Posted on 01/23/2024 3:42:23 AM PST by karpov
Collective bargaining through a labor union is supposed to “level the playing field” for workers, enabling them to obtain better terms than if they bargained on their own. That is the justification for federal and state laws that give elected unions exclusive representation power, meaning that all of the workers must accept the union as their representative. Individuality is out.
That arrangement is fine with many, but what if some workers are unhappy with “their” union? What if they don’t think the union operates in their interest? What if it makes public statements they disagree with?
The unions reply, “Too bad, but union solidarity is essential and must be preserved.”
A group of professors at the City University of New York (CUNY) disagree and have filed a lawsuit seeking freedom from their faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), which not one of them ever voted for.
Avraham Goldstein, Michael Goldstein, Mitchell Langbert, and other plaintiffs are members of the CUNY faculty and face this choice: either abandon their jobs at the university or remain tied to the PSC, which, under New York’s Taylor Law, has exclusive representational power over them. What especially bothers the professors is that PSC takes public positions that are antithetical to their religious and political beliefs. They argue that New York’s law violates their constitutional rights.
The professors, it must be stated, do not have to pay dues to PSC. That is because of the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Janus v. AFSCME, which held that public employees cannot be compelled to pay for the right to work at their jobs. The Court’s reasoning was that, when public unions speak, their speech is unavoidably political in nature. To force members to pay for speech they disagree with violates their First Amendment rights.
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
The concept of a “closed shop” is not new. What the professors need is a right to work law, which is also nothing new. The article makes it sound like this is something new, but these ideas have been clashing for more than a century. Too bad the professors at CUNY are so poorly educated. LMAO
Why can’t they hold a vote to decertify the union...?
For anyone else curious...
https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/decertification-election
Maybe these professors can form their own group and call it a “union.” They can even pretend this “union” negotiates all the things the real union does, if that makes them feel any better.
What a disaster.
It is as though all the respected universities have developed Cancer in some way.
It will take a miracle to cure them.
BTTT
They get your money no matter what
Remember that membership in the union is a condition of employment
Unions can and do discipline members.
Professional unions maybe more than trades.
If you are expelled from the union you lose your job.
One of my college professors took a similar case of forced membership to the Supreme Court and won.
To his credit, he never said a word about it in class. I read it in the newspaper
They’re doing it for the same reason I never joined the ABA: the organization takes political positions antithetical to my faith and political views.
That makes more sense. The ABA isn’t a labor union, and I am not aware of any job in the legal profession that requires ABA membership as a condition of employment.
If these guys successfully separate from their union, then what incentive does the employer have to keep them employed?
Right to Work won’t last long in democrat controlled states, here in Michigan it only lasted from 2012 to 2023 when Whitler repealed it.
In a real world they would keep their jobs because they are productive employees.
In the Bizarro world in which we live leaving the union they become At Will employees.
As such they work as long as they have a contract.
Having offended the Leftist administration by leaving the union they probably will not have their contracts renewed when they expire.
> They’re not paying any dues to the union, so their only complaint is that they’re forced to belong to a union as a condition of their employment. <
It’s more than that. The collective bargaining agreement covers the entire working condition, pay, hours, discipline, mandatory programs, benefits, seniority and promotion, etc. It can even force the employer to pay for all union activity. Almost anything can be bargained into an agreement..
I have less heartburn with private sector unions. There is only so many eggs to get from the golden goose.
Public sector unions should be outlawed. They choke the golden goose to death and steal the eggs. The taxpayers supply another golden goose to be choked. Management has zero skin in the game.
EC
“Who won’t wear the ribbon!”
My thought was that they should not be compelled to belong to an organization that violates their deeply held beliefs.
“Should college professors be compelled to accept representation from an organization they loathe?, “”
You can bet these people were against the right to work laws conservatives got passed
These are university professors. Compensating them based on productivity and excellence is anathema in that world.
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