Of all the propositions on the special election ballot,
especially the four promoted by Gov. Schwarzenegger, Proposition 75
is the most misleading, and also the one most obviously tied to a
larger political agenda.
Of all the propositions on the special election ballot, especially the four promoted by Gov. Schwarzenegger, Proposition 75 is the most misleading, and also the one most obviously tied to a larger political agenda.
It would require public employee unions to get the approval of individual members before spending their dues money for political purposes. Sounds fair – but only if you believe that union membership is involuntary, that workers are having money taken from their paychecks for such purposes against their will, and that within unions there is no way to influence union policies.
None of that is true.
Union membership is voluntary – that’s federal law. Employees who don’t want to pay union dues don’t have to.
Unions are democracies. If you don’t like the way your union spends its money, you can organize like-minded members and change its leadership.
It is a basic principle of democracy that winning an election bestows the consent of the voters, be they citizens or union members, to spend our taxes or dues lawfully in our collective interest.
We don’t require corporations to get the consent of their shareholders to spend money on political purposes.
We don’t require the chamber of commerce to get the approval of each individual member to spend membership money in particular ways.
And we don’t require government to get the approval of individual citizens to spend tax money in certain ways. Many people would love to require Congress to get individual consent before spending another dime on the war in Iraq, but that’s not how democracy works.
Proposition 75’s faulty premise leads one to believe that there must me something else going on. There is.
What this is really about is a quarter century-long effort to reduce the influence of unions in the workplace. That effort has been largely successful in the private sphere, where union membership has declined dramatically.
Proposition 75 is targeted at public employee unions, by far the strongest segment of the American labor market, because business interests know that these unions have been effective, in Sacramento and elsewhere, in advocating on behalf of policies that protect all workers.
The argument has been advanced that the real inconvenience, and impact, of Proposition 75 would be minimal. But if it passes, a second campaign by outside interests to meddle in union affairs and dissuade members from signing consent forms would be sure to follow.
Promoters disingenuously call Proposition 75 “paycheck protection.” In reality, it is unfair, unnecessary, and undemocratic.
