Government Union Bosses vs. the First Amendment

State Lawmakers Have the Ability, Duty to Protect Public Worker

Under special-interest statutes and constitutional provisions now on the books in 42 states, public employees who don’t wish to join a union are prohibited from dealing directly with their employer on key matters concerning their jobs. 

In practice, these state monopoly-bargaining laws force workers to associate themselves with advocacy groups whose speech they abhor by accepting their representation. The only other options for dissenting employees are to quit their jobs, or be fired. 

Late last year, attorneys for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation and the Harrisburg, Pa.-based Fairness Center asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case, Goldstein v. PSC/ CUNY, challenging such trampling of public employees’ First Amendment rights.

Jewish Professors Forced Into Anti-Israel Labor Union in New York City 

Top officials of the American Federation of Teachers-affiliated Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union, who wield monopoly-bargaining power over faculty members at the City University of New York (CUNY), are notorious for taking radical stances. 

The arguably anti-Semitic stances PSC bigwigs have taken with regard to long-running conflicts in the Middle East are cases in point. 

It is the PSC brass’ plain view, for example, that Jews today have no right to reside in the lands where the modern state of Israel was established three-quarters of a century ago and where many of their ancestors resided for thousands of years. 

Not surprisingly, many CUNY faculty members, Jewish and non-Jewish, find such PSC positions and actions related to them to be deeply offensive. 

But negative publicity, declining membership, and even religious-bias litigation have not deterred top PSC bosses over the past year-and-a-half from virulently attacking Jews and other citizens who support Israel’s military actions against Hamas militants in Gaza.

And under New York State law, Jewish professors like Michael Goldstein are barred from dealing directly with CUNY. 

Instead, they must allow PSC union bosses who evidently loathe them to speak for them on all matters concerning their pay, benefits, and work rules! 

Lawsuit Spotlighted Inequity of Union Monopoly Bargaining 

In January 2022, two attorneys for the Foundation, which is the National Right to Work Committee’s sister organization, and Fairness Center attorneys launched a federal lawsuit on behalf of Dr. Goldstein and five other CUNY professors. 

The suit charged that New York’s Taylor Act, the statute that empowers PSC and other government union bosses to foist their “representation” on members and nonmembers alike, violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. 

Mark Mix, the president of both the Right to Work Committee and the Right to Work Foundation, commented: 

“In 2018’s Janus v. AFSCME, a case argued and won on behalf of an independent-minded Illinois public employee by then-Foundation staff attorney and now-Foundation Vice President Bill Messenger, the Supreme Court stated that union ‘exclusivity’ in the government sector is constitutionally problematic. 

“To be precise, the Janus majority opinion acknowledged that ‘the rights of individual [public] employees’ are ‘substantially restrict[ed]’ whenever they are forced to allow a union to which they don’t belong and with which they don’t agree to speak for them with regard to key workplace matters. 

“Unfortunately, none of the federal courts considering challenges to government-sector union monopoly bargaining post-Janus has seriously grappled with the question of whether politicians should be permitted to keep on ‘substantially restricting’ public employees’ rights to please Big Labor. 

“And on January 13, the Supreme Court announced it would not review the 2024 appellate court ruling in favor of government union bosses and city university bureaucrats in Goldstein v. PSC/CUNY.”

Important Question Raised By High Court in Janus Remains Unanswered For Now 

Mr. Mix continued: “Right to Work Foundation and Committee members around the country were hoping that the Supreme Court would take the opportunity it had with Goldstein at last to answer the question raised by the High Court itself more than six years ago in Janus. 

“But the reality is that the Supreme Court only agrees to review roughly 1% of the 7,000 to 8,000 petitions it receives every year.

“That’s one important reason why, if Americans had to rely exclusively on the federal court system generally and the Supreme Court in particular to remedy every constitutional infraction, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights wouldn’t be viable. 

“Fortunately, judges are not the only people who have the power to redress constitutional wrongs. 

“When a state law violates the U.S. Constitution, state lawmakers and chief executives have the duty to repeal or amend the law to bring it into accord with the Constitution, regardless of what the judiciary decides to do.” 

Right to Work Committee Advancing Legislative Remedies For Government Union Abuses 

Thanks to the Right to Work-won Janus decision, it’s no longer legal, anywhere in the U.S., to fire teachers, police, firefighters, or other public servants for refusal to pay for union advocacy. 

However, as the late renowned union lawyer Thomas E. Harris once acknowledged, union officials often use their monopoly-bargaining privileges as a cattle prod to herd more workers under their control, and punish those who resist. 

“The fact that the union will negotiate the contract which regulates the incidents of [a worker’s] industrial life puts him under powerful compulsion to join the union,” wrote Mr. Harris. 

Mr. Mix commented: “Citizens who are outraged by the legally mandated forced association exposed in the Goldstein case do not have to rely exclusively on the courts to end the abuse. The Committee and its allies are actively promoting legislative remedies. 

“In 2021, for example, the Committee helped secure passage into law in Arkansas of a measure prohibiting Big Labor from seizing monopoly-bargaining power over public servants who work at schools, colleges, many state agencies and courts. 

“This year, the Committee expects to be lobbying for passage of bills to roll back monopoly bargaining in Idaho, Mississippi, Utah and Wyoming. 

“Barring union monopoly bargaining in government workplaces is the genuine means to level the playing field for independent-minded public servants and taxpayers as well. 

“This could be done through legislation or litigation.”

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