Seebach: Balancing rights of workers, unions (Rocky Mountain news Right wing paper)

[Omaha Steve]

When union members can tell companies not to lobby using corporate funds, this might seem a little more fair. Millions of Americans have no control on CEO pay or how companies speed money on politics we little people have hard earned $ in!!!

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5308684,00.html

Seebach: Balancing rights of workers, unions

January 27, 2007
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Jan. 10 on two cases out of Washington state concerning whether unions have to get explicit permission before spending workers' money on political activities.

That issue is familiar to Coloradans who remember that then-Secretary of State Gigi Dennis tried last summer to impose a rule saying that they do, only to have the state Court of Appeals rule against her. As a practical matter, that was reasonable; more than halfway through the year, and with the election only a little more than two months away, there was no way for unions to go back and "uncollect" dues money they intended to direct toward politics, get prior permission and then re-collect the money.

As a matter of simple fairness, though, there ought to be such a rule. Yes, workers already have a constitutional right to ask for a refund of whatever share of the fees they pay goes toward politics, but not very many of them do, and unions have no incentive to make the process easy or friendly.

The Washington cases, Davenport v. Washington Education Association and Washington v. WEA, are actually fairly narrow, and hinge on one provision of a package of campaign finance reforms passed by state voters in 1992 that required unions to get permission - a requirement that the WEA simply ignored for years. But limited as the provision is, in 2006 the Washington Supreme Court overturned it, saying the burden of obtaining consent interfered with the union's constitutional rights.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Colorado and the attorneys general of Alabama, Idaho, Ohio, Utah and Virginia. He observes that states have adopted a wide range of policies in the attempt to balance workers' rights with union interests, while conforming to the constitutional principle that workers cannot be forced to subsidize political speech they disagree with.

At a minimum, in accordance with the 1986 Hudson decision, if a union is allowed to collect agency fees (for the cost of representing workers and negotiating contracts), it must provide "notice and an explanation of the fee, an opportunity to challenge it, and an escrow for disputed amounts."

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the Washington decision, nothing much will change, although Suthers notes that the Colorado Court of Appeals cited the Washington cases in its ruling against Dennis. However, if the Washington decision stands, all state policies more protective of individual workers' rights than the minimum guaranteed by Hudson would be endangered. That would put right-to-work laws at risk in the 22 states that have them.

Linda Seebach is an editorial writer for the News. She can be reached by telephone at [phone] or by e-mail at [e-mail].

About Linda Seebach
Before starting her career in journalism, Linda Seebach was a college mathematics professor, the owner of a small printing business catering to the antique-car hobby and an English teacher at a university in Shanghai. She moved into journalism by way of the Minnesota Daily, the independent student paper at the University of Minnesota, where she did graduate work in linguistics. She later was an editorial writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News and editorial page editor of the Valley Times in Pleasanton, Calif.