Opinion: Union Legislation Violates Employee Rights

A Letter to the Editor from Tony Conte:

Our State Representative Michael S. Day (D-Stoneham) has issued a statement touting his support for legislation (H.3825) that allegedly protects public sector employees' rights following the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Janus v. American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees (AFSCM) concerning the power of labor unions to collect fees from non-union members. However, the reality is quite different from the alleged benefits to employees. The reality is that this legislation is more about protecting public employee union dues revenues than protecting employees’ rights.

While there is some logic to allowing unions to charge for services rendered to non-union members (although how the proper value of such services is to be calculated remains to be seen), the remainder of the bill is highly questionable. Unions are private organizations that are granted rights that no other private organization would dream of demanding. The ACLU, good government groups and privacy advocates should be denouncing this legislation which requires public employers to give unions the home address, home and personal mobile telephone numbers, and private email addresses of employees, allows unions to use publicly owned facilities and services to communicate with union and non-union employees, grants unions the right to meet and intimidate newly hired employees for a minimum of 30 minutes, and allows unions to harass employees to join a union at the work site before and after work, and at work on break and lunch times. The legislation ominously also contains provisions making it difficult for public employees to quit a union. The end result of this legislation is to enhance the wealth and power of public employee unions to elect officials who do their bidding.

If any private company sought the right to engage in such efforts to sell their services to public employees, they would be laughed out of the office, but unions unashamedly make this boldfaced demand, and the legislature jumps to comply. This legislation is an outrage and should be reported as such.

Tony Conte, Harvard St., Winchester