An End to Forced Unionization?

Kevin Mooney reviews the condition of home child care providers and the litigation fighting for freedom on behalf of these workers.  Teachers, as public sector workers, could feel the impact of the outcomes of the litigation.  The full story appears on AmericanThinker.com.

Without a steady stream of water and electricity, child-care service providers who typically operate out of their own homes could go out of business. Yet, hundreds of Rhode Island residents – not to mention others across the country — who offer these services must now pay union dues that can be used to support lobbying efforts aimed at securing anti-energy regulations at odds with their best interests.  Help is on the way in the form of First Amendment legal challenges filed in other states that have worked their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. This means that within a few months it may not be permissible for unions to force child care workers to pay part of their salary to support political campaigns that conflict with their own policy preferences and jeopardize their bottom line. Despite the shifting legal terrain, Rhode Island residents who operate these home-based businesses must still pony up; at least for the time being.

Note:  Former NEA chief attorney, Bob Chanin, once declared it was impossible to separate chargeable and nonchargeable expenses, claiming, “It’s all politics.”  “So you tell me how I can possibly separate NEA’s collective bargaining efforts from politics—you just can’t. It’s all politics.” (Bob Chanin, NEA General Counsel, Unions Pull Out Stops for Elections, Jeff Archer, Education Week, 11/2/00)