Labor should serve members, not Dems

After Janus, time to drop the partisan activism

Public sector unions can serve either their members or the Democratic Party, not both. On a Labor Day weekend more than two months after a stinging Supreme Court defeat, it isn’t clear that their leaders realize this yet.

The court ruled in Janus vs. AFSCME that public employees could not be compelled against their will to pay union “agency fees.” For decades, nonunion public employees in many states were forced to pay these fees to unions on the theory that every public employee benefited from the union’s work.

Had unions exclusively engaged in activities that clearly benefited all employees, this arrangement might have gone unchallenged. But over the years, public sector unions in the USA have become thoroughly politicized.

They endorse, campaign for, and fund Democratic politicians. They advocate for the endless growth and expansion of government. And they vigorously fight efforts to control government spending or make government more accountable to the people.

They’ve integrated political activism into their core missions. It’s not just that they’ve allied themselves with one political party. They’ve made the unchecked growth of the state a primary organizational goal.

This mission creep has given many Americans the impression that all public employees are left-wing activists. That isn’t true, particularly in red states. In New Hampshire, where I live, the current chairman of the state Republican Party is a state employee. The immediate past chairman is a former local government employee who just resigned her party post to take another government job.

Political activism discourages many employees from joining unions and even alienates union members. Educators for Excellence reported last spring that 52 percent of teachers in unions said their union represented their perspective only somewhat, and 20 percent said the union did not represent their perspective much or at all.

“The union voice is not my voice. The union’s fight is not my fight. But a piece of my paycheck every week still goes to the union,” wrote Mark Janus, the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services employee who won the landmark Supreme Court case.

Although public sector unions have increased their outreach to members and nonmembers since then, they’ve shown no interest in disentangling themselves from the Democratic Party or far-left political activism.

At the American Federation of Teachers Convention in Pittsburgh last month, featured speaker Bernie Sanders said teachers were part of the leftwing “political revolution.”

Not all teachers, though. Not even half. In an Education Week survey last year, 41 percent of teachers said they were Democrats, 30 percent said they were independents, and 27 percent said they were Republicans. Yet the AFT convention featured numerous Democratic politicians and candidates as speakers, including Hillary Clinton and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, as if it were a party convention.

When public sector unions could forcibly extract money from the paychecks of Republicans, independents and moderates, union leaders didn’t have to worry about the fallout their political alliances might create. After Janus, employees offended by a union’s activism can withhold their money. But union leaders are acting as if nothing has changed.

In his AFT speech, Sanders said the Janus ruling would backfire and make organized labor even stronger. That absolutely could happen, but through service, not activism.

America in the digital age is an ondemand, value-driven world. To survive, every organization that exists in a competitive marketplace has to dedicate itself to serving the needs and interests of its customers. Public sector unions now exist in a competitive marketplace.

To win new members, they have to prove that they offer public employees a valuable service at a great price. If they do that, the can not only survive, they can also grow. Employees will know that unions have recognized this reality when they ditch the activism to focus on customer service.

Andrew Cline is president of the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank.