It seems that the Public Sector union members decide to tell the union leadership “Check’s in the mail!”. Imagine that – for all of the bluster of “Solidarity Forever!”, “Workers standing side by side!” and “Mighty, Mighty Union!”, as soon as these Union Members have the Freedom to decide “er, SHOULD I send that check in, now that the Government isn’t TAKING it from me automatically”?
More than two years after Scott Walker’s showdown with organized labor in Wisconsin, the official numbers for the state’s public sector union membership are in — and they are down. Way down.
You betcha! American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 40:
- 2011 – 31,730
- 2012 – 29,777
- 2013 – 20,488 now.
AFSCME Council 48:
- 2011 – 9,043 members
- 2012 – 6,046
- 2013 – 3,498
… Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that statewide membership “fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed AFSCME’s figures.” A union official disputed the figures to me at the time but refused to provide their own numbers.
While Union leaders MAY have said that Right To Work was all about individual workers “freeloading” on the union agreements, it never was about that; instead, it was all about the money (and always will be). The message here and clear is that without the force of Government acting as the Public Sector Union’s collection agency, union bosses knew that individual workers would decide to keep their own money in their own pockets instead of sending it to the unions in gratitude for the union’s representation.
So, we all now see what a shame of what the “value add” is of unions when fully one third of the membership is saying “I can spend my money better for my benefit than the union can”. And that is the dirty secret that union bosses knew about and, therefore, continue to fight like crazy to keep more Right To Work states from happening.
