Unions and Forced Political Speech

[Geee]

National Review:


The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is being dragged to the Supreme Court for alleged First Amendment infringements. In Knox v. SEIU, Local 1000, the Court will decide whether the union forced non-members to pay for political speech and failed to give proper notice.

This court fight began in 2005. Before Arnold Schwarzenegger became another fallen star left blushing on the society pages, he took on the unions; he scared them so much, in fact, that SEIU, Local 1000 decided to garnish the wages of California’s public employees — including 28,000 public workers who were not union members — as an “Emergency Temporary Assessment to Build a Political Fight-Back Fund.” This political war chest paid for political ads and other efforts to defeat Proposition 75, a measure that would have restricted the use of union dues for political purposes, and Proposition 76, which would have imposed a cap on state spending.


If you’re wondering how a union can take money from people who are not union members, then you need an introduction to modern union rules in states without strong right-to-work laws — that is, laws that allow workers to refuse to pay union dues or join unions (though even then they are still covered by the union contract). Like 25 others, California is not a right-to-work state. As a result, those who have the privilege to work in unionized shops, or for the state of California itself, have to fund whatever union is recognized as their “monopoly bargaining representative.” So though the 28,000 state employees represented in the class-action suit were not members of SEIU, Local 1000, they had to pay SEIU 99.1 percent of full union dues.

The other 0.9 percent was knocked off because that’s what the union spends on members-only benefits. In addition, non-members could pay a reduced fee of 56.35 percent — funding only the union expenses that are “chargeable” to non-members against their will under Supreme Court precedent — if they formally objected. According to the Court, non-members cannot be forced to fund political activities — and under Chicago Teachers Local No. 1 v. Hudson, unions cannot collect money from non-members unless they first provide a breakdown of the fees and offer a chance to object. This is called a “Hudson notice,” and unions typically provide them annually.