The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME affirmed that, under the First Amendment, public employees cannot be required to either join or pay dues (or fees) to a labor union. As you might imagine, labor leaders — recognizing the devastating impact a mass exodus of members would obviously have on their financial and political clout — are willing to resort to just about anything and everything to pretend the ruling never happened.
Take, for example, an approach practiced by Ohio Civil Service Employee Association (OCSEA). In 2019, public employees there achieved a major legal victory for their individual freedoms. OCSEA was required to remove an illegal opt-out restriction included in the current collective bargaining agreement.
OCSEA’s power has been assaulted, however, because our legal system rightfully honored and recognized the First Amendment rights of public employees. Now OCSEA’s paranoid leadership must pursue another oppressive strategy to control union membership numbers.
A campaign is underway to strongly compel public employees in collective bargaining units represented by OCSEA to sign documentation that would once again compel union membership.
If they fail to read the fine print — or union sympathizers sign on their behalf — they will once again be restricted in their ability to opt out.
Why the desperation to circumvent the Janus decision and continuously find ways to undermine the First Amendment?
You can’t help but think of how these tactics mirror the socialist practices of the old Soviet Union. Elitist communist officials were obsessed with centralized planning. The Soviets employed authoritative oversight through violent measures and at the dramatic expense of human rights.
All to control the revenue and expenditures of the socialist bloc.
We know public employee unions celebrate socialism in the way they spend their money and through the causes they endorse. Yet even in their own business practices they emulate the socialist economic ideals of their soviet heroes.
Just look to the recent corrupt business model implemented by OCSEA.
When socialism is embraced in the public sector, and in this specific context among organized labor representing government employees, individual freedoms and liberties are in peril.
This very terrifying thought plagues the hearts and minds of all the patriotic people who support the work of the Freedom Foundation.
Constitutional rights will be honored, and freedom will prevail because of the good people a part of the Freedom Foundation who stand for the truth and seek to deter the advance of a United Soviet Socialist Republic of America.
