12 Things You Need to Know About Government Unions

The Federalist ^ | August 22 | Stan Greer

[willowsdale]

Long after the pro-union monopoly National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) was adopted in 1935, even strong supporters of this statute rejected the appropriateness of attempting anything analogous in federal, state, or local government.

For example, in 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who just two years earlier had publicly endorsed and signed the NLRA, wrote a letter to a government union official explaining it is “impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or bind the employer” in dealings with “Government employee organizations” because “the employer is the whole people . . . .”

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, politicians like Robert F. Wagner Jr (New York City mayor and son of the Senate sponsor of the NLRA), Gaylord Nelson (Wisconsin governor), and finally President John F. Kennedy opted to bring monopoly unionism to the public sector.

Wagner, Nelson, and Kennedy all sought to strike a balance by resisting the wholesale imposition of NLRA-style unionism on the public sector. Case in point: Neither the executive order Wagner finally got around to issuing in 1958, nor the statute signed by Nelson in 1959, nor Kennedy’s 1963 federal executive order authorized Big Labor to extract any forced union dues from public servants who chose not to join.

However, today more than 20 states have laws explicitly authorizing forced financial support for unions for some or all categories of public-sector employees. And the vast majority of unionized government workers in the United States reside in these Big Labor-dominated states.

[willowsdale]

A U.S. Supreme Court decision issued at the very end of the last term has called into question the constitutionality of laws and other public policies, now in effect in more than 20 states, that authorize the termination of public employees for refusal to pay dues or fees to an unwanted union.

[Repeal The 17th]

Let me do the heavy lifting ...From The Article (FTA):

1. Even pro-union politicians used to think public sector unionism was too radical.

2. Politicians later empowered private groups to tax government employees.

3. Government union bosses’ forced dues powers largely based on a false premise.

4. Federal courts have long admitted forced dues for government employees is constitutionally problematic.

5. In recent developments, mothers took on a governor and politically-connected union.

6. Harris and other providers blocked an expanded shakedown.

7. The Court’s Abood majority acknowledged that forced union dues violate workers’ freedom to associate.

8. Union lawyers admit public workers may be forced to pay a union to ‘make an argument’ with which they disagree.

9. A Court majority struck down the scheme, but left government union bosses’ forced dues powers intact.

10. The Harris dissent matters, too.

11. The dissent runs contrary to years of federal court precedent.

12. Millions of public servants remain subject to compulsory unionism.

[ansel12]

JFK, the man who ended us.

“In 1962, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10988, which permitted collective bargaining by federal employees. Widely seen as a gift to George Meany, the AFL-CIO head who helped Kennedy win the White House, the executive order was also a gift to government unions, both because it widened federal membership and because it signaled national approval of unions for state and local employees.”