California unions and the liberal politicians whose strings they pull, knowing what’s coming down the road, aren’t waiting until the U.S. Supreme Court issues its ruling in Janus v. AFSCME to get about the task of undermining it.
According to a San Francisco Chronicle report, labor leaders and lawmakers are responding to the likelihood of a decision that would outlaw mandatory dues and/or agency fees for workers in the public sector by crafting legislation that would help deceive newly hired employees into joining while erecting hurdles to prevent the old ones from leaving.
Dave Low, executive director of the California School Employees Association, is on record as saying his organization is actively lobbying for legislation that would give his members “release time” from their jobs that could be spent recruiting workers into the union, blocking access to union members contact information from the public and allowing unions to charge nonmembers fees for other administrative purposes.
Not only will leaving work to go serve union interests be considered vacation time, but those who exercise the option will be incentivized.
“Release time,” in this case, is code for “comped time.”
Managers will look the other way when members take time off to join a union rally or phone bank to campaign against political candidates with whom the union disagrees. This activity will be encouraged – and heavily subsidized – at the California taxpayers’ expense.
The second perk for which Low is advocating comes in direct response to the Freedom Foundation and its efforts to contact union members about their rights to opt out of unions.
When you strip away all the union rhetoric. It is not about protecting a worker. It’s about keeping public-sector workers in the dark regarding their constitutional rights and keeping the money flowing into union coffers.
Jessica Ulstad, a political field director for the California Federation of Teachers, has been quoted as saying, “If we have less money as labor, we’re going to be spending less money on Democratic candidates. We’re going to be spending less money on things like ballot initiatives.”
What she doesn’t seem to grasp is that, since it wasn’t the unions’ money to begin with, their having less of it is a good thing.
