Opinion: Labor movement still alive and kicking after SCOTUS ruling

On this first Labor Day following the union-busting Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, workers in New Jersey and across the country still have some cause for optimism.

The Court ruled 5-4 in late June that public employees who reject union representation do not have to pay an “agency fee,” even though they still benefit from the collective bargaining agreement. Calling the “fee” a violation of an employee’s First Amendment right of free speech, the Court bought the argument that public sector collective bargaining is a form of political speech, since it involves union negotiations with government representatives.

There is little doubt that this ruling, upending 40 years of legal precedent, dealt a severe financial blow to unions. But it was not doomsday.

For starters, unions began preparing for the decision the moment Donald Trump was elected president. Knowing he would appoint a conservative justice to the open seat on the Court, unions moved to shore up their membership by meeting one on one with agency fee payers – “organizing” in labor parlance – to convert them to full dues-paying members. Some unions also slashed costs. The Service Employees International Union, for instance, announced plans to cut its budget by 30 percent over the first year of the Trump administration. 

Unions also pressed for provisions in state law to help limit the damage of a negative Janus decision. In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy signed the Workplace Democracy Enhancement Act on May 18, making it easier for unions to recruit and retain members. The law enables unions to set aside time at orientations to meet with new hires, and it gives unions the right to use employer email systems to communicate with workers. In addition, the law prohibits public employers from encouraging (or discouraging) workers to resign their union membership or stop paying dues. 

While unions work to organize new members, the same conservative organizations behind the Janus case are counter-organizing, obtaining contact information from public employers and contacting workers to encourage them to quit their union. New Jersey’s new law addresses this too by affirming that worker contact information is not a legal government record and therefore exempt from the state’s Open Public Records Act. Other states, including New York and California, have also enacted – or are considering – similar laws to protect workers’ rights.

These are encouraging signs. Yet, more fundamentally, unions must rethink their relationship with members.

Agency fees helped unions solidify as institutions by providing more money to hire staff, rent or own office space, and keep the lights on. However, this kind of institutionalization can prevent unions from acting like a social movement. Now, with reduced financial resources, unions must work harder to give a voice to the people they represent, so that members can talk to union leaders about their needs and wants, hopes and fears in the workplace and beyond. This also means engaging more members in the vital work of organizing.

For people already struggling with a big workload or work-life imbalance, organizing can be a heavy lift — but workers should do their part to support the effort. Unions are effective at raising wages, preserving important benefits and providing some balance of power in the workplace and in politics. Research has shown that the decline of unions in recent decades is one of the reasons for the greater income inequality we see today. Weakening unions would exacerbate inequality and diminish democracy.

As a labor professor who has studied unions for more than 30 years, I believe the Janus case was wrongly decided and creates deep challenges, especially in “Red” states where other legal changes had already decimated public sector unions. However, I also believe the best unions will adapt and even grow stronger.

For inspiration, we can look to the Fight for $15 — in which low-wage workers have banded together to demand a higher minimum wage — and to the worker centers that protect workers against wage theft and provide health and safety training. In these examples, we may well see the future of the labor movement, fighting for economic and social justice in the workplace and beyond.

On this Labor Day, there is little point in lamenting the pre-Janus world. The best parts of the labor movement are enacting the famous expression: Don’t mourn, organize. The Supreme Court did not destroy the labor movement in the U.S. It may have only reinvented it.

Adrienne Eaton is the Dean of the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.