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Heritage Foundation
Unions Getting
Creative in Election-Year Struggle
Amy Payne
April 2, 2014
If it seems like unions are making a fuss lately, it’s because they are.
It’s an election year, and they need money.
Just one in 15 private-sector workers is a union member—in 2013, union
membership was at its lowest rate since 1916.
That might explain why they’re grasping for new members in stunts like
unionizing college athletes, especially as their influence in the
workplace is being challenged in the courts.
As Kevin Mooney reported for The Foundry:
Lawyers with National Right to Work Foundation…argued before the high
court that it is unconstitutional to compel Illinois residents to fund
SEIU’s political activism. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the
plaintiffs, payment of union dues by personal caregivers no longer
would be mandatory but become voluntary.
“They’re trying to lock people into paying dues while they still can,”
said Linda Dobbs, a dues-paying California union member who questioned
a visit she received from some aggressive union representatives.
For unionized workers, dues come out of their paychecks and go to
political causes—and they aren’t consulted on where that money will go.
When Dobbs asked what she was getting for her money, she was informed
that her union dues had gone to promoting Obamacare and supporting the
re-election of the president.
This kind of coercion is one reason for the decline in unions’
popularity. Heritage’s James Sherk and Filip Jolevski note that the
remaining stronghold is government employees.
The union movement remains strongest in the one sector of the economy
that is immune from competitive pressures: the government. In fact,
twice as many union members work for the Postal Service as in the
entire domestic auto industry.
For people in the private sector, unions often restrict the rights of
workers more than they boost them. And workers are seeing that’s not a
good deal for them.
Volkswagen employees in Chattanooga, Tenn., sent that message when they
voted against unionization in February. One worker explained: “We felt
like we were already being treated very well by Volkswagen in terms of
pay and benefits and bonuses. We also looked at the track record of the
[United Auto Workers]. Why buy a ticket on the Titanic?”
Why, indeed. It’s time for Congress to expand employee rights and free
people to choose what kinds of associations they want to be a part of.
Read this and other articles at Heritage Foundation
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