Compelled speech and the Friedrichs challenge
Rebecca Friedrichs, a teacher, and her attorney Terry Pell appeared on the show to discuss a Supreme Court case challenging compulsory union dues in the public sector. Friedrichs described herself as a “fee payer” rather than a dues payer, paying about 70% of dues, which in her case ran around $650 to $700 a year. She said that as a fee payer she was not given a vote within collective bargaining, could not serve in leadership, and was “completely voiceless,” yet her money was taken. A Teacher’s Brave Stand Against Her Union – Rebecca Friedrichs and Terry Pell (2017)
Friedrichs said the union’s core values were in direct opposition to her own and that the union’s values “impact every political decision and collective bargaining stance that they take.” She argued that no matter where her fees were directed—toward overt politics or toward collective bargaining—those fees were used to promote the union’s political agenda. Bob Zadek asked whether the union was not simply a democratic collection of members in which she had one vote. Friedrichs responded that she had never been given a vote on whether she wanted the union at all, because it was voted in when she was a small child, and that the union says it speaks for all teachers but in reality speaks for itself. A Teacher’s Brave Stand Against Her Union – Rebecca Friedrichs and Terry Pell (2017)
A caller named Nick described his sister being forced out of the school system and friends with biotech experience who were blocked from teaching positions when the union hired teachers from Poland instead. Friedrichs agreed with the caller that the best candidate should be hired and said she disconnected from her union “in a big way” because she saw herself as a public servant while the union approached collective bargaining as if she were entitled to a whole bunch of stuff. She described what she called a “one-two punch”: tenure laws the unions fought for, combined with collectively bargained grievance procedures, making it almost impossible for administrators to discipline underperforming or abusive teachers. She said she had seen abusive teachers who were not fired because administrators ran “headlong into the union-engineered grievance procedures.” A Teacher’s Brave Stand Against Her Union – Rebecca Friedrichs and Terry Pell (2017)
The Janus case and the duty of fair representation
Jonathan Tasini, discussing Janus v. AFSCME, described a “well-funded campaign” behind the series of cases leading up to it, naming the Scaife Foundation and “anti-union billionaire sons” as funders, and said the goal was to destroy the labor movement. He said a study by the Economic Policy Institute laid out who was behind the cases. The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018)
Tasini explained that unions are required under law to provide what is known as Duty of Fair Representation, or DFR, and that Duty of Fair Representation cases are among the largest categories of cases for union-side labor lawyers. He said that anyone under the union contract—whether a member or an agency-fee payer—can bring such a case if a grievance is not handled well. He argued that unions are required to represent everybody whether they are members or not, and that this costs a lot of money. He invoked the principle that “you don’t get something for free,” and said that a case known as Abood, a long-standing precedent, held that in the public sector you have every right not to belong to a union but must pay a fee to pay for the service that brings you the benefit of collective bargaining. He called that the fairest approach and a reasonable and logical one that the Supreme Court decided 40 years ago. The Two Faces of Janus v. AFSCME (2018)
Public versus private unions
Philip K. Howard, author of Not Accountable, argued that public service unions are fundamentally different from private service unions. He said the collective bargaining power of public employee unions came in during the late 1960s, not because of any scandal or abuse but because union leaders wanted more power, whereas private unions originated during the Progressive Era in response to factories abusing child labor and unsafe conditions. He said there was never any need for public employee unions and compared the difference to that between “a fish and a mammal.” Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023)
Howard gave four differences. First, incentives: in a trade union like the auto workers, both sides have a vested interest in the viability of the enterprise, because if the company moves or goes out of business, workers lose their jobs; with public unions, the government cannot move, so unions can demand anything. Second, in the private context the argument is about the split between capital and labor, while in the public context officials are not paying—taxpayers are—so unions can demand anything they can get away with. Third, he cited an ethical difference, quoting Franklin D. Roosevelt: “The process of collective bargaining cannot be transferred to the public sector,” because public employees have a sworn duty of loyalty to serve the public. Fourth, he said trade union negotiations are an honest adversarial process where collusion would be unlawful, while public union negotiations are “nothing but collusion”—unions amass power, get people elected, staff campaigns, and then sit on the same side of the table as the officials, making it “not a negotiation; it’s a payoff.” Bob Zadek clarified that Howard did not mean the conduct was illegal, and Howard agreed it would be illegal in the private sector but is not illegal in the public sector, though he called it dishonest. Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023)
The merit system and work rules
Howard argued that civil service was “supposed to be a merit system” and was not a process of tenure or lifetime employment but of neutral hiring to replace the spoils system. He said that ironically, a hundred and something years later, public employees are now the spoils system again, except permanent, because nobody ever loses their job no matter how lousy they are, due to total union control. He said a merit system that protects against arbitrary firings by having somebody else exercise judgment would be fine, but the system must honor human judgment and responsibility rather than being “a bunch of rigid legal armor.” He said you have to get rid of collective bargaining, which puts unions first in line for benefits ahead of the public, and he attributed bankrupt states like California, lousy schools, toxic police cultures, and transit systems costing three times what they ought to cost to absurd work rules. Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023)
Bob Zadek said the genius of public service unions was the marketing savvy of coining the phrase “public service,” and that they are really union service organizations because that is who they serve. He argued that due process is a specific concept dealing with governmental behavior in a criminal context and has nothing to do with the conversation, just as the First Amendment does not apply to employment relationships. He said a civil service system with rules designed to protect workers from arbitrary treatment by political bosses makes eminent sense, but that the system now deals with work rules governing the quality of life of workers, and that is where accountability is lost. Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023)
Howard said that for any successful organization, everyone must believe everyone will be accountable for their performance, and that the foundation for trust disappears if you can keep your job by sleeping all day. He cited stories of teachers who sleep during class and cannot lose their job, and a hearing Steve Brill watched where a teacher who never graded papers defended herself by saying the city could not come up with any writing instructing her to grade papers. He said the deck is stacked in police departments: an officer cannot be interviewed for a certain number of days, cannot be interviewed until he has seen every other witness statement so he can tailor his testimony, and the arbitrators who decide are picked by the police union. He described work rules designed for featherbedding: a transit crew in New York cannot remove a broken branch because it is not in their job description, so a whole new crew must come; and when subway cars were being cleaned during COVID, a private contractor did three times as much work for the dollar. Government by the Unions, of the Unions, for the Unions (2023)
Across episodes
The three episodes span 2017 to 2023. The 2017 Friedrichs episode and the 2018 Janus episode both address compulsory fees and the First Amendment, with Friedrichs and Pell arguing that fees compel speech and Tasini defending fair-share fees under Abood and the duty of fair representation. The 2023 Howard episode shifts from the fee question to the structural argument that public-sector collective bargaining is categorically different from private-sector bargaining and should be eliminated. The excerpts show a development from a rights-based challenge to compulsory fees toward a broader critique of public-sector bargaining as inherently collusive and incompatible with merit-based civil service.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state the outcome of Friedrichs v. CTA or Janus v. AFSCME, nor which amendments the cases turned on. They do not give the names of the tenure laws or grievance statutes Friedrichs references, nor the state in which her case arose. The excerpts do not provide the founding date of the Scaife Foundation or the full title of the Economic Policy Institute study Tasini mentions. Several excerpts break off mid-sentence or mid-exchange, and no excerpt states the current legal status of fair-share fees after the cases discussed.