Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME in favor of the plaintiff, a local government worker who asserted that being required to pay fees to the union at his workplace violated his first amendment rights. This ruling has been anticipated for years (a similar case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, was deadlocked after Antonin Scalia’s unexpected death).
What rights to cities have to regulate the conditions under which their residents work? If some state legislatures had their way: none. With federal efforts to increase pay for the lowest earners stalled by Republican opposition, a slew of states, cities and towns across the country have hiked the local base pay on their own. […]
Friday reading: Are unions necessary? – latimes.com. Feb 27, 2014. Michael Hiltzik comments on the ongoing debate between Evan Soltas (Bloomberg) and Michael Wasser (Jobs with Justice), spurred in part by the interference of North Carolina legislators with the union election at Volkswagen’s plant there. You can read more of the exchange here. Aside from […]
Boeing is shopping for a location, threatening to leave Washington and take with it more than 80,000 jobs. Parallels are being drawn to Detroit, of course, and the “death spiral” that followed the automobile industry’s departure from that city. Alas, in both good times and bad companies are able to get localities to engage in […]