Unions—Unrigging the system

The fact that workers have a voice on the job with their unions is something that galls the ultra-rich. Because when workers join together they can improve their wages and benefits—taking away from the power of those at the top.

Unions are one of the only proven tools to achieve a fair economy for all Americans, not just the wealthy. That’s why anti-worker crusaders have made their goal the financial starvation and eventual elimination of all unions.

Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 is a lawsuit that aims to take away the freedom of working people to join together in strong unions to speak up for themselves and their communities. 

The billionaires and corporate special interests funding this case view unions as a threat to their power, so they are trying to get the U.S. Supreme Court to rig the system even more in favor of those already at the top. Cases like this are why Senate Republicans took the unprecedented step of refusing to even give a hearing to President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee last year.

And now that President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, has been confirmed, the court has tipped toward corporations and against working people.

AFSCME members get up to go to work every day to help our communities. We know how much our neighbors depend on the public services we provide. But time after time throughout his career, Justice Gorsuch put company profits over the wellbeing and safety of workers—even in life and death situations.

Now that he’s on the bench, he is making no secret of his bias. The very same day that the U.S. Supreme Court said it would hear Janus v. AFSCME, Gorsuch headlined an event held at Trump International Hotel and sponsored by the Fund for American Studies—a conservative organization backed by the Bradley Foundation, which helped bankroll the Janus case that is now before the Supreme Court on which Gorsuch sits.