It’s been a year since Michigan became the nation’s 24th state to make the payment of union dues voluntary by becoming a Right to Work state.
Since that time, unions—particularly, public sector unions—have seen a signigicant drop in their dues-paying members.
The need to continue collecting dues in a state that is not taking them from paychecks and sending them directly to the unions is making unions like the Michigan Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers get “creative” in their dues collection.
According to the Detroit News, the teachers unions are now getting members to turn over their personal credit card information, as well as bank accounts to enable dues to be taken.
In the MEA’s case, where members have fallen behind on dues but have, apparently, not resigned, the union has enlisted help from a collections agency:
Teacher unions must now get credit card or bank account numbers from its members in order to collect dues. The MEA recently created a policy that will send a collection agency after members who are 90 days late on dues and three attempts have been made to contact them. [Emphasis added.]
Since many unions in the private sector were “grandfathered” from the effects of the Right-to-Work law by either being in existing contracts or extending their contracts when the law was enacted, for the most part, unions have not felt the full effects of the law.
That will be changing soon.
“I want to urge devotion to the fundamentals of human liberty – the principles of voluntarism. No lasting gain has ever come from compulsion. If we seek to force, we but tear apart that which, united, is invincible. . . . I want to say to you, men and women of the American labor movement, do not reject the cornerstone upon which labor’s structure has been builded – but base your all upon voluntary principles and illumine your every problem by consecrated devotion to that highest of all purposes – human well being in the fullest, widest, deepest sense.”
(From “Gompers’ Creed,” Gompers’ last AFL convention)
