The Un-Midas Touch
Dear John,
Five years ago this week, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the constitutional right of government workers to opt out of their unions in Janus v AFSCME.
In the landmark decision, issued on June 27, 2018, the Court held that the First Amendment protects public-sector employees from being required to pay union fees. The ruling was a major victory that protects workers from forced unionization and being compelled to support union talking points to keep their jobs.
In the months following Janus, government unions nationwide saw their membership numbers fall precipitously as workers opted out of their unions in droves, with some public-sector unions losing nearly 10 percent of their total membership almost overnight.
Unions responded to the dramatic loss of revenue by working to squash worker rights in state legislatures across the nation. In the Golden State, union-backed Democrats passed Senate Bill 866. The bill, signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown on the very day of the Janus decision, prohibits a government employer from “deterring or discouraging” public employees from “becoming or remaining members” of a union or “authorizing dues or fee deduction to an employee organization.“
In other words, the unions moved to block government employers from notifying their employees that they have the right to opt out of their union under Janus. As a result, some government employers remain skittish about even acknowledging the existence of Janus for fear of being misconstrued as “discouraging” union membership.
That’s when California Policy Center stepped in. For the last five years since Janus, CPC has partnered with pro-worker organizations across America, helped launch a website to support workers in opting out of their unions, and targeted myriad union events with digital ads to inform government employees of their Janus rights.
As of 2023, CPC estimates that California’s government unions have lost a whopping 27.55% of all their possible members, costing unions as much as $377 million each year in lost dues revenue.
Nationwide, public-sector union membership is down 10 percent after Janus, according to Maxford Nelsen of the Freedom Foundation, who found that an estimated 733,745 workers have left the four largest public-sector unions: National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and Service Employees International Union (SEIU). And, this massive drop in union membership comes despite the hiring spree that many unions kicked off after receiving Covid relief funds from the federal government.
Unlike union bosses, American workers have had a lot to celebrate in the five years since Janus. In addition to exercising their fundamental rights, the hundreds of thousands of government employees who have opted out of their unions have saved up to $1,000 dollars each year in union dues.
In fact, if a full-time employee paying $75 per month in union dues opted out of their union in 2018, they would have saved enough of their hard-earned income to:
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Invest in the S&P 500, yielding $6,425 today
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Purchase a Disneyland Magic Key for 7 years
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Pay off up to 10% of the average student loan
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Take a two-person vacation to Hawaii, twice.
Janus is good news for government employees, but bad news for union leaders. Facing declining membership and revenue, unions are pushing legislation in California that would hand unprecedented power to government unions.
State Senator Tom Umberg’s proposed Senate Constitutional Amendment 7 (SCA 7) — “The Right to Organize and Negotiate Act” — would create a constitutional right to “economic well-being” for government workers. The bill prohibits California state and local officials from taking any action “that interferes with, negates, or diminishes the right of employees to organize and bargain collectively.”
If SCA 7 were to become law, it would drive a stake through the heart of once-golden California. Make no mistake, this is a campaign by government unions to increase their membership and bolster their power in response to Janus — at a time when union leaders believe they can get away with making such an aggressive power grab.
“SCA 7 is part of a national effort on the part of government-union leaders in blue states,” California Policy Center president Will Swaim writes in his recent article for National Review. A similar amendment was passed in Illinois and a copycat bill has been proposed in Pennsylvania.
Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson recently discussed Will's article and SCA 7 on The Victor Davis Hanson Show podcast with cohost and longtime National Review publisher Jack Fowler, now a senior consultant at American Philanthropic. Hanson described the danger of the proposed California constitutional amendment this way:
"That's Maoist Cultural Revolution — we're back in Mao's China in the 1960s. It's just surreal. And the Democratic party once again realizes if it doesn't have all these institutions, and it doesn't have the unions — and I don't mean the regular unions, the United Auto Workers maybe, but most of the old unions that we knew — the coal miners, the pipe fitters — they don't exist anymore in the sense of powerful big money men.
But they do have the government unions — you know the SEIU and those unions. And they're huge. The teachers unions. And they're the biggest source of income for Democrats and they don't dare cross them, so they give them whatever they want.
And like every good idea that starts out — to protect teachers from imperious bosses — they take it to the next step and they destroy it — the Left does.
They have the un-Midas touch. Everything they touch turns to dross. And they've destroyed the whole idea of unions and they've destroyed with it California."
On the anniversary of Janus, there's a lot to celebrate — but the battle is far from won. As the unions' push for SCA 7 makes clear, when it comes to defending liberty, we can never rest on our laurels.
— by Houston Reese, Director of The Janus Project at California Policy Center.
Listen to the 3-minute clip quoted above from the Victor Davis Hanson Show here.
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