 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. The Supreme Court of United States is hearing a case which is very significant for the labour movement and the labour unions in the United States. We are going to discuss the issue with Stephanie Burrito who is part of Poor People's Campaign and also been associated with labour unions in the United States for the past decade. Welcome to our show. So, this case, this Janus versus Afsimi case, could you tell us a little bit about it and the significance of the case? So first, thank you for having me on the show. Afsimi is one of the largest unions of public sector employees in the United States. It's the American federal, state, county and municipal employees union. And basically what this case consists in, it has to do with the charging of automatic dues that members of unions have to pay in the United States when they belong to the union. So in most states in the United States or at least at this point actually less than half of states, if you belong to a union an automatic dues collection takes place. And so in this case what's at stake is the right of unions to collect automatic dues from their members. And so it covers primarily public sector unions. The importance of this case has to do with the fact that over the past 30 years most of the labor movement has shifted towards the unionization of public sector workers versus private sector workers. So whereas approximately 30 years ago 10% of public sector workers were in a union, today there are 34% of them are in unions. And the similar thing has happened but in the inverse for the private sector unions. Whereas 30 years ago maybe 30% of workers were in a union if they worked in the private sector. Now it's less than 7% belong to a union. And so what this case attempts to do is to really restrict the ability of unions in the public sector which for this reason that I just explained represent the majority of unionized workers restrict their ability to collect union dues and to fund unions. You talked about the automatic dues which goes directly to the unions. How do you think how will it impact the not just this union this particular public sector union but the larger struggles and movements in the United States? So first I think that it's important to say that there's been like there's been a tendency in the United States over the past about approximately 10 years to restrict the ability of unions to fund themselves to collect dues. And so the so a lot of these unions that are in the public sector have depended on union dues collection to fund their entire operation. And not just to fund their entire operation but also to play a role in funding and supporting other movements and campaigns. So it's important to say that for example the service employees international union which has which will be affected by this decision because it represents a lot of workers in the public sector as well has played an important role in supporting and being a force for a lot of other movements throughout the country. So SEIU played an important role in the immigrant rights movement from it you know the the movement that was most active during the 2006 and those years SEIU played an important role in supporting and funding some of the work that it required to take that movement off. The movement to raise the minimum wage across the country which concerns not just unionized workers but also largely non-unionized workers and that addresses the real need to raise wages in the United States to what the current cost of living is because workers who don't belong to a union haven't gotten enough cost of living increase for the past 30 to 40 years. So the movement to raise the minimum wage to a basic $15 across the board is something that was strongly supported and funded by a public sector union by defunding an institution of the working class in the United States it will end up weakening other's forces and other movements of the working class and other progressive movements across the board and I think that that's the intention of the case as well. So but the judgment in the case is up it's still to come but there was a somewhat similar law which was passed in Wisconsin in 2011 which became then a model for other states to follow and pass similar laws in their states as well where you could see that the attack was pretty much on for it was just to make the unions just to cease to exist could you just tell us a little bit about how about Wisconsin and that law. So and it's important to say also that this proceeds 2011 in the Wisconsin law so there's been an attempt throughout the past or longer than just the past 10 years to destabilize unions specifically by restricting their ability of collecting of collecting union dues. So just to explain sort of really briefly how unions work in the United States for a group of workers to join a union they have to conduct some process which is usually an election and once the election passes by a majority vote they have the right to be represented by the union and to have collective bargaining over their working conditions and their wages and their benefits and so once a unit becomes part of a union they can they can become a closed shop which means that everybody in that place will now have to join the union and will pay union dues as a part of becoming a union member and so for the employers this significantly increases the strength of the union the capacity to have its own resources and not depend on anyone else is something that strengthens the union movement specifically because for many years a lot of these funds were used to form strike funds so that if workers went on strike they would have the ability to sustain themselves even with just basics like food and support for rent and things like that so for many years the the money that was collected from union dues was used to support strike funds and so for the employers restricting the ability of unions to collect dues has always been part of their agenda to weaken unions a union that has no funding structure is unable to pursue aggressive campaigns is completely incapable of pursuing a strike in particular because it has no way of sustaining its members during the period of a strike and so for many years there's been an attempt to make more and more states what they are called right to work states so a right to work state is a state where you can be in the union and covered by the bargaining agreement but you don't have to pay the dues if you don't want to and so this doesn't only weaken the funding structure of the union it also contributes to a very anti-solidarity culture within the workplace where people feel like why should I pay for something if I'm get if I can get it anyways so because even if you don't pay the dues you'll still get the benefits of the contract you'll still be covered the union still has the obligation to represent you even if you don't pay the dues and so what creates it creates this relationship where members feel very alienated from the union as well they feel like why should I pay them etc etc and so at this point about 27 states have this right to work legislation in them what happened in 2011 was even more aggressive than a right to work law which is why it was so significant so a governor came into power in Wisconsin a Republican government governor in a state that had a strong labor movement historically a strong history of also left activity on the left and so what the legislation that they passed would not only restrict the ability to collect dues but it also made it so that public sector unions could no longer bargain over pensions and health care which are a fundamental part of a collective bargaining agreement so with this response to also is that many states and local governments have gone through fiscal budget crises primarily because more and more of the budget of the government is being used up for war and the other reason is because the rich and corporations have gotten more and more tax cuts and so the tax base the pot is smaller and more of it is spent on the war and so there's less money to spend on basic public services but the right rather than acknowledging that fact has taken to blaming public sector workers and unions saying that they have a standard of living that they don't deserve and this has been an easy thing to agitate the public about because in fact public sector workers have a standard of living if they're unionized that is much higher than the average worker they have certain guarantees and also benefits such as a pension and a health insurance that most workers don't have because they don't have a union and so the governor really took advantage of the ability to make these arguments to fight against the public sector unions to characterize them as undeserving of these benefits as lazy as entitled and so the law would make the bargaining of these rights illegal would make it so that also raises would be determined by inflation so not so much based on the union's ability to struggle over wage increases it would make the collection of dues not automatic but also it would make it so that the union every single year would have to run an election and when a 51% majority to be able to continue representing the workers in some ways this could be seen as a good thing because it maintains the union tied to the base of the workers but what in fact it does it makes the union have to revolve all its activity around continuously securing its right to exist and not be able to devote any of its activity to struggle to fight for better wages to fight for rights for workers to organize new workers and so this law that was proposed in 2011 unfortunately passed and so what happened as a result of that is that it emboldened more Republican states to pass legislation similar legislation that would restrict the rights specifically of public sector workers and so the case that is being heard this year is part of a sequence of attacks that have been taking place against public sector unions so last question what do you think is the way forward from all of this considering that labor unions have to they don't they shouldn't necessarily run like a bureaucratic institution but it should be a movement of the people it should have a political sense to it as well so what do you think according to you is the way forward from all this because it seems like considering the current political environment of United States this judgment will be devastating for the labor unions in so what do you think is the way forward well I think that there's there's many things that I think need to happen and that need to happen independently of whether this decision passes or not one is that the labor movement in the United States needs to grow and needs to represent workers in sectors that are traditionally unorganized as I was saying I think that one way to rebuild labor is to really invest in organizing workers that are among the lowest rungs in terms of pay and working conditions that have not belonged to labor unions in a long time and I think that those workers also because of their characteristic of being younger have the capacity to recreate labor in a different with a different view for what labor should be I think that also labor needs to constitute itself more like a movement and less like an organization that is devoted to providing services for dues payers and so I think that for that reason movements like the poor people's campaign are extremely important because they articulate a platform that is much broader than just the specific rights of a specific type of worker in an industry or more than just rights of workers on the job it talks about workers in a much broader sense and it talks about their rights that go beyond what happens to them in the workplace and so I think that the way forward for labor is to resist some of the tendencies to behave like a business union and to look towards organizing new workers and to adopt a much broader platform for working class people to articulate demands that make them be associated by the rest of the working class is a working class organization and not just as an organization that represents those people and I think that also a big part of it is growing the level of democracy that exists within labor itself I think labor unions need to become more democratic in order to be able to reinvent themselves in this way and I think in another important path forward which is much more difficult to imagine at this point that Trump is the president is for labor unions to become much more autonomous and independent politically thank you so much for joining us and sharing your views with us on the topic this is it for today on the topic please keep watching news click thank you