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Supreme Court Cases: Abood V. Detroit Board Of Education

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Reaction Paper #3: Labor Unions For the past four decades’ labor unions have been a major component of workers lives within the United States of America. In the 1977 case Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the Supreme Court upheld mandatory dues for public employee-unions. A labor union is responsible for protecting and furthering the rights of the employees who belong to them. There is a case that is currently challenging the constitutionality of Abood, which could potentially eliminate the mandatory dues. In Charles Lane’s article, he argues that public unions have lost touch with those who are part of the union and that if they fail, they have no one but themselves to blame. The second article, written by George Will, discusses …show more content…

And they have themselves to blame, discusses how labor unions have increased the cost of state and local government and have made it far more complex. The two court cases, he’s discussing are Abood v. Detroit Board of Education and Janus v. AFSCME. When Abood, was first decided upon, it was to eliminate free-riders within labor unions. Now the issue according to Lane, is that labor unions have gotten so large and they make it difficult to govern within the states they are in. Since labor unions have expanded in size they have also disconnected with those who are in the …show more content…

Prior to reading these articles, I was not fully aware of either of these Supreme Court cases, but after reading them and doing some additional research I have a better understanding. The article that I best related to was the New York Times piece written by Yvonne Walker. Yvonne spent much of his time explaining what will come if the Supreme Court rules in favor of Jamus. As a middle class citizen, I agree entirely with the practice of labor unions. In my opinion the only people who disagrees with labor unions are the wealthy. A majority of the employers who are unhappy with labor unions happen to fall into the upper class. I think that it’s extremely important to have labor unions there to negotiate better contracts, higher wages as well as increased benefits. If there are no labor unions who will be there to help the middle and lower class. My biggest worry is that if individuals are no longer required to pay labor union fees, they will no longer be able to pay the negotiators and that labor unions will fall. If labor unions fall then I believe just like Yvonne does, that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer, just adding to the inequality in

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