Alaska Governor Issues Executive Order to Enforce Janus Rights as Advocated by National Right to Work Foundation
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy recently issued an executive order to protect the First Amendment rights of all state employees under the Janus v. AFSCME decision won by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation at the United States Supreme Court in June 2018.
Under the new rule, adopted following a formal opinion by Alaska Attorney General Kevin Clarkson, the state will deduct union fees only from the paychecks of employees who have filed a waiver with the state acknowledging their wishes to have union dues taken from their paychecks despite their right under Janus not to fund any union activities.
Tho order follows an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal by National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix and veteran Foundation staff attorney William Messenger (who argued the Janus case at the Supreme Court) which encouraged Gov. Dunleavy to take this proactive step to enforce the Janus decision in Alaska, and also urged elected officials in other states to follow Alaska’s example:
Politicians in state capitals where Big Labor has a stranglehold are resisting compliance with Janus. Faced with both government and union resistance, public employees have filed dozens of lawsuits seeking to stop unions from seizing money from their paychecks.
But not all elected officials are so beholden to union bosses. Some are willing to put employee freedom before the interests of union officials. Alaska started that process Tuesday when, at the request of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, Attorney General Kevin Clarkson issued a formal opinion delineating how the state must change its payroll process to comply with Janus by ensuring that employees “freely and knowingly consented to have dues deducted from their paychecks.” Alaska’s solution includes stopping dues deductions absent an annual renewal of the waiver.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are being taken out of workers’ paychecks each month without any evidence that they waived their First Amendment right not to fund union activities, including partisan electioneering. Other state officials, along with federal agencies, should follow Alaska’s example.
The complete op-ed is available online here.
Public sector workers can learn more about their First Amendment rights under the Janus decision by visiting MyJanusRights.org.
Labor Day Media Round Up: National Right to Work Commentaries Highlight Injustices of Forced Unionism
On Labor Day, the National Right to Work Foundation generated significant coverage in both national and local media outlets, especially on newspaper opinion pages. Foundation President Mark Mix wrote a number of pieces for outlets around the country highlighting the injustices of compulsory unionism and what can be done to protect workers freedom.
Mix wrote for USA Today that no American should be forced to pay union dues just to get or keep a job and highlighted the prevalence of compulsory unionism despite Right to Work laws gaining ground:
Twenty-seven states have now enacted and implemented right-to-work laws, with five joining in the last eight years.
And on June 27 of last year, the U.S Supreme Court handed down one of the most significant employee rights legal victories in the history of the right-to-work movement with the Janus decision, which ended the forced payment of union dues or fees for millions of government workers nationwide.
Unfortunately, there are more private sector American workers in the 23 non-right-to-work states and others in the railway and airline industries who still work under compulsory unionism.
Mix also wrote a column for the Detroit News arguing that no worker should ever have to fear union violence just because they disagree with union tactics or thuggish strong-arming:
Violence, the threat of violence and the wrongful non-violent use of fear and intimidation by union thugs should be illegal. No exceptions.
The spreading UAW corruption scandal shows that union bosses often act as though they are above the law.
For the Lexington Herald-Leader, Mix wrote about how Kentucky’s Right to Work law benefits the state, and why they need to protect it from the attacks of Democrat and gubernatorial candidate Attorney General Andy Beshear, who wants to give power back to union bosses should he be elected to replace Governor Matt Bevin a friend of Right to Work:
Beshear wants to return the Commonwealth of Kentucky to the days of workers being forced to hand over a portion of their hard-earned paychecks to the union boss elites to get or keep a job. Meanwhile, the Bevin Administration has spearheaded record economic growth after passing Right to Work here in Kentucky.
Even putting that enormous economic growth aside, the fact is that one candidate favors allowing Big Labor to extract money from workers’ paychecks, and the other candidate has worked tirelessly to protect Kentucky workers’ right to hold onto their paychecks without union boss interference.
And for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Mark wrote how Right to Work laws have benefitted Nevada’s workers and families for more than half a century, causing noticeable effects for the state’s economy:
There is a reason Tesla’s Gigafactory is located in Nevada and not California. A nationwide 2017 survey of business leaders conducted by Chief Executive magazine found that, by a 2-to-1 margin, CEOs prefer adding jobs in right-to-work states over other states.
Business owners correctly view states that have passed right-to-work laws as being more welcoming and business-friendly than high-tax, forced-dues states such as California. That is why federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data show that from 2013-18, factory employment growth in Nevada was more than three times greater than in Western forced-union states such as Colorado, Oregon and Montana.
Just a few days after Labor Day, the Daily Caller published a timely op-ed from Mix regarding the Trump Administration’s rules to make it harder for union officials, like those implicated in the unfolding UAW scandal, to spend worker’s money on themselves or fuel their corruption:
At the end of May, the Trump Labor Department unveiled a rule that, as a contemporaneous news account filed by the Law360 legal news service explained, imposes “financial disclosure requirements for certain trusts that unions set up, scrutiny the agency says will ‘deter fraud and corruption.”
The proposed rule would reestablish the Form T-1, which until it was scuttled by union-label Obama administration bureaucrats in 2010 blocked officers of unions with $250,000 or more in annual revenue from using trusts supposedly created to benefit rank-and-file members to circumvent the federal reporting requirements for such unions that Congress instituted in the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.
In addition, Mix wrote two op-eds, one for Right to Work states and the other for non-Right to Work states, which were sent out across the country and printed in local newspapers. They highlight the benefits of Right to Work laws and the problems that forced unionism causes.
