Unions will try to thwart Supreme Court Janus ruling — that's what they did in Michigan The Supreme Court's ruling on labor unions is a start, but fight to protect workers' First Amendment rights isn't over. When something similar happened in Michigan, unions tried to undermine the law.

Joseph G. Lehman and John R. LaPlante | Opinion contributors

Show Caption Hide Caption NY unions protest Supreme Court ruling Protesters gathered in New York City on Wednesday to speak out against a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that government workers can no longer be forced to pay union dues. (June 27)

The Supreme Court has ruled that Mark Janus and other public sector employees across the country cannot be forced to pay a union as a condition of being employed. But that doesn’t mean the battle for worker freedom is over. As many chapters of American history reveal, rights aren’t self-executing; they must be defended. Michigan went right-to-work in 2012, and the abusive union tactics that ensued gave us a close-up view of how unions might behave in a post-Janus world. That experience has prompted us and others to anticipate what champions of individual rights must do now.

No union wants to tell people from whom it has been collecting money through the force of law, “You don’t have to pay us anymore.” Fair enough. But Michigan unions didn’t simply refrain from identifying the exits. They actively worked to make leaving difficult and onerous.

Unions try to keep workers locked in

The Michigan Education Association, for example, said it would accept resignations only if they were mailed in, and then changed the mailing address to a new, little-publicized post office box. More significantly, the union said people could resign only in the month of August, locking them in for 11 months of the year. And when some school employees did try to exercise their right to withdraw, the union sent them to collection agencies, saying it was owed payment.

In 2013, the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a complaint with the agency that oversees labor relations for the state’s public employees. Nearly two years later, the agency ruled that the August-only rule violated state law. And nearly two and a half years later — five years after right-to-work took effect — the Michigan Supreme Court settled the matter once and for all: Employees are free to leave a union at any time. But they suffered five years of unnecessary uncertainty and fear due to union intransigence.

Some of the union’s locals enacted their own schemes. Conspiring with local school boards, they violated state law by setting up special deals known as union security agreements. Their purpose: obligate school employees to pay the union an amount equal to 75 percent or more of membership dues, even after leaving the union. While a standard school contract lasts three years, the security agreement in one district was set for 10 years, even as the collective bargaining agreement called for a 10 percent pay cut. In December 2017, or five years after Michigan enacted right-to-work, teachers were still asking groups such as the Mackinac Center to take legal action against union locals that wouldn’t let them go.

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Unions will take wages any way they can

There are signs that in other states, elected officials and unions will do what they can to hinder the rights recognized in Janus. To help workers know about and act on their options, we created the My Pay My Say education campaign. Our fellow affiliates in State Policy Network, meanwhile, are forming their own outreach efforts. Together, we will extend a hand to more than five million government workers nationwide who will likely face obstacles from unions.

New Jersey, for example, recently enacted a law that lets government workers leave a union only during a 10-day period each year and requires government employers to furnish unions with employees’ home address and cellphone numbers. Who wants to take that call? Or be subjected to a pitch from a union representative during the first week on the job? And in the state of Washington, a union drew on its political allies to create a gimmick to avoid complying with a different Supreme Court decision affecting them (Harris v. Quinn). As a result, some Medicaid funds will help union treasuries, not citizens needing home-based care.

Unions often say that mandatory fees are necessary to cover the expense of workers who benefit from their representation but make no financial contribution. That seems reasonable. Yet when an official with Michigan’s largest teachers union was asked during a legislative hearing if he wanted to be relieved of having to represent school employees who wanted out, he paused a long time and finally said, “No.”

If unions are based in voluntary cooperation rather than coercion, they fulfill a valuable social role. Clearly, though, some are unwilling to be transparent about the freedoms workers have, preferring instead to take unlawful actions and call in political chits to place roadblocks in front of people who want to exercise their rights. That’s why, even with the latest court ruling, the fight for worker freedom will continue.

Joseph Lehman is president of and John R. LaPlante is a senior fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a right-leaning think tank headquartered in Midland, Michigan.