The Future of Public Sector Worker Power

Co-funded with The Washington Center for Equitable Growth

The 2018 Supreme Court decision, Janus v. AFSCME, made the entire public sector “right-to-work” (RTW), allowing unionized employees to opt out of dues-paying while retaining the same benefits of collective bargaining as those paying dues. This incentivizes workers to free ride, reducing union budgets and requiring them to spend more time shoring up memberships. Sociologist Jake Rosenfeld and his colleagues will examine what accounts for the stability in public sector unionization rates in the aftermath of the decision and potential pathways to greater union membership in the public sector. The investigators will field a national survey of 4,000 full-time, non-managerial public sector workers via YouGov to assess the reasons some workers continue to pay dues after the Janus decision.