The Rebirth of the “Fighting Union” in a Post-Janus America
When a few Illinois state employees protested that they shouldn’t have to pay for the privilege of having union protection, few in the labor movement thought much would come of it. It had long been established US labor precedent that “closed shops” (a.k.a. a “union security agreement”) could permit unionized workplaces the privilege of taking the cost of union dues from the paychecks of all covered workers. But, as the lawsuit wormed its way through American courts, more public-sector labor activists became concerned. Finally, the Janus case arrived at the right-wing-dominated Supreme Court, who declared that unlike nearly everything else in American society, public workers didn’t need to pay for the protections that their unions offered them and that they could still receive all the benefits of union representation without having to contribute a single dime. This exemplified what economist Mancur Olson decades ago referred to as the “free rider problem”—wherein people refuse to contribute to a public good that they can get for free (e.g., the privilege of listening to public radio without having to pay for it). Needless to say, the Janus case and Olson’s theory optimizes a central characteristic of capitalist ideology: the presumed selfishness of individuals.
Despite this being a real blow to the economic coffers of public sector unions, there are still reasons to ultimately understand the Janus case as a blessing. The justification for closed shops is the assumption that workers would remain selfish individualistic, profit-maximizing machines who had to be forced to act in their own best interests by mandatory dues. It allowed unions to feel less pressure to meet the needs of their members, and thus to simply expect economic resources without necessarily having to convince skeptical workers of its merits. The Janus decision forces unions to recall what the pre-closed shop era was like—where the fight to win-over every single union member was a crucial struggle for worker victory. The expectation that unions can rely upon worker dues (and consequently loyalty) is as presumptuous as the assumption of post-WW2 “business unionism”, where labor simply trusted capital to offer improved wages (for their union members only, of course) in exchange for refusing to strike.
It’s helpful to drop all the pretenses of business-labor peace, or, as in the case of public sector unions, the idea that corporate-inspired managers actually know what’s best for the public (or public workers). It’s helpful for unions to realize that they need to make substantive efforts to address workers’ needs (all workers, not just the politicized ones who officially “join” unions). It requires a return to the active organizing campaigns of the past, where workers discussed critical matters with their fellow workers, in pursuit of the obvious realization that workers only have power insofar as they possess solidarity with each other. Being compelled to contribute dues in the past was a false form of “solidarity”; it served as a perverse proxy for the hard work of building a union. Instead of assuming that unions fundamentally and exclusively require economic resources to organize, let’s acknowledge that the more important resource is the people themselves. If the labor movement can win over workers directly, then unions will still have the economic resources they need to fight the bosses. And, crucially, they’ll also have a more activated and rebellious membership that is ready for that fight, too.