Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Supreme Court splits 4-4, preserving fair share

[Update: the Guardian has a more detailed story on the case.]

The remaining 8 Justices on the Supreme Court announced a 4-4 split today, leaving a lower court precedent in place that preserves fair share. A number of California teachers had sued, arguing their free speech rights were imperiled by having to pay for union representation.  This from the NY Times story:
A ruling in the teachers’ favor would have affected millions of government workers and weakened public-sector unions, which stood to lose fees from both workers who objected to the positions the unions take and those who simply chose not to join while benefiting from the unions’ efforts on their behalf.
The last part of that sentence explains why unions call it "fair share": they argue that all employees who benefit from union representation should pay for it. The only campus IEA union not to have the option to get fair share is the FA. NTT, GA's, and AScE (Civil Service) bargained contract provisions last time that would give them fair share if they could get to 50% membership first. Fair share is one of many items being bargained by the FA right now.

This 4-4 split, which took place only because Scalia is now off the court, means that fair share is on the table at SIU--at least if Rauner doesn't succeed in taking it off the table.

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