Union dues: Should state be collection agent?
That was the question asked by a UL editorial and one that I have been saying no to for quite some time. After all, why should taxpayer monies be used for this – it isn’t for the common good, right? It is for a special interest group as that is what a union is – a collection of people that extract more wealth (money, time, power) from the majority than they would otherwise be able to do. Not a slam, not a whack – just a simple statement of what unions, bottomline, do. Reformatted, emphasis mine:
When the New Hampshire House returns in January, it will take up a bill that would get state government out of the union dues collection business. HB 438, introduced this year by House Majority Leader Dick Hinch, would stop the practice of withholding dues from state employee paychecks, which would require unions representing those workers to collect those dues themselves.
It would not prohibit or restrict membership in unions in any way.
This is not union-busting and it isn’t creating what unions would call “a hostile work environment”. It would just force them to collect their own damn money themselves. Simple, easy – after all, if the unions are actually providing value to their members, the members will gladly fork over checks, right? So why are the unions spitting mad and scared?
Because now they will have to, ahem, actually compete (“HATE SPEECH!!!”) for their workers private property among other ways to spend it. They would not be able to automatically assume that the money will continue to just roll in (see Wisconsin).
The House this year defeated a Right-to-Work bill that would have prevented unions from collecting dues from employees who do not wish to join. And the House Labor Committee is unanimously recommending that the House kill HB 438. These pro-union, but anti-worker, policies may soon be overruled by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supremes have taken up a case, Janus v. AFSCME, that will reconsider a decades-old ruling that allows public sector unions to collect dues from nonmembers.
The Court was expected to make dues voluntary in 2015, but the death of Justice Antonin Scalia left it deadlocked 4-4. Justice Neil Gorsuch is expected to side with the Court’s conservative wing, and let government workers decide if they want to join, or fund, unions.
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will strike a blow for worker freedom, even if the New Hampshire House can’t resist political pressure from the state employees unions.
