Goodbye unions....... goodbye decent wages.

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COMMENTS: 
*  When you ask why the Koch brothers are doing this, the obvious answer is to break down collective bargaining so that they can hold down or reduce wages and benefits.
   *  The Right has been wildly successful in its assualt on unions over four decades, yet they want nothing less than the abolishment of collective bargaining.
*  It's a damned shame that greed is not a fatal disease.
*  The Koch brothers are pure evil to the middle and lower class. They are still trying to buy the White House and this country as a whole. 
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Koch-Tied Group Asks High Court for Radical New Limits on Worker's Rights to Negotiate for Higher Wages
By Robert Creamer, January 10, 2016

[snipped]

Today, the United States Supreme Court hears oral arguments in the case of Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association.

This case has been brought to the Court by the Koch-sponsored "Center for Individual Rights (CIR) " -- an outfit that made its reputation challenging civil rights laws. The CIR is asking the Court to break with forty years of precedent to impose radical new limits on the rights of workers to negotiate together for higher wages and better working conditions.

[snipped]

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COMMENTS: 
*  Do conservatives know that they're assholes?

    *  They not only know it, they value it as one of their more "positive" personality traits.
    *  That's a feature, not a bug
*  Call me a cynic... but I reckon we can just go ahead and assume Roberts's court will do all it can to kill unions.  Yeah, we can all be serfs.
*  The Repubs have been very successful at arguing that unionized workers' decent wages and benefits are an affront to workers with poor wages, crap jobs, and no job security, and that the proper response is to lower the bar for everyone. Don't ask me how they can get people to fall for it.

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Now the Supreme Court Will Decide Whether or Not to Destroy Public Employee Unions 

Bringing Scott Walker's vision for Wisconsin to all 50 states.
By Charles P. Pierce, January 11, 2016

The Supreme Court is hearing a case today called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. If decided in favor of the plaintiff, the case likely will eviscerate the right of collective bargaining for public employees. [snipped]  At issue is whether or not public-sector unions can collect dues from public employees who do not belong to the union. (The unions already are banned from using that money for any political activities.) In 1977, the Court allowed this practice to continue, but anyone who relies on stare decisis from this Court when it comes to anything having to do with labor unions is leaning on a pretty thin straw.

[snipped]
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Public Sector Unions Just Got Brutalized In The Supreme Court 
By Ian Millhiser, January 11, 2016

Let’s not beat around the bush.

Public sector unions just had a simply terrible day in the Supreme Court on Monday. Justice Antonin Scalia, the justice who seemed most inclined to agree with them prior to oral argument, took a hard turn against them within just a few minutes of argument. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is normally this closest thing this Court has to a swing voter, appeared to grow increasingly angry with the unions as the argument proceeded. Plus the Supreme Court has already dropped two big hints that it’s ready to cut of a major source of funding for public sector unions. Oral arguments cannot always predict the outcome of the case — just ask the millions of Americans who are now insured because of Obamacare — but if they offer any predictive value, a lot of unions are very frightened right now.

Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association involves what are alternatively referred to as “agency fees” or “fair share fees,” which unions charge non-members to recoup the cost of services performed for those non-members. [snipped]
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COMMENTS: 
*  This is the real devastation of the Bush legacy. The Roberts court is determined to turn our country into a corporate kleptocracy. The pro slavery conservatives continue to take away the rights of women and workers. They want to weaken unions so that corporations can continue to enslave American citizens. They even managed to convince the court that corporations are people.
*  I hope not the unions are the only thing standing between working people and the third world nation the Teapublican/GOP is turning America into.
*  Except the Republicans are trying to unwrite all those laws and take us back to the 1800's.  Someone has to stand up against this.
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Five justices seem ready to strike down union rule 
By Irin Carmon, January 11, 2016

For the California teachers’ unions pleading their case at the Supreme Court Monday morning — in a case that could impact public sector unions across the country — the math just didn’t add up. All five conservative justices expressed their exasperation at the argument that unions should be able to charge non-members for collective bargaining, and showed sympathy for the teachers who went to court to say such fees violate their First Amendment rights.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who sometimes votes with the Democratic appointees, but rarely on issues he perceives to be First Amendment-related, seemed the most sympathetic of all to the plaintiffs.

[snipped]
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