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Page Number: 63.0

8  JANUS v. STATE, COUNTY, AND MUNICIPAL EMPLOYEES 

KAGAN, J., dissenting 

bargaining  representative  even  “if  they  are  not  given 
agency fees.”  Ante, at 14; see ante, at 14–17.  The gist of
the  account  is  that  “designation  as  the  exclusive  repre-
sentative confers many benefits,” which outweigh the costs
of  providing  services  to  non-members.    Ante,  at  15.  But 
that  response  avoids  the  key  question,  which  is  whether 
unions  without  agency  fees  will  be  able  to  (not  whether 
they will want to) carry on as an effective exclusive repre-
sentative.  And  as  to  that  question,  the  majority  again 
fails  to  reckon  with  how  economically  rational  actors
behave—in public as well as private workplaces.  Without 
a  fair-share  agreement,  the  class  of  union  non-members 
spirals upward.  Employees (including those who love the
union) realize that they can get the same benefits even if
they let their memberships expire.  And as more and more 
stop  paying  dues,  those  left  must  take  up  the  financial 
slack (and anyway, begin to feel like suckers)—so they too
quit  the  union.    See  Ichniowski  &  Zax,  Right-to-Work 
Laws,  Free  Riders,  and  Unionization  in  the  Local  Public 
Sector, 9 J. Labor Economics 255, 257 (1991).1  And when 
the  vicious  cycle  finally  ends,  chances  are  that  the  union
will lack the resources to effectively perform the responsi-
—————— 

1 The  majority  relies  on  statistics  from  the  federal  workforce  (where
agency fees are unlawful) to suggest that public employees do not act in
accord  with  economic  logic.    See  ante,  at  12.  But  first,  many  fewer 
federal  employees  pay  dues  than  have  voted  for  a  union  to  represent 
them,  indicating  that  free-riding  in  fact  pervades  the  federal  sector. 
See,  e.g.,  R.  Kearney  &  P.  Mareschal,  Labor  Relations  in  the  Public
Sector 26 (5th ed. 2014).  And second, that sector is not typical of other 
public  workforces.    Bargaining  in  the  federal  sphere  is  limited;  most
notably,  it  does  not  extend  to  wages  and  benefits.    See  Fort  Stewart 
Schools v. FLRA, 495 U. S. 641, 649 (1990).  That means union operat-
ing  expenses  are  lower  than  they  are  elsewhere.    And  the  gap  further 
widens because the federal sector uses large, often national, bargaining
units that provide unions with economies of scale.  See Brief for Inter-
national  Brotherhood  of  Teamsters  as  Amicus  Curiae  7.    For  those  
reasons, the federal workforce is the wrong place to look for meaningful
empirical evidence on the issues here.