[Originally posted at Norcal Politics by Stephen Green on October 23, 2005]

Those who wrote and are pushing for the passage of Proposition 75 on the ballot want us to believe that it’s up to us to protect the members of California’s public employees unions from their unions.  If we fail these poor people, their unions will use part of their dues to support political causes or candidates that individual members may not approve of.  We need to do this, the pro-75 people say, because these union members, who have the power to decide whether or not they will join the union, who have some control over who holds office in their unions, and have some say, through elections and conventions, to determine how the unions’ energies and resources will be channelled, apparently lack the ability to exercise these choices in their own best interests.

How absurdly paternalistic is this measure?  This is part of the text of the proposition:

• "Section 2(e) Because public money is involved, the public has a right to ensure that public employees have a right to approve the use of their dues or fees to support the political objectives of their labor organization."

 What public money are they referring to here?  They apparently consider the salary paid to public employees to still be public money, to be spent according to the dictates of the public, after these employees have received it in their paychecks.  They not only think they, and the voters of California, have a better idea of what’s in the best interests of public employees than these employees’ unions do, they also think they have a better idea of how these employees should spend their money than the employees themselves do.

Although public employees have suffered job losses and wage stagnation along with other California workers over the last five years. through the efforts of their unions they have competetive wage and benefit packages, including sick and vacation leave and health and retirement benefits.  They have, through their unions’ efforts, work rules that protect them from arbitrary or capricious actions by their employers.

I have no doubt that these unions support causes and candidates that their members don’t universally support, but stockholders in corporations and taxpayers and voters in cities, counties, states, and nations don’t get to opt out of financially supporting things those entities stand behind.  The backers of Prop 75 somehow feel that labor unions alone should bear such a burden, that union members alone should have such a privilege (isn’t this concern for the union members by the yes-on-75 people touching?).

Labor unions are inherently political organizations and this is particularly true of public employees labor unions.  Things that are settled in collective bargaining in other industries are often settle in the legislature or at the polls for public employees.  We need look no farthr for an example of this than Propostion 74, on the same ballot, which would extend from 2 to 5 the number of years public school teachers must work to achieve tenure.

In truth, the problem here is that when labor union get involved in politics, they tend to support progressive causes and candidates.  They tend to support the same kinds of things for Californians in general that they support for their members through collective bargaining.  Higher wages, better access to health care, and a more comprehensive social safety net.  These are things that the backers of Proposition 75 are, for whatever reason, opposed to.  These people will work to silence the organized voices that advocate for such things.  That’s what this is about.  The backers of Proposition 75 want to raise barriers  to organized labors ability to work to strengthen their members’ rights at the polls and in the legislature, to block labor’s ability to support progressive causes that benefit all California workers.  Because the backers of Prop 75 have an agenda that is unpopular among Californians, they want to silence the voices, particularly the organized voices, that oppose their agenda.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to reveal that I am a public employee, but not a member of a collective bargaining group or a labor union.  As with other non-union workers in our society, however, I enjoy most of the benefits my job offers because labor unions, through the power of collective bargaining and organized public advocacy, have raised the level of expectations that individual workers have of their employers.