What is free speech? Is it the right to speak out and give money
to causes, politicians and push ideas? Is it the ability to keep
silent and not support that with which a person disagrees? Or is it
the power of a group to force its individual members to fund
political causes and candidates they do not support?
On April 9, attorneys for the International Union of Operating
Engineers Local 150 (IUOE) argued that Indiana’s Right to Work
Law infringes on their free speech rights because — get this — it
deprives them of the dues mandated from workers by “agency shop”
provisions.
Earlier this year Indiana became the 23rd state in the nation to
give workers right to work protections. Right to work laws allow
employees at unionized worksites to keep their job without having
to pay dues to a union. If individual employees like what the union
is doing, they are still free to pay dues, but these contributions
are purely voluntary.
This is a problem for IUOE because if workers are no longer
required to pay, the union could lose the funds necessary to curry
favor with politicians, through campaign contributions, and
advocate for pro-union policies.
IUOE argues in its 45-page brief:
In this case, the state of Indiana restricted a channel of
speech-supporting finance … The Union legitimately utilizes dues
money collected through the agency shop provisions in its
collective bargaining agreements, in part, to finance political
speech. The Indiana Right to Work law prohibits agency shop
agreements, and that prohibition restricts a channel through which
speech-supporting finance might flow.
Many union members disagree with their union leadership’s
political giving and activism, but if they work in one of the 27
states without right to work protections, they are forced to
support an agenda with which they disagree, or lose their jobs. In
most election cycles, around
40 percent of union members vote Republican, but only around 3
percent of union political giving goes to the GOP.
In response to union efforts to fund their political activities
with forced dues, Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) chairman of the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (Committee), recently
launched ProtectingOurWorkers.com,
a website with the stated goal to
“listen directly to American union workers about forced political
contributions and to continue [the Committee’s] efforts to hold
both government and union leaders accountable to the rank-and file
whose hard earned dues are funding partisan political activity they
don’t support.”
Protectingourworkers.com provides examples of three
rank-and-file union members who recently testified before the
Committee about how labor bosses used their dues for political
activity they did not support.
Terry
Bowman, a current United Auto Workers (UAW) member,
testified about how he “personally observed the intimidating
political activities of [his] union.” In response, he created the
nonprofit organization Union Conservatives, he
said, “because [the UAW] was using my regular union dues to push a
political agenda that I opposed.”
Sally
Coomer, a private citizen, said that she was forced into the
Service Employee International Union (SEIU) because of a Washington
State bill that designates all home care providers who receive
state aid as “public employees” and requires them to join a union.
Coomer did not work for anyone, but she received Medicaid funds for
assistance in taking care of her severely disabled 22-year-old
daughter.
That was enough for the state to declare her an “employee” of
her daughter and therefore eligible to be unionized. How is SEIU
helping this mother who sacrifices every day to take care of her
disabled child? By taking $95 out of her assistance checks every
month. She told the Committee “they are taking my union dues out,
they are funding things that are directly detrimental to the
services that [her daughter] receives.”
Against their will, Sally Coomer and others in her situation are
helping to fund organized labor’s huge political machine. Twelve of
the top
20 political donors going back to 1989 are unions, according to
the Center for Responsive Politics — with nearly all of that going
to Democrats.
Free speech is not forced speech, which is what compulsory dues
go toward. Workers should have the right to join unions and support
their political causes if they wish, but no worker should be forced
to be a member or pay an organization simply to keep his or her
job. And no one should be required to fund political ideas they do
not support.
