UPDATE and bumped: Yay! It looks like the NH Administration is taking this seriously (emphasis mine, reformatted):
The Union Leader obtained a memo Attorney General Gordon MacDonald sent to Administrative Services Commissioner Charles Arlinghaus making it clear that as of the next payroll on July 6 all state workers must give permission to have any fees withheld from their paychecks. “As a result of this decision, the Department of Administrative Services must immediately stop deducting an agency fee from any state employee,” MacDonald wrote.
“No agency fee should be deducted from paychecks issued on that date and thereafter unless the employee has given his or her consent.”
Works for me! Now to get rid of the idea that a union can negotiate for me better than I can; how could they in that they have no idea what is best for me?
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I was talking with a number of folks this morning at a meeting when the word flashed around. My go to blog for SCOTUS decisions is SCOTUSblog.com for their play-by-play calling out of the decisions that are released by The Supreme Court of the United States and the on-the-spot quick analysis of what the decisions mean to “the folks” like me who aren’t lawyers and make no claims no how to be such. Amy Howe summed it up well (all emphasis mine):
In reasonably plain English: This is a case about whether government employees who are represented by a union to which they do not belong can be required to pay a fee to cover the costs of collective bargaining. The plaintiff in this case, an Illinois state employee, argued that having to pay the fees violates the First Amendment. Today the Court agreed, ruling for the employee and against the union.
What caught my eye right after that are two more things, one of which affects me personally.
The first one is out of the dissent by Justice Kagan, one of the Liberals on the Court who said, in part:
This is a big decision. Kagan has strong words. Says decision “will have large-scale consequences. Public employee unions will lose a secure source of financial support. State and local governments that thought fair-share provisions furthered their interests will need to find new ways of managing their workforces.”
This is certainly a Progressive stance totally unhinged from the Constitution – where in said document does it say that Free Speech / Free Association must be diminished because unions are entitled to have a “secure source of financial support“?!?!?!?!?!?! Seriously – that is Kagan’s dissent (again, in part)? But then again, being a PROGRESSIVE means that your money is their money – and SHUT UP about it.
Also, where in the US Constitution does it say that the Federal Government plays a part (Constitutionally speaking, again) in deciding how a State is to “manage their workforce“? Isn’t that covered under the 10th Amendment and reserved solely to the States? What a rather condescending attitude shown by Justice Kagan – it seems that she believes that the elected officials of a state and non-union bureaucrats are so feeble that they MUST have unions in order to govern (or goven well). So WHAT if they have to find new methods for employee management.
Pssst – time to yet again take a page out of the Private Sector that has been managing its workforces, pretty much forever, without said unions. It’s how most of the workforce is management – by upper management. This is considered silliness at best (and plain stupidity most of the rest of the time) but for a Supreme to make that as an argument to “let’s forget some individual’s Free Speech” should be HORRIFYING to most Normal people.
But then again, to be a Progressive is to have everyone entitled to something, and in a perverse way, is Kagan saying that States are “entitled” to have unions participate in management??
But all of that is just a prelude to this simple part of the SCOTUS order that affects me personally and affects me right now:
Of practical importance, the Court also holds that employees must affirmatively consent before fees can be withheld from their paychecks —the system must be opt-in, not opt-out.
Gosh, are Progressives alREADY all about “consent” when it comes to physical relationships in that all physical contact must be affirmed constantly and in each instance of “increased” physical contact (I almost used “acceleration” but that might be construed wrongly as to my intent). So why not in union financial matters – that to be intimate with my employment, they must first ask for permission? I think it makes PERFECT sense, don’t you?
Unions, not so much. But I digress.
In being an adjunct professor in the fall, I had to sign a paper stating that I understood that I could join SEIU 1984 as the NH Community College system is a “closed shop” – the union signed an agreement with the State of NH that mandates such membership as a pre-condition of employment. No membership, no work. Unless, of course, one paid the “agency fee” for their negotiation skillz on my behalf. Not a full membership but you still have to pay for their vaunted skills as negotiators.
Yeah, right – I now know how BAD they suck at doing it.
So, on my way home from the southern tier of the State, I stopped in to see the admin that handles all the Adjunct Prof stuff. She seemed a little bit pained at the decision this morning; a bit more so when I told her the above – and that I did not wish to opt in (as this SCOTUS decision is immediate). She’s a nice lady but she also said the obvious:
I don’t think anyone back there is ready for that.
I wasn’t surprised. So, we’ll see how it goes and I’ll let you know! I also learned what the pay rate is for what I will be doing – and remember, I was told that it was very hard for the head of the department to find an adjunct to teach at that time frame. So the union must have been sucking vacuum that day because I’d not agree to do it again at that rate of pay (which the union set). Instead, if labor is a scarcity, it should be considered to be more valuable and therefore, worth higher compensation. I’ll certainly do the gig this time, especially as the Eldest is in the class so I should be able to have a lot of fun as an implicit part of the compensation, but he only has to take the class once. But let me repeat what I said earlier:
Yeah, right – I now now how BAD they suck at doing it.
So I don’t want to hear another gosh durned word from a unionista about “working for less” as this is a real Object Lesson in working for FAR less than what I would have thought or agreed to. Again, unions move too slowly for me – it took this long to get that info to me and I’ve done the homework for the class already (at least in part)
PS: while this was decided on a Free Speech point, it also could have gone on a Freedom of Association – the freedom for us to freely gather with like minded people for whatever purpose we desire. That freedom ALSO demands the reverse freedom – the freedom to NOT associate with others. The Left certainly disagrees with this “quaint notion” just from their past actions of not letting anyone opt out of anything they believe you MUST be required to participate in (e.g., Obamacare, Medicare, et al).
