AAUP & NEA Circle Wagons for Agency Fees

Academics and educators may not like westerns but when their politcking is at stake, they are more than willing to circle the wagons. “On Friday, January 19, the AAUP and the National Education Association (NEA) jointly filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31,” Hank Reichman writes in the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). “In that case the ostensible plaintiff, Mark Janus, backed by the National Right to Work Committee and other anti-union groups, seeks to overturn a unanimous 1977 high court decision (Abood v. Detroit Board of Education), which affirmed that states may permit unions in the public sector to assess agency fees to recover the costs of ‘collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment purposes’ while insisting that objectors to union membership or policy may not have their dues used for other ideological or political purposes.”

“At present some 22 states permit some form of agency fee in public employment.” Yes and they usually vote Democratic aided with campaign efforts aided by the union using funds spent not on collective bargaining but electioneering.

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