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Winter 2016 The Costume Designer 13 This may be the most important labor report ever given. The lifeblood of organized labor is being challenged in the Supreme Court as testimony began Monday, January 11. We are following this closely. Friedrichs v. CTA (California Teachers Association). What is it? Why does it matter? At the heart of the Friedrichs case is the Supreme Court's 1977 ruling in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education. The court's decision determined that public employees can't be forced to pay union dues that might fund political activities, but that agency fees dedicated to collective bargaining are constitutional. An amicus brief in Friedrichs filed by the city of New York notes that the agency fee system has been critical to maintaining "labor peace." It has bolstered the bargaining ability of public employee unions and allowed city governments to negotiate with a single entity instead of dozens of groups claiming to represent employees. This has helped to avert strikes that can result in hundreds of millions of dollars in economic losses. Justice Samuel Alito has attacked the Abood ruling in earlier decisions. But the court, in a 5 to 4 deci- sion penned by Alito in Harris v. Quinn, declined to obliterate agency fees because the home health work- ers who were plaintiffs in the case weren't public employees—they were paid by the state, but employed by individuals needing care—and thus weren't covered Abood. But Alito's majority opinion revealed his desire to demolish agency fees. He has the opportunity in Friedrichs, which only involved public employees and which was already work- ing its way through the court system with the vocal back- ing of many of the same conservative outfits support- ing Harris, including the Koch-funded National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. The lawyers represent- ing Friedrichs fast-tracked the case in an effort to speed its arrival at the high court, asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2013 to rule against them in order to skip a trial and get straight to the appeals. The case is one of the most ideological on the court's docket this term. Only about 6 percent of the private sec- tor is unionized today. The bulk of labor's power lies in public employee unions like CTA. Defunding those gov- ernment workers' unions by allowing workers to opt out of paying for the costs of collective bargaining, as Friedrichs is designed to do, could decimate what's left of the American labor movement. Excerpted from Mother Jones magazine Written by Stephanie Mencimer In solidarity, Betty Madden CDG Organizing Representative Labor Delegate/Sergeant of Arms County Federation of Labor bmadden@cdgia.com LABOR REPORT UNION LABEL