The U.S. Supreme Court’s just-announced decision in the Janus case surprised no one who pays attention to America’s highest judicial panel. Every analyst following the case expected the Supremes to rule against America’s public sector unions. And that’s exactly what the high court — by a 5-4 margin — did.

The impact from this decision? That will surprise no one who pays attention to how modern economies work: The Supreme Court’s decision in Janus will leave the United States still more unequal.

The five justices who decided Janus never, of course, mentioned anything about inequality in their ruling that public sector unions cannot collect representational fees from the nonmembers they are legally required to represent. The Janus majority justices talked instead about protecting First Amendment rights. But that lofty philosophizing merely served as a convenient cover for our right wing’s continuing assault on the basic human right to justice on the job.

This assault — an effort bankrolled over the years by a relentless gang of fiercely anti-union deep pockets — has been remarkably effective.

Back in the 1950s, over a third of America’s workers belonged to unions. And that statistic underplayed the actual extent of the nation’s trade union presence. In the private sector, outside the South, unions represented over half the workforce in the decades right after World War II.

The workers unions didn’t represent in those years directly benefited from this heavy trade union “density.” Nonunion employers simply couldn’t hire and keep workers unless they improved what they had to offer in pay and benefits.