The Rocky Mountain News recently published a misleading op-ed by union organizer James Hansen. The article contains a number of misleading claims, but the following passage’s description of a Right to Work law is so fundamentally wrong that it has to be addressed:

“A right-to-work [sic] law would allow the government to intervene in labor-management relations, undermining the freedom that employers and workers now have to negotiate the best agreement possible for both sides.”

Union officials in Colorado already have government granted power to force every employee - member or not - to pay union dues as a condition of keeping their job (or getting a job in the first place). No other organization or association is allowed to extort forced fees from individuals.

State Right to Work protections simply eliminate this extraordinary government intervention, which is the exact opposite Hansen’s claim.

Further, if Hansen was really concerned with government intervention into employer-employee relations, he would call for the repeal of government imposed monopoly bargaining (that allows union officials to forcibly represent every employee) or the numerous other special government-granted powers that unions have.

But contrary to Hansen’s assertion, union officials are not at all concerned about preventing government intervention into employee-employer relations, as they long ago rejected AFL-CIO founder Samuel Gompers' call for purely voluntary unionism. For the better part of the last 100 years, union bosses have built their empire on special government-granted powers, with forced dues as the most glaring example of the power.

Following up on last week's post, Stan Greer of the National Institute for Labor Relations Research spoke out last week against a recent executive order in Colorado extending union monopoly bargaining over state employees. (NRTW Foundation Vice President and Legal Director Raymond J. LaJeunesse, Jr. spoke at the event.)

According to an article in the Denver Business Journal:

Greer also said that even if legislators approve a law prohibiting
government workers from striking -- and Ritter signs it -- 48 percent
of public sector strikes are technically illegal, meaning that
legislation is not an effective deterrent against strikes.

"By all economic measures, Colorado would be better off without
forced dues and fees and everyone would be better off with right to
work laws."

How true- if strike prohibitions work, how did union officials shut down New York City just before Christmas in 2005" They didn't seem to mind the illegality of that strike. The imposition of forced union dues has also prompted state employees in Washington and Maine to fight back.

The Denver Post published an article earlier this week featuring the NRTW Foundation's work on behalf of state employees in Washington in 2006, including Patricia Woodward. Washington Federation of State Employees (WFSE) union officials ordered Ms. Woodward fired for refusal to pay dues. In the Post article, her niece, Darla Branif, called the imposition of forced dues on Washington state employees a "dirty deal."

In 2006 WFSE spokesman Tim Welch told dissenting employees exactly what he thought when asked by a local newspaper:

"You can choose to be a member of the union, you can choose to pay a fee. But ultimately, if you don't like that, you can choose to be unemployed."

Sadly, with no Right to Work law in place in Washington, Welch is right. However, employees in Washington did fight back with the Foundation's help. Watch Patricia Woodward's statement at a related press conference below.

Ray Hogler of Colorado State University, an advocate of forced union dues, recently mischaracterized Colorado as a "modified right to work state." He cites a law that simply makes it just a little less easy for union officials in Colorado to impose forced union dues on employees. That law requires a secret ballot election in which a majority of eligible voters or 75 percent of actual voters must favor firing workers if they refuse to pay union dues.

Make no mistake about it, despite this procedural hurdle, union officials can still order workers across Colorado fired for refusal to pay dues once they clear it. All they have to do is quash employee dissent, and with the laws of 28 states mandating compulsory dues, they have plenty of cash to do it.

Hogler continues:

The rhetorical hyperbole about Colorado's unions does raise issues of labor law reform that are complicated, contentious and of serious consequence.

Actually, it's not that complicated, employees are either truly free to choose whether to join or pay dues to a union or they're not. And in Colorado, despite Hogler's objections, the law still favors coercion over free choice.