If Florida can ameliorate the effect of zombies, surely Louisiana can do it just as well, if not better.
In its original sense transported from Africa to the Americas, zombies are a reanimated creature from the dead found in voodoo practices, whether they know. Voodoo finds its way into Louisiana folklore, but in other places like Florida they’re more often found in labor unions.
That’s the conclusion a recent article drew about the state of these organizations in the Sunshine State’s public sector. Since that state, like Louisiana, doesn’t make employment in a bargaining unit subject to a closed shop – to work at that place you must join a union – but permits a bargaining unit to form and to negotiate on behalf of all employees regardless of whether they join and pay dues, those assessments essentially become optional.
Florida lawmakers last year passed a law that unless 60 percent of members pay dues yearly, there must be a recertification election annually. Typically in most other states such elections aren’t required to occur ever unless some extraordinary event occurs. This isn’t a great burden; it requires only that a majority of members of the bargaining unit – those who claim membership, even if they shirk paying dues – recertify that particular union as their representation, and in some places it happens annually regardless.
In combination with that, Florida law also prohibits unions making government a dues collector through automatic payroll deductions. Historically, when states have stopped this practice, union memberships fall significantly as the government employees involved become sensitized to the amount of money taken from their paychecks going to an organization that they don’t consider worthwhile for their own individual preferences.
These measures have caused a sharp increase in decertification of public sector unions, although since then a judge nominated by Democrat former Pres. Barack Obama ruled the deduction limitation was an unconstitutional impairment of the Contracts Clause as long as a previously-negotiated deal including that ability hadn’t expired. Even so, that narrow exception seems likely to be overturned on appeal, as states clearly have the ability to regulate their local governments.
Similar measures have come up in Louisiana bills, but powerful public sector unions in the state so far have frustrated efforts to pass these. This includes measures to require periodic reauthorization of deductions, stronger reminders that dues are voluntary and by federal law if dues are paid these amounts collected cannot go towards financing political activity, secret ballots in certification elections, and even to prevent public sector collective bargaining entirely – all were introduced earlier this year but made little progress.
Florida’s success in ensuring that whatever public sector union bargaining occurred with a genuine consensus of members that their unit does represent them – creating strong accountability incentives that leadership pay attention to members’ desires, not to their own political agendas – argues for Louisiana adding to its menu of labor reforms an annual recertification election. That so much decertification has happened in Florida testifies that this accountability was missing from zombie bargaining units, and Louisiana public sector workers deserve the same assurance they will receive genuine representation.
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