Written By : Warner Todd Huston

A new measure has been introduced in the Michigan House of Representatives that would ban school districts from automatically deducting union dues from teachers’ paychecks and handing that money over to unions.

The practice of having state governments deducting dues automatically from state employees is quite common in northern and western states that are in thrall to the unions. It is a major payoff to unions to have governments automatically deduct dues from the paychecks of government employees, too.

It does seem odd that government is handling union dues, of course, but the reason it is done is because if government didn’t automatically deduct the dues and hand the cash over to the unions, those unions would have a harder time getting timely dues payments from members. If employees were responsible for paying their own union dues — as they should be required to do — then unions would find payment a bit less reliable than when government does the job.

Naturally, this is all a big favor, a big payoff to unions but a bad deal for taxpayers. You see, when governments remove union dues for unions then taxpayers are paying for the procedure. Taxpayers are paying for the paper work, the accounting, and all the work needed to transfer union dues from government employees to union bosses.

Unions, on the other hand, get all this banking and records keeping totally free of charge to them.

The fact is, taxpayers get ripped off by unions for the costs of the records keeping and banking efforts needed to automatically deduct union dues. In other words, every taxpayer is essentially paying his taxes to support unions in states that automatically deduct union dues. It doesn’t matter if the taxpayers is a union member or a union supporter or not, he is supporting unions with his tax dollar.

How did this practice start? Pliant, sold-out Democrat politicians that take millions in donations from unions made these laws, rules, and regulations to favor their union patrons. They did so to save unions money at the expense of taxpayers.

There is little doubt that this is a practice that should be eliminated everywhere. After all, it is not a very American practice! In fact, it goes against the sort of American principles that foster personal responsibility and fairness.

Not only should government union members be responsible for paying their own dues but taxpayers should not have to foot the bill to help union members pay their dues.

Let us hope that Michigan’s union controlled Democrats will not be able to stop the elimination of these auto deductions in the Wolverine State.

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