Previously, I was employed at a community college in Connecticut. During the hiring process I was informed that the State of Connecticut has what is called an “agency shop”. Under this arrangement, the state employees voted to have all employees represented by the union. Although I was not in favor of joining the union, I would have been forced to still pay the union dues. This is due to the collective bargaining of the union on behalf of all employees. Ultimately I joined the union and made sure to actively participate in the meeting and decision making process. Precedent was established for the decision in Knox vs. …show more content…
SIEU, in two previous Supreme Court decisions. In Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977), the court determined that a public-sector union may charge nonmembers for "chargeable expenses" related to collective bargaining but may not require nonmembers to fund the union's political and ideological activities. In Teachers v. Hudson, (1986), the Court established procedural requirements that a union must meet to collect fees from nonmembers without violating their First Amendment rights not to be compelled to fund speech with which they disagree. These procedures require the union to give employees a notice informing them of the union fee for the year ahead and an estimate of the portion of the union's total expenditures in the coming year that will be dedicated to chargeable collective-bargaining activities, as opposed to non-chargeable political or ideological activities. If an employee who is not a member of the union objects to payment of the full amount of union dues, that employee is required to pay only the proportion of the dues that relate to chargeable collective-bargaining activities. This notice is known as a "Hudson notice." (Jones, Webber, 2012) In this case, the public-sector union sent the required Hudson notice to the employees in 2005, informing them of the union fee for the year ahead. It estimated that 56.35% of the total dues were attributable to collective-bargaining activities and stated that the fee was subject to increase at any time without further notice. Nonunion employees had 30 days to object to payment of the full amount of the dues, in which case the objecting employee would have to pay only 56.35% of the total dues. Shortly after sending the Hudson notice, the union joined a coalition of public-sector unions in opposing certain ballot propositions in California. Just after the 30-day objection period for the Hudson notice ended, the union proposed a temporary 25% increase in employee fees, which the union said was needed to achieve the union's political objectives, and sent employees a letter that increased previous caps on the amount of dues that employees would be required to pay. Employees who had objected to the previous Hudson notice were required to pay only 56.35% of the new assessment, but employees who had not objected to the previous notice had to pay the entire assessment and were not given an opportunity to object to it. A class of nonunion employees sued the union, arguing that the union improperly required the employees who had objected to the original Hudson notice to pay 56.35% of an assessment that was devoted to political expenditures they found objectionable, and improperly denied employees who had not objected to the original Hudson notice a chance to object to the special assessment. The District Court granted summary judgment for the employees, finding that the union intended to use the entire special assessment for political purposes. The Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that a court must engage in a balancing test to determine whether the procedure that the union