In 2018, public-sector labor unions suffered what was seen at the time as a crippling blow: The Supreme Court ruled that they could no longer require non-members to pay collective bargaining costs.
The Janus v. AFSCME ruling, overturning some 40 years of precedent, was seen as a crowning victory for the forces behind state “right to work” laws barring unions from forcing workers to bear such costs as a condition of employment. Public-sector employees nationwide would now enjoy the same freedoms as their private-sector counterparts in the more than half of all states that had enacted right-to-work measures, recently including Rust Belt labor strongholds Michigan and Wisconsin.
