Benjamin Sachs is the Kestnbaum Professor of Labor and Industry at Harvard Law School and a leading expert in the field of labor law and labor relations. He is also faculty director of the Center for Labor and a Just Economy. Professor Sachs teaches courses in labor law, employment law, and law and social change, and his writing focuses on union organizing and unions in American politics. Prior to joining the Harvard faculty in 2008, Professor Sachs was the Joseph Goldstein Fellow at Yale Law School. From 2002-2006, he served as Assistant General Counsel of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) in Washington, D.C. Professor Sachs graduated from Yale Law School in 1998, and served as a judicial law clerk to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His writing has appeared in the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the New York Times and elsewhere. Professor Sachs received the Yale Law School teaching award in 2007 and in 2013 received the Sacks-Freund Award for Teaching Excellence at Harvard Law School. He can be reached at [email protected].
As we noted yesterday, a judge in Indiana has held that the state’s right-to-work law is unconstitutional. The holding is based on Article I, Section 21 of the Indiana constitution, a provision that reads: “No person’s particular services shall be demanded, without just compensation.” It turns out that Tennessee, also a right-to-work state, has an analogous constitutional provision. Article I, Section 21 of the Tennessee constitution states that “no man’s particular services shall be demanded, or property taken . . . without the consent of his representatives, or without just compensation being made thereof.”
The constitutional problem that the judge identified in Indiana comes from the intersection of the state’s right-to-work law and federal labor law. Again, federal law requires that unions represent all workers in a bargaining unit equally. But the Indiana law – like all right-to-work laws – allows workers to refuse to pay dues to the union for that representation. Hence, federal law requires unions to provide services for which state law enables employees to refuse to pay.
At least one judge believes that Indiana’s constitution makes this unconstitutional. On this theory, so does Tennessee’s.
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May 22
U.S. employers spend $1.7B on union avoidance each year and the ICJ declares the right to strike a protected activity.
May 21
UAW backs legal challenge to Trump “gold card” visa; DOL requests unemployment fraud technology funding; Samsung reaches eleventh-hour union agreement.
May 20
LIRR strike ends after three-day shutdown; key senators reject Trump's proposed 26% cut to Labor Department budget; EEOC moves to eliminate employer demographic reporting requirement.
May 19
Amazon urges 11th Circuit to overturn captive-audience meeting ban; DOL scraps Biden overtime rule; SCOTUS to decide on Title IX private right of action for school employees
May 18
California Department of Justice finds conditions at ICE facilities inhumane; Second Circuit rejects race bias claim from Black and Hispanic social workers; FAA cuts air traffic controller staffing target.
May 17
UC workers avoid striking with an 11th-hour agreement; Governor Spanberger vetoes public employee collective bargaining protections; Samsung workers prepare for an 18-day strike.