Janus vs. AFSCME: One Year After
A little more than a year ago, June 27, 2018, the Supreme Court issued its anti-worker, politically motivated decision in the Janus vs. AFSCME case. In a 5-4 decision, the court overturned 40 years of established law throughout the country, attacking the ability of working people to stand together in a union.
“This terrible decision is wrongly decided and damaging to our country,” said Jason Rabinowitz, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 2010. “Working people should have the freedom to stand together in our Unions and bargain collectively with our employers, to even the playing field and create good jobs in our communities.”
While the corporate lawyers and billionaires who pushed this decision hoped it would decimate unions so they could lower working people’s pay and benefits, Teamsters are standing strong and standing together. We have more Teamster members in public service today than on the day of the Janus decision.
Years before the decision, Local 2010 carried out our plan to talk to every member about the benefits of our Union and how standing together is the only way we can maintain the power to protect and expand our pay and benefits. More than 10,000 members – the vast majority of Teamsters Local 2010 – signed our Member Power form, committing to stand together in spite of the attacks on our Union.
“Teamsters Local 2010 worked tirelessly and strategically to organize our members to action,” said Teamsters Local 2010 President Catherine Cobb. “We communicated about all the hard-fought benefits we have acquired through standing together in our Union. As a result of those efforts, we have maintained the level of membership that we had on the day of the Janus decision, and showed that our collective voices could not be silenced.”
Across the United States and Canada, more than 200,000 Teamster public workers, including school employees, police officers, city workers, firefighters and Local 2010’s university employees work hard to make America work.