Thursday, February 12, 2015

How Bruce Rauner Could Weaken Public Unions Nationwide

Illinois' new Republican governor wants the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider the constitutionality of public-sector unions' funding sources. by Daniel C. Vock | February 11, 2015

 

But Bruce Rauner, Illinois’ new governor, might have the most ambitious plan of all. His gambit for curbing the power of government employee unions in Illinois, if successful, would also reduce their influence nationwide.

The plan involves bringing a case before the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to have the court declare that public employees cannot be required to participate in a long-standing feature of collective bargaining. Several conservative justices on the high court seemed eager to do that last year, but ultimately left the question unresolved.

Rauner’s strategy could unravel before it gets to the high court, because of significant legal and political obstacles in the way. But as a Republican governor looking to curtail labor’s influence in a state where Democrats dominate the state legislature -- and where many Republican lawmakers remain friendly with unions -- Rauner’s best hope of a local victory may be a national victory.

The thrust of Rauner’s legal argument is that it violates the First Amendment to require public workers to pay unions a fee for the services they provide (such as collective bargaining and grievance processing), even if they do not belong to the union. Those “fair-share” fees are typically somewhat less than full union dues, because they do not cover the costs of political activity like lobbying or involvement in elections.

The fair-share fees, also called agency fees, are a common target for conservatives pressing “paycheck protection” or “right-to-work” proposals for both the public and private sector. In recent years, conservatives have attacked agency fees for public workers on the grounds that collective bargaining itself is inherently political when the employer is a government body. A union that presses for raises, by that theory, is making a political case for increased spending.

But Paul Secunda, the director of the Labor and Employment Law Program at Marquette University in Milwaukee, said agency fees are key to making labor unions effective.

The collective bargaining law Walker signed in Wisconsin four years ago contained many new limits on union activity. But “the most important act of [the law] was the inability to collect dues for collective bargaining and grievance processing,” Seconda said. “That’s the meat of what unions do from day to day.”

Wisconsin’s teacher unions lost 30 percent of their membership within two years of the law’s passage.

“It’s not surprising that the effect is to decimate unions, and, of course, that is exactly the Republicans’ political objectives. This is clearly a political ploy to take away a major supporter of the Democratic Party,” Secunda said.

Government workers are labor’s stronghold. Nearly 36 percent of public employees belong to unions, compared to less than 7 percent of employees in the private sector.

Public-sector unions can also be major players in elections, spending nearly $73 million in state elections throughout the country last year, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics. It is a fact Rauner knows well. The billionaire governor’s major opponents last year were labor-backed candidates in both the Republican primary and in the general election.

Earlier this week, Rauner sued dozens of public-employee unions and issued an executive order to place the fair-share fees in an escrow account while the litigation is resolved. But he cannot prevail without the high court’s intervention, because all of the other judges in the country are bound by a 1977 Supreme Court decision called Abood v. Detroit Board of Education that permits public-sector unions to collect agency fees.

Conservative justices on the high court have criticized that decision and, last year, came very close to striking it down in an Illinois case called Harris v. Quinn. A five-member majority called the Abood decision “questionable on several grounds,” but avoided the question of whether it ought to be stricken down.

Both Rauner’s lawsuit and the executive order refer extensively to the majority’s reservations in Harris v. Quinn, often in language that gives the impression that the Supreme Court already declared the agency fees to be illegal.

“A majority of the Supreme Court also recognized in Harris that ‘fair-share’ provisions in public employee collective bargaining agreements impose First Amendment concerns not necessarily presented in the private sector,” Rauner’s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.

“The collective bargaining process itself is political when taxpayer funds go to pay the negotiated wages and benefits, especially given the great power of unions in electoral politics and the size of public employee payrolls,” they added.

Supporters of Rauner's actions agree that the issue will come before the high court. “There’s no question that this… ultimately is going to be an issue the Supreme Court is going to need to deal with,” said Patrick Semmens, a spokesman for the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. “They’ve kind of been inviting that case.”

A high court decision could come well before Rauner’s case makes it to the court. A group of California teachers who opted out of their union recently asked the justices to consider a similar challenge, and other cases are pending in Texas and Massachusetts, Semmens said.

The justices are expected to vote on whether to hear the California case, called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, in the next few weeks. If the court adds the case to its docket, it would likely be decided by June 2016.

Meanwhile, Rauner’s actions face other challenges back in Illinois.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a four-term Democrat, will likely seek to intervene in the case to defend the state labor law that authorizes the agency fees.

“The current state of the law is that fair-share fees are constitutional. As recently as last year, the United States Supreme Court was urged to rule that they were unconstitutional. The court explicitly declined to do that, leaving in place the case law saying these fees are constitutional,” said Ann Spillane, Madigan’s chief of staff.

The executive order that accompanied the lawsuit could also be rescinded by a majority vote in either chamber of the Democratically controlled General Assembly, if lawmakers first determine it contravenes state statutes or reorganizes government.

Read the entire article:  http://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/gov-how-illinois-governor-bruce-rauner-could-weaken-unions-nationwide.html

U.S. Judge Orders Alabama Official to Issue Marriage Licenses to Gay Couples

 

A federal judge here ordered a county official in Mobile to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

With the ruling, Judge Callie V. S. Granade of Federal District Court, enjoined the probate judge in Mobile County, Don Davis, from refusing to issue licenses to gay couples seeking to wed.

The ruling came shortly after Judge Granade heard arguments from lawyers for four same-sex couples seeking to marry and a plea for clarity from the lawyer of a local probate judge. The decision was expected to send a signal to judges statewide who are caught between a federal ruling and an order from Alabama’s chief justice.

READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/13/us/alabama-same-sex-marriage-ruling.html?

Democrats settle on Philadelphia as site of 2016 convention - Yahoo News

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats have selected Philadelphia as the site of the party's 2016 national convention, choosing a patriotic backdrop for the nomination of its next presidential candidate.

The Democratic National Committee said Thursday the convention will be held the week of July 25, 2016. The two other finalists were Brooklyn, New York, and Columbus, Ohio.

"Philadelphia's deep-rooted place in American history provides a perfect setting for this special gathering. I cannot wait to join Democrats across the country to celebrate our shared values, lay out a Democratic vision for the future, and support our nominee," said Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chief, said in a statement.

Read more of story by clicking on the following:  Democrats settle on Philadelphia as site of 2016 convention - Yahoo News

District 100 Superintendent looking at Iowa again

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Southeast Polk names superintendent finalists

The Southeast Polk Community School District announced three finalists to replace retiring superintendent Craig Menozzi.

The three finalists, Dr. Dick Halupnik, Dr. Nicholas Ouette and Dr. Michael Houselog, were chosen after the district board of education’s week-long process to whittle down the pool from 20 applicants and interview the top six candidates.

Board of education president Brett Handy said the three finalists were chosen from six candidates after the preliminary interviews.

“We are down to the three that we believe that would be three candidates that will fit well in Southeast Polk,” Handy said.

Handy said there were many well-qualified applicants in the pool and he was pleased with the applications he saw.

“All of them would have been very capable of being the next superintendent,” he said. “With the process, however, you have to wean some out or lose some due to their own personal or professional reasons, and now we have the three left.”

Handy said the most interesting part of the process comes next when the candidates will be able to interact with the community.

“(Moving forward) it will be about what the community likes and wants,” he said. “It’s hard to get a complete understanding of that in an hour, but you can get a pretty good read from the community that is involved.”

The three finalists will be available to meet and interact with community members during receptions at Clay Elementary library from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m., from Feb. 10-12, the district said in a news release. Community members wishing to attend the receptions will be able to write their own questions as well as fill out input forms to be considered by the board of education.

The board will meet Sunday, Feb. 15, in closed session to discuss and possibly select a final candidate for the superintendent position.

Above is from:  http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2015/02/09/southeast-polk-names-superintendent-finalists/23156355/

 

SEE Rockford Register Star coverage at:  http://www.rrstar.com/article/20150211/News/150219853

 

Dr. Houselog was searching in Iowa back in 2014 and 2012, see:  http://district100watchdog.blogspot.com/2014/03/belvidere-superintendent-michael.html and http://district100watchdog.blogspot.com/2012/08/dubuque-school-board-narrows.html