Skip to main content

Conservative Supreme Court justices take aim at union fees

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In a case that could weaken the finances and political clout of organized labor, conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Monday indicated strong support for stopping millions of dollars in fees that non-members are forced to pay annually to unions representing public employees.

But the justice whose vote is likely to decide the case, President Donald Trump's appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch, remained silent throughout the one-hour argument. His reputation as a staunch conservative suggests he will join his fellow conservatives in an eventual 5-4 ruling against the unions.

The court's liberals expressed sympathy toward retaining the so-called agency fees. Workers who decide not to join unions representing police, teachers, firefighters and certain other state and local employees must pay the fees in two dozen states in lieu of union dues to help cover the cost of non-political activities such as collective bargaining.

Roughly 5 million public-sector workers pay such fees. A Supreme Court ruling disallowing these fees would deal a setback to an already-diminished American organized labor movement, taking away a vital revenue stream from unions and undercutting their ability to attract new members.


Source :- yahoonews

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We're open to work with Britain over incident involving ex-agent

The Kremlin said on Tuesday it was ready to cooperate if Britain asks it for help investigating an incident involving a former Russian double agent who fell ill after exposure to an unknown substance. Sergei Skripal, once a colonel in Russia's GRU military intelligence service, was critically ill in hospital on Tuesday after he was exposed to an unidentified substance in southern England. "Nobody has approached us with such a request," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters, when asked if the British authorities had been in touch seeking help. "Moscow is always open for cooperation." When asked to respond to British media speculation that Russia had poisoned Skripal, Peskov said: "It didn't take them long." Calling the incident "a tragic situation," he said the Kremlin did not have information about what had happened. Source :- yahoonews

Key players recall 1968 Polish student revolt, ensuing anti-Semitism

In March 1968, a student revolt crushed by Poland's baton-wielding police was used as a pretext for an anti-Semitic purge by the communist regime. It began when the communists banned the 19th-century play "Forefathers' Eve" by poet Adam Mickiewicz claiming it had anti-Russian elements. Two students who contested the ban were expelled from the University of Warsaw, prompting their peers to stage a demonstration on March 8. Backed by other civil groups, particularly workers unhappy with daily life under communism, the pro-democracy protests spread to other cities. The regime used the student revolt as an excuse to unleash an anti-Semitic campaign that was rooted in a settling of scores inside the Communist Party, which was split into two camps. Source :- yahoonews

Tension with Israel 50 years after Poland's anti-Semitic campaign

On the 50th anniversary of a brutal anti-Semitic campaign in Poland, the country faces a diplomatic crisis with Israel over a controversial new Holocaust law. In 1968, partly to settle disputes inside the ruling Communist Party, the Polish government stripped many Jews of party membership -- and thus jobs -- prompting around 12,000 to leave the country. Today, Poland's conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) has been accused of trying to deny the Holocaust after introducing a law notably intended to prevent people from describing Nazi death camps in German-occupied Poland as Polish. "It's not the same today," said Adam Michnik, a prominent communist-era dissident who is now editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's leading liberal newspaper. "There are certainly similarities. Once again there's a growing image of a Poland besieged by enemies and the enemies are the Jews who want to do us harm," he told AFP. Source :- yahoonews