Bills
| 3.23.22

Should Workers be Able to Opt Out of Unions? (S. 545)

Do you support or oppose this bill?

What is S. 545?

(Updated July 15, 2021)

This bill amends the National Labor Relations Act and the Railway Labor Act to repeal provisions that allow employers to require employees to join a union in order to get or keep a job.

Provisions that allow railroad carriers to require the payroll deduction of union dues or fees as a condition of employment would also be repealed.

Basically, this bill would allow individuals to decide if they want to join a union when they get offered a job, and if they do — they can choose whether want to have their union dues deducted automatically from their paycheck.

Argument in favor

People shouldn’t have to choose between joining a union or not being able to work at a job they were offered. Unions spend too much money on political activism, and forcing a worker to fund activities they don’t agree with through dues is unethical.

Argument opposed

Prospective employees already have a choice -- take the job and join a union or find work elsewhere. States with right-to-work laws tend to have lower wages than states without them, so why would we want this on the federal level?

Impact

Workers who would’ve had to either join a union or look for work elsewhere, unions, state governments, federal governments.

Cost of S. 545

A CBO cost estimate is unavailable.

Additional Info

In-Depth: Right-to-work laws have been around since the 1940s and 1950s, and historically it has been the choice of a state whether they’d allow employers to require union membership for workers. There are 25 states plus Guam that have right-to-work laws, and three of these states — Indiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin — have enacted right-to-work laws since 2012.

Technically, unions can only collect dues from workers for collective bargaining, contract administration, and grievance procedures — and these so-called ‘forced dues’ make up about 25 percent of what a union spends its dues on. While this omits activities such as political spending, lobbying, and union organizing, many employees feel they are obligated to pay full dues because of the wording “membership in good standing” that unions employers use in their contracts.

Unions have seen their political clout decrease as their membership has declined from 20.1 percent of the workforce in 1983 to 11.3 percent in 2012. But what hasn’t changed is that unions still spend big-time money when elections come around, in 2008 they spent nearly $76 million, and in both 2012 and 2014 they spent about $140 million. And nearly all of this spending goes towards one party, as 91 percent of unions’ 2012 political spending aided Democrats.

In countering efforts to expand the presence of right-to-work laws, unions like the AFL-CIO have pointed out that workers in states with right-to-work laws generally earn less money than their counterparts in states without such laws.

A study done by the Economic Policy Institute corroborates the AFL-CIO’s claims about lower wages in right-to-work states, but they also have lower unemployment rates and lower cost of living than their non-right-to-work counterparts.


Media:


Summary by Eric Revell
(Photo Credit: Flickr user JD Hancock)