Six Ways to Hold Government Unions Accountable
For generations, government unions have existed for their members to be organized and have a seat at negotiating tables. But for too long, the influence of those public employee unions has been less about negotiating raises and sick leave and more about funneling taxpayer dollars and volunteers toward partisan political activity that almost exclusively benefits the Left.
Government unions should re-focus their energy and resources on their intended purpose: working on behalf of public-sector employees so those workers can do the job the American people hired them to do. Here are six ways states can help hold these government unions accountable to both their members and taxpayers.
Allow non-union schoolteachers to negotiate salary
Public school teachers have a choice of whether or not they want to be part of a teachers’ union—as they should. Unfortunately, non-union teachers are still held to the demands of unions that do not prioritize students and teachers. Teachers’ unions still have a grip on negotiations over salary and benefits.
Non-union teachers made their choice, and that choice should be respected across the board, including at the negotiating table. States can enact reforms that allow teachers who opt out of union membership to have their pay based on performance and qualifications and to negotiate directly with their public school district without union involvement.
This reform would help improve teacher quality and loosen the grip that teachers’ unions have over public schools.
It’s popular: Nearly nine in 10 voters support allowing public school teachers who are not in a union to receive pay raises based on good performance.
Standardize labor regulations statewide
What if your city, county, and state all had different labor policies? It’d be confusing, to say the least.
Workers should not be at the mercy of a regulatory patchwork in different parts of the same state. Instead, there should be fair, open, and reasonable labor policies that are uniform no matter where you live in a state. Preempting local governments and public employee unions from creating their own labor regulations by establishing statewide standards reduces red tape and helps ensure predictability.
Require annual recertification
Did you know that 94 percent of government union members did not vote to be in a union?
This is a problem because even in right-to-work states, workers still must accept the terms of collective bargaining agreements if they work in jobs that have union representation—even if they decide not to join the government union or pay dues. Additionally, union membership is politically diverse, but activism is geared almost exclusively toward the Left.
States can help give workers more of a voice and hold government unions accountable by requiring unions to be recertified every single year. This would help ensure that unions are more focused on the wishes of their members and would give workers the power to keep unions as they are, restructure them, or disband them altogether.
Eliminate PTO for union business
Government union business is not politically neutral, so taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill.
Government union contracts often have clauses allowing employees to work on union business while still receiving their taxpayer-funded salary. That means that taxpayers are unknowingly subsidizing union activity—which predominantly supports leftist causes and politicians.
The cost is more than just donations to partisan politics. The full scope is difficult to assess, but taxpayers are likely paying hundreds of millions of dollars each year for government union business.
States can ban taxpayer-funded union business by prohibiting the use of paid time off (PTO) when workers are working on behalf of the government union rather than serving the public.
Paycheck protection
Workers, not union bosses, should be the ones to decide how their paycheck is spent.
Unfortunately, government union leadership can subtract dues from member paychecks without their consent. This money is then often used to support political causes, which almost exclusively benefit the Left.
States can protect workers’ paychecks by prohibiting forced union dues. At least 10 states have passed some form of paycheck protection laws to safeguard employees’ take-home pay and let employees decide for themselves whether union membership is in their best interest.
Union membership should be a choice. Enforcing union dues on public servants is not the government’s place.
Reduce government headcount
In 2023, there were 19.5 million state and local government employees nationwide, and in total, wages alone for these employees are estimated to cost taxpayers more than $1.23 trillion.
State governments are big, wasteful, and inefficient, and government unions often make it worse by propping up bad employees and continually negotiating for more benefits and higher wages for public-sector workers.
Reducing the size and scope of the bureaucracy would go a long way in restoring trust and accountability to local and state governments. One way to do this would be to reduce government headcount by eliminating long-unfilled open positions. Some state and local government agencies intentionally do not recruit for open positions because leaving them unfilled allows them to use the funds allocated for those salaries and benefits for other purposes.
States can eliminate government positions that have been open for several months and save taxpayer money.