"The Supreme Court Case That Could Clobber Public-Sector Unions."

Garrett Epps looks at yesterday's oral argument.

[The National Right to Work Committee argues] that permitting the [public-sector] unions to collect fees for representing non-members—the so-called “agency fee”—violates the First Amendment....

Since public employees work for government, everything they bargain about is political. Higher wages, better benefits, new work rules—all affect the state budget. Assessing fees from non-members thus requires them to pay for political speech.

All the expenses, in other words, are non-chargeable.

Scalia appeared skeptical of that argument, but it went over with three of the other four conservatives.

So liberal hopes hang on Scalia of all people. Epps extracts some quotes.
From Alito:  "Governor Blagojevich got a huge campaign contribution from the union and virtually as soon as he got into office he took out his pen and signed an executive order that had the effect of putting, what was it, $3.6 million into the union coffers?" Kennedy: "Suppose the young person thinks that the State is squandering his heritage on unnecessary and excessive payments or benefits and wages. Is that not a political belief of the highest order?"

ADDED: From the SCOTUSblog summary of the argument:

The precedent whose philosophical foundation was up for discussion — and that [U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli, Jr] urgently sought to be reaffirmed — is Abood v. Detroit Board of Education.  That 1977 decision was the Court’s first major ruling to embrace public employee unionism and the idea that a single union should represent a public unit of workers and all employees — union members or not — would have to support its core bargaining activities by paying dues.

The hearing Tuesday had only gone for  couple of minutes when a lawyer for the National Right to Work Legal Foundation, William L. Messenger, was urging the Court to overrule Abood, and thus drawing heavy questioning from more liberal Justices, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, and, soon, Justice Elena Kagan...

The trend of the argument... appeared to have alarmed Justice Kagan, who said that what was being discussed was “a radical restructuring of the way workplaces are run” throughout the country.  She noted the “passion and heat” now spreading across the country — as, for example — in Wisconsin, over the role of public employee unions.  She wondered if it was “fair” to suggest that Messenger was actually arguing that a “right-to-work law [that is, no compulsory union support) is constitutionally compelled.”

Think about why this may or may not be something that ought to be determined in the legislative process, as Kagan clearly would prefer (not that she likes where the Wisconsin legislature has gone). Revisit the Alito quote above, which highlights the circular path of the money from the union to the politicians who return the money after the election. And yet it's possible for the political process to break the circulation of money, and the circulation of money is itself a vibrant political issue that might motivate the people to elect a legislature like Wisconsin's. I guess that motivation is what Kagan calls "passion and heat."

This made me want to look up that passage from Governor Scott Walker's book ("Unintimidated") that describes the circular process (calling it a "racket" and a "scam"):

1.     The government automatically collects compulsory union dues from the paychecks of public workers.

2.     The government then gives the money to the union bosses.

3.     The union bosses then give that money to pro-union politicians in the form of campaign contributions.

4.     The union-backed politicians use that money to get elected.

5.     Once elected, the union-backed politicians then sit across the table from the union bosses to “negotiate”— purportedly on behalf of the taxpayers.

6.     But instead of representing the taxpayers, they do the bidding of the unions by providing excessive wages, benefits, and pensions.

7.     They line the pockets of union bosses through sweetheart deals, such as contracts requiring school districts to buy insurance from union-affiliated insurers, like the Wisconsin Education Association (WEA) Trust, when they could have gotten much cheaper insurance on the open market.

8.     Taxpayers lose tens of millions every year in higher health insurance costs— money that could have gone into classrooms but instead goes to the union bosses.

9.     The union bosses then line the campaign coffers of the politicians with whom they just negotiated all over again, so they can elect more pro-union politicians who will continue this racket.

10.     The cycle starts all over again.

This is why, as George Will so eloquently put it, public sector unions are nothing more than “government organized as a special interest to lobby itself to expand itself.” 

Collective bargaining gives the union bosses the keys to the statehouse, city hall, and school. It allows them to effectively sit on both sides of the bargaining table when contracts are negotiated, while no one represents the interests of the taxpayers (whose money is at stake) or the children (whose education hangs in the balance). It is cronyism, plain and simple.

Now, it's still a separate question whether the remedy for that problem — assuming you agree that's what happens and it's a problem — is through electing political representatives who are and can keep out of that cycle or whether the solution is to be found in the law of freedom of speech (which is what the Supreme Court case is about).

AND: Here's Ilya Shapiro at Cato. Excerpt:

It was... heartening to see that the continuing vitality of Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977) was in play. That case established that, in the interest of “labor peace,” a state could mandate its employees’ association with a union, forcing them to subsidize that union’s speech and submit to it as their exclusive representative for negotiating with the government regarding their employment. (Abood simply assumed, without further analysis, that the Supreme Court had recognized labor peace as a compelling interest.)

Justices Breyer and Kagan were particularly concerned that so many employers and unions had relied on the Abood doctrine over the years, so touching it would implicate significant reliance interests. But overruling or severely limiting Abood would only be one more step in the Court’s trend of protecting individual workers from having to support political activities....

Somin links to George Will's column and to the Wall Street Journal (both of which predate the oral argument and highlight the very Blagojevich material that Alito asked about).