Article from Reason by David Harsanyi.
How does a public-sector union work? Easy.
First, the state creates a monopoly. The monopoly forces taxpayers to fund those workers, whether they do a good job or not. The union then coerces workers to pay dues regardless of whether or not they want to. Then the union uses those dues to help fund political advocacy that perpetuates their monopoly and the union’s influence. So, in other words: racketeering.
Among many significant problems with this arrangement, the most obvious is that it’s an assault on freedom of association. If there is another organization in American life that has a license to compel workers to participate in their nongovernmental organization simply to secure a job, I haven’t heard of it.
The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Janus v. AFSCME, a case in which a man named Mark Janus, a non-union child-support specialist in Illinois, argued that his First Amendment rights were violated because he is forced to pay “agency fees” to a public-sector union. It was dismaying, though not unexpected, that during oral arguments, justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor concerned themselves with the impact the decision would have on union membership rather than concerning themselves with impact this kind of policy has on the Constitution.
Read more at Reason.
Image Credit: Industrial Workers of the World journal “Solidarity” [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_hand_that_will_rule_the_world.jpg)], via Wikimedia Commons
wpDiscuz
Ginsberg is still alive? I thought they just propped her up in a corner like an Irish wake.
She is dead and doesn’t know it.
Public Sector Unions are a horror. Their “Contracts” are not signed in good faith, because the Taxpayers are paying the “Contracts”, and by the way have no say in their terms….Bigger Gov’s means more useless jobs and money for Unions….but in places where Unions are strong Public Finances tend to be in rough shape..
This article is spot on. For college income, I worked for the Santa Fe Railroad during the summers of 1961-63. Never such union abuse. When harvest work in Kansas disappeared, I signed up for the “extra gang” at Chicago’s Corwith Yards. I was never called and when I inquired, they told me I had not yet joined the Brotherhood. So I did and worked the same day. Many with whom I worked not only manipulated locations, shifts, jobs, car cards and whatever their imagination conjured. Many worked in Chicago and collected unemployment in Gary, Indiana. Some voted in both states. It was a criminal’s paradise. Not my cup of tea.
Indeed, public sector unions are a travesty against the general citizenry. Public sector employees are already given an insane level of job protection. Unions do not so much protect employee rights as lobby for additional pay and spend union dues on political issues.