On the one hand, I think it's ridiculous to try to take away collective bargaining rights from the unions. Why should unions, or any bargaining agent, not be able to bargain for whatever they want? In no way is the legislature forced to agree.
However, I think the opposition has a point too. The WSJ (and others) claim that the unions are "on both sides of the bargaining table", because they raise a lot of union dues, which are automatically collected by the state and given to the unions, who then funnel them to Democratic politicians. I support the Democratic party, but that's my choice. I don't accept that any organization should make it for me.
As a theoretical exercise, I propose the following compromise:
(1) Split union dues into two parts, and make half of them opt-in rather than opt-out. You can quit the union, but you can't get out of paying union dues. Apparently, if you make a big fuss, you can get some of your dues back -- those that go to Democratic politicians, or perhaps those that go to beer.
It seems the fair thing to do is to require employees represented by unions (I'm thinking of the TAA specifically, but I imagine other unions are similar) to pay only the bare minimum which actually pays for the TAA's specific expenses in negotiating and dealing with the legislature. Any money that goes to politicians, to social events, or to national labor organizations should not be automatically deducted from paychecks, except from those TAs and employees that specifically decide to join the union. This would come with the understanding that it's purely optional, and comes with higher paycheck deductions.
(2) Require unions to be recertified periodically by secret ballot. Walker wants this, and I think this part is fair. Maybe not annually, but at least every two or four years. Require, say, a quorum of at least a third of those represented by the union, and a majority vote to retain the union.
As it is now, there is no way the unions are going anywhere. There's no real mechanism for them to be disbanded (except by the legislature), and there is enormous social pressure against speaking out against the unions. I get the impression that the unions enjoy overwhelming support. I think it is reasonable that Republicans ask that the unions prove it.
7 comments:
I once asked about getting part of my union dues back, and Adam said that it would be some amount low enough that it ultimately didn't make a difference to me. I got the impression that in actuality, very little of the union dues goes into political action. So as far as WSJ's claim goes, I'd like to see some actual statistics. To be fair, I don't currently have any evidence other than anecdotes that little of the union dues goes into political action.
Things do get fuzzy though. Would you consider the efforts of the TAA right now to be political or to be a part of the negotiating and dealing with legislature? And I think money that goes to national labor unions is also because it helps gives sway for the negotiations, solidarity and all.
Maybe you can argue back beer money, but I don't know. Involved members of the TAA are definitely much more active and spend their time fighting for my benefits for no pay. Giving them beer as compensation doesn't really seem unreasonable to me.
The getting re-certified, maybe. And if that were all that was proposed in Walker's bill, there may not be these protests.
Also, I was reading this:
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2011/jan/07/scott-walker/wisconsin-gov-scott-walker-says-state-can-severely/
It may be that the unions have a say in who sits on the other side of the bargaining table with them, but the state and legislature gets to set the rules of bargaining, as Walker and the legislature is currently trying to do now.
It seems to me that with the public sector situation of government versus public sector unions, both sides of this have too much power in the negotiations process. In other situations such as the private sector, federal labor laws and state laws sets the rules of negotiations. But with public sector unions, the employer makes the law and rules.
If you ever dig up statistics, please share them. I'd like to see them too.
To answer your question -- I don't know exactly what the TAA is doing now as an organization, other than encouraging its members to protest at the Capitol (and, from what I heard, organizing a trash cleanup!) But from what I have heard, it seems to be well within the absolute minimum of what unions should be able to do: it is fighting for its survival. Gov. Walker wants to decapitate it. Of course it should fight back.
I've always been a little bit queasy about "solidarity" -- it always sounded a little like letting others make decisions for you to me -- but I agree that building ties to national labor groups is likely to be of some value.
I've been swayed by articles such as this
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/10/unions_america
but also this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/opinion/21krugman.html?hp
I am curious about how widespread misuse of power on the part of unions is. I'm sure it's real, but reading stories that say "Unions did X", "Unions did Y", doesn't give much indication into how widespread problems are. Krugman said --
"You don’t have to love unions, you don’t have to believe that their policy positions are always right, to recognize that they’re among the few influential players in our political system representing the interests of middle- and working-class Americans, as opposed to the wealthy."
That's a damn good point.
So I was digging around, looking for information about just how much of my union dues goes into the TAA Political Action Committee (PAC). And I found their "bylaws."
http://www.cgeu.org/wiki/index.php/Political_Action
In particular, #5, part F, it says "1. All direct, in-kind and independent expenditures related to campaigns for federal office are prohibited. 2. Direct and In-Kind contributions to candidate committees shall be limited to $1,000 for candidates endorsed by the TAA and to $500 for candidates endorsed by an affiliated union unless the maximum contribution allowed by law is less that these amounts."
Now, this doesn't necessarily mean that they can't contribute money to campaigns in other ways such as printing flyers, etc. For example, Koch brothers fund Americans for Prosperity who can then spend large sums of money on campaign ads. When the TAA does print flyers, etc, it should say "funded by the TAA-PAC" fund or something like that. I've yet to see ANY of those flyers in my time in Madison.
It also says in there that "No dues funds shall be transferred to the TAA-PAC Fund without an explicit directive from the membership through action at a general membership meeting." I pretty much have never gone to a general membership meeting until recently, so maybe that's a bit shady. Then again, I pay taxes and never got to decide if I wanted any of that money to go to the Iraq war. I pay segregated fees and don't get to decide what it funds and doesn't fund.
It seems less like a "funnel" to me and more like a thoughtful contribution.
Here's another link:
http://www.dol.gov/olms/regs/compliance/rrlo/lmrda.htm
This will take more patience than I currently have to sort through the data.
The other data that would be relevant to this information is how many people are actually represented by the union. If the TAA spends 10,000 on political action, and represents 2500 people, this comes down to about $4/person. This would just be a drop in the bucket compared to the $225 we pay a year for dues.
I'm going to add another comment. Sorry for this. I've just been thinking about this a lot. You mentioned the getting recertified and the way the budget repair bill is currently written, there is no "quorum" requirement for a union to be recertified. The union must get a majority of their members (as opposed to those voting) to get recertified. This would require a higher voter turnout than the November election in which Walker got elected with a 53% vote of those that voted. This part sounds an awful lot like union busting to me.
Hey, thanks for the comments and the links. Some responses --
I agree $4 a member is a pittance. I remember looking at the TAA website and being annoyed at the lack of a budget. It seems like $200 a member times 2000-5000 (??) members is a lot of money, and I didn't understand what it was going to. Although, I could have tried harder to find out.
I noticed that it takes a 2/3 vote of the entire union membership (i.e. not just those voting) to strike. (I think someone posted a link to their FB wall. Maybe you, or Sarah B.) A damn high hurdle, as it should be.
As far as the union needing 50% to be recertified... I'm not sure what I think. Right now, my gut tells me that's a bit too strict, but that something weaker along the same lines is justified. That said, I can't think of any good idea. Maybe something arbitrary, like 25% of membership, and a majority of those voting.
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