CHICAGO –The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that state workers may excuse themselves from union fair share dues in a landmark decision that weakens collective bargaining rights. 

Senator Martin A. Sandoval (D-Chicago) said the Janus v. AFSCME ruling is detrimental to police, firefighters, state employees and anybody else who benefits from the wage-raising power of union bargaining.  

“This decision is a blow to the American Dream and the upward mobility that unions provide by protecting the rights of the worker,” Sandoval said. “It effectively weakens the bargaining power of unions by legally protecting ‘free riders’ – people who don’t pay the fees but benefit from the work of the unions.” 

Sandoval said the decision is another that demonstrates the reprehensible intent of the Republican Congress that refused to seat President Barack Obama’s pick for the Supreme Court in 2016 – pragmatist Merrick Garland.

“What we see here are the Trump chickens coming home to roost,” Sandoval said. “Republicans held Merrick Garland’s appointment hostage to sway the election and further their anti-middle class agenda. Now we are beginning to see the depths of the destruction these efforts have caused.”

Trump’s newest appointee – Justice Neil Gorsuch – broke a 4-4 tie from an earlier case with similar implications for labor unions. 

“It’s easy to take for granted the benefits unions have provided for the last century in the United States of America,” Sandoval said. “Unfortunately, it is one of those things that you don’t realize you have until it is gone, and this decision puts us in real danger of experiencing a world where unions are weakened to a point of powerlessness.”

Sandoval said rights secured by labor unions cannot be forgotten. They include hour limits, paid vacations, workplace safety conditions and living wages among many other benefits.

“I will always believe in the role organized labor and collective bargaining play in making our workplaces and communities strong,” Sandoval said. “Unions are resilient and they can overcome this obstacle. But to do so, the public will have to wake up and understand the dangers of creeping corporatist, anti-middle class power. Only then will working men and women be able to regain their footing against such a sinister foe.”

CHICAGO – State Senator Martin A. Sandoval (D-Chicago) has urged President Donald Trump to bring an immediate end to the separation of children from their parents at the U.S. border.

“There’s no other way to say it: This policy is horrifying,” Sandoval said. “These people come to the United States of America seeking asylum in what is supposed to be a land of opportunity and they have their children ripped from their arms. This has to stop.”

Sandoval, the son of Mexican immigrants, has spent much of the summer speaking at graduations from the elementary to high school level.

“I look at the crowds of these bright young students and I know that many of them are immigrants,” Sandoval said. “Yet I know children their age, just as talented, just as innocent, are having their lives torn apart on our country’s border because of the president’s political ransom. It’s sickening.”

Recent surveys have shown more than two-thirds of Americans oppose the child separation policy and Sandoval said he was saddened the number in opposition was not higher.

“This isn’t a game. These aren’t gang members being detained. These are children. These are people coming to our country seeking asylum and looking to contribute,” Sandoval said. “My mother and father crossed the same border with the same hopes for America that all of these people have. Donald Trump is dashing those hopes for generations to come because he wants leverage to build an ornamental wall.”  

Sandoval urged all Americans supporting the policy to view images of the detention centers and read articles about the detainments from varied sources on the internet.  

“We all owe it to these children, to ourselves and to our nation to look at what we are doing to these families,” Sandoval said. “I call upon President Trump to fix this immediately.”