July 6, 2021
The march of worker freedom moves on in the states
By F. Vincent Vernuccio, Senior Fellow at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy
Legislatures across the country in 2021 moved several pieces of labor reform protecting workers’ rights and taxpayers. These included bills advancing Janus rights in several states, stopping unions from getting in between public employees and their employers, prohibiting government from being the bills collector for union dues, and advancing a constitutional amendment to solidify right-to-work in the Tennessee State Constitution.
Thanks to the assistance from the Mackinac Center, partnership with national coalitions, such as Americans for Prosperity and the Association of American Educators, and state-based think tanks, legislators were able to advance several pieces of legislation protecting public employees’ rights. They also solidified employee protections to choose to pay unions or not as required by the US Supreme Court’s Janus v. AFSCME decision.
The Indiana Governor recently signed legislation protecting teachers’ paychecks. The bill safeguards school employees’ decisions about joining and paying a union, ensuring that teachers are informed of their rights and that any agreement to take money from their paycheck goes directly from the teacher to their employer and not through a union middleman. To prevent fraud, the employer simply confirms that the school employee wants money taken from their paycheck. Finally, the bill provided that, just like many other paycheck deductions, the authorization be renewed annually, ensuring that teachers’ First Amendment rights are considered on a regular basis. It also allows teachers to leave and stop paying the union at any time.
As a state Senator and sponsor of the bill pointed out, “If a teacher wishes to be a member of a union, this law will not hinder their ability to do so…This legislation was introduced after lawmakers heard from teachers who felt they were not given an appropriate amount of flexibility.”
Similar bills advanced to various degrees in other states, including Florida, thanks to The James Madison Institute, Kansas, thanks to the Kansas Policy Institute, Kentucky, thanks to the Bluegrass Institute, Montana, Oklahoma, thanks to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, and Tennessee, thanks to the Beacon Center.
Florida also sought to protect union democracy by strengthening that state’s union recertification law—which ensures that teachers get a choice and a voice by getting to vote on unions which do have a majority of members for the employees they represent. Oklahoma tried to protect teachers by including state-provided liability insurance to teachers along with Janus protections.
The Arkansas Legislature passed a bill prohibiting collective bargaining by public employees, joining the handful of states which do not allow unions to come between public employees and their employers.
An Arkansas state lawmaker noted that the legislation “doesn’t prohibit [public employees] from unionizing, it just prohibits state actors from negotiating with them through a collective-bargaining agreement.”
West Virginia stopped the state from becoming the bills collector for union dues with SB 272. Similarly, they protected entrepreneurs by clarifying the definition of employment, making it easier to be an independent worker with AB 2257.
The author of SB 272 said the legislation “recognizes the reality of our 21st Century life, and that is we do not need to have organizations making deductions from people’s paychecks for these things anymore. It’s too easy now. Anyone who wants to belong to a club or a labor organization or a country club can easily have an automatic withdrawal set up from his or her checking account.”
Lawmakers in Tennessee approved a ballot proposal to solidify right-to-work in the Tennessee State Constitution. The proposal will now go to voters on the November 2022 ballot.
The Beacon Center, who played a significant role in this win for Tennessee workers, noted: “Placing right-to-work in the Tennessee Constitution will help protect this right for future generations and sends a clear message to Washington that the states, not the federal government, should control whether workers should be forced to pay union dues.”
While there is still much work to be done to protect workers throughout the states and unions are already suing to block these reforms, several bright spots in 2021 show that the march of worker freedom is going in the right direction.
