NPR broadcast a story this morning concerning the fairness of forcing non public union members to pay some share of union fees to unions in their workplaces:
It’s the showdown at the Supreme Court Corral on Monday for public employee unions and their opponents.
Union opponents are seeking to reverse a 1977 Supreme Court decision that allows public employee unions to collect so-called “fair share fees.”
Twenty-three states authorize collecting these fees from those who don’t join the union but benefit from a contract that covers them.
The decision later this year will have profound consequences not just for the California teachers in Monday’s case, but for police, firefighters, health care workers and other government workers across the country.
And I thought to myself,
Fine, if you have some objection to the union which you think is fundamental to your very being, then let’s find a way to accommodate you which is fair to all sides.
Since you object to paying a fair share for the work of the union, we’ll eliminate that requirement.
And since the union objects to representing you for free, we’ll eliminate that requirement.
My suggested resolution is that your salary, benefits, and workplace conditions will be based on the lowest offer from the employer. So if the union negotiates a salary 15% over the lowest offer of the employer, then your salary will be … ah, you understand.
Or you can negotiate for yourself.
I think this is undeniably a very fair approach to the problem for those who think unions are un-American, and for those who simply don’t want to try to reform the union.
Further along in the NPR offering, I see this:
In the Supreme Court on Monday, lawyer Michael Carvin, representing the challengers, will tell the justices that what are technically called “agency fees” are unconstitutional.
“You’re forcing the employee to subsidize somebody else’s speech,” Carvin said. Negotiating a public employee union contract, he maintains, is different from negotiating one for workers in the private sector.
I disagree. Just as companies lobby, quite often against the philosophical beliefs of their employers, without accusations of violating free speech rights, unions should as well. And while I played with the notion of permitting the objectors to only pay the costs of the immediate contract negotiation, a good union’s activities should be constrained to those benefiting the union members; differentiation is a fool’s task.
That, of course, is an ideal union; but a good member should be reforming the bad union, not running away from it.
Mr. Carvin then moves along with an emotionally appealing, but basically, idiotic argument:
“When we’re talking about public unions,” he said, “everything they do is inherently a matter of public concern, because every time they get pension, health care and salary benefits, that comes out of the public fisc … so every dollar you spend on health care or salary is a dollar you can’t spend on roads or children.”
You bump up the taxes a trifle and pay the folks educating your kids without stealing from the other chores. And, oddly enough, paying the teachers better means your ARE spending more on children.
All that said, I’ve never been a union member and probably never will be. Probably won’t join AARP, either. Not a joiner at heart. But, given the disgraceful behavior of employers in the private sector, I do not deny the need for unions, for their ability to bring the viewpoint of the line worker to the table, with regards to safety, salary, and many other matters. Face it: the workplace is not an easy matter, and leaving it to management, with an overriding interest in profit (in most places), leaves the matter greatly unbalanced. The smart places embrace unions, in my view. Unions, for all their flaws, are a valuable addition to the workplace, private or public.
