Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Today in education reform

This is Joseph

It seems like I completely misunderstood the Friedrichs case.  I had assumed that it was about removing unions from the public sector.  But, according to Jersy Jazzman, I missed the main point completely:
Understand, they aren't seeking to overturn state laws that require unions to negotiate on behalf of all public employees within a specific jurisdiction and job type. If that was the case, the Friedrichs Freeloaders could just go out and try to negotiate their own contracts, completely forgoing not only legal protections and services from the unions, but any benefits those unions receive from negotiations.
Good luck with that.
No, what the Friedrichs Freeloaders want is for the court to find that compelling them to pony up for the cost of negotiations is a violation of their First Amendment rights. Not of their rights to speak out against their union, though, nor to actually run in elections and change the policies of their locals; those rights are guaranteed (even if they are too much work for these plaintiffs).
This seems to be a very silly change to the law.  If unions are bad (and I am not saying that they are) then the remedy can hardly be to make them less effective (collectively hurting all members).  Eliminating unions is at least a cogent position.  But applied logically and systematically, this approach would lead to all sorts of problems.  Can pacifists opt out of paying taxes?  And not just the portion they pay to support the military but all taxes?  Because the government has at least one different position from the ones they hold?

I am just hoping that I am misunderstanding something.

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