Milton Friedman warned us about this kind of thinking: “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither.” Absurd as it sounds, we are approaching that level of thinking.

Take for instance the rise of “pandemic pods” that parents are creating in an effort to educate their children amid COVID-19 school closures. Pandemic pods are taking all kinds of shapes, but generally consist of a small band of parents organizing themselves (and sometimes even hiring private teachers) to oversee the education of their children. These enterprising parents are doing exactly what we would want any rational, thoughtful person to do. Indeed, they are doing the very thing that Alexis de Tocqueville lauded Americans for in “Democracy in America.” After traveling to the United States in the 1830s, de Tocqueville noted, “Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition, are forever forming associations.” They were taking initiative to solve the problems around them.

From that day to today, we have seen this desire to join together for common cause and address societal ills as a good thing. For some, it seems, that view has now changed. Rather than celebrate parents who are finding innovative ways to make the most of the current situation, some are disparaging them and warning that their actions may cause irreparable harm.

In a Barron’s commentary, for instance, R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy suggests “Pandemic pods are a classic example of opportunity hoarding.” He goes on to argue: “like other forms of opportunity hoarding,” pandemic pods “tend to look as if individuals are simply making the best choices for their family, when in fact their actions will quickly concretize and widen inequalities.”

Similarly, in a Washington Post piece J.P.B. Gerald and Mira Debs equate pandemic pods to white flight. They warn, “These personal decisions, however, have a collective consequence.”

It seems Lewis-McCoy, Gerald, Debs, and others are viewing this issue through an equity lens only. On one hand, their analysis is right. When some individuals take an action that is in their own interest, it may very well create inequity. Indeed, that is the very nature of action! Any time one individual or group of individuals undertakes an activity that is designed to improve their life, they are by definition going to create some form of disparity between their station and other people’s station. Greater inequity will arise here if only affluent parents are able to organize better learning opportunities for their children.

It is in the solution, however, that these folks fall short. Lewis-McCoy has suggested we should “dissuade” parents from forming these pods. Gerald and Debs argued that instead of trying to address the problem themselves, parents should “stay and fight” for a better educational system.

Like the government handicappers of Harrison Bergeron, their solution is to stifle the creativity and opportunity of some individuals. This is what happens when you look at things ONLY through an equity lens.

Societal change and improvement are made by encouraging innovation and free association, not by stifling them. Our goal should not be to stop affluent parents from attempting to help their children, but to empower less-affluent families to do the same. We do this by increasing educational options, not by decreasing them.

Don’t get me wrong. Equity is important and we should all care about the health and welfare of the least advantaged in our society. To finish the Friedman quote: “A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”

The post The Danger of an Equity Only Lens in Education appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In the aftermath of the decision, government unions were unable to convince many non-members to become full-fledged members and pay dues. As I discussed in a previous post, union financial reports submitted to the Department of Labor show the National Education Association lost the 88,000 non-member agency fee payers it had in 2017. And the Americans Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union lost 110,000 agency fee payers. The financial reporting of another large public-sector union, the American Federation of Teachers, does not reflect the impact of Janus because its reporting period ended in the same month as the decision. However, a new report from the Freedom Foundation states that “union spokespeople indicate the union lost nearly all 85,000 agency fee-payers it had at the time of the decision.”

As Kovacs notes later in the piece, the Janus decision doesn’t only affect non-member fee payers, who in many states were the primary beneficiaries of the case, but also union members themselves. As the ruling notes, “Unless employees clearly and affirmatively consent before any money is taken from them, this standard [for waiving one’s First Amendment rights] cannot be met.”

But are union members aware of these rights? Kovacs persuasively suggest that the answer is no, and that state law can still act as a barrier to securing these rights.

Prior to the Janus decision, workers who wished to opt-out of union membership were restricted by what are known as window periods. For example, in Michigan, many public employees could only leave their union once a year during a short period of time in August. Other window periods only permitted members to leave the union for a brief time period around the anniversary of their hiring.

Despite the text of the decision that allows workers to resign union membership nearly at any time, labor unions are still blocking workers who want to leave by enforcing these invalid window periods. In a recent case, Hendrickson v. AFSCME, New Mexico public employee Brett Hendrickson, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, was prohibited from exercising his Janus rights to resign from union membership. Hendrickson, a quality control specialist for the New Mexico Human Services Department, attempted to leave AFSCME Council 18 and stop dues from being deducted from his paycheck, but was told he could only opt-out during a narrow window period. This is just one of many examples of unions coercing worker to continue paying dues and undermining their First amendment rights.

To what extent Missouri government workers are having their rights curtailed is the subject of rigorous debate. For instance, a court injunction against House Bill (HB) 1413, which reformed much of Missouri’s labor law framework, has created uncertainty as to what the law is on basic issues like union membership and representation. Also, collective bargaining agreements in the state were (to be generous) lightly overseen by the state even before HB 1413 became law, meaning that violations of workers’ rights could be ongoing—and hardly anyone would know about it. Fortunately, Missouri did not technically allow for “fair share fees” of the sort that Janus put an end to nationwide, so many Missouri workers had at least incidental knowledge of their labor rights in the Show-Me State. Unfortunately, that isn’t always the case.

The better educated workers are about their rights, the better off they will be. Especially in this post-Janus legal environment, that educational process is more important than ever.

The post Are Government Unions Adequately Informing Workers of Their Rights? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But regardless of the extent to which the case affected a given state, the Court’s ruling highlights a pair of important questions that Missouri educators have to grapple with each year: namely, why might teachers join a union, and if they joined, what would their dues pay for?

Unionized teachers do receive some tangible benefits from their membership, such as legal services in the event they’re fired or sued, and liability insurance. The cost of union membership varies depending on location and the union involved; dues are typically either flat, such as the annual $219 for the Missouri State Teachers Association, or a percentage of salary, such as the one percent for the St. Louis chapter of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Of course, if a teacher doesn’t join, he or she is still covered by the salary schedule; not joining has no impact on things like health insurance, tenure, or seniority.

But if a teacher does join a union, a portion of their union dues often goes to advocacy work and to support political candidates. Given the diverse opinions of teachers, the funneling of dollars to particular causes often runs afoul of an individual teacher’s own personal beliefs. For example, at the national AFT conference just a few weeks ago, a resolution was passed that stipulated what policies a candidate must support to receive the union’s endorsement. These included, among other things, universal health care, universal and free child care, doubled per-pupil expenditures for low-income students, and free college

What a lot of teachers don’t know when faced with the decision of joining a union is that the vast majority of the benefits unions offer are also available through other vendors. For example, dues for Association of American Educators (AAE), a non-union professional organization for teachers, are just under $200 per year, and the benefits are similar to those offered by unions—disability insurance, legal protection—but without the politics. And if joining a group of any kind isn’t your style, teachers can always buy many of the benefits they want a la carte on the open market.

In short, Missouri teachers have a lot of options in determining how they’ll advance their professional interests—and they can do so with or without the political speech embedded in the operations of a government union. And especially after the passage of HB 1413, teachers in Missouri are particularly empowered to have a say in who represents them to their districts, and to see how unions spend the money they receive from members. Perhaps one day, public school teachers will even be able to negotiate their own employee contracts and have a freer hand to choose their health insurance and retirement plans, like many of the rest of us already have. But until then, Missouri teachers still have a lot of choices that they can make, and fortunately, subsidizing a union’s political speech doesn’t have to be one of them.

The post Missouri Public Teachers, Take Note: Union Membership Is Optional appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

And over the past few months in Missouri we’ve seen claims like this made repeatedly in anti–Right to Work advertisements. Show-Me Institute chief economist Joe Haslag recently wrote about one such ad that claimed that in Oklahoma, passage of Right to Work caused wages to fall while simultaneously encouraging businesses to leave the state. That just doesn’t make any sense!

Suffice it to say, I’m used to seeing this type of over-the-top claim in opposition to Right to Work, so I wasn’t surprised by most of the arguments in the Columbia Missourian piece. That is, until I got to the part where the author argued against Right to Work because it would make it harder for unions to engage in political activity. She writes, “weaker unions mean less organized ability to advocate for social justice issues and progressive campaigns.” That’s exactly the point! Conservatives, libertarians, and many other Missourians do not want to be forced to support “progressive campaigns” and policies they don’t agree with. That’s why they want out.

As stated in the Show-Me Institute’s 2018 Blueprint, “Right to work ends forced unionism and lets workers decide whether joining a union best serves their interests.” The economic arguments for and against Right to Work are important, but the fundamental issue here is worker freedom. Should someone be forced to support causes they disagree with as a condition of being employed? The answer seems obvious.

The post Right to Work Commentary Misses the Point appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

But that could change if a lawsuit challenging the North Dakota mandatory bar and filed in the Eighth Circuit — of which Missouri is a part — is successful.

A lawsuit filed by a Bismarck attorney will appear before the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis on Tuesday, April 4, claiming the North Dakota State Bar Association spent his dues to oppose a ballot measure he supported.

Arnold Fleck, 59, a self-employed attorney and member of the association, is being represented by the Goldwater Institute, an Arizona-based public policy think tank, in his lawsuit that argues the association contributed nearly $50,000 to a PAC opposing a shared parenting time and responsibility bill in 2014. An amended version of that bill — though shot down by voters twice in the past decade — just passed the Senate last week and before the state bar opposed the legislation, it took a neutral stance on the measure….

The case is addressing two additional issues: requiring the bar to adopt an “opt-in” for political spending, rather than an opt-out, and challenging mandatory bar membership as a violation of the First Amendment.

We have long talked about the Constitutional attractiveness of opt-in arrangements especially when political speech is involved, but the ability of mandatory bars to command dues payments creates substantive fungibility problems if only an “opt-in” reform is adopted. If the Show-Me Institute could force every educator in the state to pay us for the right to educate, that would be an enormous benefit to our day-to-day operations that would help make fundraising for other Show-Me projects much easier. In reality, SMI has no such power, and the supporters we have are supporters of their own accord rather than through compulsion. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

But that freedom to associate and support an organization, or not, should apply as much to Bar membership as it does to other policy spaces. I don’t have a problem with the idea of a Bar exam to ensure prospective lawyers are versed in local law and jurisprudence, but once that hurdle’s been cleared, further interaction with a state Bar should be optional. In states where the statewide bar isn’t mandatory, the state still polices the legal profession effectively; there’s no reason to believe North Dakota, Missouri and other mandatory bar states wouldn’t be able to, as well.

Plenty of local bars continue to exist not because lawyers have to be members, but because they want to be members. The state Bar should adopt the same model.

The post The Mandatory Bar Goes to Court appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Kansas is taking a step in the right direction. The Kansas Senate just passed a bill that would give teachers the right to vote for their union on a regular basis. In most states, including Kansas and Missouri, once a union takes control of a group of public employees, such as teachers or firefighters, that union remains in power indefinitely. There is no election every two or four years whereby workers can hold their union accountable. If workers want to remove a union from power, they need to organize again and go through a difficult “decertification” process.

Some Missouri lawmakers have also explored the possibility of regular union elections for government workers. So far, these bills haven’t had a floor vote.

If individual employees of our public institutions are going to be forced to subsidize a union, we need to protect them from unaccountable union executives. Unions can force people to pay for their services on the theory that an individual’s rights can be curtailed for “workplace democracy.” So let’s ensure there’s democracy. Require unions to run for re-election every couple of years. This is how democracy works.

The post Supreme Court Decision Deals a Blow to Union Reform appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Geri’s father and husband were both union members. And she was initially fine with joining. But now she wants out.

Geri’s situation is worsened by the fact that she has a moral objection to many of the activities of her union. Her union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, spends heavily on politics. According to the Washington Times, they spent $5.9 million on lobbying and campaign contributions in 2014 alone. “It breaks my heart,” she told me.

Geri called her local’s business agent to ask about the political spending. She says it didn’t help anything. I also called Geri’s local to ask about their stance on forcing people to join the union. I’m still waiting for a call back. 

Thousands of Missourians are in Geri’s situation—forced to pay for a union’s services while skeptical that the union is actually doing anything for them. Giving workers the freedom to opt out of a union is one way to hold a union accountable. Giving workers a regular secret ballot vote on whether to keep their union is another way to make union executives listen to the concerns of the people they represent.

I had the opportunity to interview Geri; the video is available via the link above.

The post Geri’s Story: Holding Unions Accountable appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Ms. Friedrichs is a 27-year veteran teacher who currently works in Buena Park, California. According to an interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation, she first encountered the teachers union when she tried to get her school to deal with a colleague who had been abusive to students. As she said, “They couldn’t get rid of her because of teacher tenure. . . . There was absolutely nothing, from my perspective and what I was told, that I could do.”

Friedrichs tried to work with her union, volunteering within it and working to convince her colleagues to be more amenable to some education reforms (like school vouchers) that might give more opportunities to her students. And what, according to Friedrichs, was the union’s response? “They punished me for standing up. . . . For that whole year, for that whole fight, I was treated like dirt.”

Teachers are too important to be treated like that.

Ultimately, what is at issue in this case is very simple: the right of free association, a right protected by the First Amendment. Ms. Friedrichs and thousands of public servants like her do not want to be forced to support a union that does not represent their interests or values.

As James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation points out, for much of the history of the American labor movement, private unions supported that right for public employees. In 1959, the AFL-CIO’s Executive Council wrote “In terms of accepted collective bargaining procedures, government workers have no right beyond the authority to petition Congress—a right available to every citizen.” Why? “It is impossible to bargain collectively with the government.” That was George Meany, President of the AFL-CIO, in 1955.

The issues associated with public unionism are clear. Institute researchers and scholars have written about the dangers of allowing government unions to elect their bosses and thus sit on both sides of the table during negotiations over salaries and benefits, pensions, hiring and firing procedures, and a variety of other policies (like school vouchers) that might only tangentially affect their membership. You can find a small sample of our work here, here, and here.

A victory in the Friedrichs case would strike a blow for individual freedom; it would recognize the millions of teachers and other government workers across the country not simply as interchangeable widgets who all think the same way, but as individuals with independent ideas and preferences.

This kind of fight is worth fighting. We’re happy to join it.

(Click on the link below if you would like to read the full text of the amicus brief.)

The post Why We Joined Rebecca Friedrichs’ Fight appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

• 98% of educators surveyed believe teachers should have the right to choose an association that best fits their needs. Missouri teachers do have this freedom. However, while the teacher may benefit from the professional development opportunities and liability insurance their association offers, teachers don’t have a choice as to who represents them during negotiations over salary and benefits.
• 68% of members would prefer to negotiate their own contract. Wouldn’t it be nice if a teacher who works twice as hard as other teachers and increases academic achievement more than other teachers could ask for a raise? This is unheard of in education, where 84 percent of AAE members say collective negotiations do little to recognize excellent teachers. No wonder schools have such a difficult time holding onto great teachers! They can’t reward them appropriately.
• Only 8% of educators surveyed reported ever having participated in a union certification election. That means that an overwhelming majority of teachers surveyed have never had the chance to vote for which union represents them. Can you imagine if you never got the chance to vote for an elected official—state representative, governor, congresswoman—and the elected official stayed in office indefinitely?

Regular union elections ensure that government employees like teachers have the opportunity to vote for the union or professional association that best represents their interests. While education analysts at the Show-Me Institute often advocate for more choice for students, teachers need choice, too. Teachers need the freedom to decide who represents them at the bargaining table. Whether that’s the individual teacher or a preferred association, teachers should have the freedom to choose. 

The post Teacher Survey Makes Case for More Government Employee Freedom appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

For most Missouri public employees, unionization is a one-way trip. Once employees elect to have a union represent thier interests in negotiations with management, no further elections are scheduled, no term limits are imposed, and the union stays in power indefinitely. Workers are usually stuck with the results of that original election, even if their representative fails to provide the services it promised. New employees will be forced to accept a representative for whom they never voted.

Recently, some have questioned whether employees should be subject to this one man, one vote, one time system. Why not hold elections at regular intervals?

Regular union elections would give public employees the right to vote for a union for a fixed term. When that term ended, the union could choose to run for re-election. Other unions might also offer their services and run against the incumbent union.

Proponents of regular elections argue that competition among unions will breed innovation and accountability. At the very least, regular elections help keep the actions of unions in line with the interests of voters. With union elections, workers could choose to keep their union, elect a new union, or forego a unionized workplace altogether. Workers would no longer be bound to a union that was put into power years before they were hired. In addition, worries of unaccountable unions squandering dues on things that don’t benefit workers would be greatly reduced. If members didn’t like the way their union was run, the next election would offer the opportunity to make a change.

The power to choose who speaks for you is a fundamental freedom. Regular union elections preserve this freedom for employees, and I can’t think of a better time to promote union elections than during national employee freedom week. 

The post Employee Freedom Week appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

One proposal to fix this problem would restructure the process by which a government workplace becomes unionized by holding elections for unionized government employees every two years. In these elections, public employees would be able to keep their union, choose another union, or forgo union representation altogether.

For workers, that could mean serious money.

Consider the firefighters in Chesterfield. A union firefighter in Chesterfield pays $2,169.18 a year in union dues. While some might feel that this is money well spent, other firefighters may take a dim view of the value they're getting for the price—perhaps preferring to save or spend that money on other needs in their households. Shouldn’t our public employees, from firefighters to teachers and social workers, have some choice over this portion of their paycheck?

Regular union elections give workers this choice. If they had union elections and chose to boot out the union for the next two years, they’d save a little over $4,300. If this didn’t work out, they could always go back to the status quo. And they’d be $4,300 richer for it.

Union elections not only give workers the option of going without a union or signing up with a new union, but it also preserves the right of workers to keep their union if they believe it gives them the best deal. And it’s this freedom to choose that’s really valuable.

The post The Value of Union Elections appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Why doesn’t Missouri follow suit? In our state, government workers, such as police and firefighters, are often required to pay for union activity, whether or not they want to be a member of a union. Many police and firefighters in this situation gladly accept representation by their union and would be happy to pay voluntarily. However, the government should not force workers to pay for services they don’t want.

Sometimes workers end up paying for two unions at the same time. In Saint Louis, the St. Louis Police Officers Association (SLPOA) has mostly represented white police officers, while the Ethical Society of Police has historically acted for African-American police. Recently, SLPOA won a union contract that allowed it to force payments from all rank-and-file officers. This action forced members of the Ethical Society to choose between leaving the employee association that they wanted to represent them or paying dues to two unions at once.

Illinois’ new order is a serious gain for liberty. Missouri could enact similar reforms. Indeed, doing so would protect the rights of police and firefighters who do not want to be forced into paying for the services of a group that they haven’t voted for and don’t want as representatives. For those government workers who protect us, it’s the least we can do.

The post Illinois Makes Union Fees Voluntary for Government Workers appeared first on Show-Me Institute.