The Oregon lawsuit was supported by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which is handling some 200 other cases across the country, including a class-action lawsuit in California by 30,000 state employees.
For generations of Americans, working for a state or local government — as a teacher, firefighter, bus driver or nurse — provided a comfortable nook in the middle class. But they are now finding themselves financially downgraded.
The southern victory could be a blueprint for defending the public sector.
The Supreme Court case Janus v. AFSCME is poised to decimate public-sector unions—and it’s been made possible by a network of right-wing billionaires, think tanks and corporations.
The presidency of Donald Trump has ushered in a fresh wave of withering attacks on public employees at the federal level. Just days after taking the oath of office, Trump imposed a federal hiring freeze. And a new bill moving through Congress would eviscerate civil-service protections, making it easier to fire career government employees without due process. The president's proposed fiscal year 2018 budget is so austere that it would, according to the Washington Post
A bill proposed in the Republican controlled state legislature in Iowa will make it illegal for all public employees except “public safety employees” (police and fire) to negotiate over health care, transfers, job evaluations, procedures for workforce reductions, subcontracting, or anything related to seniority.
If this attack is successful it would decimate the National Treasury Employees Union and leave IRS staffers without union representation. More that than, it would weaken federal unions generally by making them all vulnerable to a similar assault.
Attacks on public employee unions, especially teachers unions, have become a permanent feature of the political landscape. One glaring example is the lawsuit filed last month in federal court in Los Angeles against six California and national teachers unions. The lawsuit purports to defend the “free speech” rights of four California schoolteachers, but its real goal is to silence the collective voice of union members on political and educational issues.
Arnold’s spokespeople bristle at the suggestion that the billionaire is out to cut pensions, insisting that he only wants a realistic accounting of the under-funding problem. But the similarities between what Raimondo did in Rhode Island and what the Arnold Foundation advocates nationwide are striking.
Many of the 112,000 active educators and school workers in the Michigan Education Association can now leave the union and stop paying fees under a state law that took effect last year. Other major unions, covered by multi-year contracts, won't reach the opt-out point until 2015 or later.
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