While legislatures nationwide, including New Mexico’s, will be meeting in January, the US Supreme Court will be hearing the Friedrich’s v. California Teachers Association.
The case, if decided in favor of Friedrichs, a California teacher, would restore the First Amendment right to free speech for government workers who currently are forced to pay dues to unions which in turn use those dollars to engage in the political process in ways that many of those workers may not agree with. The idea is that workers should not be compelled to engage in “speech.”
Ultimately, the case could lead to “right to work” for all public workers in the United States when the decision is handed down by the Court this summer. That has the public sector unions running scared. The hard-left In these Times said the case could “decimate American public sector unionism”
Public sector unions are key because they represent the only real area of growth in the union movement:
We at the Rio Grande Foundation, of course, oppose coerced speech. If individuals want to join unions and pay dues, they should be allowed to do so, but no one (especially someone who works for the government) should have their hard-earned money forcibly extracted and handed over to special interests with whom they disagree. Also, none other than Franklin Delano Roosevelt opposed the very concept of public sector unions.
One of the great Kennedy legacies is the widespread growth in public-sector unions. Public-sector unions have increased the cost of governance for over 50 years, especially in the education “profession” (With losses in absolute sense in every identifiable measure); in public safety, with bargaining units consisting of every employee but the Chief in some jurisdictions, and more effort to influence elections of those promising increased wages/benefits; and at the Federal level, with supposed “professional” employees members of bargaining units along with “rank and file”. There has been little or no differentiation one group from the other, but costs have risen alarmingly.
All toward one end. Go ahead and guess.
By definition, progressivism is collectivism.