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Workers unite-against forced dues

By Jami Lund, Project Manager
Historically, Labor Day has commemorated the efforts of workers to unite for their common interests in the face of gross exploitation. But in recent decades, “representing workers” has become a multi-billion dollar industry with all the flaws of a monopoly: lack of accountability, financial excess, and a disregard for individual rights.

Labor organizations are the only private entities in the country empowered by government to force American workers to hand over money as a condition of employment. This yields billions of dollars in revenue every year to the disposal of union officials who have no incentive for accountability, and who spend large amounts of it promoting their own political agenda.

Not surprisingly, labor organizations have become the most potent political force in America today. They have operations most political parties would envy. Nationwide, the union’s political activities include get-out-the-vote drives; detailed political assessments and reports; voter identification logs; direct mass mailings; email list-building; publications from local, state and national union affiliates; contributions to candidates; contributions to ballot initiatives; paid political staff; funding to other political and ideological organizations; funding to state affiliates; coordinated campaigning with political parties; NEA delegations at party conventions (state and national); phone banking, television, newspaper and radio campaigns; research and development; polling; purchase and operation of equipment; etc.

Labor unions are organized to elect or defeat candidates at nearly every level of public office.

There would be nothing inherently wrong with this political machinery except for one thing: it is paid for with automatic and sizable deductions from workers’ paychecks. It is a simple matter of free speech that all politics should be paid for with voluntary contributions. Thomas Jefferson hit the mark several centuries ago when he said, “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical.” It is unacceptable that American workers in 2002 are being forced to support someone else’s political agenda.

But there is a reason many union officials don’t like the idea of having to ask for their political contributions. In Washington, 91 percent of the National Education Association’s (NEA) members refuse to voluntarily contribute even one dollar per month to the union’s political action committee now that the state’s paycheck protection law gives them a choice.

Unfettered ability to take money from workers has brought a corresponding lack of accountability to labor organizations. The political ambitions of union officials are often at odds with the beliefs and interests of their membership.

Examples of union officials contributing money to political causes members do not support have become all too common. In Washington state, for instance, labor unions spent more than $400,000 in the 1999 election cycle trying to defeat a popular tax relief measure, despite their own internal polls showing that sixty percent of their membership supported it.

In 2000, delegates at the NEA’s annual convention realized many of the union’s 2.4 million members supported George W. Bush in the presidential race. So the union developed an aggressive campaign to “move” 800,000 members to Al Gore’s camp, and spent millions of dollars taken from their members to carry it out.

All told, labor unions spent $50.8 million in admitted direct contributions to national campaigns in the 2000 elections. That amount does not include unreported “indirect” contributions. The AFL-CIO alone claims to have activated 1,000 grassroots coordinators and made five million phone calls, none of which is reported as a direct contribution.

But even this isn’t enough for many union officials. The NEA and AFL-CIO both voted recently to levy special assessments on their millions of members to raise an additional $62.5 million and $25 million respectively for election-related activity over the next few years.

Voluntary unions may have an important role in speaking on behalf of workers. But in states like Washington and Oregon, with laws allowing unions to take wages from workers as a condition of employment, officials too often spend this “easy money” in violation of workers’ free speech rights.

In the case of the National Education Association, these violations prompted the Evergreen Freedom Foundation to fight numerous court battles on behalf of teachers against their union. Our investigations have led to two lawsuits filed by our attorney general against the NEA’s Washington state affiliate, a Superior Court ruling of intentional and willful violations of teachers’ rights, and more than one million dollars in penalties against the union, including repayment to teachers of more than half a million dollars illegally taken from their paychecks.

Frankly, what unions do to their members may be the last institutionalized civil rights violation remaining in our nation. We cannot assume that those profiting from this activity will ever dismantle the illicit system. To the contrary, they often use pressure and intimidation to maintain it. That is why it’s up to citizens to speak out against this exploitation.

After all, isn’t that what Labor Day is all about?

Jami Lund is a project manager for the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, a Washington state-based policy research organization.

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org