In 2018, the Supreme Court decided Janus v. AFSCME, in which the plaintiff, a governmental worker in Illinois, objected to being compelled to pay dues to a union that used most of the money for political purposes with which he disagreed. The Court held that mandatory union dues in such circumstances amounted to forced political speech in violation of the First Amendment. This meant that public sector workers across the country could opt out of paying dues.
Several non-profit organizations that dislike the heavy political clout the unions exert began campaigns to notify workers of their rights under Janus. The unions were apoplectic, as large numbers of workers, upon learning that they could stop paying dues, did so.
Unions seek to maximize revenue just like any other business, and they never hesitate to turn to politics to do so. In New York State, they recently got their Democratic allies to pass a bill meant to stop groups in the state from notifying union members of their opt-out rights.
How? The pretext of the law is that it is illegal for anyone to falsely claim to be a union official and, therefore, communicating with members in a way that misleads them to think the communication is from the union is fraudulent.
There is no evidence that any of the mailings from the unions’ main target, Freedom Foundation, and its Opt Out Today campaign, have been fraudulent. They don’t claim to be from unions. But that is beside the point of the bill. It allows the state attorney general to bring action against any person “who has engaged or is about to engage in the false impersonation of an employee organization.”
As is so often the case in the left’s lawfare operations, the process is the punishment. The unions expect the hyper-partisan Attorney General Letitia James to hound the organizations that want to tell workers the inconvenient truth that they have the right to opt out.
As the Wall Street Journal wrote in its editorial, “Smart union members might ask what their union bosses are so afraid they might hear.”
Even FDR opposed public sector unionism. This snide attack on free speech is just one more reason to think he was right.
The freedom to opt out of compulsory union dues is good. Better still, however, would be the freedom for workers to choose whether they want to opt in to union membership in the first place.