The United States Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of paycheck protection in a case between Washington State and the Washington Education Association. The decision sets an important precedent for California and workers in all states.

Paycheck protection requires unions to get specific consent from nonmembers – 88 percent of all workers – to use their fees for political purposes.  The Washington State Supreme Court struck down the state’s paycheck protection law last year, arguing that it placed an unconstitutional burden on the union’s right to free speech.  The recent Supreme Court decision overturned the state decision, concluding unanimously that the union had no First Amendment right to use nonmembers’ fees for political purposes.

While the decision will have few immediate consequences for the Washington Education Association, it sets an important precedent in affirming that no worker can be forced to pay for a union’s political agenda without their consent.  Perhaps the decision will encourage Californians to reconsider their own rejection of paycheck protection and move toward protecting the free speech of all its citizens.

Despite its acceptance in other states, paycheck protection has floundered for years in California. In 1998, California voters were first presented with a paycheck protection initiative. On the ballot as Proposition 226, it required all unions, public and private, to obtain written consent from their members before using dues for political purposes. Initial polls indicated strong support for the measure, including support from union members, but the initiative ended in narrow defeat, 53 to 47.

Paycheck protection came up again in Governor Schwarzenegger’s ballot measure election of 2005, this time in the form of Proposition 75, which only applied to public employee unions. Like Prop 226, Schwarzenegger’s measure had strong initial support, but when the votes were counted, it too failed by a narrow margin. One major factor accounts for these results – profuse union spending.

In 1998 unions spent more than $22 million to defeat paycheck protection, while proponents spent slightly more than $6 million, less than a third as much. In 2005 unions spent almost $100 million fighting Schwarzenegger’s measures, pumping the airwaves full of emotional images of teachers, firefighters, and nurses pleading for support. Ironically, these very people, the public servants one union boss tearfully called “the personification of apple pie,” have the most to gain from paycheck protection. 

Union leaders and bureaucrats manipulate voters into believing they represent workers.  In the process, workers who don’t support union agendas lose their right to free speech.  Their hard-earned paychecks fund political platforms they do not support.

What unions really fear is a diminished war chest, a scenario which played out in Utah after the legislature there passed a paycheck protection measure in 2001. After making contributions voluntary, the Utah Education Association, one of the most potent teachers unions in the nation, saw their annual political spending budget shrink to less than half of what it was in 2002.

Paycheck protection seeks worker consent rather than legal extortion. The Utah Educational Association lost money because it did not represent the interests of its members; otherwise, more would have chosen to contribute. When a similar law was passed in Michigan, the Michigan Education Association actually raised more money for political expenditures. It did so by accepting that union members now had a choice to support the union’s political activities, so the MEA initiated a marketing campaign to persuade members that the union-backed candidates and causes were worthy. Paycheck protection forces unions to communicate better their political agenda to their members, making union leaders accountable to those they serve.

The Supreme Court decision in the Washington state case sends a clear message: paycheck protection is constitutional.  It does not violate union rights, but rather protects the rights of individual workers, most of whom are not union members, according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In 2006, unions represented only 12 percent of all wage and salaried workers, 7.4 percent in private industry and 36.2 percent in government. In other words, a full 63.8 percent of government employees, 92.6 percent of private sector workers, and 88 percent of all workers nationwide are not in unions.

Californians should keep those numbers in mind when they reconsider past decisions. They should look beyond expensive advertising campaigns funded by union war chests to the real issue of First Amendment rights.