Following Wisconsin’s enactment of legislation that removes the automatic check off of union dues and requires them to be voluntary on the part of unionized employees, large percentages of members have chosen not to pay the dues and have been removed from union membership rolls. According to the Wall Street Journal, membership in AFSCME, the state’s second largest public sector union, has dropped from over 60,000 in March 2011 to just over 28,000 currently.
Clearly, union members who were so demonstrative in their attacks on Governor Walker and the Republican members of the Legislature for enacting the removal of forced union dues are quite comfortable in not paying those dues.
Besides the removal of forced dues deduction from paychecks, Act 10 also requires that each bargaining unit hold a vote to retain the union as their bargaining unit. In addition, the right to strike has been taken away. Taken together these changes have stripped the unions of the ability to hold taxpayers hostage and as a result have made union membership far less economically beneficial to the employees.
Wisconsin has shown the other traditional heavily unionized states that the people and the taxpayers can stand up to the power of public unions. When will Pennsylvania politicians join this brave movement and emulate their brethren in Wisconsin and Indiana who are leading the way in restoring sanity to the balance of labor negotiating power and returning freedom to labor markets?
