To the Editor:
Re “Union Setback Looms in Suit Before Justices” (front page, Jan. 12):
Without the hoped-for support of Justice Antonin Scalia, who you report was “consistently hostile” at last week’s hearing, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court seems ready to deal a major blow to the union movement.
Animus toward unions, both public and private, is encoded in conservative ideology: Unions are seen as an assault on the rights of private ownership. Workers are “human resources” in the strictest sense of the term, a resource like raw material or infrastructure.
Overturning the 1977 Abood decision, which upheld the requirement that nonunion members in a union shop must pay the equivalent of union dues, along with the powerful right-to-work (anti-union) movement, will drastically weaken an important avenue to the middle class for millions of Americans.
STEVEN BERKOWITZ
New York
Note from KBJ: Please. If unions are so good for workers, then the workers should be happy to pay dues. This court case is about liberating workers from union bosses. Why is the "right to chose" prized when it comes to abortion, but despised when it comes to joining a union?
