West Virginia Supreme Court Cites Foundation-Won Janus Case in Decision to Uphold Right to Work Law
In April the West Virginia Supreme Court upheld West Virginia’s Right to Work law, ending a multi-year union boss legal challenge.
National Right to Work Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse wrote an article for The Federalist Society analyzing the decision in the case: Morrisey v. West Virginia AFL-CIO. LaJeunesse just published piece highlights how the justices relied heavily on the Foundation-won Janus v. AFSCME U.S. Supreme Court decision to uphold the law protecting workers against being forced to subsidize union activities:
“Four of the five Justices concluded in Morrisey that the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME, 138 S. Ct. 2448 (2018), required that result. Janus held that forcing nonmembers to pay union fees as a condition of public employment violates the First Amendment. As Justice Workman put it, concurring in the judgment of the Court in Morrisey, ‘there is no principled basis on which to conclude that under the legal analysis upon which Janus is based, a prohibition on the collection of agency fees is constitutional for public employees’ unions but unconstitutional for private employees’ unions.'”
Foundation staff attorneys filed 10 legal briefs in Morrisey in defense of West Virginia’s Right to Work law. Foundation President Mark Mix hailed the decision as a “a great victory for Mountain State employees.”
Since 2012, Foundation staff attorneys have defended and enforced five newly passed Right to Work in states including West Virginia.
Veteran Foundation Attorneys Highlight NLRB Victory for Workers Over UAW Union Bosses
Earlier this month, National Right to Work Foundation staff attorneys won a decision at the National Labor Relation Board (NLRB) for Johnson Controls Inc. employees seeking to remove the United Auto Worker (UAW) union from their workplace.
Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Raymond LaJeunesse and veteran Foundation staff attorney Glenn Taubman, who provided free legal aid to the workers, recently authored an article for the Federalist Society about the victory and how it advances the rights of workers seeking to free themselves from union monopoly ranks:
The main takeaways from this case are: 1) employers can lawfully withdraw recognition of a union when presented with objective evidence (like an employee signature petition) that the union has lost majority support, and they now face less legal jeopardy for honoring the wishes of their employees than they did under the prior regime; 2) secret ballot elections remain the favored method for determining employees’ representational desires, so if the union is “anticipatory” ousted based upon a majority employee petition but believes it actually possesses majority support, it cannot litigate its way back to power using the slow and prolonged unfair labor practice process, but must file for a secret ballot election; and 3) as noted in the dissenting opinion of Obama appointee Lauren McFerran, the Johnson Controls decision could open the door to periodic recertification elections for unions.
Many employee advocates have long urged that recertification elections are desirable. Unlike politicians who must automatically face periodic elections (a.k.a “recertifications”), current NLRB law “presumes” that unions retain majority status in perpetuity. Yet statistics show that 94% of unionized workers have never voted for the union representing their workplace. James Sherk, Union Members Never Voted for a Union, Heritage Foundation, August 30, 2016. If the NLRB adopts a recertification process, unions could not rely upon outdated doctrines granting them perpetual majority status, but would have to periodically prove their majority support. As National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have long argued, permanently encrusting a labor union on a bargaining unit, with no showing of current employee support, does not lead to workplace stability or protect employees’ right of free choice.
Read the rest here.
Learn more about the decision here.
Blog Post: Big Labor-Backed Senator Pushing Double Standard on NLRB Recusals
In a recent post on the Federalist Society website, National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation Vice President Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse responded to demands by Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) that Trump’s lone remaining current NLRB nominee recuse himself from numerous potential cases:
“Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has suggested that Emanuel should ‘also sit out any case involving the hotly contested question of whether employers can force their workers to sign class action waivers,’ because he ‘has represented parties on the class action waiver issue in a case before the board, . . . his firm is counsel in a number of others . . . and he has also co-written briefs in U.S. Supreme Court cases arguing that the agreements aren’t unlawful restraints on employees’ right to engage in collective activity.’ (Emphasis added.)
However, unless the standards for recusal are more stringent for nominees of President Trump than they were for nominees of President Barack Obama, Emanuel can ethically ignore Senator Warren’s suggestion and need not recuse himself in all class-action waiver cases, even though that is a ‘hotly contested’ issue.”
The post goes on to cite Obama NLRB Member Craig Becker, who refused to recuse himself from a case to end protections for employees who had union monopoly bargaining imposed through the coercive and unreliable “card check” scheme. The Foundation’s press release on that case can be found here. Becker had previously weighed in on the issue as counsel for the AFL-CIO but that didn’t stop him from recusing himself when the NLRB voted 3-2 to end employees’ ability to force a secret ballot vote after a union was installed through card check.
To read the whole post, please click here.
Foundation Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse’s commentary on Janus v. AFSCME featured on The Federalist Society Website
With free legal aid from National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation staff attorneys, an Illinois state employee’s legal challenge to forced union dues and fees for public sector workers has garnered significant media attention nationwide since the petition to the Supreme Court of the United States was filed on June 6. Recently, Foundation Legal Director Ray LaJeunesse wrote a blog post on The Federalist Society’s website about the case, Janus v. AFSCME. An excerpt is below.
Twice in the past five years the United States Supreme Court has questioned its holding in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977) (6-3 decision on this issue), that the First Amendment allows a government to force its employees to pay “agency fees” to a labor organization that is their “exclusive representative” for purposes of “collective bargaining” with the government.
To read the whole post please click here.
