Unions are not political speech

[angrychair]

Unions are required, by law, to represent you if you pay or not. If these people succeed and can choose not to pay their unions dues, I suspect many will stop paying and public employee unions will become ineffective as funding dwindles and paid membership falls until it dies.

It is not political speech. I am a public employee shop steward and I never engage in political speech as a shop steward.
Protecting your rights and fighting to have everyone treated fairly is not political speech.
Wanting fair pay is not political speech.
Wanting to ensure that your supervisor and senior management treat everyone equally and follow the rules is not political speech.
Wanting time off to enjoy time with your family or recover from an illness is not political speech.
Having a contract is not political speech.

City, county, state and federal employees are not the enemy. We are taxpayers too. We work and live in the very city, county or state of the people we serve.
Unions make our communities better.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Very, very well said.

I stand 100% behind the unions.

[jeff47]

2. Of course you're the enemy.

You guys actually think you're worth more than minimum wage and that your pensions should actually be paid. That makes you the enemy of some very rich people.

[daleanime]

3. +1

[gratuitous]

4. And for these same reasons

Anything a union does is political by some lights.

I wonder if these same legal arguments could be brought to bear on publicly held corporations? When ExxonMobil pays its lobbyists beaucoup bucks, doesn't that harm its bottom line in the near term and hurt shareholder value?

[angrychair]

5. I would look at it differently

Large lobbying efforts that influence public funding, like oil subsidies, cost taxpayers more money and therefore should be held to a different standard.

[angrychair]

6. Secondly

Every interation with government could be "political speech" if it entails public funds. The lawsuit is ridiculous.

[Igel]

8. "Political." Sigh.

I've had people tell me my choice of where I buy a sandwich or who makes my jeans is political, choosing to bike versus car versus bus is political. I've been railed at for listening to the wrong performer, because just listening to him/her on the radio is a "political act."

"Everything's political." Granted, these aren't the most common folk on the left (I don't ever remember anybody on the right making this particular point, unless it was parodying some stereotype of somebody far left of center). But they exist.

[gratuitous]

9. I don't know what circles you move in

But I've been called all kinds of names for (to name one example) feeding the hungry and advocating for public programs and policies that make sure all citizens have enough to eat. While I haven't asked these people for their voter registration, the arguments and the vehemence with which they advance them lead me to think that they're politically closer to the right than the left.

[1939]

7. Federal employee unions are limited

1. They can not bargain collectively on pay or benefits (they can only lobby Congress to increase the pay scales).

2. They cannot bargain working conditions where the solution they want is in violation of statutes or civil service regulations.

3. They cannot strike as shown by the Air Traffic Controllers