Government Workers Deserve Paycheck Protection

If you’ve ever signed up for a magazine subscription, bought cable TV, or purchased something from an infomercial, you’ve probably encountered the automatic renewal process. After the initial subscription period ends, some companies continue charging you until you jump through myriad time-consuming hoops. And you may never get your money back.

This happens perpetually to Arizona workers, but the consequences are far greater. Year after year, unions take dues from the paychecks of government workers without asking them for permission. The unions then spend the millions of dollars raked in from automatic renewals to fund political warfare their own members oppose.

The Arizona Legislature is considering HB 2103, a bill that would require unions to get members’ permission every year before taking dues from their paychecks.

Under Arizona law, once you’ve joined a government-employee union, you’re never asked if you’d like to continue authorizing paycheck deductions. Big Labor diverts some of those deductions to political activism, which may directly conflict with your political beliefs and have little to do with your job.

For instance, the Service Employees International Union, which represents more than 1 million local and state government workers, public-school employees, and bus drivers nationally, spent much of 2010 organizing boycotts of Arizona in the wake of SB 1070, the immigration legislation overwhelmingly supported by Arizonans.

A half-dozen states have already passed similar paycheck-protection measures, including union strongholds Michigan and Ohio.

Within five years of the passage of Washington’s paycheck-protection law, voluntary paycheck deductions to the state’s teachers-union PAC had shrunk by 75 percent. Paycheck-protection legislation in Idaho and Utah yielded comparable results.

Paycheck-protection laws give government workers a greater voice and force unions to justify to their members why they should continue to subsidize union bosses’ political activism.

HB 2103 will restore the balance of power to working Arizonans – public employees and taxpayers alike.

Learn more:

Arizona State Legislature: HB 2103

Arizona Republic: Bill Would Stop Unions from Raiding Paychecks