A.
Agency fees are monies charged by unions for representational activities. Namely, those activities are collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment.
Essentially, when a member or a fi-core worker pays a union an agency fee, that money funds the union’s collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment activities.
In right-to-work states, workers are not required to pay agency fees to unions in order to work under union contracts. These workers are sometimes called “free-riders” because when working under union contracts, they are benefitting from the union’s services of collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance adjustment without funding those services.
The alternate of right-to-work states is union-secure states. These states permit unions to require workers to pay agency fees in order to work under union contracts. Generally construed, in these states, workers may be required to become union members in order to work under union contracts.
In truth, though, those workers do not have to become what is usually referred to as “full members.” Rather, they can become financial core members (sometimes called “non-members”). In so doing, they have to pay agency fees in order to work under union contracts, but they do not have to abide by union rules.
The term “union dues” usually refers to funding for both representational and non-representational activities, while the term “agency fees” usually refers to funding for just representational activities. In the Beck ruling, it was clarified that financial core members do not have to pay for any non-representational activities performed by the union — such as lobbying or other political or ideological activities. This typically means that financial core members do not pay “union dues” and pay less than full members. In other words, both financial core members and full members pay agency fees, but full members pay a bit more to the union to fund the union’s non-representational activities.
As of this post, the United States Supreme Court is hearing a case (Janus v. AFSCME) about public sector agency fees and their constitutionality. While this story does not apply to private sector unions like SAG-AFTRA, the conversation about agency fees is of interest, and the court case may have a bearing eventually on the perception and support of compulsory agency fees for private sector unions like SAG-AFTRA.
To read the Supreme Court’s recent discussion on the topic, click here.