Banning Compulsory Dues Curbs Cost of Living
On average, forced-unionism states are 23.2% more expensive to live in than Right to Work states. And decades of academic research show that compulsory unionism actually fosters a higher cost of living.
In many cases, “official time” is no more than taxpayer-funded no-show jobs. When union officials are on official time, they are without any direction or control from the the federal government even though taxpayers are paying. Many federal employees who have official time status work all year on union business and never work on anything for the benefit of taxpayers who are paying their salaries. Not only are these full-time non-federal employees being paid by the federal government; they receive pay increases, bonuses, vacations, retirement benefits, promotions, and other benefits. Without forced-dues collection being used for politics, it is doubtful that this taxpayer funded union boss perk would be allowed by any elected politician.
In the OPM Report, you can see how much federal agencies are paying for union officials to work for unions. For example, the supposedly impartial National Labor Relations Board spent $768,465.14 for union officials to work for their union not for the NLRB. Click here to read the Office of Personnel Management Labor-Management Relations: Reports On Official Time report.
Unfortunately, this is only the tip of the iceberg, states pour billions more of taxpayers’ money into union salaries.
The Washington Examiner’s Sean Higgins looks at the OPM report:
The Office of Personnel Management released it annual ”Labor-Management Relations: Reports On Official Time” report Monday. The term “official time” refers to ” time spent by Federal employees performing representational work for a bargaining unit in lieu of their regularly assigned work.” In other words, the time those employees spent doing union activities instead of their job but still getting paid.
This is entirely legal. It is essentially viewed as a trade-off for certain limitations put on federal unions, such as prohibitions on striking.
So how much time was spent doing this? The report found:
During FY 2011, unions represented 1,202,733 non-Postal Federal civil service bargaining unit employees, an increase of 17,048 bargaining unit employees compared to FY 2010. Agencies reported that bargaining unit employees spent a total of 3,395,187 hours performing representational duties on official time…
It is a significant boost from FY 2008, the last full year of the previous administration, when the number was 2,893,922 hours. In FY 2002 it was as high as 4,765,484 hours. The number steadily decreased during most of the Bush administration, hitting a low of 2,718,142 in FY 2007, before it started rising again.
On average, forced-unionism states are 23.2% more expensive to live in than Right to Work states. And decades of academic research show that compulsory unionism actually fosters a higher cost of living.
Thanks to the Committee's election-year program, union-label candidates like Sen. Jon Tester (Mont.) are being given a choice: pledge to change course and support Right to Work going forward, or face the potential political consequences.
Biden judicial nominee Nicole Berner has a track record of mindlessly repeating union bosses’ anti-Right to Work diatribes and defending their schemes to profit at the expense of the disabled.