NY: Union Dues Now Permanently Mandatory for Public Employees

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/nyregion/24unions.html?ref=nyregion

By JEREMY W. PETERS
Published: July 24, 2008

ALBANY — As political rituals go, it was one of Albany’s most predictable.

Every two years, a state law that required public employees to pay their unions’ dues regardless of whether they joined would near expiration. And every two years, the Legislature would renew the law. For more than three decades, unions pushed to make it permanent. But lawmakers, mainly Republicans in the State Senate who wanted the Legislature to have some degree of leverage over the state’s powerful public sector unions, blocked those attempts, arguing that a permanent extension of the law would amount to a big giveaway to organized labor.

Now, Gov. David A. Paterson has given the state’s public-employee unions their long-desired victory. On Wednesday, his office announced that he had signed a law making union dues mandatory in perpetuity for all public employees who are covered by unions even if they opt not to join.

The law affects mostly state workers, as well as county employees, public school teachers and other civil servants.

The Legislature overwhelmingly approved the bill last month. Similar bills had passed the Democrat-controlled Assembly before, only to fail in the Senate. But with Republicans in a pitched battle to preserve their thin majority in the Senate, the party seemed unwilling to block a priority of organized labor.

It passed the Senate last month by a 62-to-0 vote. The Assembly approved it 140 to 5.

Labor leaders said on Wednesday that making the law permanent guaranteed that unions would have the money to adequately represent members and nonmembers alike, which they were required to do under a state law known as the Taylor Law.

FULL story at link.