Sonoma County public-sector unions see ‘attack’ in Supreme Court’s ruling on member fees

Sonoma County labor leaders Wednesday panned the Supreme Court’s ruling against public-sector employee unions, decrying the move as a step intended to weaken government workers’ strength in numbers but expressing optimism about the path forward locally.

Unions could suffer if enough members empowered by the high court’s ruling in Janus v. AFSCME opt out of paying to support the collective bargaining from which they benefit, since they can no longer be compelled to do so. Avoiding the fees would give them a larger paycheck.

But Jack Buckhorn, the executive director of the Santa Rosa-based North Bay Labor Council, thinks local unions can prevent any sharp declines in their membership ranks.

“There will obviously be some that will choose to opt out and be freeloaders. We can’t do anything about that,” Buckhorn said. “But I think it strengthens us, because it will incentivize, to a very large degree, communication with our members on issues that are important to them - working family issues.”

An even higher burden now falls to public union leaders to organize internally and prove to their members the benefits of paying to support them, Buckhorn said.

“But that’s what we were supposed to be doing all along,” he said. “I think this is going to ultimately backfire. Short term, it’s going to be problematic. It’s going to cause some financial hardships for some unions, I’m sure. But I believe, long term, that we’ll be stronger.”

Joel Evans-Fudem, president of the Sonoma County chapter of Service Employees International Union Local 1021, said he was angry about the Supreme Court decision and had been following the case closely. Yet Evans-Fudem was “pleasantly surprised” by the reaction from about four dozen members of SEIU, the county government’s largest labor group, when he informed them of the court decision Wednesday.

“Rather than them asking about money and their dues or anything like that, what came out of their mouths were different iterations of ‘How can I help?’?” he said. “‘What can we do? What’s the next step to make sure that we stay strong here?’ That was really inspiring.”

On the law enforcement side, the Sonoma County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association expects effectively “no impact” from the court decision, said president Mike Vail. Its nonmembers do not receive key benefits granted by the union - such as legal defense coverage they may need for workplace incidents - making it a “no brainer” for deputies to join, he said.

Nonetheless, Vail said the ruling is detrimental to the organized labor movement nationwide.

“Unions need their union dues and agency shop fees to operate their business and take care of their members and do good in the community as well,” Vail said.

Evans-Fudem felt it was too early to predict the impact on SEIU’s ranks, but he’s not expecting them to take a major blow at the moment.

“People really seem to get, viscerally, that this is an attack, and it’s meant to weaken us,” he said. “It’s meant to make it easy to drop and make us less powerful in the workplace. And they’re pissed off.”

You can reach Staff Writer J.D. Morris at 707-521-5337 or jd.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter ?@thejdmorris.