by Hunter Tower
A new media campaign unveiled last month in Philadelphia and New Jersey is providing empirical evidence of what’s been obvious anecdotally all along — it isn’t loyalty that keeps so many public employees ensnared in a labor union five years after the U.S. Supreme Court banned mandatory membership and dues.
It’s fear and lack of information.
In 2018, the court issued a 5-4 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME affirming that, because public employees are paid out of tax revenue and every dollar spent on their wages and working conditions is one that can’t be used for some other government program, virtually every action taken by the union has a definite political component to it.
Consequently, forcing workers to join or fund a union as a condition of employment is a violation of their First Amendment rights.
In theory, Janus should have opened the floodgates for workers wanting out of their union. And in fact, nearly 800,000 have exercised their newly reinforced rights since the ruling was issued, depriving unions like the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the National Education Association (NEA), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and countless others of billions of dollars they would otherwise have confiscated from millions of government employees.
Instead of lining the pockets of greedy labor moguls and the liberal politicians whose allegiance they buy with someone else’s dues dollars, the money stays in the hands of the people who actually earned it.
In practice, however, unions responded to news about Janus by doubling down on what they were doing wrong to begin with. Rather than working harder to provide government employees with representation they’d be willing to voluntarily pay for, union leaders made it their business to challenge every possible defection.
Government employees were never told by their unions that Janus safeguarded their ability to choose for themselves whether to organize. And when they found out about their rights anyway, union operatives lied, bullied and filed lawsuits to prevent them from being exercised.
Not surprisingly, most workers decided it was easier to simply accept the status quo than stand up to their union overseers. But don’t believe the union cover story: They aren’t staying around because they’re happy.
In response to the unions’ refusal to comply with the Supreme Court ruling, the Freedom Foundation devised a strategy of its own. Rather than waiting in vain for them to the do the right thing, we developed a multi-pronged outreach program that included informational materials distributed to government employees by mail, email, social media and, when possible, in face-to-face meetings with canvassers.
Occasionally, when resources permit, these efforts include paid advertising, too, as they did from April 17 to May 28 for commuters in Philly and South Jersey. Billboards announcing “Save $100’s a month! Opt out of your union,” and “learn your rights: OptOutToday.com.”
A brand new billboard went live at the beginning of June declaring, “Your union dues – funding indoctrination… stop funding insanity: OptOutToday.com.”
To the surprise of no one — including, almost certainly, the unions themselves — the results of the media blitz simply confirmed what the Freedom Foundation has known since even before Janus.
When public employees know their rights and have confidence that someone has their back, they opt out.
Small wonder union leaders who insist their workers are as content now as they were when they were penned together like cattle behind regulatory barbed wire are forced to take the millions of dollars they’d rather lavish on liberal political candidates and causes and spend it on attack ads and lawsuits.
And it’s getting worse every day for them. The good news is, what’s bad for them is good for everyone else.
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Hunter Tower is the East Coast Director of the Freedom Foundation.
