A Supreme Court decision that guarantees civil service workers the right to stop being charged union dues is being threatened under a proposal being advanced by a federal administrative agency, as appointees of President Joe Biden want to limit that right to just one day a year.
“All American public sector workers have a First Amendment right under Janus to freely make this choice, and by changing the rules, the FLRA will deliberately undermine the constitutional rights of the federal workforce.”
The FLRA under Trump implemented the Janus decision in the federal workplace by issuing a regulation in 2020 that affirmed the right recognized by the high court. However, the Biden proposal would allow public employees only one day each year to revoke the dues deduction for the following year.
The authority oversees the relationship between the career civil service workforce of more than 2.1 million federal employees and unions that represent major portions of the government’s employees.
Its chairman is Susan Tsui Grundmann, former chairperson of the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017. When President Donald Trump took office, Grundmann left the MSPB to become executive director of the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights in the legislative branch.
The general counsel of the FLRA is Charlotte Dye, who was appointed by Biden in March 2021. Colleen Duffy Kiko is the Republican-appointed member of the FLRA’s governing council, which also includes Grundmann and Dye.
More than 700,000 federal workers are represented by the American Federation of Government Employees. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) represents 150,000 federal workers, while another 100,000 are represented by the National Federation of Federal Employees.
The NTEU based its claim on its contention that because the one-day rule was in effect for decades prior to Janus indicates that was the intent of Congress.
“When the [FLRA] very recently solicited public comment on this regulation, we heard from employees who were frustrated with narrow form-submission windows occurring on indecipherable anniversary dates.
“In 2020, the [FLRA] enacted a regulation that is consistent with the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute and assures employees the fullest freedom in the exercise of their rights. Regrettably, the majority’s proposed rule-making would discard a valuable reform without affording it even a reasonable trial period.”
Kiko also pointed out that in 2020, when the current rule was issued in response to the Janus decision, the NTEU argued that the authority didn’t have the ability to do so.
“Just a few years ago, the [NTEU] asserted that the authority lacked the power to issue a rule on this topic, but now [NTEU] insists that the authority must exercise its rule-making power in this area,” she wrote.
In its comments on the FLRA proposal, the NRTW emphasized the importance of the Janus decision in protecting the right of every individual federal worker to decide whether to join a union and pay its dues.
“In Janus, the [High] Court held that the First Amendment guarantees public employees a right to refrain from subsidizing a union and its speech. The government violates that right if it deducts union dues or fees from employees against their wishes.”
Kiko said the high court explained that compelling individuals to mouth support for views they find objectionable violates a “cardinal constitutional command,” and compelling a person to subsidize the speech of other private speakers raises similar First Amendment concerns.
“As Jefferson famously put it, ‘to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and [abhors] is sinful and tyrannical,” she said.
“A government restriction on federal employees’ ability to stop union dues deductions restricts those employees’ First Amendment right under Janus not to subsidize a union and its speech.
“Enforcement of that restriction violates the constitutional rights of federal employees who authorized dues deductions in the past, but no longer want to support the union’s speech [or perhaps never freely did in the first place].
“Because of a restriction on revocation, those employees will have union dues seized from their wages against their will, in violation of their First Amendment rights.”
A copy of the NRTW comments, which haven’t yet been published in the Federal Register, was made available to The Epoch Times.