Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. HIRONO. Mr. President, conservative, rightwing forces in our country are engaged in an all-out assault on working people. Their target? Private and public sector workers and the unions who are fighting on their behalf. While private sector unions at least have some protections under the National Labor Relations Act, public employees have been historically forced to rely on Supreme Court precedent to protect their basic rights.

That is why the Court's decision last year in Janus was so damaging. In one fell swoop, the Court overturned more than 40 years of precedent from the Abood decision and barred public sector unions from collecting fair share fees from employees who had opted out of the union but whom the union is still legally required to represent.

The Supreme Court's decision in Janus was not unexpected. Its decision was the culmination of decades-long efforts by groups like the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation to undermine settled precedent in Abood in order to weaken public sector unions. These groups worked methodically to achieve their goals.

First, Justice Alito all but invited a challenge to Abood when he wrote his decision in Knox v. SEIU Local 100 and Harris v. Quinn. He called the justification for allowing a union to collect fair share fees ``an anomaly.'' He said ``the Abood Court's analysis is questionable on several grounds'' and laid out the grounds as he saw them for someone to bring a case to overturn Abood.

This was an open invitation to conservative groups to then go looking for a plaintiff to do just that--to create an opportunity for the Supreme Court to overturn Abood. They funded Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, which was fast-tracked to the Supreme Court in 2016, where ``the signaler,'' Justice Alito, awaited the case. Public employee unions received a temporary reprieve in a deadlocked 4-to-4 decision because of Justice Antonin Scalia's unexpected death.

The well-funded conservative interests then saw a huge opportunity to fill the vacancy with a Justice to their liking. From applauding Senator McConnell's single-handedly blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland to spending millions to confirm Neil Gorsuch, they wanted a Justice who was on their side.

They got it in Neil Gorsuch, who delivered the decisive fifth vote in Janus, torpedoing 41 years of precedent under the pretext of protecting ``fundamental free speech rights.'' Justice Elena Kagan saw right through this argument. In a strong dissent, she said: ``The majority overthrows a decision entrenched in this Nation's law . . . for over 40 years . . . and it does so by weaponizing the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy.''

Undermining public employee unions and, in fact, all unions has gained momentum because of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. With this narrow majority, we are likely to see a lot more 5-to- 4 decisions on ideological, partisan lines. This is not good for the country and not good for the credibility of the Court. We need a Supreme Court that strives to achieve consensus as often as possible, not one pursuing a hard-right ideological agenda.

In the face of these onslaughts from the Supreme Court and conservative interests, unions are fighting back. We have seen tens of thousands of teachers taking to the streets in cities and States across the country demanding and in many cases securing more investment in schools, smaller class sizes, and a living wage for teachers.

In the year since Janus, public sector employee unions like AFSCME are adding thousands of new dues-paying members energized to fight back against the conservative assault on unions' very existence.

Our public employee unions are doing their job to stay in the fight and Congress needs to do its part. That is why I joined 35 of my Senate colleagues and 27 of my House colleagues this week to introduce the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act of 2019.

This legislation affirms to all 17.3 million public sector workers nationwide that we value their service to the public and that we are fighting to protect their voice in the workplace.

Our bill codifies the right of public employees to organize, act concertedly, and bargain collectively in States that currently do not afford these basic rights.

Under our legislation, States have wide flexibility to write and administer their own labor laws, provided they meet the standards established in this legislation, and it will not preempt laws in States that substantially meet or exceed this standard.

The right to organize shouldn't depend on whether or not your State has robust worker protections, like the State of Hawaii, and workers shouldn't be held captive to the anti-union bent of the Roberts Five on the Supreme Court.

The fight to protect the right to organize is not an abstract issue. Unions have lifted people into the middle class, especially women and people of color.

I speak from personal experience. When I was a young child, my mother worked for years in low-wage jobs that provided no job security, no healthcare, and no stability. We lived paycheck to paycheck. That all changed when my mother and her coworkers organized and formed a union. That union happens to be the CWA.

Unionization brought job and economic security to our family. Our public employee unions are fighting on behalf of millions of people across our country who are serving our communities. They are our teachers, our firefighters, social workers, EMTs, and our police officers. They are us.

These are not normal times. We all need to come together to fight back against an all-out assault on working people.

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