he attempted to pass his initiatives. I was in contact with some of their LR people back when that was going on and I told them I didn’t think they’d succeed with the dues in place. They said the opinion was that they couldn’t do anything about the dues, and maybe they were right. A challenge that anyone who knows anything about public sector labor relations knew was going to succeed failed all the way up and the law was finally only upheld by the USSC – and even then two justices voted against the complainants. Talk about a stacked deck! Does anyone wonder why the left coast is such a communist controlled mess?
It still amazed me that with years of a Republican controlled Congress and a two-term Republican President we couldn’t break up the 9th Soviet and add a new circuit for the Intermountain West and Alaska and leave the hopelessly leftist and corrupt Left Coast, Hawaii, and the Pacific Territories to their fate in the new, smaller 9th Soviet. At least a new Circuit for the resource rich states in the West would make it easier to develop those resources. As it stands today, almost any attempt to develop natural resourcs in the 9th Soviet’s area has to go all the way to the USSC, a process that generally takes about ten years by the time the commies get their bite in both the state and federal courts, you lose to a 3-judge 9th Soviet panel, you have to go to the full court and lose again, and if you have enough money and live long enough, you go to the USSC and win. That has been precisely the scenario in developing the last two large mines in Alaska. The very rich Pebble Mine prospect faces the same ten or more year delay and ANY oil development outside the established provinces will take at least ten years of litigation. The entire TransAlaska Pipeline, its marine terminal, and all the field infrastructure only took a little over three years to build; the ten years to production that the Left always bandies around isn’t the time to develop; it’s the time it takes to get past the 9th Soviet.
Breyer and Kagan’s dissent is crazy! They say if the unions “basic administration” is Constitutionally permissible, then any action by that administration should be permissible. Surely they’re not so stupid! In the first place, it isn’t the “basic administration” to which a fee payer objects; it is specific expenditures. A union certainly can, though few actually do, have a “basic administration” that allows it to separate expenditures that are chargeable to objecting fee payers from expenditures for “social, fraternal, and political” activities that are not chargable to objectors. The fact that it can accurately track expenditures, a necessary component for a Constitutionally permissible dues system doesn’t mean that the union actually charges expenditures accurately. No matter the system each individual form of expenditure must be examined to determine that it is appropriately described and an accurate determination made as to whether it can be charged to an objecting fee payer.