In 2010, the right-wing majority of the Supreme Court infamously decided that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money from their treasuries to influence elections. The Citizens United decision also expanded the spending power of another type of organization: labor unions, which had up until that point been governed by the same Congress-set election rules. But make no mistake: the Corporate Court has a very different agenda for unions than it has for corporate big spenders. In a decision last week, the Court started to chip away at the rights of unions to influence elections while continuing to leave corporations free to spend as they choose.
What happened was this: In 2005, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1000 representing public sector workers in California, imposed a temporary dues increase in order to fight anti-worker measures on the state ballot. Because California law makes payment of union dues by both union members and non-members a condition of government employment, the Court applied a First Amendment analysis. Having already issued Supreme Court-mandated notices to members and non-members informing them of their dues and allowing non-members to opt out of those that support strictly political activities that non-members may not agree with, the union failed to issue a second notice regarding the dues increase. Seven of nine justices on the Supreme Court agreed last week that the union should have sent out a second alert about the dues increase.
What's unusual is what the five conservative justices tacked on to the narrow ruling about the dues notice. Rather than deciding whether the situation at hand followed the existing law, they decided to make a brand new law in order to cripple union spending on elections. Without being asked to do so, and in violation of the Court's own rules against deciding "significant constitutional issues not contained in the questions presented, briefed, or argued," the Justices declared that the public sector unions were constitutionally prohibited from enacting such a dues increase on non-members unless those workers affirmatively opt in.
The law as it stands already allows these unions to collect limited dues from non-members who benefit from union-related collective bargaining and other benefits. But it also lets those employees opt out of expenses - like political spending - that don't directly go toward their own paycheck and benefits. This opt-out option only applies to labor unions; shareholders are not afforded a similar right if they disagree with corporate political spending decisions. Even so the Justices, of their own initiative, turned this process on its head to weaken labor even further.
The five right-wing justices justified this over-reach by declaring that the existing opt-out provision for emergency dues increases "substantially impinge[s] upon the First Amendment right of nonmembers."
Interestingly, a very similar situation involving corporate shareholders has been in the news recently, but so far has attracted little interest from the conservative Court. After the Citizens United decision let loose a flood of corporate spending - much of it funneled through shadowy organizations and undisclosed - some corporate shareholders began to be concerned that their money would go to fund political spending that they disagree with. This is no small issue: about half of Americans have investments in publicly traded corporations, often through 401(k)s and other retirement accounts established by federal and state laws. And those corporations - with officers given the authority to spend other people's money - exist only because they are artificial government creations.
The Republican-led Congress has not been receptive, to say the least, to efforts to require that corporations disclose political spending to their shareholders and the public, much less require a shareholder vote on such spending. And the Supreme Court - surprise, surprise - hasn't shown any interest in writing any of those rules into law. Indeed, in Citizens United, the pro-corporate majority dismissed concerns about protecting dissenting shareholders from corporate decisions to spend on controversial political candidates, arguing that shareholders could protect themselves against such spending through the normal processes of corporate democracy. The conservatives had no thought, apparently, of allowing shareholders to opt out of such political activity, much less requiring that their investments not be used unless they opt in.
So what accounts for the difference between a policy requiring employees represented by unions to actively opt in to political spending and a policy allowing corporate shareholders and the public to remain in the dark about the political causes and candidates that their stocks and retirement funds are being spent on, without having the benefit to opt out?
As far as I can tell, there are two main factors that could account for this radically disparate treatment. The first is that the Court majority seeks to create strong corporations with centralized command leadership that goes unquestioned, while it seeks to undermine unions as a countervailing political force. The second is simply that the majority of post-Citizens United corporate money spent on elections goes to benefit Republicans, while the majority of union political funds go to help Democrats.
If the narrow majority of the Corporate Court wants to treat corporate shareholders like public sector union non-members - thereby applying its new "free speech" rights evenly - it will carve out a shareholder opt-in provision in one of its series of decisions opening up corporate pocketbooks in elections.
But I'm not holding my breath.
Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm: Another Reason To Hate Citizens United
A few points:
(a) Citizen United was a boon for unions and they were active supporters of it. They like spending billions, directly and indirectly, as well as providing in-kind support through their members participation in Democrat campaigns to get their friends elected so they can gorge on payola.
(b) Efforts by Obama and the Democrat controlled Senate and House to curtail Citizens United through new legislation failed when Obama…wait for it…made special carve-outs for unions and other special interests and companies that traditionally support the Democrats. How sleazy. Luckily even though the Dems controlled the legislative and executive branches needed to enact this new law, many within their own party saw it as the sleazy piece of legislation that would haunt them unfavorably.
(c) Corporations would LOVE it if they had all the advantages that unions have, the right to cartelize and price fix their products or service. The right to force others in their industry to join their cartel and fix their prices at an uncompetitive level and then make them pay for the honor of doing so….much to the consumers’ detriment.
(d) Unions are a special interest, a sleazy self-interested one at that, and they should have no special rights that allow them to extract from people against their will.
Kai
I hope you are well. Big win for you on Obamacare, I assume that you are quite happy with that.
You state, ‘And yet every single point you raise is completely, utterly, false.’
If that is the case, prove it.
Kai
Current law holds that the SEIU has to give an opt-out to people on that portion of dues that deals with political activities and not collective bargaining. The SPECIAL ASSESSMENT for political activities only that was done above & beyond the normal dues payments is what was held to require affirmative response.
The difference is that now unions have to get a positive opt IN from their members, whereas corporations don't have to.
One of their best benefits is that they can practice in most professions in many states without a professional in the company to discipline when they violate a license law that would require an individual to be subject to discipline. One company is entering the business of specializing in providing credit for elderly dental patients referred to Cadillac priced providers who are paid immediately for work not yet done, for more work than they wanted, for prices they can't afford at interest rates they can never repay. They are beyond discipline by the dental board of Pennsylvania, and spreading rapidly across states..
What, exactly, makes a corporation made up of many people different than a union made of of many people? Why do corporations have the same rights as individual citizens and not unions?
Come on, this should be interesting....
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow
Maybe you forgot you wrote that.
In some states paying union dues is compulsory for ALL employees.
Buying corporate stock, or working for a corporation is NOT compulsory.
See the difference?
Maybe you missed that part too...
However, the problem here is that the SCOTUS has decided that corporations not only can donate unlimited funds to politics (which they can do in numbers that unions can NEVER match!!!!) but that they never have to ask their shareholders or other stakeholders if they want to do so, but that unions have to get an actual "Yes, use my money!" from their members, rather than the previous rule where if they got a "No, don't use my money!" from a member is the only time they had to pull back.