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Tag:Janus

January 7, 2019
News & Commentary

Rachel Sandalow-Ash

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is challenging public sector workers’ right to exclusive union representation at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The NRWLDF, the anti-union organization that represented the plaintiff in Janus, is now teaming up with the right-wing Pacific Legal Foundation, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and the Mackinac Center […]

December 19, 2018
News & Commentary

Jared Odessky

In wage and Auer news, Bloomberg reports that a potential Supreme Court ruling upending “Auer deference” could magnify judicial oversight of federal agencies enforcing labor and employment law. Named after the Supreme Court’s decision in Auer v. Robbins and dating back to the 1945 case Seminole Rock, Auer deference instructs courts to defer to agencies’ interpretations of their […]

August 3, 2018
News & Commentary

Ryan Wheeler

The Massachusetts legislature this week passed a new bill that would limit the use of noncompete clauses in that state. The new law, which still must be signed by Republican Governor Charlie Baker, would allow employers to prevent their workers from moving to a competitor for a year after the worker departs the company. However, […]

July 9, 2018
News & Commentary

Rachel Sandalow-Ash

Professor Susan Dynarski of the University of Michigan writes in the New York Times about a new economics study that shows the key role that unions have played in reducing inequality in the United States. In addition to improving their own members’ wages and benefits, the study’s authors — Henry Farber, Daniel Herbst and Ilyana […]

Janus and the Private Sector

Jul 3, 2018 Benjamin Sachs

In the grim aftermath of Janus v. AFSCME, discussion has focused on what the decision portends for agency fee agreements in the private sector. Given the cloud of doom that has descended on many of us, it’s not surprising that pessimism abounds. There is thus speculation that Janus will soon be exported to the private sector and that […]

June 28, 2018
News & Commentary

Ryan Wheeler

The Supreme Court struck a major blow to public sector unions yesterday. The Janus ruling held that the First Amendment prohibits states from requiring non-union members to pay so-called “agency fees” to the union that represents them. Sharon Block and Ben Sachs suggest some ways states can support unions to avoid the First Amendment problem, […]

Could Originalism Save Public Sector Unions?

Jun 7, 2018 Maddy Joseph

Justice Gorsuch’s silence during the Janus oral argument generated considerable buzz. Wishful (yet tentative) commentators hoped the silence was a sign that the new Justice’s originalism would lead him to uphold Abood. To be sure, Justice Thomas, the Court’s other steadfast originalist, voted with the majority in Harris. And commentators have largely assumed that both […]

Free Speech Rights: Public Employees v. Football Players

May 30, 2018 Sharon Block and Maddy Joseph

“[S]peech on public issues occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection.” Snyder v. Phelps, 562 U.S. 443, 452 (2011) (citation omitted). Nearly every brief filed in Janus v. AFSCME advocating for the Supreme Court to invalidate as unconstitutional union fair share dues, including the Petitioner […]

April 13, 2018
News & Commentary

Jyoti Jasrasaria

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation yesterday that is aimed at protecting public workers’ rights in advance of the Supreme Court’s potentially adverse ruling in Janus v. AFSCME Council 31. The new law allows unions to deny full benefits to workers that opt out and makes it easier for unions to receive dues. “Too […]

Will Masterpiece Cakeshop and Janus Create a First Amendment Right to Strike for Teachers?

Apr 5, 2018 Andrew Strom

Sometime in the next few weeks, the Supreme Court will issue its decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, one of the most closely watched cases of this Term. In that case, Jack Phillips, the co-owner of the Masterpiece Cakeshop, argues that the State of Colorado violated his First Amendment rights when it […]

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OnLabor

Law. Workers. Organizing.

OnLabor is a blog devoted to workers, unions, and their politics. We interpret our subject broadly to include the current crisis in the traditional union movement (why union decline is happening and what it means for our society); the new and contested forms of worker organization that are filling the labor union gap; how work ought to be structured and managed; how workers ought to be represented and compensated; and the appropriate role of government — all three branches — in each of these issues.

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