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.
Daily News & Commentary
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December 11
In today’s News and Commentary, Biden’s NLRB pick heads to Senate vote, DOL settles a farmworker lawsuit, and a federal judge blocks Albertsons-Kroger merger. Democrats have moved to expedite re-confirmation proceedings for NLRB Chair Lauren McFerran, which would grant her another five years on the Board. If the Democrats succeed in finding 50 Senate votes […]
December 10
In today’s News and Commentary, advocacy groups lay out demands for Lori Chavez-DeRemer at DOL, a German union leader calls for ending the country’s debt brake, Teamsters give Amazon a deadline to agree to bargaining dates, and graduates of coding bootcamps face a labor market reshaped by the rise of AI. Worker advocacy groups have […]
December 9
Teamsters file charges against Costco; a sanitation contractor is fined child labor law violations, and workers give VW an ultimatum ahead of the latest negotiation attempts
December 8
Massachusetts rideshare drivers prepare to unionize; Starbucks and Nestlé supply chains use child labor, report says.
December 6
In today’s news and commentary, DOL attempts to abolish subminimum wage for workers with disabilities, AFGE reaches remote work agreement with SSA, and George Washington University resident doctors vote to strike. This week, the Department of Labor proposed a rule to abolish the Fair Labor Standards Act’s Section 14(c) program, which allows employers to pay […]
December 4
South Korea’s largest labor union began a general strike calling for the President’s removal, a Wisconsin judge reinstated bargaining rights for the state’s public sector workers, and the NLRB issued another ruling against Starbucks for anti-union practices.