Texas legislature looking at no longer collecting union dues for state employees

Matt Mackowiak:
You may be surprised to learn that from 2005-2015, the State of Texas (through the Comptroller’s office) has actively collected over $49 million in dues on behalf of politically active labor unions. And that does not even include data from school district, cities, and counties.

Why don’t labor unions collect their own dues?

This question is being increasingly asked by Texas legislators and is the subject of a Senate State Affairs Committee hearing on Monday, Feb. 13 in the Senate Chamber in the Capitol in Austin.

Legislation in both chambers has been filed in the current biennial legislative session, with House Bill 510 filed by State Rep. Sarah Davis (R-Houston) and with Senate Bill 13 filed by Senate State Affairs chairwoman Joan Huffman (R-Houston).

It may also surprise you that there are 28 “Right to Work” states (Kentucky and Missouri just joined the list), and of those 28, just 16 states (including Texas), still partner with labor unions to collect their dues on their behalf. Other states that have prohibited the government from collecting membership from public employee paychecks for unions: Alabama, Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, North Carolina and Wisconsin. These are all Right to Work states.
...
There is more.

Wisconsin did this in the face of a rather tempestuous response from the unions.  The results were pretty interesting.  When dues became voluntary, a lot of employees decided they would not longer belong to the unions.

In states dominated by Democrats those politicians usually have a corrupt bargain with the unions.  They collect dues from state employees where are used to elect more Democrats who then negotiate pay raises for the union that supported them.  In such cases, there is no one at the table representing the taxpayers who would be responsible for the higher wages.

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