Public-sector unions took forced dues from more than 250,000 public employees in 2013, siphoning away taxpayer money to support the unions’ shared goal of bigger government.
Some, but not all, of the labor unions that take mandatory “agency fees” from public employees must report the number of agency fee payers to the U.S. Department of Labor each year.
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees had 130,920 agency fee payers in 2013 while National Education Association had 88,378. Service Employees International Union reported 243,799 agency fee payers. Many of the employees represented by SEIU work in the private sector.
The Department of Labor defines agency fee payers as “those who make payments in lieu of dues to the reporting labor organization as a condition of employment under a union security provision in a collective bargaining agreement.” Public-sector unions can impose agency fees in 23 states.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 7.2 million of the country’s 20.4 million public-sector workers were members of unions in 2013. Another 690,000 government employees were represented by unions but weren’t union members.
“Unions were first developed years ago to protect workers. But too often, in today’s world, they exist solely for one thing and one thing only—raw, crass political power,” said Brett Healy, president of the Wisconsin-based MacIver Institute. “Big Labor bosses are more worried about supplying politicians with donations than the wellbeing of the rank-and-file or what is best for the rest of us—the taxpayers.
“Government workers understand this and that is why so many refuse to pay for the political spending of unions,” Healy continued. “By becoming an agency fee payer, the money forcibly removed from a public employee’s paycheck cannot go toward political candidates or causes.”
Determining the total number of agency fee payers nationwide is difficult because certain public-sector unions—including those with less than $250,000 in revenue—are exempt from many Department of Labor reporting requirements.
In addition, American Federation of Teachers and other large unions representing government workers do not report a total number of agency fee payers because of the way workers’ money flows to each union’s headquarters through state and local chapters.
Excluding the New York State United Teachers, an affiliate of both NEA and AFT with 23,622 agency fee payers, AFT locals took mandatory fees from at least 38,644 workers in at least 12 states.
“Why should one be forced to hand over their hard-earned money to a political organization they may not agree with? We live in the land of the free not the land of forced association,” Healy said.
