{"id":2155,"date":"2024-06-29T17:25:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-29T21:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print-2\/volume-22-1-winter-2024\/political-unions-free-speech-and-the-death-of-voluntarism-why-exclusive-representation-violates-the-first-amendment\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:11:31","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:11:31","slug":"political-unions-free-speech-and-the-death-of-voluntarism-why-exclusive-representation-violates-the-first-amendment","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print-2\/volume-22-1-winter-2024\/political-unions-free-speech-and-the-death-of-voluntarism-why-exclusive-representation-violates-the-first-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Unions, Free Speech, and the Death of Voluntarism: Why Exclusive Representation Violates the First Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employee\u2019s International Union (SEIU), was fired up. In May 2023, she gave an interview to Restaurant Dive.<sup><span class=\"s1\">1 <\/span><\/sup>Her union was then embroiled in a fight over AB 257, a California law that created a labor council for fast-food workers.<sup><span class=\"s1\">2 <\/span><\/sup>The union had sponsored the law and helped steer it to passage.<sup><span class=\"s1\">3 <\/span><\/sup>The union had also invested years into the process, and along the way made significant concessions.<sup><span class=\"s1\">4 <\/span><\/sup>For example, it agreed to drop a provision that would have held fast-food franchisors liable for their franchisees\u2019 labor violations.<sup><span class=\"s1\">5 <\/span><\/sup>The union gave up that provision because, it hoped, the franchisors would drop their objections to the bill\u2014or at least cool their opposition to a low boil.<sup><span class=\"s1\">6<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">But that didn\u2019t happen. Only days after the governor signed the bill, a franchisor coalition announced that it would run an opposing referendum.<span class=\"s1\"><sup>7<\/sup> <\/span>It would ask voters to repeal the law.<sup><span class=\"s1\">8<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">So predictably, Kay Henry was agitated. She didn\u2019t hesitate to share her thoughts on the referendum. \u201cThe question for California voters,\u201d she said, \u201cis \u2018are we going to continue to allow corporations to override what our democratically elected state legislature and governor are trying to do to improve the lives of all Californians?\u2019\u201d<sup><span class=\"s1\">9<\/span><\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employee\u2019s International Union (SEIU), was fired up. In May 2023, she gave an interview to Restaurant Dive.1 Her union was then embroiled in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10127,"featured_media":0,"parent":1770,"menu_order":8,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-2155","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2155"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2155\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2159,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2155\/revisions\/2159"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}