HOW FAIR IS FAIR SHARE?

by Bob Walsh

Fair Share is a concept in labor law. It is a product of compulsory union membership. The idea is that even if you have some legitimate objection to being the member of a union you, as a worker, benefit from the existence of that union and therefore have an obligation to pay for that benefit you receive.

Compulsory union membership is on the wane in the real world but is still very strong indeed in public employment. Public employee unions as a group are very liberal and a significant amount of their membership objects to the political positions their union supports.

Therefore the unions are required a make a determination (in theory a reasonable determination) of what percentage of their dues support collective bargaining and what portion of their dues support other things, say for instance 80% to 20%. A Fair Share member would still be required to kick down 80% of the normal dues even though they are not a full member and do not get a vote in what happens, because they benefit from what the union does.

SCOTUS is about to hear a major case on this point. Fredrichs vs. California involves unionized school teachers in 22 states who object to these Fair Share fees. The current law coms from Abood vs Detroit Board of Education 40 years ago. It says that no one can be forced to join the union and the union must represent all members of the group. Therefore the union can extract these Fair Share fees from persons who choose not to join. Depending on which way the wind blows this case could deal a very heavy blow to compulsory unionism or could (depending on how you look at it) lead to much more freedom for workers and a lessening of political power of large public employee unions.