(Wall Street Journal)—The Supreme Court has only just announced it will hear Mark Janus’s case, but labor unions are already acting as if they’ve lost. Mr. Janus, a state employee in Illinois, wants to stop paying union “fair share” fees, which ostensibly cover the cost of collective bargaining. If he wins, public workers in states like Illinois, California and Minnesota—which don’t have “right to work” laws—could be freed to keep their money if their union isn’t delivering value.
Mr. Janus’s case is similar to one the justices heard last year involving a California teacher named Rebecca Friedrichs. Her argument was simple: Because collective bargaining with the government is inherently political, forcing her to fund it violated her First Amendment rights. A 5-4 majority of the justices appeared to agree, and seasoned court observers were confident Ms. Friedrichs had won. But then Justice Antonin Scalia died, and the final vote was a 4-4 tie.
Which brings us back to the current case, Janus v. Afscme. Now that Scalia has been replaced by the like-minded Justice Neil Gorsuch, at least some unions are preparing to lose. Consider Education Minnesota, my home state’s National Education Association affiliate.
As teachers settle into a new school year, they will be shown a video featuring Education Minnesota’s president, Denise Specht, asking them to sign a “membership renewal” card. The union has already filled out cards for all of the state’s 86,000 teachers, who are asked merely to add their signatures. One union representative told me the renewal form is being distributed in anticipation of Janus.
I’ve reviewed a copy of the form, which says the union is authorized to deduct dues from the teachers’ paychecks. It also includes the following fine print: “This authorization shall remain in effect and shall be automatically renewed from year to year, irrespective of my membership in the union, unless I revoke it by submitting written notice to both my employer and the local union during the seven-day period that begins on September 24 and ends on September 30.”
The cynical bet is that most teachers will sign the card, if they haven’t already, without reading it or understanding what it means. The lack of transparency is jarring: Recently I spoke to a group of teachers who said they didn’t even know how much they paid in dues. When teachers start working they sign an authorization card, and then the money is automatically deducted, like taxes. Teachers never see the money.
Under current rules teachers can opt out of paying the portion of dues that explicitly funds the union’s political activity, but there’s a narrow window to do it, and the process must be repeated every year. Moreover, because Education Minnesota claims to spend about 85% of dues on representational activities, most teachers don’t bother. For a lousy 15% back, it isn’t worth breaking from the union pack.
If public-sector unions are putting this “renewal” strategy in place in Minnesota, it’s likely that they’re making similar plans elsewhere. Teachers confronted with these cards should read the fine print with the same focus they expect their students to have in class. If Mr. Janus wins, teachers will have to be taught that signing a union card doesn’t erase their constitutional right not to pay dues.