Giving Compass' Take:

· AEI discusses the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Janus v. AFSCME case and how it is changing the way teachers' unions operate. According to the president of the American Federation of Teachers, unions will become more politically active.

· How are teachers' unions changing? Should public employees be required to pay fees for unions if they opt out of a membership? 

· Read more about the Janus case and the future of teacher's unions.

In a landmark First Amendment decision, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this summer in Janus v. AFSCME that states cannot require public employees to pay “agency fees” to unions. Prior to the decision, in 22 states, public employees who chose not to join a union could still be required to pay these fees — somewhat less than full dues — for union services. Some have suggested that unions might temper their left-wing politics in response to the decision, in the hopes of wooing potential members put off by union politics.

For unions, the stakes could hardly be higher. Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, warns that surveys show “many [teachers] see dues as too high” and “political activity as too leftist”; she also notes that “only half of all teachers voted for Hillary Clinton.” Internal documents from the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers’ union, anticipate that the union will lose a whopping 300,000 members. Things look even bleaker for the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s other major teachers’ union, which has 15 of its 22 largest state affiliates in former agency-fee states — and already had fewer than half its members paying full dues.

By happenstance, both unions held their big national conventions in July, providing a chance to scour the tea leaves for subtle hints as to how the unions might woo reluctant members, especially the hefty share who take issue with the leftist bent that has characterized the unions in recent decades. Even before the shock of Janus, unions worked in concert with Senate and House Republicans in 2015 to pass the Every Student Succeeds Act in a push to roll back many of the federal educational excesses of the Bush and Obama years, so a shift in approach seemed entirely possible.

Read the full article about teachers’ unions by Grant Addison and Frederick M. Hess at AEI.