Happy Labor Day. There's no better time to talk about why workers’ rights would suffer if Brett Kavanaugh, whose hearings for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court start tomorrow, is confirmed.
The Roberts Court has dealt some big blows to workers and unions in the last few years. With Kavanaugh on the Court, a 5-4 hard-right majority would be even more aggressive in siding with corporations over people.
The Court's ruling in Janus v. AFSCME earlier this summer overturned a 40-year-old precedent to hold that public-sector workers with union contracts don't have to pay fees for collective bargaining expenses if they're not members.
That ruling won't just hurt seven million public-sector union workers with contracts. It'll hurt all workers, because union deals on wages and working conditions affect what businesses without unions do, too.
The Court has also recently granted corporations the right to deny workers reproductive health care and made it harder for workers to sue businesses by allowing companies to force employees to sign mandatory arbitration clauses with their contracts.
In other words, the Court has already been widening the disparity in power between corporations and workers. Kavanaugh's record from his time as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia shows he'd help further that trend for a generation.
In 2007, Kavanaugh wrote an opinion that severely limited union rights and allowed major damage to federal workers' ability to bargain collectively.
In 2014, he dissented in a case where the Occupational Safety and Health Administration held SeaWorld accountable for the death of a trainer.
In 2016, Kavanaugh held that corporations have the right to punish workers for displaying pro-union signs in their cars.
Unions and labor movements are why we have workplace safety precautions, collective bargaining, weekends, minimum wages, and, yes, Labor Day.
We can't afford more damage to workers' rights. Make sure your senators hear from you: Let's #StopKavanaugh.
We can't afford more damage to workers' rights. Make sure your senators hear from you: Let's #StopKavanaugh.
