The Latest Attack on Unions - Higher Pay!

Here's what's wrong with unions (from National Review):

To see why unions are going extinct, check out the SEIU’s latest alert. Union president Mary Kay Henry warns that “collective bargaining rights are under attack — again.” The threat comes from a bill . . . that would let employers pay higher wages. Yes, the union considers higher pay “a federal attack on your rights at work.” Currently, union rates are both minimum and maximum wages. Unionized businesses may not pay any more or less without the union’s permission. Senator Rubio’s RAISE Act turns union rates into minimum wages only: Employers could always pay more.

They often want to. Individual performance-pay can motivate employees to work harder. This increases both wages and profits. Unfortunately, most unions dislike performance pay. As Henry put it, unions want to “negotiate contracts that create a uniform, fair process for granting wage increases.” So everyone gets the same amount — no matter how hard they work.

The RAISE Act allows employers to reward individual achievement with higher pay. The SEIU considers this intolerable, and thinks “it undermines the fairness collective bargaining contracts bring to the workplace.” Worse, “employers would be allowed to ignore what they agreed to in collective bargaining agreements — and that’s not fair.” No wonder so few workers want to unionize.

And there's this from Michigan:

One school employee union in Michigan is demanding that members turn over bank account and credit card information so that the union can automatically claim monthly dues after the state voted to stop deducting the money on behalf of the union.

“Debbie Bence, president of the Plymouth-Canton Cafeteria Association, sent a letter to her union members on June 4 stating that the dues had to be paid as a condition of employment,” the Capitol Confidential (Mich.) reports. Members can also pay dues in full at the beginning of the year.

Her demand came after the Michigan Supreme Court found that the state’s practice of automatically deducting dues on behalf of the union’s political action committee violated campaign finance laws; the state legislature also passed a bill ending the automatic deduction of union dues that is under contention in federal court.

If states can keep passing union reforms that end mandatory union dues, eventually the unions will starve and that will be the end of them.