N.J. union leader: Future of organized labor is in Supreme Court’s hands | Opinion
Taken from Nj.com, February 21, 2018
By Charles Wowkanech
The U.S. Supreme Court soon will be the stage of one of the most consequential fights in the history of the American worker.
Anyone concerned with the future of middle-class jobs in our nation deserves to get the facts. Rather than sifting through the complexities of this legal battle, the goal of this article is to make clear to readers the real-life implications of this impending court decision.
The case is called Janus v. AFSCME, and it is scheduled to be heard by the court on Feb. 26. At its core, this case is a direct attack on collective bargaining rights and undermines the ability of all workers to join together and negotiate with their employer for better wages, benefits and working conditions.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of wage and salary workers who were members of a union was 10.7 percent in 2017, down from a peak of 33.4 percent in 1945. This might lead someone to ask: If union membership is such a small proportion of the workforce, why should anyone worry?