The future looks bleak for New York's unions

GREG DAVID

July 9, 2018

Supreme Court ruling dims forecast for organized labor

The labor movement in New York faces its biggest test in decades following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that public-sector workers who decline to join a union cannot be forced to pay fees. The immediate repercussion will be a blow to some unions' finances, but the real impact will play out over several years.

New York is the most unionized state in the United States. Although private-sector unions represent far more of the workforce in New York than nationwide (17% compared with 6%), the real strength of organized labor here comes from the public sector, where a little less than 70% of employees belong to unions. That's twice the national percentage. (All New York numbers come from the indispensable State of the Unions report published each September by the Murphy Institute at the CUNY Graduate Center.) In all, 1.9 million workers in the state belong to unions, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The immediate problem for the unions is that this month they will lose the fees paid by nonunion workers, like me. (I direct the business reporting program at the Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY; fees are deducted from my paycheck even though I have elected not to join the Professional Staff Congress union.) District Council 37 in the city faces the biggest immediate hit, followed by the union representing teachers in the CUNY system. The United Federation of Teachers faces the least impact.

More important is whether the unions will lose members who joined only because they were going to have to pay dues whether they did or not. When Wisconsin ended agency fees and limited the scope of public-sector bargaining over contracts, union membership plunged by 40%, noted Daniel DiSalvo of the Manhattan Institute.

Unions have already stepped up their efforts to convert fee payers to members. The Professional Staff Congress at CUNY added two full-time organizers to what had been a staff of five, according to a Gotham Gazette report. And some 200 union members have been talking to co-workers one-on-one about the importance of supporting the union. Already the union claims it has increased membership of full-time professors to 94% from 86%.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed a bill through the Legislature that will make it harder for workers to leave a union. And he and Mayor Bill de Blasio have promised to give unions special access to recruit new workers and to limit personal information conservative groups could obtain to send anti-union material to current and potential members.

The law and other efforts are clearly subject to a legal challenge. The governor's actions are ironic, given that he spent his first term fighting with state unions to impose wage freezes and with teachers unions about charter schools and evaluations. It's another sign of how he has moved to the left.

In the end, DiSalvo argued, union membership in New York will drop by 15% to 30%. If the loss is in the neighborhood of one-third, union clout in the state will recede dramatically.