California lawsuit seeks to end practice of forced union dues

by Paul Kersey In Illinois and many other states, government workers are often forced to pay union dues in order to hold on to their jobs. But a lawsuit filed on behalf of teachers in California may bring this practice to an end. Union officials use forced dues to fund massive political and lobbying drives...

by Paul Kersey

In Illinois and many other states, government workers are often forced to pay union dues in order to hold on to their jobs. But a lawsuit filed on behalf of teachers in California may bring this practice to an end.

Union officials use forced dues to fund massive political and lobbying drives that many workers are opposed to. This is a massive taxpayer subsidy for union politics, and a huge problem in terms of the First Amendment. Nobody should be forced to fund a purely private organization he or she does not support.

This mess has been mitigated somewhat by the fact that workers are not formally required to join a union. Workers who refuse to join still must pay an “agency fee,” but they can then invoke their Hudson Rights to limit their agency fee to their share of the costs of collective bargaining. In theory this allows them to stay out of the purely political stuff that the union does.

But is this enough? The Washington, D.C.-based Center for Individual Rights says no, and they aretaking this case on behalf of 10 California schoolteachers to court. They have a strong argument, especially when government workers are concerned, because it is extremely difficult to separate a government union’s workplace representation from its political activism. Government unions have a direct interest in expanding the reach of government, and government should not be guaranteeing funding for private groups with such direct political interests.

CIR no doubt took some inspiration from Justice Samuel Alito’s recent observation in Knox v. Service Employees International Union that, legally speaking, we have sort of backed into allowing forced dues. Alito observed that the whole structure of agency fees and Hudson Rights came about “more as a historical accident than through the careful application of First Amendment Principles.”

As we’ve noted before, in Illinois bargaining is about politics and politics is about bargaining, and separating the two is close to impossible. The legislative wrangling over state pensions illustrates the point: what is ordinarily part of worker compensation has become the biggest political football in the state. Should workers be forced to fund one side in what has become a political brawl? If we take our First Amendment seriously, the answer should be “no.” We’ll see what happens in California.