The Supreme Court’s decision on union dues could cost New York’s powerful public-employee unions as much as $112 million annually, according to a report.…
The Supreme Court’s decision on union dues could cost New York’s powerful public-employee unions as much as $112 million annually, according to a report.
A study by the Empire Center found that New York’s public employees paid $750 million in dues and $112 million in fees charged to non-union members for collective bargaining, which the court ruled this week are unconstitutional.
New York’s public workforce is among the most unionized in the country, representing 73 percent of local and state employees, who paid $862 million in total fees in 2016.
Union leaders said they intend to combat the high court’s decision through “organizing and education.”
“The TWU is a fighting union; our members are going to stand up,” said John Samuelsen, the former longtime head of the Transport Workers Union Local 100, who now leads the national organization.
“We’re positioned pretty well,” Samuelsen said.
Conservative groups celebrated the decision in the case, Janus v. AFSCME.
“The Janus decision immediately puts $112 million back in the pockets of roughly 200,000 New Yorkers who chose not to join unions,” said Empire Center spokeswoman Abigail Salvatore.
“This is a groundbreaking win for them — and for the other 1 million public-sector workers who now have a real choice in whether or not to support inherently political government unions.”
The center’s study focuses on New York City and state governments — which account for about half the state’s total public-sector workforce — because their accounting systems differentiate between union dues and agency fees.
It found that those unions collected about $460 million in union dues and fees in 2016, including $53 million in agency fees from nonmember employees.
Extrapolating those figures to the rest of the state’s public-sector workforce in other cities and towns, the center calculated the total could grow to $112 million, potentially cutting union budgets around the state by an eighth.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill in April to insulate public-sector unions from the fallout from the expected ruling by making it easier for them to recruit and register workers.
The powerful United Federation of Teachers said it doesn’t expect a big hit to its treasury.
“Agency-fee payers constitute less than eight tenths of 1 percent of the full time DOE employees represented by the UFT, which has made the appropriate budget adjustments to cover any financial impact,” said a spokesperson.
