Looks like the SEIU is back to its old ways of using forcibly taken membership dues and converting them to PAC dollars — this time, using a little creative financing to apparently skirt campaign finance law. According to the WSJ:
The union adopted a new amendment to its constitution at last month’s
SEIU convention, requiring that every local contribute an amount equal
to $6 per member per year to the union’s national political action
committee. This is in addition to regular union dues. Unions that fail
to meet the requirement must contribute an amount in "local union
funds" equal to the "deficiency," plus a 50% penalty. According to an
SEIU union representative, this has always been policy, but has now
simply been formalized.
Remember, in many cases, employees are forced to pay administrative fees to the union whether they choose to join up or not. Thus, through this new provision, SEIU is able to take those union dues and convert them to political actions.
News flash: employees paying administrative fees are not union members; the assessment is per-member. So there’s no coercion.
But the assessment is paid out of the same account that administrative fees go into.
You can’t untangle the money once it is combined.
It’s still coercion to have non-members pay the administrative fee just to have the privilege of having a job.
The point is that the political assessment is per-member, not per-employee. So there’s no coercion to participate in the political activity of the union; an employee who wishes not to do so is free to drop her membership in the union. Of course, she still must pay for actual services rendered by the union, viz. the service of negotiating on her behalf; hence the administrative fee.
This, of course, is far less coercive than the right-wing North Carolina Association of Realtors, which is literally requiring members to participate in its political activities in order to continue to work at all.