LIVING LIBERTY
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A PUBL ICAT ION OF THE FREEDOM FOUNDATION
or on Labor Day? Work and workers, not unions, deserving of a holiday By HUNTER TOWER Excerpted from CENTERSQUARE.com Sept. 7, 2020 Today, Labor Day is no longer about trade unionists marching down the street asking for safe working conditions and a five-day workweek. The union leaders of today openly support the defunding of police, Medicare for All and other radical ideals that have nothing to do with the pay, benefits or working conditions of their dues-payers and everything to do with advancing a far-Left political agenda. The goal is to expand government – which means more union dues dollars for their slush funds. Thanks to the government union-backed politicians like
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, thousands of businesses and livelihoods of those employed by them are in great peril. While in no danger of missing out on a paycheck themselves, Tom Wolf and his cabinet have made disastrous decisions affecting the economic, mental and social well-being of our citizens, and they would not be in office without the union bosses’ help. Not coincidentally, government unions donated more than $10 million to his last gubernatorial run. So, this Labor Day we shouldn’t be celebrating government labor unions or the union bosses who take lavish trips and enjoy six-figure salaries. Instead, we should celebrate the workers of this great nation and their constitutional right to leave their public-sector union if they so choose without fear of losing their job.
Oregon’s example show why unions are failing everywhere By JASON DUDASH Sept. 7, 2020 Unlike the private sector, where union membership is largely voluntary, government workers at every level for generations had no choice but to join a union or support its activities through so-called “agency fees.” That changed in 2018, when the U.S. Supreme Court in Janus v. AFSCME affirmed that mandatory unionization is a violation of the worker’s First Amendment rights. The decision allowed public employees to opt out of their union without fear of losing their jobs, and tens of thousands have. But the unions aren’t giving up without a fight, and through lawsuits, workplace intimidation and the simple expedient of keeping workers in the dark about their rights, the defection rate has been effectively suppressed in most states. Not so in Oregon. Like their neighbors in Washington and California, government employee unions the Beaver State have had to contend with the Freedom Foundation, a small but growing public policy organ-
ization that makes a point of informing government workers about their rights — and defending them in court when they dare to exercise them. And the results have been remarkable. SEIU 503, Oregon’s largest public employee union, has lost a full third of its dues-paying members in just the two years since the Janus ruling was issued. The state’s teachers’ unions have seen similar out-out rates. It’s gotten so bad SEIU has resorted to forging the names of workers on membership cards. But what choice do they have? For decades, the country’s last remaining pocket of union strength has enjoyed the luxury of a publicly enforced monopoly over the government workforce. But now government employee unions have been told that, instead of force and connivance, they must attract clients the old-fashioned way — by offering a quality service at a reasonable price. And competition just isn’t in their vocabulary.
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