At a Thursday news conference, Lucas County union leaders said the Supreme Court’s major blow to organized labor would likely have little impact on local unions’ financial footing.
Union leaders and activists gathered on the grounds of Union Memorial Park, the site of the Electric Auto-Lite factory strike, where 84 years ago a worker strike left two dead and 200 injured. On the “birthplace of the union movement,” Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken said the decision, which ruled that public-sector workers refusing to join a union could not be forced to pay fair-share fees instead of dues, may have been “a blessing” for organized labor.
“If we have become complacent at all because of our successes, those days are over,” Mr. Gerken said. “We will make the union movement a movement of attraction for people. People will want to pay their dues because they’re going to see the benefit of what they get for it.”
But Kevin Dalton, president of the Toledo Federation of Teachers, said the decision is unlikely to impact the teachers’ union.
He called the Janus vs. AFSCME decision “a slap in the face of working families across the state and across the nation.”
George Tucker, executive secretary-treasurer of Greater Northwest Ohio AFL-CIO, said that given the support for unionization in Toledo, the city is unlikely to bear its burden. As of 2016, 30 percent of Toledoans belonged to a union, compared with the national average of 11.1 percent, said Mark Buford, a United Auto Workers Local 12 member and part of the UAW’s Community Action Program.
Dan Greenberg, president of the Sylvania Education Association and a member of the Ohio Education Association Board of Directors, said it’s still too early to tell how unions and their membership will respond. He suspected his union would feel little impact, partly because Sylvania had prepared for this ruling through outreach and collecting input from membership.
Still, in parts of the state and country with less public support for unions, the loss of fair-share fees could shake organized labor.
The highest court had signaled it would rule against the unions after hearing arguments in 2016. But after the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, the court was left in a deadlock. When President Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch, the court had the necessary conservative majority for the Janus case filed in 2015.
Mr. Greenberg said the Ohio Education Association had prepared for the decision, and his own union had ramped up outreach efforts in the last few years. Awaiting an almost certain ruling, Ohio unions eyed other states that already introduced “right-to-work” laws that prohibit unions from collecting fees from nonmembers, he added.
Mr. Tucker said the Supreme Court’s decision was misguided, adding that workers can already claim exemption for religious reasons or if they disagree with the union’s political activities.
“We have to represent ‘em all the way through the disciplinary procedure including arbitration, and those arbitrations cost $1,500 a case. So why do they get that for free?” he questioned.
In the majority decision, the court argued that these nonmember fees are a violation of First Amendment rights.
On Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a longtime swing vote, announced plans to retire. His departure will almost certainly shift the nation’s highest court further to the right when President Trump appoints his second nominee. Mr. Tucker feared that a more conservative court would soon deal a blow to private unions, to whom the Janus ruling does not apply.
“[I] definitely have concerns that if we continue to have these ultraconservative views, the middle class and working class won’t have a chance,” Mr. Dalton said.
Contact Hailey Fuchs at hfuchs@theblade.com, 419-724-6050, or on Twitter @Hailey_Fuchs.
First Published June 28, 2018, 9:58 p.m.
