Public Unions - THE RIDGEWOOD BLOG.

November 17,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, According to recent filings with the Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) , the New Jersey Education Association spent about $5.7 million in union dues on the recent general election. It did so through Garden State Forward, a Super PAC (political action committee) that the teachers union founded four years ago.

The amount spent was almost seven times more than the NJEA spent from voluntary donations to its regular PAC. NJEA communications director Steve Baker confirmed that all the roughly $5.7 million came from membership dues. Many NJEA members erroneously believe teachers union spent only funds from voluntary donations on recent political battles .

The Supreme Court Just Dealt a Devastating Blow to Public Unions
By Sam Baker andEmma Roller
June 30, 2014

The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision on Monday that mandatory public union dues violate some members’ First Amendment rights.

The case, Harris v. Quinn, involves Pamela Harris, a home-caregiver in Illinois who takes care of her disabled son. Harris is among home caregivers who have decided not to unionize through the Service Employees International Union, opting instead to bargain directly with the Medicaid recipients who decide how much money to allocate to their caregivers.

The case posed a challenge to so-called “fair-play fees,” which allow unions to collect dues from employees who aren’t in the union but who still benefit from the bargains unions strike with employers.

In the case of public-sector unions, though, the employer is the government. And for that reason, the challengers in Harris argued, the unions’ collective bargaining is inherently a political activity—unions are essentially lobbying the government.

https://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/the-supreme-court-just-dealt-a-devastating-blow-to-public-unions-20140630