Despite the arguments in favour of agency shops and closed shops, it would appear " prima facie " that these types of agreement do infringe the employee s freedom of association.
32.
Where the agency shop is illegal, as is common in labor law governing American public sector unions, a " fair share provision " may be agreed to by the union and the employer.
33.
Several bills were offered in Congress over the next few years to either ban agency shop agreements or to adopt various provisions of the 1997 Nickles bill, but all of them died in committee.
34.
Like agency shops, which have been upheld by the courts, the government says the marketing assessments prevent some growers from being " free riders, " enjoying the benefits of industry-wide promotions without sharing the costs.
35.
Section 14 ( b ) of the Taft-Hartley Act also authorizes individual states ( but not local governments, such as cities or counties ) to outlaw the union shop and agency shop for employees working in their jurisdictions.
36.
Foster and Graham not only had to pay for their own substitutes, and their own travel expenses, they were required to count their absences against their allotted number of personal and sick days ( Lindl took leave this year to fight the agency shop provision ).
37.
But now, with dues more than $ 600 a year and the potential rebate for non-members in an agency shop 30 percent of dues, the stakes for the NEA's massive lobbying effort are enormous, and the union goes to extraordinary lengths to make sure the deck is stacked.
38.
The situation is different in the case of agency shops : The employee still has the freedom to choose whether or not he wants to belong to the union which is party to the collective agreement " that is if the employee wants to belong to a union in the first place ."
39.
This new test dictates that : " a union may constitutionally compel contributions from dissenting nonmembers in an agency shop only for the costs of performing the union's statutory duties as exclusive bargaining agent . " However, much leeway and uncertainty still exists regarding the acceptable use of union " service fees " in the public sector.
40.
At issue in the case was whether " Abood v . Detroit Board of Education " should be overruled, with public-sector " agency shop " arrangements invalidated under the First Amendment, and whether it violates the First Amendment to require that public employees affirmatively object to subsidizing nonchargeable speech by public-sector unions, rather than requiring that employees affirmatively consent to subsidizing such speech.
