Before serving in the Legislature, I represented fellow pilots as a negotiator and lead steward with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 2750 for Atlas Air. I sat across from management, worked contract language, and handled disputes. I saw organized labor’s value when it focuses on fair treatment and worker protections. I also saw how priorities can shift, when the Association grows at the expense of members, and negotiations protect the system itself rather than the people it affects.

That experience shapes how I see Janus v. AFSCME. The 2018 ruling made clear that forcing public employees to fund union speech as a job condition violates their First Amendment rights. No one should be compelled to support an organization or message they disagree with just to keep working. It overturned Abood v. Detroit Board of Education’s long-standing imbalance and aligned public-sector workers with core constitutional protections.

Rebecca Friedrichs made those same arguments in Standing Up to Goliath. As a longtime public school teacher, she exposed how large unions can disconnect from the classrooms they represent, pressuring dissenters, using dues for political ends, and letting institutional power outweigh teacher autonomy and student success. Her 2016 case against the California Teachers Association nearly resolved the issue; Janus finished the job.

But Janus only ended compelled fees. It did not fix the deeper problem, unions using time-leverage to extract more from the public.

In the public sector, there is no real competition. No alternative DMV line, no second school district down the road for most families, no backup provider if service falls short. No alternative school bus company. In the private sector, when a company pushes too far, customers leave. Revenue drops. The system corrects itself. That free market feedback loop does not exist the same way in government.

That changes incentives. Pressure can be applied without the usual consequences landing on the institution. Instead, that pressure lands on everyday Alaskans, parents dealing with disrupted classrooms, families waiting longer for basic services, students who should be getting more but are not, and taxpayers who are asked, year after year, to put in more without seeing measurable improvement.

That is the leverage. Unions and now aligned administrators push for bigger budgets, higher pay, richer benefits, and more control, knowing the public absorbs the impact. In education, it shows up in stalled negotiations, strike threats like the recent Juneau Education Association authorization vote, and demands that put the system ahead of students.

In Anchorage, the recent push for large raises on already strong salaries, roughly $85,000 for nine months of work, comes alongside increased contributions to the Public Education Health Trust, an already expensive health care system. Those costs do not exist in a vacuum. They are borne by taxpayers, families, and a system that already struggles with enrollment decline and uneven outcomes. At the same time, practical reforms like AlaskaCare opt-ins or tying funding to performance and enrollment are dismissed outright by legislative majorities aligned with those interests.

Statewide, the pattern holds. Public-sector unions secure compensation packages that drive personnel costs to roughly a quarter of the budget. That may be manageable when revenues are high. But Alaska is not a static economy. When oil revenues dip, those obligations do not adjust. That rigidity squeezes everything else, services, savings, infrastructure, and ultimately the Permanent Fund Dividend that so many Alaskans rely on.

The push to revive defined-benefit pensions is the clearest example. Alaska moved away from that model in 2006 after it created billions in unfunded liabilities driven by unrealistic assumptions and promises the state could not keep. Reopening it shifts investment risk to taxpayers and puts the state back on the same path, with less room for error and fewer safeguards in place.

Having negotiated from inside a union, I understand the desire for stability and retirement security. Those are real concerns. But I have also seen how, without competition, leverage turns the public into the bargaining chip, used against the Legislature and taxpayers to force concessions. The pressure does not land on the people making the decisions. It lands on everyone else, on parents, on students, and on working families who had no seat at the table. They did not negotiate the contract, they did not cast the vote, but they are the ones who pay the price with their time, time spent in lines, time spent getting children to school during disruptions, time that families do not get back.

Increasingly, families are responding to that pressure by looking for alternatives, including homeschooling and other options outside the traditional system. That should be a signal that something is not working. That families are tired of being used as a bargaining chip. Instead of addressing the underlying problems, we are seeing efforts in the Legislature, including proposals like SB277, that would limit those choices rather than fix the system driving families away.

Janus v. AFSCME gave individuals a choice and ended one form of coercion. The broader influence, through bargaining, politics, and public pressure, remains. That is where the real work still needs to be done.

If we are serious about putting students first and protecting taxpayers, then we need transparency in negotiations, honest accounting of long-term costs, and funding tied to real results. Not promises. Not projections. Not more Bills. Not more Government restriction on the free market, but real results that parents and taxpayers can actually see. We also need the willingness to say no when proposals put the state at risk, no matter how organized the pressure behind them.

Alaska has on of the highest union participation in the nation. We cannot afford systems that use people or their time as leverage. We need systems, departments, and districts that serve them. We all need to keep pushing for accountability, grounded in experience and focused on putting Alaskans, students, taxpayers, and families first.

Originally published on Substack: https://kevinjmccabe.substack.com/p/when-the-public-becomes-the-bargaining