Don’t Unionize the National Guard

I magine, for a horrifying moment, the spectacle of an enlisted service member hesitating at a crucial moment to carry out an order from his or her commander until it can be vetted by a union shop steward.

The image seems absurdly hypothetical to most Americans, but for labor leaders, always hungry for new sources of dues revenue and the corresponding political clout that other people’s money can buy, it’s more than a tantalizing thought. It’s a distinct possibility.

President Biden’s Department of Justice conceded as much on January 20 in the course of asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed last November by state-employee unions in Connecticut. That suit concerned whether members of the National Guard, under certain conditions, can be unionized.

While the DOJ recommended that the suit be dismissed, on grounds that the unions lacked standing to file it, it agreed with the unions’ position that National Guard troops doing state business can be unionized just like other state employees.

A 1978 federal law prohibiting military personnel from organizing unions “does not apply to Guard members on state active duty or in the Inactive National Guard,” DOJ lawyers wrote in their filing. The law makes it a felony for members of the armed forces, including the National Guard, to join or attempt to form a labor union. But the rule affects National Guardsmen only when they are on federal duty ordered by U.S. military officials.

“We’re excited about what appears to be a straightforward agreement with our position that National Guard members on State Active Duty are not subject to” the federal law, Josh Lefkow, a legal intern for the Yale Law School Veterans Legal Services Clinic and a Marine veteran, told the Army Times.

Unless called to active duty, National Guard and reserve personnel are typically on the clock for one weekend a month and again during an annual two-week training requirement. These occasions are considered federal service.

But unlike reserve units, the National Guard is officially composed of 54 separate organizations — one for each state plus Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia. At the discretion of their state or territorial governor, these troops are occasionally deployed in local emergencies to perform non-military missions, such as supplementing local health authorities doing Covid testing or battling natural disasters.

The Connecticut lawsuit is the brainchild of the 30,000-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 4, along with the Connecticut Police and Fire Union, the Connecticut State Employees Association, and the National Association of Government Employees.

The latter two are affiliated with the Service Employees International Union.

AFSCME, with a reported 1.4 million members, is the fourth-largest public-employee union in the nation. It was also the losing party in Janus v. AFSCME, the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 2018 ruling affirming that public employees cannot be compelled to join a labor union or support one with their dues or fees.

Thousands of state, county, and local government workers have opted out in the wake of the decision, and AFSCME is always on the lookout for ways to backfill the growing hole in its membership. An audacious scheme to organize members of the military would fill its needs very nicely.

Proponents of the plan assure critics that it would apply to National Guard troops only when they are doing state business. But bigger camels have wriggled into smaller tents once their noses were given a head start by elected officials compromised by ties to government unions.

It bears noting that the 1978 federal law the unions are currently trying to circumvent was passed by Congress in response to efforts earlier in that decade to unionize the entire military — including troops on federal active duty — in the wake of the Vietnam War.

To state the obvious, unionization is fundamentally incompatible with military service of any kind. Unionization of National Guard units, even if only in their state capacity, could erode discipline, dilute the chain of command, and undermine unit readiness.

If National Guard personnel were to unionize, current law in many states could permit them to go on strike. What would happen if a state was stricken by a natural disaster while its National Guard personnel were on strike?

And morale could suffer if unruly or insubordinate guardsmen were shielded from meaningful discipline. Writing in 1977, U.S. Military Academy faculty member Colonel William Taylor aptly observed that “most Americans continue to expect standards of conduct, discipline, dedication and self-sacrifice from their military which they are not prepared to have bargained away at the behest of any labor union.”

Our concern as Americans should be that it’s no longer 1977, and Joe Biden doesn’t think like “most Americans.” He has already overperformed on his campaign promise to be the “most union-friendly president you ever saw,” so the very real possibility of organized labor extending its tentacles into the nation’s armed services can’t simply be written off as more bluster.