(The Center Square) – A group of majority Jewish professors from the City University of New York are challenging their state’s Taylor Law that forces them to be under the representation of a union that has espoused antisemitic remarks, with one plaintiff saying: “we would rather have no representation at all.”
A National Right to Work Foundation news release said that “the final brief has been submitted urging the U.S. Supreme Court to hear six City University of New York (CUNY) professors’ First Amendment case challenging the monopoly representation powers of Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union officials.”
PSC is the union that represents CUNY faculty and staff, the representation which “New York state law forces the professors to accept,” according to the release.
“The lawsuit challenges aspects of New York State’s ‘Taylor Law’, which grants union bosses monopoly bargaining power in the public sector,” the release said.
“This gives union bosses the power to speak and contract for public workers, including those that want nothing to do with the union,” according to the release.
CUNY professors Avraham Goldstein, Michael Goldstein, Frimette Kass-Shraibman, Mitchell Langbert, Jeffrey Lax, and Maria Pagano “want to dissociate completely from PSC,” the release said.
The professors are fighting with the free legal aid of the Fairness Center and the National Right to Work Foundation, the release said.
Professor Avraham Goldstein told The Center Square that he and his colleagues “are challenging the Taylor Law because it imposes on us the representation of a union that is actively and vocally anti-Israel, that supports harassing Zionist Jews, and that passed a resolution denying Jewish people their historical rights to their ancestral homeland.”
In 2021, PSC came up with a “Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People,” which “encouraged support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement” and called Israel an “apartheid” state, as explained in a Fairness Center release.
This messaging is distasteful to the six professors in particular, being that all but Pagano are Jewish, according to the Fairness Center..
“We would rather have no representation at all than have such a union make their hateful statements in our name,” Goldstein told TCS.
“This union cannot negotiate in the best interests of a Zionist Orthodox Jew like me,” Goldstein said. “We are asking the Court to uphold our constitutional rights and free us from a union that hates us.”.
As stated in a Fairness Center release, following the 2018 Janus v. AFSCME Supreme Court ruling, non-union member public employees need not pay union fees, but “must accept the ‘exclusive representation’ of a union.”
In New York, specifically, unions can “legally offer” nonmembers “inferior services compared to members,” due to a Taylor Law amendment that shortly preceded the Supreme Court ruling, the release said.
Executive Vice President for the Fairness Center Danielle Acker Susanj told The Center Square that in New York, professors “cannot choose a different union or represent themselves, even if the union makes statements and engages in political activism that they abhor.”
“Our clients’ only options are to accept the union’s representation or quit their jobs,” Susanj said of the six professors.
The National Right to Work Foundation’s vice president Patrick Semmens told The Center Square that “there are many reasons why monopoly forced representation is wrong, especially … when it comes to government unions.”
“Generally, government union monopoly bargaining creates a government that is less accountable to voters and more wasteful for taxpayers,” Semmens said. “It undermines the ability of elected officials to implement policies they promised to voters by making them bargain over public policy with the union.”
“Specifically for government employees, the system also creates a one-size-fits-all system that harms many of the most effective and productive employees,” Semmens said.
“Union officials prioritize seniority and protections for underperforming employees, to the detriment of those who would earn more if compensation were based on merit,” Semmens said.
“By forcing these professors under the PSC’s so-called ‘representation,’ the professors are required by the Taylor Law to associate with the union and its highly controversial views, including views the plaintiffs in this case find deeply antisemitic,” Semmens said.
TCS reached out to PSC, but did not receive a response in time for publication.
