The Supreme Court’s unambiguous directive to unions has been largely ignored in the Constitution State.
The Supreme Court’s unambiguous directive to unions has been largely ignored in the Constitution State.
Y es, all government employees have Janus rights. But try enjoying them in blue states such as Connecticut. Here, practice falls short of theory, as important free-speech guarantees prove elusive for many workers.
Cash-desperate public-union bosses have seen to that.
Janus, the momentous 2018 Supreme Court decision that empowered workers’ First Amendment rights by kneecapping forced unionization and compulsory dues-paying for state and local government employees, poses a significant threat to the fiscal spigot that for decades has flooded Big Labor’s coffers, where the boodle has been put to use for preferred Democrat candidates and liberal referenda. At its core, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion — which upended the reigning jurisprudence of the Court’s unworkable 1977 Abood decision — created an “opt out” for workers. Really, Janus specifies that employees must provide “opt in” consent to union membership before their paychecks are dunned for onerous dues and agency fees:
States and public-sector unions may no longer extract agency fees from nonconsenting employees. The First Amendment is violated when money is taken from nonconsenting employees for a public-sector union; employees must choose to support the union before anything is taken from them. Accordingly, neither an agency fee nor any other form of payment to a public-sector union may be deducted from an employee, nor may any other attempt be made to collect such a payment, unless the employee affirmatively consents to pay.
This High Court’s unambiguous declaration has had little resonance in the Constitution State, where the clarity of Alito’s directive has been obfuscated and mugged by union practices, and where the ability to exercise the First Amendment is essentially precluded for eleven months of the year.
Teachers — plenty of whom are not leftists — know this well. The Connecticut Education Association (CEA) and its local affiliates — the labor home for the vast majority of the state’s K-through-12 educators (the American Federation of Teachers is a power center in the large cities of Hartford and New Haven) — have treated Janus compliance with contempt. Per the ruling, the affirmative consent required for union membership proved AWOL for teachers who were employed when the SCOTUS decision was rendered. Grandfathering prevailed. As for opting out, it’s a thing still found in membership form’s fine print — a right never to be raised by a shop steward and relegated to the dog days of summer. Here, from the CEA’s online registration:
I agree to pay on a continuing basis, by any payment method accepted by the CONNECTICUT EDUCATION ASSOCIATION, and regardless of my membership status, the modified annual dues, fees, and assessments established by the governing bodies of the three associations unless I provide written notification to the CONNECTICUT EDUCATION ASSOCIATION between August 1 and August 31 of the membership year immediately preceding the membership year in which the payments are cancelled.
“The First Amendment,” argues Michael Costanza — a sixth-grade teacher at North Stonington Elementary School and founder of Constitution State Educators (CSE), organized earlier this year to alert teachers of the hoop-jumping way to invoke their Janus rights — “doesn’t apply only one month of the year.” Describing the CEA’s high-tech means to approve membership — “there are apps and an online form, it’s paperless and immediate and pro-rated; you can become a dues-paying union member in 20 minutes” — Costanza condemns the CEA’s approach to Janus as “absurd and insulting.” It’s even “comical,” he adds, since there is “no reason, logistically or legally, why leaving a union should be more burdensome than joining it.”
But it is. Exiting the CEA requires “snail mail” correspondence that must be received in August. Too bad for the teacher who sends an opt-out letter on September 1: She’ll have to wait a year (during which an average of $850 in dues will be collected) to enjoy her Janus rights.
Well, not all Connecticut teachers wait. Those with gumption — such as Plainville middle-school teacher Christina Corvello — have exposed the CEA’s tendency to fold in the face of individual legal threats rather than change its arbitrary narrow-window rule. In 2021, peeved at the policies promoted by CEA’s leadership, particularly Covid-19 restrictions that she “believed worked against the interests of students and teachers,” Corvello began to press the union for an immediate opt-out, only to be told — it ain’t August.
After months of repeated rebuffs, Corvello reached out for help from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Once the lawyers got involved, the CEA immediately folded and — exercising its strange empowerment to approve who can and who can’t enjoy free speech — granted her right.
Corvello’s was a win, but an anecdotal one. A thing to be heralded, true but to Costanza, it is proof that Connecticut government worker unions are at the mercy of “a consistent policy that is applied inconsistently.” As for Connecticut’s other big teachers’ union, the AFT, Costanza says its policy for an opt-out period is to “leave it up to the locals.” He tells of how municipal union reps gaslight teachers: “They go classroom to classroom making disingenuous requests to ‘update paperwork,’” whose fine-print language means that a signature will result in union-membership consent. The result, he says, is that Connecticut’s AFT has “an inconsistent policy that is consistently applied . . . inconsistently.”
The narrow-window squeeze is endured and suffered by non-teachers too. According to the Yankee Institute, the state’s pro-liberty think tank and the primary voice championing workers’ Janus rights:
Most state employee contracts require only 30 day written notice, but some contracts and membership cards contain time restrictions. For example, AFCSME membership cards say a member can only opt out during a 30 day window coinciding with their membership anniversary date.
Frank Ricci — a retired firefighter and former president of the New Haven Firefighters Local 825, and now the Yankee Institute’s Fellow of Labor & Special Initiatives — says that opt-out windows “equate to a dues grab where the union picks the pockets of their workers who are trying to leave.” Besides the money, it’s about power: The “small print of membership cards,” Ricci says, “are designed to trap the worker into membership.” The tactics result in “defying the Janus decision and increasing the union’s political power.”
Narrow opt-out windows, fine print, contrived work-anniversary triggers, and related obstacles litter the political battlefield in the Nutmeg State, where Big Labor holds the current upper hand in efforts to circumvent Janus. Still, a pushback, small but determined, gels — inspired in part by the Yankee Institute and discernible in the growth of Costanza’s social-media-based organization. While not advocating the decimation of unions, and taking pains to express respect for the pro-membership decisions that individual educators make, Constitution State Educators is having success in widening it efforts to alert teachers about the existence of their Janus rights (something government-union officials are loath to do). On a practical level, its detailed, scripted steps on how to opt out have proven to be a reliable (and free) resource that has helped many to leave their unions. (CSE also directs teachers to benefits-providing nonunion alternative organizations, such as the Association of American Educators.)
August approaches, so it’s the busy season for CSE — and for the First Amendment. Until then, it will be mothballed in the Constitution State — a moniker so undeserved in Connecticut.