Hundreds gather to support the rights of workers

March 1, 2018 | G. Michael Dobbs
news@thereminder.com

Springfield City Council President Orlando Ramos speaks the crowd of several hundred people at the "Working People Day of Action" at 95 Liberty St. in Springfield.
Reminder Publications photo by G. Michael Dobbs

SPRINGFIELD – City Council President Orlando Ramos led hundreds of union members in a chant: “United we bargain, divided we pay.”

Ramos was among the elected officials who spoke to the several hundred people gathered on the sidewalk at 95 Liberty St. on Feb. 26 as of the “Working People’s Day of Action” that was taking place across the nation.

The rally had one central message: with a union, workers can maintain their rights. While designed to extol the benefits of unions, the rally was also timed to fall on the same day as the hearing of oral arguments in the case of Janus vs. AFSCME.

According to the official blog of the Supreme Court the case involves, “A Michigan statute authorizing union representation of local governmental employees permits an ‘agency shop’ arrangement, whereby every employee represented by a union, even though not a union member, must pay to the union, as a condition of employment, a service charge equal in amount to union dues. Appellant teachers filed actions (later consolidated) in Michigan state court against appellee Detroit Board of Education and appellee Union (which represented teachers employed by the Board) and Union officials, challenging the validity of the agency shop clause in a collective bargaining agreement between the Board and the Union. The complaints alleged that appellants were unwilling or had refused to pay Union dues, that they opposed collective bargaining in the public sector, that the Union was engaged in various political and other ideological activities that appellants did not approve and that were not collective bargaining activities, and prayed that the agency shop clause be declared invalid under state law and under the United States Constitution as a deprivation of appellants' freedom of association protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The trial court dismissed the actions for failure to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The Michigan Court of Appeals, while reversing and remanding on other grounds, upheld the constitutionality of the agency shop clause, and, although recognizing that the expenditure of compulsory service charges to further ‘political purposes’ unrelated to collective bargaining could violate appellants’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, held that, since the complaints had failed to allege that appellants had notified the Union as to those causes and candidates to which they objected, appellants were not entitled to restitution of any portion of the service charges.”

To read the full description of the case, go to https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/431/209/case.html.

According to an analysis by the Illinois Education Association (IEA), “The Janus case is an attempt to take away the right of public unions to collect fair share fees from all employees and an attempt to take away the collective power of all public unions. Fair share fees are collected from all employees who join a workplace that is unionized. Those fees are used during the collective bargaining process to help fight for fair contracts that attract and retain quality employees. In the case of the IEA, those contracts also help improve learning conditions in schools by helping to keep class sizes low, implement new technology and training and by making sure schools are implementing practices to educate the whole child.”

Maureen Colgan Posner, the president of the Springfield Education Association said the case is “an attack in the workforce, an attack on the democratic bedrock.”

Jaimie Poudrier, the Western Massachusetts Regional vice president of the Department of Transitional Assistance, said there is a national effort to divide co-workers from one another.

“We have proven we are stronger than ever,” she said.

Deb Bys, a paraprofessional in the Springfield schools spoke of the efforts the paraprofessional have taken on themselves to improve their skills and knowledge, something the city has recognized. She maintained, “Our union is good for public education.”

Ramos said, “Unions are not only important, but necessary to our way of life in the United States.”

Among the officials who attended the event were state Sens. James Welch and Eric Lesser, state Reps. Jose Tosado, Carlos Gonzalez, Bud Williams, John Velis, Aaron Vega and Angelo Puppolo, as well as City Councilors Adam Gomez, Marcus Williams and Jesse Lederman. Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Setti Warren was at the Springfield rally as was Attorney Tahirah Amatul-Wadud who is challenging Congressman Richard Neal.

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