California’s political landscape is changing, and that’s cause for celebration. In 2018, the Supreme Court’s Janus ruling prohibited the collection of union dues from public employees as a condition of employment. Before that ruling, with few exceptions, no dues meant no job. By protecting a worker’s right to choose to financially support a union, Janus...

Five years ago this week, the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed the First Amendment right of government workers to opt out of their unions.  In Janus vs AFSCME, decided on June 27, 2018, the Court ruled that public-sector employees have the right to opt out of union representation and cannot be forced to pay union dues....

Internal California Teachers Association documents reveal the union has far fewer members than it claims – and that union leaders expect that number to drop farther. Investigative journalist Mike Antonucci reports that union’s 2022-23 fiscal year budget has the number at 267,270 – a loss of 42,730 members or nearly 14 percent. The California Teachers...

California’s largest union has two names it doesn’t want members to know about. The first is Alma Hernandez. The second is Mark Janus. Hernandez is the now-former top boss at California’s largest labor union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). In a truly let-them-eat-cake-moment, she’s been charged on multiple counts of embezzlement and tax fraud...

Over a quarter-million California workers are exercising new-found freedoms, despite lawmakers’ and unions’ attempt to prevent them from doing so.   In the past three years, an estimated 306,000 Californians – representing 20% of the public workforce – have stopped paying dues and fees to unions. This means they are able to keep approximately $240 million...

In 2018, the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark Janus decision, confirming that it’s unconstitutional for government employers to deduct union dues or fees from employee paychecks without the employee’s permission. In other words, no employee whose workplace is represented by a government union can be forced to pay any part of his or...

More than a year after court recognized First Amendment protects state workers from mandatory union payments, IOUE union officials claim forced fees are legal in California  Sacramento, CA (October 31, 2019) – A Sacramento County employee has filed an unfair labor practice charge with California’s Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) against the International Union of...

Based on an estimated total membership of 1.1 million and average dues per member of around $700, California’s public sector unions collect and spend approximately $800 million per year. The impact of the June 2018 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in the case Janus vs AFSCME may have chopped around $50 million off that annual total, by eliminating the union’s...

In a special election earlier this week, Brian Dahle defeated Kevin Kiley in the race to become the next California State Senator representing District One, which sprawls north from the foothills east of Sacramento all the way to the Oregon border. Both candidates were Republican members of the State Assembly, competing in one of the few safe Republican districts left...

California’s government union leaders love their monopoly — their control over government employees, public officials and the public. So by June 27, when the Supreme Court declared in Janus v AFSCME that a “state’s extraction of agency fees from nonconsenting public sector employees violates the First Amendment,” union leaders already controlled the information field. In...