Keep The Unions On Their Heels

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
--Thomas Jefferson

Yes, thanks to Mark Janus, his legal team, and the State Policy Network, among others, millions of us across the country have been freed from the immoral requirement that we pay an outside agency, a union, or else not hold the jobs we desire.  But don't expect that to be the end.  Already, unions are trying to find ways to sneak around that decision--requirements that people only be allowed to leave a union in a very short time window, for example, or trying to require people to stay in a union until the current contract expires (sometimes years in the future).  In California the unions have gone even further, shepherding through the legislature a law that allows unions (but no other organizations) unfettered access to new government employees--no doubt they'll inform such a captive audience about the right not to join or pay a union.

The Janus decision was not the end of our entanglement with unions.  Whether it was the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning, I cannot say, but it was not the end.  We must be eternally vigilant to ensure that our right not to pay is union is never infringed again.

Some will want to play defense and just swat away future union attempts to extort money from us.  Of course, though, the best defense is a good offense--so how do we play offense?  We cannot rest on Janus' laurels, rather we need to continue to take the fight to the unions!  Already there are lawsuits working their way through the courts asking that unions be required to reimburse those of us for the agency fees we were unjustly required to pay for so many years.  Here's another idea:

By recognizing the inherently political nature of public sector unions—which exist to influence government spending decisions, in addition to lobbying, political advocacy, and electing candidates sympathetic to their interests—the Court in Janus opened the door to First Amendment challenges to other common practices, such as taxpayer subsidies to public employee unions in the form of “release time” provisions...

With Abood overruled as a precedent, what’s next? If the compelled payment of agency fees violates the free speech rights of government employees, taxpayer subsidies of public sector unions should likewise be unconstitutional. In Janus, the Court compared public sector unions to a political party, and indicated that the First Amendment would not permit a state law requiring all residents to sign a document expressing support for a political party’s platform. Compelled financial support is equally problematic, the Court held in Janus...

Assuming that public employee unions are inherently political, that collective bargaining in the public sector entails political speech, and that compelled financial support of political speech implicates the First Amendment, the reasoning of Janus logically extends to direct payments of taxpayer funds to subsidize the operations of public sector unions. One of the biggest subsidies is the widespread but little-known practice of government employers paying the salary and benefits of union officials even though they exclusively perform union duties.  This practice, variously called “release time,” “official time,” or “association business leave,” is common at all levels of government—federal, state, and local—and is often sought by public-sector unions in collective-bargaining agreements.

This practice, sometimes described as “union time, taxpayer dime,” allows government employees who are also full-time union officials to collect their full salary without rendering any services on behalf of the public; to the contrary, union officials actively work against the interests of the taxpayers through labor negotiations, grievance adjustment, lobbying, and political advocacy. But for the hidden “release time” subsidy, unions would have to compensate their officers using union dues. Instead, taxpayers are forced to fund the unions’ inherently-political operations.

If they're ever given over to anything but anger, the unionistas might, just might, wonder why I want to take away so many of the privileges that unions have enjoyed over the years.  They'll accuse us pro-Janus workers of wanting to destroy unions, blah blah blah.  I don't want to destroy unions.  I believe in unions--just like I believe in voluntary associations of people.  What I don't agree with is compulsion, and the unions have been allowed to go so far with compulsion that they deserve to be slapped down, and quite hard, so that they hesitate before going down that road again.

If unions stuck to employee pay, benefits, and working conditions, I probably wouldn't be so strident.  But in the opinion of the Court in the Janus decision was a comparison of unions to political parties--and the comparison is certainly apt.  Unions are pretty much an arm of the Democratic Party.  Taking my money for all those years, and giving it to a political party I stand against?  You bet I want to slap unions down, good and hard.  It won't make them any less political--in fact, with only volunteers in their ranks now, they can justify being even more fervently left-wing--but I admit I want a little payback.  That, and I don't trust them not to try to chip away at the Janus decision (especially since they're already doing so, as I pointed out above), so I want them to pay a price, a continual, high price, for their efforts.

Keep them on their heels so they can't go back on the offensive against us.

Update, 12/8/18:  Here's another example of shenanigans.