Source: http://mapunion.org/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 04:51:15+00:00

Document:
MAP was developed to meet the growing needs of police related employees in the area of collective bargaining, to provide due process for our law enforcement members, and to promote the advancement of police labor issues that were not being met by other police labor groups. Joseph Andalina, a 26-year police veteran with more than 35 years experience in the police labor field, originally conceived and established MAP in the early 1980’s. Over the years, it has now, with its staff, board and attorneys, risen to a premier labor union in Illinois.
In a recent opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court emphatically reaffirmed the requirement that collective bargaining agreements (“CBAs”) must be interpreted according to “ordinary principles of contract law” when deciding whether retired employees are entitled to health care benefits. CNH Industrial N.V. v. Reese, No. 17-515, 2018 WL 942419 (U.S. Feb. 20, 2018). The Supreme Court once again rejected the analysis used by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (including federal courts in Michigan) that placed a “thumb on the scale” in favor of holding that CBAs provided lifetime health care benefits to retirees. The result is that employers in Michigan will now have greater certainty in negotiating and modifying the terms of health care benefits provided to their employees and retirees under CBAs.
The case involved a dispute over union retiree health benefits. In 1998, CNH entered into a CBA which provided group health care benefits to certain employees set to retire under the company’s pension plan. After the CBA expired, a class of CNH retirees and surviving spouses initiated a lawsuit in federal court asking for declaratory judgment that they were entitled to health care benefits for life and seeking to enjoin CNH from modifying those benefits.
ples. After Tackett was decided, the district court ruled in favor of the retirees. The Sixth Circuit affirmed the district court’s holding that the retirees had vested lifetime health care benefits.
HB4780 Amends the Peace Officer and Probation Officer Firearm Training Act.
It provides that the fee required for an applicant for a retired law enforcement officer concealed carry certification shall be no more than 20% of the fee required under the Firearm Concealed Carry Act for application or renewal for a concealed carry license.
Please contact your representatives to show your support for HB4780. Here's an article we are running in the August issue of American Police Beat about the most recent murder of one of our law enforcement officers.
This morning NPR on their Morning Edition radio show aired a story on the dramatic increase of unprovoked attacks on law enforcement. There was no text available so all I have to send you is the link to the segment on the radio show. I hope you can tune in. It's well done. Click here http://apbweb.us7.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=dcd3e5ab5e37d1df82eed bad9&id=8799513fe1&e=bea0cb0b7b to listen.
7424c7ff29&e=bea0cb0b7b" and watch the video the SBA produced to educate the public about the realities of police work and the NYPD's use of force training. Scroll down to see how you can help Hugh Barry. The SBA is a founding member of PubSecAlliance, an online community of police union and association leaders and their members.
Dow 20,000 - Have any wonders been revealed?
MAP is an organization composed of sworn police officers and other police-related employees who maintain full or part time employment with any state, county, or municipal agency. We have joined together to form a more professional voice in law enforcement.
or legal defense. Associations or units wishing to utilize our collective bargaining programs should sign collective bargaining interest cards. There are two ways to establish a chapter for bargaining, depending on whether your group is new or has a current labor organization representing you. Call us for details.
Read article on The Hill website.
I know you've all been preparing for the fact that our Supreme Court could rule that unions enjoying automatic dues collection by the employer and sent to the union is a violation of the employees' rights to free speech. I am sending you an article written by a guy who supports "limited government" - i.e. he wants to privatize everything including public safety. Good to know what your enemy is thinking. If your union is doing anything to prepare for this or influence the Supreme Court (not sure how you do that) please let me know and I will get the word out.
Organized labor faces a transformation this year. In February, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Janus v. AFSCME to decide whether government employees can be fired for refusing to pay union dues. A decision for petitioner Mark Janus could extend right-to-work protections to millions of public employees, and the implications for public policy and national politics are profound.
The case is an inflection point for organized labor, coming after decades of grim news. Union membership as a percentage of U.S. employment has been shrinking for 60 years; only 10.4 percent of workers are members of a union, down from a peak of 35 percent in the 1950s.
Several trends have caused difficulties for labor unions, including automation, globalization and the expansion of right-to-work states, to say nothing of exorbitant union contracts. As a result, unions represent only 6.4 percent of all private sector workers.
In the 1960s, labor leaders sought to retrofit collective bargaining to a sector where competitive market forces are less threatening — the government. Though Franklin D. Roosevelt warned against collective bargaining in the public sector, union’s success in organizing government workers helped slow their decline. Government has been a strong growth sector for unions and today 49 percent of all union members are employed by the government.
Government unions won a major assist from the Supreme Court in the landmark case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education (1977). The court ruled that a public employee could be forced to pay for union representation, even if the money supported causes the employee opposed.
Yet even this model of forced unionism shows strain, brought on by union overreach.
Political intersectionality led unions, particularly the National Education Association, to embrace causes that have little to do with the workplace. Labor’s shift to politics is the logical result of relying on government employees to sustain membership rolls. Unions are self-motivated to grow government: More government programs lead to more employees who pay more in union dues. But fiscal pressures in states and municipalities have been mounting, particularly related to retiree benefits, and the Great Recession forced many states to make tough choices.
Hoping to grow the pool of public employees, unions stretched Abood beyond recognition by unionizing in-home caregivers who are hired by Medicaid recipients. The effort started on the West Coast in the late-1990s and early 2000s by redefining public employment. “Caregivers are paid through a government program,” went the union logic, “let’s organize them as public employees.” Unions siphoned off hundreds of millions of dollars intended for disabled adults before the Supreme Court held that states cannot force caregivers to pay dues.
With Janus, the Supreme Court will address Abood directly.
A ruling for Janus will trigger an exodus of union members who held their nose over union politics. We saw this in Michigan; after the state enacted a right-to-work law in 2012, the Michigan Education Association lost 25 percent of its membership.
Nearly five million workers will be affected by the Janus ruling, a fact not lost on the Democratic Party, heavily dependent as it is on union cash and activists. Legislatures in blue states can be expected to test the limits of Janus; some will try to directly subsidize unions with taxpayer funds.
So how will unions respond to the Janus ruling? Faced with a loss of revenue, unions may chose to focus on the needs and interests of members, eschewing partisan politics and far-left causes.
Alternatively, as their conservative-leaning members leave, unions may seek more radical aims, pushing for strikes and work stoppages. Such moves could backfire with lawmakers and the taxpayers, leading to changes in labor law.
A reimagining of the labor movement is called for. The leaders of tomorrow’s labor movement would do well to discard a collectivist, coercive model and instead promote services potential members want while honoring the rights of individuals to make their own choices. Only a few labor leaders see the future with clarity.
Michael Reitz is the executive vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Michigan, a nonprofit group that advocates for limited government.
The Sacramento Bee's The State Worker published this piece about what public sector unions in California are doing to prepare their members for the Janus decision. Follow The State Worker on Twitter: #thestateworker.
Cops, teachers prepare for Janus.
California's public employee unions are backing a pack of bills that might help them hold on to members if the Supreme Court this summer issues a ruling that's expected to deliver a serious blow to the finances for labor organizations.
Two of the bills lay out standard guidelines governing how public agencies collect dues from union members. Both give unions time to call workers and try to change the minds of those who want to stop paying dues. One of the bills would require local governments to grant time off to union shop stewards. It requires the unions to reimburse government agencies, but local government lobbyists still have concerns about it.
Another, Assembly Bill 2970, would prohibit government agencies from publicly disclosing information about new employee orientations. The bill's author, Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, says he wants to shield public employees from workplace violence, but it's raising concerns that the proposal is really intended to prevent anti-union activists from distributing information outside gatherings for public employees.
Already, anti-union activists from the Freedom Foundation are showing up outside public employee orientation events in Los Angeles County to distribute information to workers.
Cooper's bill would block public agencies from disclosing the dates of the orientation events, limiting the Freedom Foundation's ability to contact workers at those events.
"It just seems like a bill targeted at squelching political speech and doing so without any good justification," said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.
This year's group of public employee organizing bills follows a similar cluster of legislation a year ago that gave labor some extra muscle as it prepares for a Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, the lawsuit that aims to forbid public employee unions from collecting so-called fair share fees from workers who are represented by them but do not want to belong to them.
Unions expect the court will side with Mark Janus, the Illinois state worker who filed the lawsuit. It would end a 41-year precedent that permitted public employee unions to collect fair share fees in the interest of ensuring that workers who benefit from representation don't get a "free ride" at the expense of other members.
California unions have a lot to lose. Fair share fees typically are almost equal to full dues, and workers who don't want to belong to unions would save hundreds of dollars a year by breaking with them.
Last year, the Legislature adopted a measure that requires public agencies to give unions time to meet with workers at some point during new employee orientation.
Many California public agencies already allowed unions to have that access; the new law ensures labor groups won't lose it.
The law requires agencies to give unions a 10-day notice when they hold orientation events for new employees.
Caitlin Vega, a senior lobbyist for the California Labor Federation, told lawmakers at an April hearing that the notice might become a public record that could lead to unintended parties attending orientation sessions.
That could include "parties that have objections with public employees, with law enforcement, with unions, with any of that," she said. "This is an internal meeting, and our intent with this is simply to keep advance notice internal." Cooper, a former Sacramento County deputy sheriff, argues AB 2970 is necessary to protect the safety and privacy of new public workers. "It is imperative that we protect our new public employees attending orientation by only providing advance notice to pertinent parties," he said at the committee hearing. The bill cleared the Assembly by a 52-18 vote and is awaiting a hearing in the Senate.
Its only opposition came from lobbyists representing cities, counties, school districts and special service districts. They're worried that if the law is read literally, they won't be able to hire private sector experts to give new employees training on workplace standards.
"We also think it's maybe not the appropriate response. We don't think it's necessary by any means," said Dorothy Johnson, a lobbyist for the California State Association of Counties.
The Freedom Foundation, which runs campaigns encouraging West Coast workers to quit their unions, says Cooper's bill could inhibit the organization's ability to provide information to public employees.
"If we're not allowed to know where they are, we don't know who's working," said Sam Han, its California director.
His organization is eager to contact union members about the looming Supreme Court case. It recently sent a message to 50,000 California teachers that described to them the steps they'd have to take to quit the California Teachers Association. It contacted them through their public email addresses.
Snyder of the First Amendment Coalition likened Cooper's proposals to a wave of bills in state legislatures that would have criminalized protests like the one led by Native Americans that delayed construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline in the Upper Midwest.
"You see these targeted efforts that have some window dressing justification but really are aimed at stopping a kind of speech that the bill's supporters don't like, and that's problematic," he said.
Claudia Briggs, a spokeswoman for the California Teachers Association, called the Freedom Foundation messages "spamming" of public employees. The union has not endorsed Cooper's bill, but it favors his intent.
"When employees are in an orientation setting, they're given the time with the employer to discuss employment matters from insurance to vacation leave, health insurance, disabilities. You have employment policies being discussed, safety measures, and those are matters that should be discussed between the employer and the employee and that shouldn't be open to anyone other than those involved," she said.
No one else will save your job and benefits!
Thumbs down on this argument we can only have wages if we accept health care cuts. Law enforcement people deserve both considering the risks of the job and the emotional and psychological toll the work takes on our officers.
Big question is why can't we have both? Raises and health care. Isn't this the way it used to be? What happened?
It’s wages vs. health benefits. On this Labor Day, just about everything seemed to be going right for typical American workers, with the glaring and puzzling exception of wage stagnation. The unemployment rate is 3.9 percent, near its lowest since 2000. The number of new jobs exceeds the peak in 2008 by about 11 million. Then there’s wage stagnation. Corrected for inflation, wages are up a scant 2 percent since January 2015, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The gain is roughly one-half of 1 percent annually. Little wonder that many workers feel they’re not getting ahead. They aren’t. A strong and growing economy is, by the textbook, supposed to put upward pressure on wages as companies bid for more workers and employees shop around for higher pay. All sorts of plausible theories have been advanced to explain why this doesn’t seem to be happening.Content from Wells Fargo Demographics are cited. Well-paid baby boom workers are retiring and being replaced by lower-paid millennials; this drags down average wages. Or the Great Recession left workers and employers with psychological scars. Workers are more concerned with job security. They are leery of pressing for big wage increases, just as companies are leery of providing them. Mismeasurement of wages is another theory.
Editor's note: If you read the first story on the recruitment crisis, you will learn that Lt. Mike Lewis believes the difficulty in finding police officers is cyclical. "We've seen stuff like this before," he said. "I honestly believe that there are still a whole lot of people out there who want to serve."
I would beg to differ. The recruiting crisis is NOT cyclical. The police profession is undergoing a profound paradigm shift. It started more than a decade ago with recruiting wars between agencies with signing bonuses and billboards to get officers to leave one department for another. It lost steam after the 2008 recession and returned with a vengeance when the economy improved. Paradigm shifts are driven by change agents. There is not one change agent causing the lack of qualified applicants. It is a combination of the younger generation not seeing policing as a professional career choice, negative media coverage on a daily basis, political chiefs over-responding to every use of force, unrealistic expectations from some segments of the community and elected officials, police unions failing to recognize that many contracts have archaic restrictions on seniority, hiring and promotions, and police departments in general operating a quasi-military work environment that is not acceptable to young applicants.
Law enforcement may not like the answers but policing as we know it is changing and there will be a new reality.
Even agencies like the NYPD, LAPD and Chicago are having trouble finding people who want to put on the badge and go out on patrol.
MANTUA, Ohio - Chief Joe Urso is the only full-time officer on the Mantua Police Department. He has ten part-timers and would like to hire three or four auxiliary officers who he would make part-time officers in the future.
The problem is, he only has a handful of applications at a time when it's tough to find people willing to protect and serve in a village of only 1,000 people. "Nobody is banging down the door like ten or 15 years ago to come into this line of work," Urso said.
The chief said he has seen fewer candidates due to intense scrutiny on television and social media over police-involved shootings.
This ruling is good news for US Border patrol agents, and all other law enforcement people working for federal agencies like the DEA, DHS, etc.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has ruled that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority by issuing executive orders on collective bargaining for federal employees that conflict with congressional intent.
U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson struck down key provisions of the three executive orders in a decision on Saturday, report the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and BuzzFeed News. The American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union applauded the decision in press releases here and here.
The executive orders, issued on May 25, had made it easier to fire workers for bad performance and had restricted issues that could be addressed in collective bargaining. The Trump administration will appeal.
Do your meetings turn into screaming matches or worse yet, a room full of incredibly bored people saying nothing?
These tips from an expert may help you do better.
Only 10.7 percent of American workers belong to a union today, approximately half as many as in 1983. That's a level not seen since the 1930s, just before passage of the labor law that was supposed to protect workers' right to organize.
The results obtained from nearly 4,000 respondents show that 48 percent - nearly half of nonunionized workers - would join a union if given the opportunity to do so.
It is no accident that the present focus of the right’s anti-labor agenda—in Janus, in Friedrichs, and most notoriously in Governor Scott Walker’s 2011 attack on municipal unions in Wisconsin—is on public-sector unions. The jobs are harder to outsource, and thus the unions are harder to break.
Public-sector unions make convenient targets for whipped-up envy, cast as parasites “living off the rest of us,” a role once filled by “welfare cheats.” That most of their members are women and many are women of color probably makes the transference easier.
Widening income inequality has kept steady pace with declining union membership. In addition to better wages and benefits than their US counterparts enjoy, workers in union-friendly Europe now have a greater statistical likelihood of seeing their children live more prosperous lives than they do.
Click here to read the story on the Harper's website. There are also links to other stories about the plight of labor unions in today's world. The complete article is also pasted below.
It is no accident that the present focus of the right’s anti-labor agenda—in Janus, in Friedrichs, and most notoriously in Governor Scott Walker’s 2011 attack on municipal unions in Wisconsin—is on public-sector unions. The jobs are harder to outsource, and thus the unions are harder to break. They also make up the larger share of union membership. Public-sector unions scarcely existed before the Sixties, when private-sector workers accounted for the bulk of the organized third of the American workforce. Now they make up about 6.5 percent, a little more than half of the 10.7 percent still in the union movement.
2 The Smithfield campaign resulted in the first union contract for 5,000 workers at a massive pork operation in North Carolina, then the state with the lowest union membership in the nation. As depicted in the 2016 documentary Union Time and in Jane McAlevey’s 2016 book No Shortcuts, the sixteen-year struggle was not only a victory for labor but a demonstration of class solidarity in the face of racism and nativism.
Ihad seen them in Chicago, at a diverse roundtable confab that remained in session after the larger meeting adjourned, multiple skin colors, a middle-aged man taking notes on a laptop, a young woman with buzz-cut hair. It wasn’t until I checked the day’s catch of business cards that I noticed the phrase the UE uses for its moniker: “The members run this union.” Months later, my wife and I are coming out of Riley’s Fish Shack in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, just a few miles from home, and notice two women standing at one of the entrances to the Fairbanks Scales company next to a dormant burn barrel. Beside it stands a heap of firewood along with two American flags. I drive by slowly so that I can make out what’s hand-lettered on a cardboard sign: solidarity forever and ue. The workers are on strike, and of course we stop.
10 According to a 2017 survey by the European Commission, 80 percent of Swedes expressed “positive” views of automation and artificial intelligence, technologies that caused “worry” in 72 percent of Americans responding to a Pew Research Center survey. The difference has nothing to do with native pessimism or optimism; the majority in each country responded realistically on the basis of their own social contract. Socialist robots and capitalist robots serve different masters.
The concessionary demand of most concern right now has to do with health care, an issue of particular urgency for a union like the BMWE.12 Though many of the more backbreaking tasks have been mechanized, the job is still dangerous, dusty, and, in the case of the creosote used in railroad ties, carcinogenic. Dall says it’s rare to meet a worker who’s lived more than ten years beyond his retirement. Thanks to his time spent “on the property,” he now has a clearer picture of what health care means to a worker with diabetes or a disabled child. He’s also found more consensus than he’d been led to expect. 12One of the reasons European unions have fared better than their US counterparts is that they are not engaged in costly battles to achieve and then retain benefits that social democracies provide for all citizens as a matter of course. France devotes 31.5 percent of its national budget to social spending; the United States, 19.3 percent.
Praying will not make you mentally strong, but practicing some of the tips on this list may do the trick.
I’m not just talking about doing a crossword puzzle to combat dementia -- I’m talking about becoming mentally strong. When you do, you’ll be better equipped to regulate your thoughts, manage your emotions and boost your productivity.
The 12 things mentally strong people do.
“Research from the University of California in San Francisco shows that the more difficulty you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression,” writes Travis Bradberry, Ph. D. Saying “no” may be a problem for some, but not for the mentally strong. Instead of accepting every social invite or helping co-workers with every project, they just say “no.” This way, they can complete their own work and not over commit themselves.
If you think you’re a failure, guess what? You’ll probably end up failing. That self-fulfilling prophecy is predicting your fate.
Instead, use that self-fulfilling prophecy to your advantage by believing you’re going to succeed. This can be a challenge, but it’s possible if you pay attention to your thoughts. Don’t ignore those negative thoughts -- acknowledge them, and then do something positive to distract yourself. Take a look at the evidence on both sides. By jotting down the good and the bad, you’ll notice that some of those negative thoughts are irrational. Find balance: Rather than beat yourself up, look at your flaws as ways to improve.
4. They expose themselves to pain. Muhammad Ali once said that he didn't count his sit-ups; he only started counting when it hurt because those were the ones that counted.
When I started my first business, things were tough -- especially when it failed. To rub salt in the wound, I saw my neighbors purchasing new cars or high school friends posting pictures of their travels.
For them, that meant they were successful.
Even though my business failed, I was still successful. I had an amazing wife and was able to pick myself back up. Today, I’m a successful entrepreneur. That’s not to boast. My point is that the successful have their own definition of success. For example, I work with freelancers who don’t make what some would consider a lot of money. But they see themselves as successful because they’re doing what they love with a flexible schedule.
There’s a well-known Stanford University study in which an administrator left a child alone with a marshmallow for 15 minutes. The experimenter, before leaving, told the child that she could eat the marshmallow. However, if she waited until he returned, she would get a second marshmallow.
After 40 years of research, it was found that the children who waited experienced better outcomes in life, including higher SAT scores, greater career success and even a lower body mass index.
The point is that delaying gratification is paramount to success. That’s why people with mental strength are willing to put off gratification. They know that results only take place after they’ve put in the time and effort.
Mentally strong people practice realistic optimism instead. This means they take into account the challenges facing them and focus on what they can do to accept or overcome those realities. I've found that most start with schedule things ahead of when they need to be done. This way they are optimistic and have wiggle room.
Instead, they appreciate others and celebrate their accomplishments with them. This creates optimism -- which is a win-win for everyone. According to a Harvard University study, a sense of optimism may be able to reduce the risk from dying of major causes, such as cardiovascular disease.
11. They enjoy feeling scared. Most people run away from their fears, but not the mentally strong. They not only seek them out, but they also enjoy the feeling of being scared. That may sound unusual, but they realize that being afraid pushes them out of their comfort zone. As a result, they experience new things, meet new people and learn more about themselves. There are also health benefits associated with fear. This includes keeping your brain vigilant and alert, balancing bodily functions like your immune system and motivating you to accomplish goals.
12. They respect, and even like, their competitors. Mentally strong people aren’t afraid, intimidated by or jealous of their competitors. In fact, they respect and even like them.
They realize their competitors can be their greatest teachers. They can learn what the competition did right or wrong. They can see what differentiates them and use that as inspiration for their own next move.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates had a love-hate relationship.
However, both men ultimately supported and respected each other, with Gates once saying, "I’d give a lot to have Steve’s taste." Jobs admitted, "I admire him for the company he built — it’s impressive — and I enjoyed working with him. He’s bright and actually has a good sense of humor."
Becoming mentally strong doesn't happen overnight, but it's worth the journey. It can make you -- and your business -- resilient enough to withstand anything.
Rick Pinckard, a leading law enforcement labor attorney out of southern California has put together a list of tips to help you survive and thrive after the Janus vs AFSCME ruling.
In response to the Janus decision, we put together a quick FAQ (frequently asked questions) and emailed it to all of our POA Presidents to provide guidance on how the decision will impact their labor organization. We thought you might find some of this information useful. This FAQ was drafted in the context of California statutory public sector labor law. Laws from state to state may vary. At one point in California, there was legislative movement to require public sector labor organizations to obtain affirmative written consent from each member to allow payroll deductions for union dues. That movement died in California, but may have been successfully adopted by other states.
As you all know by now the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Janus v. AFSCME. The resulting barrage of commentary may render it difficult to discern what is important for each of your Associations to glean from this decision. Accordingly, I am presenting information below to assist you in providing guidance and answers to both you and your members as they inquire into the significance of the decision.
1. Q - Does this decision change existing law?
A - Yes. In this decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has overruled the law established by Abood v. Detroit Bd. Of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977). In Abood, the U.S. Supreme Court approved the mandatory/involuntary collection of agency-shop/fair-share fees.
2. Q - Does this decision eliminate public sector employee unions? A - No. The decision prohibits public sector unions from compelling the involuntary or non-consensual payment of agency shop fees from non-members.
3. Q - Does this decision eliminate agency shop provisions in public sector collective bargaining agreements?
A - To the extent that such provisions allow the employer, at the behest of the union, to collect agency fees from non-members, those provisions are no longer deemed constitutional.
4. Q - If my Association does not exist as a closed agency shop, does this decision require me or the Association to do anything different than what we've been doing?
5. Q - How do I know if I work in a closed agency shop?
A - It will be in your collective bargaining agreement (labor contract) with your City, County or District. Currently, most of our client Associations are not agency shops.
6. Q - From this date forward, will my Association now be required to get signed permission on an on-going basis, to collect Association dues?
A - No, not from members.
7. Q - Can non-members agree to voluntarily pay an agency fee?
A - Yes. But, any non-member who waives their Constitutional rights so that an agency fee can be collected from them, must sign a written waiver granting consent to the Association to collect the fee; such waivers should be obtained on the same cycle that would have applied to distribution of Hudson letters. Additionally, the agency fee would still have to be calculated from an audit, using as much precision as possible to accurately identify the chargeable and non-chargeable expenses.
8. Q - For Associations which had agency shop status, is there a requirement that the Association refund any and all agency fees which have been collected over the entire period of time the employee was a non-member?
A - No. Prior to the Janus decision, collection of agency fees was deemed constitutional by the precedent established in the Abood decision. Pro rata refunding to fee payers, covering the period since the date of the Janus decision (yesterday) would be appropriate.
9. Q - My Association had been thinking of negotiating for agency shop status; is that now prohibited?
A - No. However, you will not be able to compel the involuntary payment of an agency fee from those employees who choose not to join the Association.
10. Q - Under the duty of fair representation, does my Association still have the duty to bargain for non-members, even if the non-members don't pay their fair share? A - Yes, unless and until State law changes.
Keep in mind that our brothers and sisters in law enforcement recognize the tremendous benefits of Association membership for things such as public safety legislative influence through statewide organizations such as PORAC, supplemental insurance, support of widows and orphans, retiree medical trusts, filing and litigating grievances, criminal defense and administrative legal defense.
These benefits are only available to Association members. It is for this reason that most of your Associations enjoy 100% (or close to that) voluntary membership. The Janus decision does not change this. The decision only applies to Associations which are agency shops, and within those groups, the decision benefits only those employees who are non-members. There will likely be legislative proposals to amend both federal and state laws to adjust to the paradigm shift presented by this decision. For now, we'll all have to watch and when appropriate, join the conversation as active participants in any legislative activity.
Please feel free to reach out to us with any questions or concerns you may individually or collectively have, or any questions brought to you by your members or non-members. We will do our best to guide you through the uncertainty.
This is not just an attack on a few specific unions. It’s an attack on unions as institutions. The anti-worker right, bankrolled by conservative billionaires, has finally gotten the victory it’s been looking for through years and repeated well-funded Supreme Court challenges to a 40-year-old precedent. Janus v. AFSCME once again challenged the requirement that people represented by public sector unions who choose not to join the union still have to pay a fair share fee to cover the direct costs for representing them. That is, they’re paying the costs of collective bargaining and other things from which they personally benefit, not for any union political activity. But Republicans and their wealthy donors saw an attack on even that fair share fee as a way to weaken unions. And now, on the third try in recent years, with Neil Gorsuch on the court, the right got its win.
Recent decisions upholding President Trump’s travel ban and Texas’ racially skewed voting districts are body blows to this optimism. They are unhappy reminders that, for much of American history, the Supreme Court has been a deeply conservative institution, preserving racial hierarchy and the prerogatives of employers.
When it comes to economic inequality, today’s Supreme Court is not only failing to help, it is also aggressively making itself part of the problem in a time when inequality and insecurity are damaging the country and endangering our democracy.
Under Chief Justice John Roberts, the court has consistently issued bold, partisan decisions that have been terrible for working people. Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, decided on Wednesday, was one of them.
Just hours after that decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement. With this “swing” vote gone, Chief Justice Roberts will now likely take even more control over the direction of issues related to economic inequality — a direction that is earning him a legacy as chief justice of bosses, not workers.
"We conclude that this arrangement violates the free speech rights of nonmembers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern," wrote Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the majority.
President Trump's victory allowed him to replace Scalia with Gorsuch who, as expected, cast the fifth vote for the conservatives.
The current case was launched by Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner shortly after he took office. He sued to stop the forced collection of union fees, but a federal judge in Chicago said he had no standing to sue since he did not have to pay the fees. So Mark Janus, a state employee from Springfield, stepped forward as a plaintiff. He said he did want to pay $45 a month to support the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
As expected, he lost in the 7th Circuit Court in Chicago because such union fees were legal under the court's previous precedent, now overturned.
Cynthia Brown is the founder and former publisher of American Police Beat and has been serving the law enforcement profession for over 40 years starting out with a stint with the first community police program in the country in the mid-70's in Boston.
Cynthia is the author of Brave Hearts: Stories of Pride, Pain and Courage. Sold over 20,000 copies and used in over 50 police academies as curriculum material. Email Cynthia at cynthia@cynthiabrown.netfor more information.
House Republicans accused unionized federal workers last Thursday of abusing a law that allows them to take paid time off to attend labor-management meetings and address workforce issues outside their regular jobs.
In a survey, a panel of the House Oversight Committee found that more than 12,500 employees took advantage of legally sanctioned time off, known as "official time," for labor-related activities such as worker disputes, whistleblowing and collective bargaining.
"Some collective bargaining agreements allow certain labor union employees to spend 100 percent of their time on official time," Republican staff wrote. "These employees are subsidized by American taxpayer dollars, but do not have to do their regularly assigned work."
That conclusion echoed the findings of an OPM biennial report on official time, which OPM Director Jeff Pon labeled as "Taxpayer Funded Union Time within the Federal Government." Pon estimated that the taxpayer cost of employees using official time was up nearly 7.6 percent, to $174.8 million, in fiscal 2016 from two years earlier.
Democrats and unions challenged those conclusions , calling them part of a broader assault against career civil servants led by President Donald Trump, who has accused the "deep state" of thwarting his policy agenda.
In a statement submitted to the House Oversight Government Operations Subcommittee, the American Federation of Government Employees disputed that official time was "union time," saying the time was not used to recruit union members, hold union meetings, campaign or hold elections for union office, or collect dues. Rather, AFGE said, "it is time spent representing workers who are the victims of illegal discrimination, illegal harassment, or other prohibited personnel practices."
"Misleading reports on official time are just the latest barrage in a series of attacks aimed at reducing protections for federal employees in the workplace," said AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. in a written statement. "Federal workers assure delivery of services over politics, and the unions that represent workers help preserve civilian protections over partisanship."
"The Trump administration is launching a multi-front attack on our independent civil service," said Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.). "These actions will harm middle-class workers who dedicate their lives to public service, impair our ability to recruit and retain the best and brightest, and degrade the services that our government delivers to the American people."
Pon has called for revising civil service laws, including changes to official time and a $143.5 billion rollback of pension benefits. An OPM spokeswoman denied rumors of civil service layoffs, saying "there are no high-level" discussions about a reduction in the federal workforce.
But change already is happening at the agency level. In March, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos unilaterally imposed a new contract on the agency's nearly 4,000 unionized employees, prompting AFGE to file a complaint to the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
Statement from AFGE website: WASHINGTON - President Trump is attempting to silence the voice of veterans, law enforcement officers, and other frontline federal workers through a series of executive orders intended to strip federal employees of their decades-old right to representation at the worksite, the American Federation of Government Employees said today.
"This is more than union busting - it's democracy busting," AFGE National President J. David Cox Sr. said. "These executive orders are a direct assault on the legal rights and protections that Congress has specifically guaranteed to the 2 million public-sector employees across the country who work for the federal government."
"Our government is built on a system of checks and balances to prevent any one person from having too much influence. President Trump's executive orders will undo all of that. This administration seems hellbent on replacing a civil service that works for all taxpayers with a political service that serves at its whim."
"Federal employees swear an oath to serve this country. The American people rightly expect that federal employees go to work every day and do the jobs they were hired to do - whether it's ensuring our food is safe to eat, caring for veterans who were injured while serving their country, preventing illegal weapons and drugs from crossing our borders, or helping communities recover from hurricanes and other disasters."
"President Trump's executive orders do nothing to help federal workers do their jobs better. In fact, they do the opposite by depriving workers of their rights to address and resolve workplace issues such as sexual harassment, racial discrimination, retaliation against whistleblowers, improving workplace health and safety, enforcing reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities, and so much more."
"These executive orders strip agencies of their right to bargain terms and conditions of employment and replace it with a politically charged scheme to fire employees without due process," Cox said.
* Successfully negotiate equipping federal correctional officers with pepper spray to keep them safe on the job.
"All federal employees, whether they belong to a union or not, are guaranteed the right to fair representation. Employees who volunteer to serve as union representatives use official time to carry out those representational activities ," Cox said.
"It's a policy that has saved taxpayers in the long run because it helps resolve isolated conflicts that arise in the workplace before they become costly, agency-wide problems. And contrary to some reports, official time is never used to conduct union-specific business, solicit members, hold internal union meetings, elect union officers, or engage in partisan political activities."
"By preventing problem solving, these executive orders will create inefficiencies and hinder the ability of dedicated federal employees to effectively deliver services to the American public."
Ron DeLord is recognized as a leading public safety union contract negotiator; an expert on police and fire unions in United States; and an author and lecturer on public safety union leadership, power, organization, media and political action.
Cynthia is the author of Brave Hearts: Stories of Pride, Pain and Courage. Sold over 20,000 copies and used in over 50 police academies as curriculum material.
Ron is the co-author of Law Enforcement, Police Unions, and the Future: Educating Police Management and Unions About the Challenges Ahead.

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