Paul Bass Photo
Alder and union steward Kim Edwards addresses Monday’s rally.
As a move to crush government unions landed at the U.S. Supreme Court Monday, labor activists took to New Haven’s City Hall steps to declare their determination to fight on, whatever the outcome.
The occasion was the presentation of oral arguments before the court in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The plaintiffs in that case seek to overturn an Illinois law requiring public employees represented by a union to pay fees to cover bargaining costs incurred on their behalf whether or not they join and pay dues. A victory would nullify 20 similar laws nationwide and potential decimate the power of government unions, the labor movement’s last redoubt. Conservative groups have pushed for decades to reverse such laws; the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority is expected to rule in the plaintiffs’ favor.
The plaintiffs argue that mandatory-fee laws breach workers’ First Amendment free speech rights by forcing them to pay for a cause they don’t support. Campaigns funded by business owners appeal to workers to hold off paying union dues or fees to exercise their free-speech rights.
At the New Haven rally, speakers like Harold Brooks characterized the case — and the broader anti-union “right to work” movement — as an effort to in fact deprive workers of rights by crippling unions that can fight for better wages, health benefits, and working conditions.
“Right to work was created by segregationists and union-busters” to “rig the economy” in the favor of the wealthy, declared Brooks, vice-president of AFSCME Local 3144, which represents city government management and professional workers.
“The Supreme Court case is a ploy to take away our rights as union workers” and “protect the super-rich” by balancing budgets “on the backs of working people,” echoed District 1199 member Denitra Pearson of New Haven. (Click here to read a New York Times article on who’s funding efforts like this case.)
Mayor Toni Harp, one of the founders of Local 3144, argued that “all who are in your unions should pay their dues if they benefit.”
The rally drew about 100 supporters. It was one of four simultaneous noon-hour demonstrations across the state organized by a coalition of unions to protest the Janus case; the others took place in Hartford, Stamford, and Storrs. (Click here to read Christine Stuart’s account of the Hartford rally.)
Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn spoke of belonging to District 1199 “for 30 years” and being “proud to pay my dues. I understand why I need to pay them.”
Fellow Newhallville Alder Kim Edwards has belonged for 22 years to the Communication Workers of America, which she currently serves as a steward.
“My union is my family,” she declared to the crowd. “My union is my voice, to make sure my children are taken care of, to make sure there is gasoline in my car” and her family has health care.
Beneath the surface there was an acknowledgement that unions may indeed lose this round at the Supreme Court, the latest in a year-plus of labor setbacks.
The last wave of speeches included calls to keep fighting to recover and rebuild, to guard against the next round of proposed legislative and legal givebacks.
“This is the result of 40 years of work by the other side,” New Haven Association of Legal Services Attorneys President James Bhandary-Alexander said of the Janus case. “We have 40 years of work to turn the tide.”
"Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun." -Eugene Debs, 1904