From: The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations
Contact: Susan Kniep, President
Website: http://ctact.org/
Email: fctopresident@aol.com
Telephone: 860-841-8032
TAX TALK MARCH 31, 2010
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Union Dues Collected by the State in 2009
$33.1 Million
Why are Connecticut taxpayers footing the bill to collect union dues from state employees for the unions? State legislators should cease this service and require the unions to bill their members directly!
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Wednesday, March 31, 2010
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5 comments:
Even a better question is why are we mandating through legislation that employees in state jobs must belong to a union?
If I am a state employee, why can't I decide whether I want to join a union, but here in CT you mandate that I must belong, and then forcibly seize a portion of my pay and hand it over to the union with the state taxpayers footing the huge expense for collecting it, accounting for it, and paying it to the 28 different state employee unions.
sounds like communism at its best
Susan Kniep is only scratching the surface on this one!
Most of the unions have political action committees that allow their members to make political donations to the union coffers through payroll deduction. The state comptroller then has to pay staff to collect all these donations as bi-weekly deductions from the employee's payroll checks, deposit them into a separate account, and then pay them along with an accounting report to each union.
Maybe someone needs to find out how many state employees are involved in this disbursement process on behalf of the unions.
Of course the legislature will never end a process like this because the money all goes to Democrats!
Another item Susan missed is the unions who have retiree associations. The state collects the dues for these associations through deductions form pension payments and disburses them to the appropriate association.
Once again the cost of collecting these fees, accounting for them and disbursing them is born by the taxpayers.
Even in so called right to work states, unions are accused of abuses of power:
Phoenix, AZ (April 1, 2010) – The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) regional office in Phoenix has issued a statewide complaint alleging that local union bosses and Fry’s Food Stores are illegally blocking independent-minded workers from stopping union dues payments.
The prosecution is the result of a four month long investigation of charges filed by Fry’s employees with free legal assistance from National Right to Work Foundation attorneys. Employees from several Fry’s locations filed the federal charges challenging the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 99 union hierarchy and Fry’s management, after union and company officials refused to honor the employees’ legal rights to revoke their dues deduction authorizations and continued to illegally seize union dues from their paychecks.
Upset by the UFCW Local 99 strike threat last November, the employees resigned from the union and revoked their dues deduction authorizations – used by union officials to automatically withhold dues from employee paychecks – during a time in which the union did not have a contract at their workplaces. Under Arizona’s popular Right to Work law, no worker can be required to join or pay any money to a union; and under federal labor law, employees can revoke their dues deduction authorizations once a contract terminates.
The Phoenix NLRB regional director found that the dues deduction authorizations used by UFCW Local 99 union officials at all Fry’s locations are illegal because the dues deduction authorizations do not allow employees to revoke them during contract hiatus periods, as required by federal law.
Suspecting that the illegal dues deduction forms are used in all workplaces in Arizona where UFCW union bosses enjoy monopoly bargaining privileges, Foundation attorneys are now offering free legal aid to all employees affected by the illegal UFCW dues deduction authorizations.
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