I’m so happy for Florida. I could even get a little weepy.
The Florida House delivered a major blow to public employee unions Friday, approving a bill that would ban automatic dues deduction from a government paycheck and require members to sign off on the use of their dues for political purposes.
Democrats and Republicans fought over the legislation for just under two hours. Democrats and labor unions have accused conservatives of “union-busting” and said the bill was more about political payback than public policy. Unions have typically been big backers of Democratic candidates.
Somebody call the Whabulance! The union’s gravy train is low on coal!
Frankly, this should have been where Wisconsin’s Walker should have started and where every other (R) should start if they have plans to strip the unions of their free ride. Maybe, if the union drones were seeing how much of their money was flowing into the union’s pockets and how little they were getting for it they’d think twice before letting the greedy bastards into their business.
Every government agency should make the unions ask their membership dues first hand and stop being complicit in the union’s extortion racket. Make them put bills in the mail like every other business that has to operate in the real world. Just because they have managed to slither their way into a workplace doesn’t mean that they don’t have to work for that money.
I am so hoping that the next time my employer negotiates with the Teamsters I work with that this change is right at the fucking top of the list of things to change. I’d love to see that play in the press.
That’s not likely to play in WA or Oregon. We’ve had those sort of attacks on union funding before, and the Supremes of both our states have said freedom of speech is at issue, so the matter can’t be legislated. It seems a strange contortion of freedom of speech to say that the individual union member should not have a say in how his union dues are spent, but that pig flew out here. I wouldn’t get all celebratory about FL, either, until the courts have had their say down there.