While public employees are generally not required to join unions, they are often required to pay fees to cover the cost of collective bargaining. A challenge to this practice is heading to the supreme court. While the legal issue will be settled by money and judges, there is also the moral issue of whether public employees should be compelled to pay such fees. As a point of full disclosure, I belong to multiple teacher unions. As such, this should be considered as a potentially biasing factor on my part.
One interesting argument against compelling public employees to pay these fees is based on an appeal to the right of free speech. As has also been argued in the courts, money is regarded as a form of speech. As such, a moral case can be made that forcing employees to pay union fees is a form of compelled speech. This is because unions, like corporations, use their financial resources to influence politicians and voters. A person who does not agree with the views expressed by the union is thus forced to “speak” on behalf of these views by paying fees (rather than union dues). Being an advocate of free speech and opposed to compelled speech, I do find this argument appealing. However, it does have some issues.
One basic concern is whether money should be regarded as speech/expression. While the courts have, so far, drawn a line at outright and explicit bribery, the logical conclusion of this notion is that if money is speech, then giving a politician money to do something is the same as trying to persuade them via other means. While it would be a slippery slope fallacy to insist that this view must lead inevitably to the legalization of bribery, proponents of the view have pushed through many other past barriers and now the sea of money is, metaphorically, eroding this last wall. As such, it is reasonable to worry that through a slow erosion money will gain even more of the status of traditional speech and someday what is now regarded as bribery will merely be legitimate persuasion. It can, of course, be argued that the bribery line can be drawn and held by claiming crossing the line would be harmful. But, so many lines have already been crossed by the flood of money that one should be forgiven for being worried how far the tide will go. As such, I am not a proponent of the broad idea that money is speech and that spenders should thus enjoy considerable freedom under this cover.
A second concern is that this same logic would seem to also apply to corporations. If it is morally wrong for employees to be forced to support a union whose views and activities they disagree with, then it would follow that it is also morally wrong for employees to be forced to support an employer whose views and activities they disagree with. For example, an employee at Hobby Lobby might not embrace the religious views and political activities of that company. While employees are not, obviously, required to write checks to their company’s lobbying and political efforts, the money generated by their labor does go to such activities. Just as an employee would make less income by being forced to pay fees to a union, an employee makes less income by being forced to receive less pay so that the employer can engage in lobbying and political activity. Naturally, this would only apply to employers that used business funds to engage in such activities. If employees are engaging in compelled speech by being forced to pay fees to unions, then employees are also engaged in compelled speech by having the money they generate being used to fund lobbying and political activities rather than getting that money in their paychecks. As such, if employees cannot be compelled to pay union dues on free speech grounds, then employees have the same right to demand that their money not be spent by their employer on activities they disagree with.
The way to respond to this argument is, obviously enough, to argue that there is a relevant difference between employers and unions. For example, it could be argued that people chose to work for companies and hence express a tacit agreement with their activities. After all, they can just get another job elsewhere. The easy and obvious reply to this is that the same would apply to people seeking employment where they must contribute fees to unions—if they do not agree, they can surely just get a job elsewhere.
It could also be argued that employers have special rights to compel speech that unions lack; the challenge would be to make such a case in a principled way. Merely liking employers and loathing unions would obviously not be a principled justification.
Considering the above discussion, if employees have a free speech right to not pay union dues, then they have the free speech right to refuse to allow their employer to use the money they generate for political activities they disagree with. As such, if employees can get the benefits of the union without paying the fees, then employees should have the choice of contributing some of their pay to the political activities of their employer or getting that sum in their paycheck.
DH says
March 7, 2018 at 10:38 pm“Just as an employee would make less income by being forced to pay fees to a union, an employee makes less income by being forced to receive less pay so that the employer can engage in lobbying and political activity.”
I don’t think this is a reasonable argument at all. There is no correlation between what an employee earns and what the company spends its money on. An employee is paid a (presumably) competitive wage based on his or her value to the company – there is no “reduction” in pay because the company wants to make political contributions. I would really love to hear about a case where an employer said to an employee, “Gee – I’d really like to pay you more money, but I have to donate to Donald Trump’s campaign, so no raise for you this year!” Preposterous.
On the other hand, union dues (or fees) are taken directly from an employee’s gross wages, and are often a tacit condition of employment.
I’ve posted this before – but a dozen years ago I was an adjunct at a major New York university. We had the “opportunity” to join the UAW, which had branched out and was supporting the Adjunct’s Union of NY. I did not join. After three years, I was told by the university that unless I joined and paid all my back dues in cash, they would not be able to renew my contract. The union had them by the throat, and were not letting go. I paid the dues, which amounted to over $1,000.
The collective bargaining issues on the table were ones that I either disagreed with, or ones that did not apply to me. Further, I immediately began getting “SOLIDARITY” magazine delivered to my door – which was essentially a propaganda piece for a left-wing agenda that I did not support. The articles also featured the Obama family life and how wonderful they were, and how we should all vote for them for the sake of our union.
I had a casual conversation with an old friend about this – I knew he was an attorney but was not aware that he specialized in labor law. He told me that I had what were called “Beck Rights” (named after a landmark case involving the Beck’s Beer company). I was entitled to audit the union’s accounting, and for whatever percentage of their revenue was allocated toward political causes, I could reduce my dues by an equal percentage. I contacted the union rep and claimed my “Beck Rights”, and asked for an accounting. The conversation was very short. A few days later, I got several boxes in the mail – they buried me in paperwork. Did I want to go through all of this for the principle for which I was standing? Was it worth it for a couple of classes for adjunct pay?
It really didn’t matter – when contracts came around the next year I was not asked what I wanted to teach, or what would fit best in my schedule – as my seniority had allowed in past years. I was given an awful schedule and told to “take it or leave it” – and instead of being offered the 2 – 3 classes I had been in the past, I got one, with a second dangling in front of me “if it ran”. I was blackballed.
This is not about free speech, it’s about power and thuggery. The article you post doesn’t get into nuance – it makes no effort to hide the fact that the unions view those who don’t want to join as a threat …
The political consequences of this shift can be dramatic. The authors estimated that right-to-work laws resulted in a 3.5 percent reduction in Democratic presidential vote totals per county.
The motive doesn’t get much more clear than that.
I wonder how the union members would react if their unions began supporting causes like de-funding Planned Parenthood, or fighting Universal Healthcare – “We are protecting YOUR jobs by lobbying against DACA.”, and things like that. I think the lofty conversation about “Free Speech” and “Right to Representation” would go right out the window.
Michael LaBossiere says
March 7, 2018 at 11:23 pmEmployees could be paid more if a company did not spend money on lobbying and other political activities; so they are losing income in order to support these activities.
I agree completely that a person has a right not to join a union and to not pay for services they do not use. In my next post I argue that a reasonable solution is to change the law so that non-union members do not have to pay fees while they, in turn, get nothing from the unions. That is, they are on their own as they wish to be.
DH says
March 8, 2018 at 2:40 pmOr – a company could spend money on lobbying and make donations to super PACS resulting in the election of someone who cuts corporate taxes, enabling that company to give raises and bonuses to their employees.
But in either case, it’s as Coffee Time describes. One activity has nothing to do with another.
K RWWTP says
March 7, 2018 at 11:45 pmBasically it boils down to, you’re wrong (in Mike’s brain) because Mike says so, DH. Keep playing his game for another decade or so and you’ll understand this.
CoffeeTime says
March 8, 2018 at 4:33 am“Employees could be paid more if a company did not spend money on lobbying and other political activities; so they are losing income in order to support these activities.”
Like DH, I was immediately struck by your equating of the political spending of a company with the political spending of a union.
I can’t understand why you would repeat this point.
The worker in a company gets paid for the labour. The payment is based on what the company is willing to pay and what the worker is willing to turn up for. It is not at all influenced by other expenses the company has. Google could pay its workers more if it discontinued its executive 747, but it wouldn’t; it would just find something else to spend that money on, like a fleet of Gulfstreams. If it makes cost savings, it has no need to pass that on to its staff.
A company’s payment of external monies has no bearing on its payment of staff. These two things are just not related. Since a company’s primary purpose is the profit of its shareholders, it should not pay its staff more unless that results in higher shareholder value. The employees would get no extra pay if a company ceased its political payments.
The more accurate comparison would be to the shareholders of the company. These deductions are being taken from them, not from the employees. And that’s another story.
In a union, however, with no external pocket for profits to go into (except politicians’ pockets) those payments are being made entirely at the expense of the members. The members’ money is being taken from them for this purpose.
Now, I think the idea of treating a company as a legal person with all the rights of a person is the most baldly pig-ignorant piece of unreal stupidity of all time, but under this arrangement, both the company and the union have the right to contribute.
Shareholders can sell their shares anywhere if they are not happy with how their money is being disbursed, but in some states and industries, employees cannot change jobs to another similar. This is an injustice, and needs to be addressed.
On the other hand, I do see that unions will be pitted against free riders and the tragedy of the commons if they cannot enforce membership. My preferred solution would be for unions to be prohibited from lobbying and political donations, in return for keeping a closed shop in certain areas.
WTP says
March 8, 2018 at 3:00 pmOK, had another comment get lost. Not sure what’s up with this new service but even my last post (which seems lost) screwed up my nom de guerre. Let’s see if this one goes through…
You and DH are arguing points of economics and business with Mike. It has been demonstrated time and time and time again over lo these many, many years that Mike neither understands, nor even desires to try to understand, neither business nor economics.
Michael LaBossiere says
March 8, 2018 at 8:19 pmI think the Gravatar thing was bugged somehow. The software did recognize you with your most recent comment.
Michael LaBossiere says
March 8, 2018 at 8:17 pmYes, you can certainly make a relevant difference argument between compelled speech of employees who have to pay fees in return for services and employees whose work is being used to fund lobbying and political activities.
But, if you take the view that using someone’s resources to fund political activity without their explicit consent is compelled speech, then it would seem that they are comparable. Naturally, people can refuse to work for a company or employer that has a unionized work force.
CoffeeTime says
March 9, 2018 at 2:14 amif you take the view that using someone’s resources to fund political activity without their explicit consent is compelled speech
We need to get this point completely clear: a company is not taking its employees’ resources when it makes a political donation. It is taking its shareholders’ resources.
Imagine I am a shareholder in a company that owns a bar. In a month, the bar buys 50 kegs of beer and 1,000 hours of labour. It also donates $1,000 to the Mayor’s re-election campaign. That $1,000 was not taken from the brewery’s resources, and it was not taken from the employees’ resources; it was taken from my resources, and that of my fellow shareholders, since if that donation was not made, we could have claimed that $1,000 as profit, to be paid to us as a dividend. That was our $1,000 – not the employees’ and not the brewery’s.
Michael LaBossiere says
March 9, 2018 at 4:38 pmI do agree that the company is expended the shareholder’s resources, but it is also using the employee’s resources. The employees do the work that enables the company and the shareholders to have money, so whatever they spend on lobbying and such does utilize the labor of the employees to engage in speech. Crudely put, the employees are working to move the mouth while the company leadership decides what words will emerge. As such, they are engaging in compelled speech. At least by the same sort of reasoning that alleges paying union fees is compelled speech. This all assumes that money is speech.
If money is speech, it would seem equally reasonable to claim that labor is speech as well.
CoffeeTime says
March 9, 2018 at 8:03 pmIf money is speech, it would seem equally reasonable to claim that labor is speech as well.
We agree on this. If freely donated money is speech, consistency requires that freely volunteered labor is also speech. So is freely donated materials. If a local sawmill donates wood, and a local carpenter volunteers labor, to build a stage for the Mayor’s re-election campaign rally, these must also be considered policital speech.
However, I do not see how that is relevant to the question of whose resources a company is using to make a donation.
In my example of the bar, the staff exchanged 1000 hours of labor for money. The brewery exchanged 50 kegs of beer for money. They did not donate it. They were paid in full for their labour and materials.
The position that the company is using the staff’s resources to make the donation must also, to be consistent, imply that the company is using the brewery’s resources to make that donation, since both were instrumental in making the profits from which the donation was made. And then, of course, we have the farmers who grew the barley to make the beer, the architect who designed the bar’s building, the city planners who provided for a water supply, and so on, back into history. It is certainly possible to argue that the donation could not have been made without all of these contributions, but it stretches the meaning of “using the resources” into meaninglessness.