Public Employee Unions Don't Get One Penny from Taxpayers and Can't Require Membership,...

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/150130/public_employee_unions_don%27t_get_one_penny_from_taxpayers_and_can%27t_require_membership,_but_the_big_lie_that_they_do_is_everywhere/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet_workplace

Public Employee Unions Don't Get One Penny from Taxpayers and Can't Require Membership, But the Big Lie That They Do Is Everywhere

AlterNet / By Joshua Holland

Nobody has to belong to a union or support its political activities, but you'd never know that from reading the news.
March 5, 2011 |



Photo Credit: vaxomatic


Let us begin with this simple, indisputable truth: public employees' unions don't get a single red cent from taxpayers. And they aren't a mechanism to “force” working people to support Democrats – that's completely illegal.

Public sector workers are employed by the government, but they are private citizens. Once a private citizen earns a dollar from the sweat of his or her brow, it no longer belongs to his or her employer. In the case of public workers, it is no longer a “taxpayer dollar”; it is a dollar held privately by an American citizen. Public sector unions are financed through the dues paid by these private citizens, who elected to be part of a union – not a single taxpayer dollar is involved, and no worker is forced to join a union against his or her wishes. No worker in the United States is required to give one red cent to support a political cause he or she doesn't agree with.

There is no distinction between the role public- and private-sector unions play: both represent their members in negotiations with their employers. At the federal level, both are prohibited from using their members' dues for political purposes. They donate to political campaigns – to elect lawmakers who will stand up for the interests of working people – but only out of voluntary contributions their members choose to make to their PACs.

“Unions cannot, from their general funds, contribute a dime to any federal candidate or national political party,” says Laurence Gold, an attorney with the AFL-CIO. “They can only do it through their separate political PAC and only according to strict limits.”

FULL story at link.

[pacalo]

1. Unions have "strict limits"? If the "Citizens United" decision allows corporations to be "citizens"

who can contribute unlimited amounts to "their representatives", why do unions have "strict limits". Unions represent working people!

[LARED]

2. Alternet, 'the stupid part' of the internet.

The headline is ridiculous.