January Issue of Labor Watch Highlights Two Important Supreme Court Cases Concerning Employees’ Personal Freedom
The January edition of Labor Watch, published by the Washington, D.C.-based Capital Research Center, features a lead article and a sidebar by Institute Senior Research Associate Stan Greer regarding two important cases recently heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and related underlying issues in federal and state labor policy. Â In both cases, employees seeking to assert their statutory and constitutional rights not to associate with an unwanted union are being provided with free legal assistance by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation.
Since Greer’s Labor Watch contributions were drafted several weeks ago, the High Court has announced it would not issue a ruling in the first case, Mulhall v. Unite Here Local 355, and thus allowed to stand an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision finding that, under certain circumstances, organizing assistance furnished by private-sector employers to union officers may constitute a “thing of value.” Â And Section 302(a)(2) of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act as currently amended makes it unlawful for any employer to “pay, lend, or deliver” any “thing of value” to any labor organization “which represents” or “seeks to represent” any of the employer’s employees.
In the same edition of Labor Watch, an update written by the publication’s editor, Steven Allen, explains the significance of the Supreme Court’s decision to punt on Mulhall, which at its core addresses the question of whether it is permissible under federal labor law for employers to collude with Big Labor to push their employees into unions in exchange for other considerations.
The second case discussed by Greer in the January Labor Watch is Harris v. Quinn, in which oral arguments were heard January 21. Â The Harris plaintiffs are Illinois home care providers whom public officials are either already forcing, or are currently seeking to force, to pay dues or fees to a union they don’t want. Â All but one of the plaintiffs are close relatives of the patients for whom they are providing home care. Â They contend that Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and his appointees are violating their First Amendment rights when they threaten to cut off the Medicaid-funded assistance the caregivers need in order to be able to afford to look after their patients full time unless they pay forced union dues or fees.
In written briefs to the court and at this month’s oral arguments, the Foundation’s Bill Messenger, the lead attorney for the plaintiffs, has pressed the nine justices to vindicate the caregivers’ freedom of speech and association by overturning Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. Â This is the 37-year-old case, also argued by the Foundation, in which the Supreme Court first found that government officials may licitly “interfere” with public employees’ First Amendment rights by authorizing forced union dues in order to secure “labor peace” in the workplace.
Messenger has also argued that, even should the court balk at reversing Abood, his clients should not be forced to pay union dues or face the imminent threat of forced-dues payments, because they are not employed in any government workplace. Â Therefore, there exists not even a theoretical possibility of “labor peace” in the workplace being disrupted because some employees resisted bankrolling their union monopoly-bargaining agent, as Abood had envisioned.
A reversal of Abood would amount to a very serious setback for government union bosses, but a decision that neither revokes Abood’s constitutional waiver for public-sector forced union dues nor finds the plaintiffs outside of Abood’s reach could have very dark implications for personal liberty and the democratic process.
That’s why freedom-loving Americans across the country are now awaiting the Harris verdict, which is expected late this spring, with both hope and concern.
Illinois home care provider Pamela Harris, pictured here with her son Josh, and seven other plaintiffs are being represented by National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation attorneys in a case heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 21. Image: Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune