The Agency Shop after ABOOD: No Free Ride, but What's the Fare?

Abstract

In Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that nonmembers of public employee unions might constitutionally be required to pay an agency shop or fair share fee to their bargaining representative, provided that such fees are used only to pay for the union's costs of collective bargaining and contract administration and not for its political expenditures. Thus far, seven states have grappled with the problem of attempting to define what kinds of union expenditures fall on one or the other side of this dividing line. This study shows that each state has approached the problem differently, developing varying answers to the procedural and substantive issues involved. The authors argue that these differences arise from the mistaken belief that the two types of union expenditures—political and bargaining—are for fundamentally different purposes and thus different rules should be applied to each. They contend that union-management relations in the public sector are inescapably political and, therefore, at least nonpartisan political expenditures should be charged against all bargaining unit members.