Earlier
this session, a bill that would have halted taxpayer subsidization of
pensions of future union officials while they were not performing state duties
was shunted aside. Yesterday, the House Labor and
Industrial Relations Committee took up HB
451 by state Rep. Alan Seabaugh,
which would had removed public employees from processing the transfer of
compensation diverted to union dues for all except public safety employees.
Seabaugh explained the bill was
as simple as instead of an employee in a union or wishing to join one as part
of the job hiring or change in personnel status filling out a piece of
government paperwork to authorize public employees on taxpayer time to authorize
deduction on a regular basis union dues from paychecks, the employee would fill
out one provided by a union or bank (or one could even do this online) to make
a direct debit on that regular basis. As a matter of principle, he said
government should not be in the business of assisting with taxpayer resources a
private entity in performing one of its duties, especially one that bargained with
government over taxpayer resources.
Opponents presented a dizzying
array of straw men, red herrings, and non
sequitur arguments against this obvious proposition. Some asked why unions
appeared to be singled out when deductions for things like insurance or for
charitable organizations would continue to be allowed under the bill. But these
are apples and oranges comparisons. For example, the offering of benefits, some
compulsory and others voluntarily taken, under programs overseen by a
government as part of compensation and deducted as a part of figuring and
reporting that compensation (often with tax implication) is entirely different
from a non-compensation issue of dues collected on behalf of a private
organization apart from the government and whose contractual relationship is
not overseen by the government, in the case of a union membership. And donations
to a nonprofit go for charitable purposes, which are not the primary purposes
of a union’s existence where dues are not donation and serve as a contractual
relationship between member and organization.
They also wondered why public
safety employee dues would be exempt. However, the value of the principle is
not all-or-nothing; it stands independently of whether it is applied with
uniformity. Just because it is not applied in totality or consistently does not
make it suddenly undesirable to be applied in no instance; in this case,
taxpayers would benefit even by partial application and thus there is no
rational reason to reject something beneficial when applied only because it is
applied partially.
Some brought up the issue of cost
savings, claiming there would be none – a proposition absurd on its face. Basic
logic dictates that if a government employee spends time doing things like shuffling
and explaining paperwork, entertaining questions about the deduction, and
performing data entry as a result of this, that this is time and productivity
that could be spent on matters dealing with government, not on behalf of a
private organization. In testimony, even as there was not a fiscal note on the
bill, one opponent claimed the Legislative Fiscal Office had reviewed the bill
and issued a finding that it would not have a “material” savings – obscuring
the result that there would be savings, just not much. In a way, by passing
this into law, it would provide a kind of pay increase to government employees that
must deal with this, for they would receive the same pay with a small decrease
in duties.
Finally, opponents extraneously
argued that if supporters believed in devolving as many possible powers and
functions in state government, that this state law would conflict with
lower-level governments who would want to keep union due deductibility as a
privilege for employees. Yet this introduces yet another illogical
all-or-nothing scenario that mandates in effect that all policy made in a state
– and keep in mind constitutionally that all power in a state flows from the
state and that local governments exercise only those powers that state
governments either allow them to have or those which they are not deprived –
either must come from the state level or local level, when a mixture certainly is
acceptable. For example, would opponents support allowing local governments the
option to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and others to
prohibit it, or would they prefer that the state not allow any discrimination?
Not assigning a policy all-or-nothing state-or-local does not address it merits
or demerits.
In fact, legislators showed a
wide hypocritical streak in their opposition. Every Democrat on the committee
voted against it, plus no-party state Rep. Dee Richard. Many
of these same Democrats waste no opportunity in complaining how government employees
deserve pay raises, and here they have a chance in effect to give one and they
sell out to their ideological allies. Richard deserve special scorn here, for
he presents himself as a champion of taxpayers, for example with a bill to
reduce state government contracting, yet he sold them out on this issue.
And this hypocrisy is born of
fear because they are lapdogs to unions, who badly want this bill sidelined.
Unions sent dozens of representatives to testify against a bill that, if we
take them at their own words, would cost a pittance for them rather than
governments to administer. Even members of public safety unions, not affected
by the bill, testified against it, demonstrating that their loyalty is to
themselves and their union buddies regardless of bargaining unit first with
taxpayers and the citizenry dragging the rear. One of these said it was way too difficult for them to keep up with members' address changes; but why should taxpayers be charged with doing this for them? They vented that the bill was “anti-union,”
“unethical,” “unjust,” and would destroy unions if passed.
Very tellingly, note the logic
here. They argued that if they did not receive this subsidy and preferential
treatment from government that their very existences were at stake. Which led
state Rep. Lance
Harris to remark that if this were the case, there was something these
organizations were doing wrong that made them so dependent on government
performing this task. After all, if they truly were bringing value to their
members, why would these members seem so deterred from paying dues if they had
to sign a government piece of paper as opposed to a non-government one?
So this is what it’s all about,
the dirty secret these unions wish so badly not to be exposed: they add so little
in value to an employee’s experience and/or these unions are so disorganized or
so oriented towards fulfilling their leaders’ wants (note that many of the
testifiers who showed up either had that paid for by their unions or by
governments themselves) that to be cut off from government subsidization they
think they would shrivel up and have ended the gravy train for their leaders. Maybe
if this government privilege was ended their leaders might orient themselves more
towards serving their members and place less attention on themselves, making
their outfits more relevant and attractive to a work force increasingly
indifferent to them. And their cries of apocalypse probably ring hollow: with
Louisiana being a right-to-work state and not a large portion of the government
workforce already unionized, there’s not many members to lose in any event.
The national
trend has been to end this preferential treatment, and once again Louisiana
threatens to lag where public policy is concerned (even as the state's mainstream media ignore the issue entirely: no outlet ran a story on either of these bills, even though debate for them lasted altogether four hours). After a motion to defer
involuntarily the bill – meaning it could not be brought up again effectively
before the end of the session – lost, the eight Republicans on the committee matched
with yeas the nays of the Democrats and Richard on voting for final passage, so
with an 8-8 tie technically the bill remains unreported, meaning that a majority of the House
may pull it from the committee directly to the floor. If party voting holds
there, that can happen and it will pass. For the sake of the taxpayer and to
create more responsible and responsive unions for their members, let’s hope
this happens.
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