Automatic Dues Collection Under Attack
Texas may become the next state that bars paycheck deductions for certain public employees to cover membership dues for labor unions or associations if Republican leaders have anything to say about it.
The Texas Tribune has reported that other states have seen mixed results after doing the same thing.
For months, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has made it clear that ending automatic dues deductions is one of his top priorities. He first highlighted the issue during his State of the State address in January.
Most recently, North Carolina approved a law last month that contained a provision to prohibit farm workers from having dues deducted from paychecks. The main union group that would be impacted by the law is not going to take it sitting down.
They are already planning legal action. Cat Crowe is with the Farmer Labor Organizing Committee, an agriculture union in North Carolina that’s a branch of the AFL-CIO.
“We’re challenging it in court as discrimination against farm workers,” she said.
Texas is in a similar boat to North Carolina, as they are two of the country’s 28 “right to work states.”
Jimmy Dixon is the Republican member of the state’s General Assembly and has carried the provision. He said if unions wanted to soften any impact the new law may have on membership, they needed to up their marketing strategy and convince people that they’d benefit from joining one.
Joe Slater is a law professor at the University of Toledo Law School. He has said that district courts usually ruled with unions when they challenge paycheck deduction laws — but federal courts of appeal tended to be more deferential to state legislatures, often ruling that the state had unlimited discretion to differentiate among groups, so long as it wasn’t based on gender, race or religion.
“What unions have to argue is that there was no rational reason for this distinction,” Slater said.
Unions in these circumstances typically file a combination of First Amendment and Equal Protection claims.
Michigan, Oklahoma, and Alabama as well as other states are experiencing the same conflicts over dues deduction rules.
At the time this was written there was still no action on the bill.
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