“Turnpike Workers Sue Union Over Dues”

The Patriot News reports “[a] group of Pennsylvania Turnpike employees has filed suits in federal court against the International Federation of Teamsters locals that represent them, arguing the unions are improperly collecting dues from them.”

Pennsylvania does not have a Right to Work law protecting a worker’s right to decide for him or herself whether or not he or she wants to financially support a labor union. Therefore, under the agency-shop agreement in place at the Turnpike, the Teamsters are permitted to collect dues from all employees, whether or not they belong to the union.

But under the Supreme Court’s Beck decision, nonmembers are supposed to be entitled, at least, “to see an audit proving that none of the compulsory dues money they are forced to pay is used for political contributions, organizing activity or the like.”

This doesn’t appear to be happening.

As Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, points out, “In their lust for forced dues revenues, Teamsters union officials are trampling upon the rights of the very employees they claim to represent.”

Lord Acton, a British historian of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was right when he observed, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The government granted combination of monopoly bargaining power and the ability to forcefully collect money from members and nonmembers alike is a threat to the freedom of every working American.

“Hats Off” to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation for standing up for the rights of these union nonmembers subject to forced-unionism coercion.

We look forward to the day when all of Pennsylvania’s workers can share the protection of a state or national Right to Work law.